Morning Pages Entry - FREEHAND 2173 in the flesh...
AUGUST 4, 2023
Today the printed promotional copies of my first novel, FREEHAND 2173 will arrive. I am excited and nervous. In a way it doesn't seem real as the road to get here has been long...full of twists and turns and detours.
I started writing poetry when I was eleven and my Aunt Sandi gave me a journal and told me whatever life threw at me, to write about it. I was spending time with her and my Uncle Ski at their home in the foothills of East County San Diego when my first poem, inspired by their peaceful garden paradise full of flowers and bird, inspired me,.
Rooster, rooster I can hear you crow,
I can hear you high, I can hear you low.
Just beyond the bushes, just beyond trees,
Not once do you stop, not once do you cease.
Simple, and tattooed on my my psyche forever.
As a senior in high school, English literature was my favorite subject. Mrs. Kitzmiller, the only teacher whose name I still remember. In junior college I took creative writing courses alongside, widowed old ladies, finally pursuing their passions. I entered and won a poetry contest, $100 prize. In my twenties and thirties I continued to write poetry, researched and wrote a television show pilot, a play, wrote songs for my band WAXAPPLES to perform and record, and then in my early forties I wrote and directed a feature length documentary, Cadillac Tramps "Life On The Edge". No matter what, writing has been there, sometimes invisible to me.
Then in May, 2019 a tragic event gave birth to FREEHAND 2173, my first novel.
It's taken me four and half years of joyful work to get to this blessed day...the publishing of a novel. A grand story about depression and hope and love and fear and time travel and quantum physics and Albert Einstein and family! A lovely story, birthed through me, materialized after thirty-nine years of writing, reading, learning, living, listening, collaborating, experimenting and facing oh so many fears to get to this day!
There is still so much work to be done as I wade into the cold and choppy shores of releasing a work of art to the world, and so much unknown about how others will respond to the story and to my writing, and yet today I am allowing myself the space and grace to experience this miracle in all it's glory, and think to myself "what a wonderful world"!
FREEHAND 2173 is available as a paperback, pre-order on Amazon today, available for purchase as an ebook on Kindle, August 13th-and will be officially released October, 3rd, 2023!
