The Lake and the Lost Girl was released June 6!!

Last week I had three book launch events — at Forever Books in St. Joseph, Schuler Books in Grand Rapids, and Bookbug in Kalamazoo — every one of them was rewarding and unexpectedly fun. Friends, bookshop staff, and visitors I had not met before were generous with their attention to my reading and my words about my writing. I am so, so grateful.

It was more moving than I could have imagined to receive the recognition from friends of just how long the road to publication (of a book) has been for me, and that they are proud of me for staying on it. Getting to a point of satisfaction with a work and/or publication is a long road for most authors. I am in good company with those who have postponed creative work for years, decades, as life demanded so much attention and energy that there wasn’t much left for writing, or any other in-depth, personal endeavors. In fact, at times pursuing writing seemed frivolous in light of life events. That made it difficult — and seemingly irrelevant — to believe in that aspect of myself.

But that aspect of myself did not go away. I connect to my core and to the seen and unseen worlds through writing, and attempting to ignore that fact does not change the truth of it.
So here I stand, a published novelist. And there I stood, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, with my beautiful book in hand (thank you Mark Nepo, Kevan Lyon, and Sourcebooks) sharing it with old and new friends.

At 20 years old when I was in college in Iowa City, if I had been told that it would take three+ decades to achieve this, I believe my mind would have been divided between encouragement that publication would in fact happen, and horror that it would take so long. Here in 2017, my view of life has become much less bound to Time, and I see that holding the lamp toward the unknown and continuing to step, step, step (step, step, step, step) … was most of what was required of me on the journey. And will continue to be.

Along with the blessings … of love and luck. 🙂