Blog
June
Wednesday 3rd June 2020
May was not a month I necessarily want to remember. There was a couple of highlights—my husband and I celebrated 20 years of marriage and our dog Abbey turned 6. But by the end of the month we had been under 10 weeks of lockdown, my godson had coronavirus and was in a hospital in Portland, Maine, (and is doing very well) and George Floyd had been killed by the Minneapolis police, inciting peaceful protests but also igniting looting and many injuries. I lived for many years in Minneapolis and St. Paul—they are wonderful cities. I still have friends, relatives and many wonderful memories of life in the Twin Cities and it is painful this has happened. I hope and pray this time the voices of our many oppressed Americans are finally heard.
May was not a productive month writing-wise. There were a lot of interruptions—planned and unplanned. At the same time the story for my new book Stealing Thunder was heading off in directions I hadn't known about at the beginning, which required quite a bit of rewriting. At the beginning of May my characters were in Prague. Now they're in a raging storm in the North Sea!
As I often do, I look to the poet Mary Oliver to help make some sense of the world in which I live. And Snoopy's simple guidance always seems to be just what I need. Mary was a great dog lover, so it is fitting that I include one of her poems.
