in the aftermath of three made books.

Yesterday I sent dear Tamra Tuller of Philomel the revised Berlin novel.  A few days before, HANDLING THE TRUTH went off to Lauren Marino at Gotham, and the week prior to that DR. RADWAY'S SARSAPARILLA RESOLVENT was emailed to its publisher, a package made complete by my husband's eleven illustrations. 

It has been, in other words, a heady time—my thoughts, in overlapping intervals, inside a certain German city, circa 1983, inside a century's worth of 100 memoirs, and inside 1871 Philadelphia and the cacophony of Baldwin Locomotive Works.

But it was my office that was really showing the heat.

That space is so much neater now.  It's dusted and Windexed and vacuumed, too.  It's a place for starting over in, and that is what I'll be doing over the next many weeks.  I'll be back at work on corporate projects.  I'll be doing some teaching, some reviewing, some author interviewing, some essay writing.  I'll be reading some 20 new books and celebrating them here, on my blog, with the world.

And I'll be launching SMALL DAMAGES.

It will be an untangling time.  It will be a while, I suspect, before I begin to dream about any new books.