I have been remiss in posting this past month or so...and the Christmas Season hasn’t helped, but it’s all been good! While not so much caught up in the shopping frenzy, I have taken sick for two-weeks, which had thrown me for a loop, cause once you’re better, you then have to catch up. And there’s also all the wonderful family interaction I love and enjoy. As much as many make lots of noise about what this time of year is or isn't supposed to be about, I don’t listen to any of it. Any time of the year when parts of Humanity can find it within them to be nicer to their fellow humans works for me. Any other discussion on the roots of Christmas is deserving of a novel idea I have for far future work....
But what had been “lost” (even for me, this is a misnomer, but I’m just gonna run with it, so bear with me...) was time going back over another novel manuscript my-then-prospective agent was interested in. This manuscript is about reincarnation. Gritty reincarnation. And a mass murder at a retirement home. How the two concepts fit together. It’s a story I’ve been working on for years (I’d written it in three years of part-time sitting, and have been updating it over the years to keep it current). It’s a story that really speaks to and burns through my soul and--I feel--will do so with others. It’s my way of showing that there are things that go on in the background of which we aren’t aware...and perhaps (in many cases) for good reason. Sometimes we don’t need to know the ill we’ve rent in other lives...but to KNOW we had them, THAT is the important part.
After all, what would YOU do if you knew...beyond all doubt...that you’d lived before... and might live again? How would that change your life?
So, sitting here, listening to Creed’s Weathered and Human Clay (I secretly have one of their songs as the closing credits for the movie adaptation of this manuscript [I also adapted the manuscript into a script]...) as I again work on its hopefully transparent words, really drives this story deep into me like a bloody sliver. Every time I spend a lot of time working this manuscript I always say I’m “over” going back through it ever again...yet every time I pick it up...it again grips and grabs and burrows into my marrow, and I don’t ever want to it be over. So maybe I’m somewhat afraid that when it gets published (and it will--eventually, and by someone...) it might be a time of great sadness, because I’ll know that this one “baby” of mine will be forever “done.” No more going over it, no more updating it...no more caressing its story....
Sigh.
This manuscript always blows me away, the emotion I pour into it...that pours into ME from it. It holds a exceptional, extraordinary place in my soul and I feel ridiculous in even putting this into words, whimpy, even, but it’s how I feel, and I can only hope I can adequately convey this to others and that they, too, can find something in it that directly speaks to them...MOVES them. Maybe even change the direction of their lives and how they LIVE. I’ve had a handful of reviewers give me some cover quotes and you can find them on my website, at the Recent News link below...scroll down to the Novel Updates at the bottom of that page, to the “8/4/07” entry.
So, recovering from a couple lost weeks, waiting for my agent to return from her well-earned holiday vacation, and pondering starting a new year that could well change the direction of MY life...has me chomping at the bit (Ha! Another image from my reincarnation novel!)!
Enjoy this time of year in every and any way you do...with peace and love and understanding...and an open mind.
