Why Did I Write These?

I got an interesting question from my publisher yesterday: Why did I write the stories in Precarious?

Believe it or not, I never really thought about why I wrote them.

The stories in the collection (due out in February) were written over a period of 30 years and are all very different, but as it turns out, they're all about the same thing. Women and men. An endlessly fascinating topic. I suppose I wrote them to figure out how I felt about certain things.

The great thing about stories is they can make you feel what someone else felt. The better the story, the more subtle and nuanced the feelings. Anyway, that's what I look for as a reader. The surprise as a writer is how you can make yourself feel things you never felt before or never knew you felt.

Writers are like actors. We get to play a lot of different roles, try out a range of personalities, and live lives very different from our own.

I wrote these stories to find out what would happen to the characters and how things would turn out for them.

I wrote them because I felt like I had some things to say that I couldn't say any other way.

Delayed, in a Good Way

The publication date for my story collection, Precarious, is being pushed out until January or February. While I can't help but feel let down — eager as I am to hold the final product in my hands — the delay is actually good news.

It means that extra care is going into the release of my book.

It means that Midpoint — a major distributor that my publishers recently signed up — is putting together a more detailed marketing plan for us.

So I can wait. In fact, I'm happy to wait.

I'm actually more excited now, and more hopeful about the book's prospects, than I've ever been.