It's been a while. And by a while I mean five months. Literally, my blog tells me that my last post was in August. But much has happened since we last spoke.
If you haven't heard lately, I wrote a book. And if you haven't heard lately, then you don't log on to Facebook much or you nixed me as a friend because I've been haunting you all with announcements of its debut on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Google Books. Don't worry, I'll send more :)
It all started about six years ago in an English class at CSUN. Oh the days of English class...in an actual classroom. These days I'm relegated to the online "classroom" where you miss out on all of the face to face debate and pounding of chests, oh and the nodding off of your classmates. I just loved watching others struggle to stay awake, head dropping an inch or two before they awakened quite startled, looked around and slowly but surely closed their eyes again. But don't feel too badly for me. One of my students was actually snoring in class this morning. But I digress...
So the assignment was to write a short story in which you develop a character and some other fancy and insightful direction, but I don't remember the rest of the details. I just know that a scene had been replaying again and again in my mind. A woman is driving in the night and it's raining, the kind of rain you only experience outside of L.A. She has a young daughter of course, but her daughter is asleep in the backseat. This woman is crying because her marriage is over. She's crying because she has nowhere to go. Crying because she doesn't know who she is anymore. She's reached that moment of crisis when you realize just how small and powerless you really are. I wasn't sure how her story would unfold, but I knew one thing. I knew where it would begin. I too had met with that moment of crisis. I too was once lost. I too had felt the significance of my insignificance. I knew that my character would have to fall to her knees and look in the only direction we can in that moment. She would experience the freedom of powerlessness, the unfathomable peace of spiritual awakening, the fulfillment of agape and the hope of new life. She would trudge that promising road, filled with fear and uncertainty, but I would give her what I was given, a new kind of family to carry me through it all.
It's still fun to watch the reaction of people when they come to terms with the fact that really, I'm not kidding, yes, I really did live in a mortuary. And if you know me at all, you know that I love irony. I speak its language. I tease that it's God's way of reminding me I'm not in control. So to have my character find new life while surrounded by death just seemed natural. And I get to share a few of the fascinating and gruesome details of my experiences along the way.
Visit my website for a peek at the first chapter. rebeccafisherbooks.com
