You missed me, right?

How come you haven’t been posting a little essay at your blog every week as you have for, like, forever? I’ve sure missed it.

Said no one.

But, since you didn’t ask, let me tell you: When I first started blogging 11 years ago—yes, that long ago—it was in support of my then just-about-to-be-released book, My Teenage Werewolf. The weekly posts were meant to gin up interest in the book and, as they say, “build my platform.” Neither of which happened. I then blogged my way through the next book, Counterclockwise, mostly because there was no end to the fascinating research coming out about health and aging, and I wanted to keep sharing it.  Then there were the weekly stories connected to my next project, Raising the Barre, which I found time to write because the book was teaching me so much about humility and self-empowerment as I learned about the lives of those who lived their art. Research for the prison book, A Grip of Time, grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go, so I had to write about that even as I was writing the book.

But the blog also became a place where I could write about writing and, during those dark  Trumpian years, about politics, about holding on to a semblance of sanity, about not losing hope. The weekly stories became part of my writing discipline. I no longer thought about “platform building” or driving sales or–forgive me, I actually had this fantasy back in 2010– “going viral.”

Lately, though, not that you noticed, I have not been posting regularly. Work on the new book, which I hope will be titled Time After Time, has taken over. (Four weeks and counting to manuscript deadline.) Add to that the work-on-top-of-work it has been to conceptualize, refashion and reboot four writing workshops and a graduate seminar to the virtual classroom.

And then there’s the psychic energy drain of living through the final dangerous days of Trump and the never-ending months (now a year) of the pandemic.

Anyways, my friends, I am back. At least for the moment. And while I have your undivided attention (all 3 of you), I wanted to share this link to an interview I did recently with the 1200-member Aviatrix Book Club about The Happy Bottom Riding Club. That book, one of two biographies I’ve written (published, yikes, 20 years ago), has recently—and mysteriously—been getting renewed attention. There’s this book club, and then another female pilot book club before that, and a film option. It’s nice that old books never die. I am reminded of that final scene in The Happy Bottom Riding Club, possibly my favorite in the book. If you know it, you know just what I mean. I am not, however, covered in ashes.