Evolving, as you have, from the journalistic discipline of daily deadlines, taking an entire year to gestate and give birth to a piece of work could easily smack of (lazy) extravagance.

How many of us, no matter what our creative path, aspire to the kind of internal rhythm you seemed to have found in your hustle and flow?

This topic makes reminds me of a minor bookstore incident that happened a few weeks ago when I was dawdling in unfamiliar territory (the poetry section), and overheard the tail-end of an almost musical pitch sung by a salesgirl in the gushing tones of a devotee, addressed to a rather stout middle-aged female, dressed in a pastel-print, calf-length, wrap-around dress of what looked like organic cotton. A straw hat with a feather wouldn’t have looked out of place perched on top of the thick, naturally grey braid festooning her back. She gave the impression of hip affluence, yet had the air of vacating by slow degrees her stance of polite attention. Soon enough, she drifted away, allowing me to buttonhole the salesgirl, about whose appearance I have little to say… only that I’d been thinking, “Oh, Ann Patchett and partner have hired a crop of dewey local enthusiasts for this book-lovers’ oasis”. “What were you just talking about?”, I asked the bright young thing. She immediately launched into further exclamations of wonder and delight for the works of Dickens…about how he could so seamlessly make his vivid characters self-combust when he needed them to. Her favorite? ‘Hard Times’! Ah, one I haven’t read…he was soooo prolific…some say, a hack…

Authors write and publish on their own schedules. We, the reading public, should read and enjoy and be happy when our favorite authors have a new book available. That is all.