Pandemic Writing

It's been a while since my last post, almost a year in fact. I published The Shift in February 2020, and the boxes of my books arrived while I was in early labor. I opened them immediately anyway, excited to see four years of work in hardcover and paperback. Once I snapped some pics and uploaded a video for you all to see, I went back to bed and waited to meet my little girl.

Sofia is 9 months old now, and I am finally taking some much needed time to write again. You see, for me, writing is cathartic and rejuvenating, It's almost a basic need, like showering or staying hydrated. Now, I get to piece together the ideas I've fervently typed into the notes app on my phone, hiding under my comforter in bed as not to wake my baby. I finally get to introduce my next book to you.

To introduce my ideas I first need to explain how the story came to exist. It was a week or two after I had given birth to Sofia and a few weeks before the coronavirus pandemic spread across the world. COVID was a household name, but not quite a concern to us just yet. I hadn't given it much thought at all. Masks were not a thing. Fear was not a thing, at least not for the greater majority of us. But my subconscious was brewing an idea, one that I would come to realize was something of a premonition.

I should explain that, when I write, I see a story in my mind, hear the characters in my head (no not literally, I'm not crazy...), something like backward reading. Zoe and Charlotte emerged in my imagination, telling their stories through the keypad on my touchscreen phone. A story of fear, hate, and love. A story of a country full of people forced to wear gas masks to leave their homes, its citizens afraid of the very air they breathed. Zoe and Charlotte's stories became clearer as I wrote. Eventually the coronavirus pandemic exploded and we found ourselves wearing masks to leave our homes, afraid of the very air we breathe.

There remains a lot to expose about Zoe and Charlotte's stories, and I can't wait to share them with you in my next novel, The Air.

Today, for the first time since before giving birth, I sat down with my laptop to write. While writing The Shift, I had posted all the different locations in which I wrote, from airplanes to my own sofa. Now, due to the pandemic, I can no longer write "anywhere". Banished from coffee shops and libraries alike, I now sit in the driver's seat of my Subaru in a Starbucks parking lot, writing about fear, hate, love, and hope.

I invite you to follow me along this new journey.