Just back from New York City, a week’s stay in a lovely Brooklyn condo courtesy of generous friends. My first time to the city. We took the Q train to Manhattan every morning, staggered back exhausted and exhilarated every night. (To put it in perspective: St. Augustine, where I live, is home to approximately 12,000 residents. We have a Target and the Showboat Car Wash, but you won’t find a public bus, a designer shoe or an escalator anywhere. A town without an escalator! It’s true.) Anyway, great meetings with the brilliant folks at Grove/Atlantic and Sobel Weber. Once again astounded and privileged to be playing in this arena. The book is headed to typesetting; it’s an exciting world, these days.

Here’s my first glimpse of the city from the taxi on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. If you’re my age and you’ve never seen this before, it’s a pretty big deal:

And here’s my pretty mum, searching the rows of Calvary Cemetery in Queens for our nineteenth-century Irish family: