I am sitting at JFK airport--Mad Props to Jet Blue for providing free Wi-fi and ample electrical outlets--in a four hour layover.  Took the red-eye from Burbank.  My body thinks I landed at 2:30 in the morning and my husband really thinks I need to attend this with him after I land in Rochester at 10:30 a.m.:

Normally I would say, "You know, that DOES sound interesting," but I'm going to be in an altered state for the rest of the day.

Even though the memoir writing trip was abortive, writing-wise, the trip wasn't a complete write off.  I did a big promotional giveaway of my novel Because the Angels and it was at the top of the free downloads in the political novel genre and did surprisingly well in the literary novel downloads as well  (although I'm not sure other literary novelists would think it belonged there.)  I also got to spend an afternoon with my CPT colleague and friend Tim Nafziger, who gave me the idea to incorporate journal entries of one of my characters, Ralph,  into Shea, my current novel.  As I started spinning this out in my head, I realized Ralph, who is writing during the years he is 14-16, is gay.  That's one of the things that gives me the deepest satisfaction when I write--when characters seem to tell me who they are instead of me telling them who they are.  So thanks, Tim.  And thank you for being chief among my encouragers over the years, letting me know that my fiction was something more than a promoter of my mental health.