Mind of a novelist. Florence, Italy.

3:45 in the afternoon, outside Philadelphia, and all this long day long, I've been in Florence, where it is dawn and has been dawn and the sun is breaking at the Ponte Vecchio.

It took me five and a half hours on a flight to San Francisco to find the image I needed, the key to a novel that has nearly broken my heart.

One image. One moment. And the novel turns.

Slowly, it turns.