Post # 1 On the Way to Isabela's Way, September 16, 2024

A year from today, my third novel, currently titled Isabela’s Way will be published by She Writes Press, and distributed by Simon and Schuster. For those of you who have been along for the ride for a while, you’ve known this book came to me on a hero’s-journey-bike-trip way back in 2011. This blogpost from 2017 describes more of this origin story.

The bike trip was a long-planned trip from Lisbon Portugal to the Alhambra in Granada Spain, all the way through Andulusia, and was meant to bring my husband and I to visit our son, who was studying in Madrid in his junior year of University.  Life and a health crisis intervened, and I did the bike trip alone. Still writing my first novel, with the second one in the wings of my mind, when Isabela appeared on day two of the bike trip, I basically told her to wait her turn. I had two books in front of her. She waited, I wrote, and now it’s definitely her turn.

I have set myself a goal of writing a weekly observation of the process of bringing a book to publication, starting a year out. I will post on social media, send periodic newsletters, perhaps write articles and otherwise mark what it means to bring a book into the world long before its official publication date. I hope to bring along a cohort of other authors engaged in the same run-up to publication that I am; interviewing, hosting guest blogposts, and reviewing some of their books.  I plan to take my readers behind the curtain of the pub process, and along the way, introduce you to this next book.

Welcome to the journey!