I’ve been doing book events for When the World Turned Upside Down. (By the way, I got an email from my editor that my book launch date has been pushed back again! Paper supply issues + new author = a bouncing launch date. Word is they have had to reschedule 20 book launches. It’s my second push. First it went from a November launch to a January launch. Now it’s launching in February. One day, this book will hit the shelves. Lol.)

Anyway, as I’ve been doing the book events, I’ve been talking about the pandemic, about people, and about anxiety. Sometimes I forget that after you write a book, you live in it for a while. You talk about it, you read from it, you represent it—and it represents you. Which makes me think that we’re these two entities—the writer and the book—dancing with each other. Some books the writer writes, and other books, the book takes the lead and it basically writes itself.

Somehow, I feel like When the World Turned Upside Down brought itself to life. Once the idea was planted, the outline, the narrative, the characters, just came flowing out. it got written very quickly. (I probably could have used another draft, but there was no time—ironically, there’s all the time in the world now, isn’t there?) And now that I’m talking about it, I feel like it is leading me into necessary conversations about life, giving me lots of food for thought and opportunities for reflection.

That’s one good thing about writing, the adventure continues past the work of writing. As people engage with your work, as you promote the work, there is more to learn, more transformation to step into, more newness to be born!

Here’s a slice of some of the reflection I’ve been doing, as reported in the Managing Anxiety section of this Publishers Weekly write-up of a panel I participated in.

Onward!