What's happening with the second book?

The second most common question I get asked (after people want to know if the book is about me) is when am I coming out with a second book.

For those of you who follow me on Facebook or Twitter you know I have been working on it pretty seriously for the last year or so. This summer I ramped up the pace of the writing and have set some pretty strict deadlines for myself to get it in shape. I promise it will not take as long as the first book. (It can't, I don't have that kind of patience anymore!)

Writing the second book feels different. While it is easier to structure the book and I do have a much better understanding of how to put the story together, I also have the weight of the first book sitting on my shoulders, sometimes it is an angelic presence, reminding me I can do it and other times it is devilish, making me question whether or not this book is as good or as relevant as The Last Bridge. All those thoughts dance through my head as I first sit down to write. As I climb back into the story they dissipate and the momentum of the plot takes over. The characters come alive and start speaking to me and for a while, I am lost and not thinking or worrying about anything else other than what happens next.

As I get further along (that's code for as soon as I have a solid draft which should be within a month or so) I will talk a little bit more about it. I can say this, it takes place in Bali, and there is no suicide note.

Excuse me would you like to buy my book?

Since the launch I have been adjusting to my life as a published author, which isn’t much different from my life before, except there is more work and an ever present sense that there must be something else I should be doing to get the word out. In this day and age, the life of an author is part writer and part pusher, so I find myself spending a portion of every day contacting libraries, organizations, and media outlets pitching them my book (and the value of supporting it.)

While I am an outgoing person, like most folks, I have a level of discomfort, feeling like I am talking about myself (or my book) all the time, so I’m trying to find the right approach, one that gets results without me feeling like I’m trying to get you hooked on dope.

The universal experience I have had when speaking to people is how nice and supportive they are. In spite of all the different ways you can connect to readers, the most effective way is still word of mouth. This is when you are grateful to have friends with big mouths! In addition to reading the book, many of you have recommended it, lots of you have sent me pictures of the book from bookstores, and a few of you have checked your library card catalogs to make sure they are stocking it. (It gives me a thrill to see multiple copies checked out or on hold in library catalogs!) Thank you for all the promotion you have done on my behalf!

By far though, the best experience I have had on my own, was walking up to a woman in a Barnes & Noble in Bayshore, Long Island. She was holding my book and trying to decide whether or not to buy it. I said, "that book is really good you should buy it."

She said, "did you read it?"

I said, "No, I wrote it." She and her friend each bought a copy and I signed it.

Live to tell the story...

I have officially put myself on a television blackout on anything related to the Jaycee Dugard case. I cannot sit through another interview where a reporter asks an expert, friend of the family or distant relative the question, "Why didn't she get away?"

Every time I hear the question I feel my blood pressure spike as my hands ball into fists. While I understand all the reasons behind the question, I still cannot handle its' implication and our societal ignorance of the realities of abuse.

While we all like to say we have empathy for the victims of these atrocities, it is easier for us to wonder why they could not save themselves. (By extension save us the huge discomfort of having to face the horrors that some people are forced to endure.) Asking this question, or even wondering about it, is the same thing as trying to imagine what it would feel like to have cancer. We can say we would fight it, do everything necessary to live, but do we really know what we would do when the pain hit us? Do any of us ever know what we will do until we are tested?

Victims of violent crime struggle with many things after rescue, one of them being guilt. Either guilt for surviving when others didn't, or guilt for not fighting hard enough to get away. This thinking is a factor of being safe, when you are in danger or struggling to survive you do not have the luxury of hindsight, you only have moments to endure. When you are free, you question what you did to survive. When you are enslaved, you merely survive.

Perhaps the harder questions to ask are "how did you survive? what was it like?" but who really wants to know that? In speaking with survivors of sexual abuse during the writing of The Last Bridge, this was the comment I heard most often, "no one wants to know what happened. When I try to bring it up, people change the subject or they tell me it's too painful."

Imagine something awful, unimaginable happens to you and when you are returned to your family and friends you feel their hesitation, their fear and resistance. What has happened to you has not only broken you in ways you will spend your whole life healing but has separated you from everyone and everything you know, for ever? What do you do when no one will hear your story?

Anyone who has ever been in therapy knows this, what heals us more than anything is the power of listening. While we cannot make the atrocities so many people suffer go away, we can listen, we can open up our hearts and let the story come out and live in the open. Instead of focusing on what they should have done (get away, call the police, etc.) we can focus on what they did do, they stayed alive.

Perhaps it is the belief we all cling to that bad things do not happen to good people that gets us in to trouble. The truth is bad things happen to everyone all the time. What happens to us is not a judgement of our worth, what we do about it is what defines us. When we can embrace the notion that there is no "normal" we can free a lot of people from emotional suffering. What is normal, after all, is what happened to you.

Which takes me to the hero's journey. If we are all the hero of our own story, our job is live to tell the story. It is to survive the obstacles that are put in our path. I read the stories of Jaycee Dugar, Shawn Hornbeck, Elizabeth Smart, Elisabeth Fritzl and all other survivors and I am amazed at the power of the human spirit to endure, to survive. While what became normal to them is unthinkable to us, it is what they experienced and it deserves to be acknowledged openly and with love and understanding.

We don't ask people who survive cancer why they didn't have it diagnosed sooner. When they survive we congratulate them on fighting the good fight. We should treat survivors of abduction, violent crimes and abuse in the same way. We should honor their courage and hear their stories.

Living in the sentences

"...after you get into the book, you're really living with these people and you're living in the sentences. And their experience kind of becomes yours. It's a peculiar kind of loss of identity that the author has..." -- E.L. Doctorow

Yesterday afternoon I was listening to E.L. Doctorow on All Things Considered on NPR talking about writing his new novel "Homer and Langley," which explores the lives of two privileged brothers who hole themselves up in their brownstone and live amidst a tremendous amount of clutter.

In discussing the character of Homer, Doctorow remarked that he really felt bad for his character and went on to say that, "you're really living with these people and you're living in the sentences," to describe the experience of being so engrossed in your story that you feel deeply for your characters.

I love the expression of "living in the sentences" as it accurately describes the reality that inhabits me when I am working on a novel. As I have said before, Cat's story lived in my head for over ten years. My life at work, at home and with friends was shadowed by her life, her reality, her feelings. I lived in the sentences of The Last Bridge for a long time. Even now, when readers ask me what happens next, or they speculate for me on what the future holds, I honestly can't say whether or not it all works out as I have not "lived" that part of the story (yet? I don't know.)

Right now I am in the thick of book two and this story is told from a man and woman's point of view. This is the first time I have put myself into a man's head and I have to say I am learning a lot(like women are intense and can be complicated!) Generally, I work on one part of the story at a time and live in that character's head for a while. In the car, during morning walks or when I am doing chores, I will play out a scene in my head, often speaking the dialogue of the character out loud. Over time, I hold the character in my heart in the same way I would a cherished friend of member of my family. In stores, I can pick out what he would wear or what color lipstick would look good on her. At times, I wonder what my characters do when they are not in my head.

It is a curious and intense experience. At times it feels as if you are cheating on the people in your real life, that someone else is the object of your attention. Writing is only a small part of the process, inhabiting the world of your story stays with you all the time.

It can be a burden sometimes, especially when you can't get the story done and you can't shake the character either. There are lots of road blocks on the way to finishing a novel and I have had moments when I have felt like my characters were bad pennies I could not lose. When writing about the darker aspects of Cat's life I felt sad a lot of the time, and could not understand how someone could endure what she did. Every time I got drunk I thought, "this is how she feels all the time."

When I got the word from my editors the final draft of The Last Bridge was accepted, I was elated. At last I could go "public" with my relationship with Cat and send her and her story out into the world. I was finally free to live inside other sentences and I was looking forward to it.

That's when I realized the only thing harder about inhabiting the lives of your characters is letting them go.