“Morning here is not like any mornings Hannah Pearl has ever known.”
Sometimes a first sentence surprises you, and you just thank the spirits of your writing morning. You know it’s a good start, because it opens a door to a whole landscape you can start to discover. As soon as this opening announced itself, for a short story to be called “Once, Something,” I started wondering, what other mornings has this woman known? I knew she was an old woman, who had lost an ocean of memory, and I had to know: what remained for her?
Over time, this short story became a chapter in a novel filled with seven such interlinked stories: Someone Not Really Her Mother. My character’s morning opened up into glimpses of the story of Hannah’s, her daughter’s, and her granddaughters’ lives.
I have so cherished the chance to come back to this novel, after eleven years. This is unusual, for a writer, to have this chance! With the insightful and astute help of my publisher Mark Cunningham of Atelier26 Books, I have combed through this fiction a few times, catching this and that, pruning here, adding there, making sure the seeds of the story have scattered in the way I wish, getting the shapes and colors into a satisfying whole.
I hope you will enjoy entering into this landscape, through this particular fictional morning, “not like any mornings Hannah Pearl has ever known.”
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