FINALLY, I Have a New Novel Idea

And I'm sharing the entire process along the way...

Amidst all the root canals and waking to blood matted on my cat’s fur (don’t even ask), amidst all the chaos and heat and uncertainty and how the world is crumbling and cruel but every day a puppy, a child, a kitten, a black rhino is saved. Amidst feelings of failure, of despair, of feeling like a house with all the lights snuffed out—

I have a new book idea.

A real one. Finally. Like, for real this time. Scenes have played out in my head for months and this happens often and then I move on to the next but I like these characters. They linger. They won’t go away which means their stories are worth telling.

The story is a retelling of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. A group of friends meditate on a friend’s suicide. But unlike Woolf’s book, which was all from an interior POV, this will be real and visceral and pulsing, and a book that finally starts with darkness but ends in light.

This is a first for me since my last two book titles centered on darkness.

Four friends: Neville, Mundo, Sophie and Alexandra (Alex) grow up in 1980s Brooklyn. Brooklyn, even though it and I have changed, remains home to me. It a place to which I feel comfortable returning because I know the streets back then, the territory is familiar and navigable.

The friends splashed in front of wrenched open Johnny pumps and feasted on hot dogs in Sunset Park. They lived in apartment buildings where you could hear the thumping, laughter, beatings, and love through the walls. And while most of the book will start in the east coast, I finally plan to introduce California in the mix. Because while I’ll never consider myself an Angeleno (I’m a long-term tourist), there’s something here that Brooklyn doesn’t have. A light I’m eager to explore.

The book spans a forty-year friendship, marriages, children, extended families in various stages of disrepair, petty crimes, and double-dealings and sometimes other loves, and the unexpected death of Neville. (Aside: I have the entire chapter of the event mapped out and visualized in great detail, and this hasn’t happened for me before, where the lives play out in a way that you can feel the action as it happens.)

The loss sends them reeling in ways they couldn’t imagine—from being lost in the sickness of nostalgia (and getting trapped in it) to rage and anger, and hate, and finally acceptance, life, and love—I want to write about friendships and love that cannot be altered by time or tragedy.

This is new terrain for me. All my characters die or leave, and while I cling to my Linus blanket with the suicide, the challenge is in the remaining three—how they survive and thrive, how they crawl (in varying degrees) out of darkness.

Virginia Woolf once wrote that the death of the poet in Mrs. Dalloway was important because it presented contrast—it showed the other characters how to live. And that lingered with me, the contrast, the dark and light, and the all the spaces between the two worth navigating.

One thing that has troubled me is the business of books, and I’ve decided to no longer care. I will be publishing early drafts for paid subscribers and showing the revision process, while sharing more finished pieces for everyone to read. So, essentially, a novel written in real time, untethered to agents and Bookscan numbers and how many followers I have on social media.

Because I love and live to write. It’s always been the one thing that roots me. I write to make sense of the world and hopefully share my excavations with others.

So, in the coming weeks, I will be working on the first chapter. I write out of order (shocker) because I’m not a linear thinker, but I’ll have a guide where you can see the puzzle pieces coming together. It’s all a work-in-progress and I hope to figure it out.

And finally, I won’t use the reason/excuse of making money to take me away from writing. I’ll make the time.

And I hope, in the coming weeks and months, you’ll take some time to read along and discover these characters whom I’m only just meeting and slowly falling in love with.