In June this year I received a publication offer for my third novel, CONFUSE THE WIND. The offer came from an independent press based in Athens, Greece called Vine Leaves Press. I’d been communicating with VLP for months and I was ecstatic to receive their offer. After the initial thrill quieted, I realized that I wanted to do a pretty serious revision of the book they’d finally agreed to publish. I had a call scheduled with an editor at Vine Leaves and I rehearsed how to explain the revision to her. What I feared was that she would say, that sounds like a big revision- why don’t you re-submit when you’re done. I decided that would be okay. I’d roll the dice. Revision is a huge part of writing, the majority of the endeavor. A final version of a novel only carries a shadow of the first draft in my experience. I’d already revised this novel many times. But, this was not something I’d done before. Found a publisher, received an offer, and then decided I had to revise again. I had my long talk with Vine Leaves editor, Amie McCracken. And she said two sentences that I’ll never forget. “That sounds like the same novel we’ve accepted, with some critical changes, some major revisions, but not a new book. Our offer would stand and you can have until December to revise it.” This call was yet another indicator of several I’d already perceived that Vine Leaves Press was a publisher I was going to be very happy with.

Five months ago I began a revision that if I called it a slog, would be a large understatement. I’ve re-written this book mostly after 10pm, on the fumes of mental and physical energy that exist after a day of a full-time job and raising two young kids. I think I’ve done three years of writing in 5 months.The joy of writing wasn’t the leading sensation of this re-write. But I knew every hour that what was happening was improvement, was closer to my truth, was the story that I had been trying to get to all along, but more of itself. And finally, something happened this week that made the revision a joy again. I always think that if a nugget of my writing does the intended thing and then something else that I didn’t intend but that cracks the book a little more open, I’ve achieved my best. This book has two main protagonists, a dad and baby-sitter. What happened this week was that a secret fell into place between the baby-sitter and the child she cares for, and the reader. Just them. This happened because I moved huge chunks of writing around to change the chronology of some key plot points and somehow in the shuffle, this event became something that no one knows about except these two characters. And I love it. It’s subtle and I will be curious what readers in my life will catch it. But it’s there and it was not quite intentional and a happy accident. It also brings me great relief and some returned thrills to know I’m only 20 pages from the end of this revision. Revision, even when you’ve begged for it, is very hard. And it is the only rewards I’ve really known in writing.