But I will also honor my dreams as best I can, with whatever thimble's worth of diligence and determination I can muster day by day.
When I attended the Fargo SCBWI regional conference in September 2019, I was in horrendous pain from what I later found out was pelvic floor dysfunction. I couldn't go to the bathroom properly, and sitting was utter agony. I carried a hemorrhoid pillow with me everywhere. I was mortified when an editor sat at my table during lunch and I had to repeatedly excuse myself for bathroom breaks. But you know what? I learned so much at the conference! I had a marvelous time with all my fellow writers despite feeling terrible. And someone liked the premise of Agent Regalia and is expecting me to complete her story.
So I won't give up. I am more than the sum of my pain, ink is also in my blood. 2020 is going to be a good year, I know it . . . because it marks the thirteenth year since I started writing novels. And 13 has always been my lucky number!
Here is a surprise peek at the opening to the sci fi verse novel I am writing, BAD SPECIES. I hope to finish both Agent Regalia and this new experiment this serendipitous year.
The Grit
Humans
like me
aren’t
born on Earth anymore,
but
Mama still believes
the
memory of that planet
twists
through our DNA
in
all the ways bones branch into
skeletons
and knuckled fingers.
No
Homo sapien has set foot on the blue
sphere
in
more than forty years.
(It’s
not ours anymore)
Maybe
that’s why “Earth” rolls like a hollow orb
on
my tongue: Urrrr—
(a
deep growl rises in my throat as I sound my ancestry out)
tthhh
. . . .
that
single syllable always ends in a pathetic lisp!
Yet
Mother wants me to believe pretend
that
stupid dead word holds some
secret
power in the saying, like maybe—
home
can never be stolen away, not when
the
core of the world curls inside the wail of each newborn
and terra
firma—
solid
ground—
finds form in the flesh of a child.
So
she named me “Pearl,”
not
after the shiny nacre,
but
for the precious grit
that
lies at its true
origin
point—
a
tiny speck of Earth lodged deep inside my heart.
I
can never escape the weight of it.