I know what you are thinking: Is she really going to post about her debut novel, Crazy String, that was published in July, again? Well yes, maybe, simply, because it was 7 months of back and forth emails and notes and suggestions and edits and rewrites and font decisions and cover designs and everything that goes into this act of publishing that is far far away from the solitary hours and years and imagination that formed around my initial ideas when I first met the core characters and felt their angst, their sorrow, their loves, their struggles but also the overwhelming crazy strings that held them together even when they were hellbent on getting clear across the continent and as far apart as possible. Yes, for all of that.

Now all those people, for they are hardly characters anymore but people with a shared past and passions and desires and weaknesses, now this family, the Ueland family, live on pages that can be turned. Word by word, line by line, one chapter at a time, they come into a reader’s consciousness, blend with their own notion of what a family is, what a good mother does, what Vermont feels like in July, what rollerblading down the crowded Santa Monica bike path takes, what looking across the Hudson and spying the majestic Lady Liberty does to your resolve. Yes all of that is within the covers, while all that a reader brings to the page gets mingled with the printed words and the novel takes on an unique and singular experience.

Sometimes a reader pauses. Sometimes they question. Sometimes they nod in agreement. Once a book gets opened anything is possible.