A lot. My injured foot is still a problem. No publisher for my novel. We’ve canceled an anniversary vacation. A neighbor is not doing well. And I am assured by a former student that, “There is hope in this world, ya know. And it’s okay to get depressed; it just means you’re paying attention. And while anyone is still paying attention, there is still hope for everyone who is not.” Walking, submission, altruism, A Christmas Carol, righteousness, and hope. The ocean of my business.

Health first, right? I can manage a mile or two, every other day, wearing my orthotics. Then I’m sore enough the next day that I don’t walk further than across rooms. That is to say, I am better but not healed. Prior experience suggested at the outset that I would need the better part of a year to be well and running again. If I ever run again. Best case scenario: We’ll be able to do the Zoo 5k at Thanksgiving, both of us walking. In the mean time I’ve gained almost 10 pounds, though still well under “overweight” according to my BMI. I still count calories and keep watch on nutrition. But ice cream. Cake. Chips. I’ve indulged my appetite, which is not good in this case.

My novel, ALL THE DAUGHTERS SING, does not have a publisher. I continue to revise both it and my query letter that I use when submitting to publishers and agents. It’s a hard sell because there is little that can be called a “plot” in the novel. There are two long stories, broken into chapters and interspersed with characters with a single chapter each. These women are First Nations (in Seattle, and one of the repeated characters), African American (the other repeated character), Brazilian, Peruvian (in Mexico), Korean, Nigerian, Welsh, Tunisian (in Turkey), two Chinese, and Indonesian (in Pakistan). All the characters have one experience in common, and most of them describe that experience. I am currently considering cutting most of those shared experiences as redundant and/or rearranging the order of those stories, and/or converting all but the repeated characters’ stories to third person. If nothing else, I will be entertained. I’ve already messed about with verb tense.

Duotrope records eighty submissions of the novel to agents and presses this year. I record in my own files seven more. For authors this is a hey, you’re not alone. For non-writers, this is reality. One of my best stories was published twenty years after I wrote the first draft in order to apply for my MFA (Master of Fine Arts in fiction, 2007 graduate from Pacific University). I have a few dozen drafts of that story saved, most of which I can no longer open. “The Promised Hour,” about a woman recovering from guilt and loss, was published in CALYX Journal, where it was featured and can still be read online. [click the link] I expanded that short story into a novel before the story itself was published. That novel was my fifth. This is not my first rodeo. None of this is unusual. Writers generally have a few full length works “in the drawer.” Struggling to find publication is common. There is every chance that next year I will self-publish once I have submitted to the presses that open to submissions this coming winter. I have a list.

All the Daughters Sing is my sixth novel, and I believe it has something valuable to say. It subverts what everybody knows about survival as a competitive sport. You can find out more about it in my Press Kit on this website. It’s not a good Press Kit, which is used to promote published work, but I enjoyed putting it together.

I had an interesting discussion with my son Alan recently about science fiction and fantasy. Those terms are variously defined depending on who you talk to. A brilliant friend of mine commented that she didn’t care for fantasy; I pointed out she’d done her thesis on The Fairy Queen. Another disliked science fiction, which meant she failed to appreciate Molly Gloss’s “Lambing Season,” which is widely anthologized and deeply humane short story. [You can read it or listen to it HERE.] Ursula K. Le Guin famously said of fantasy that “you can’t get there from here,” which Alan and I agreed was also true of most “science fiction.” Star Wars, though cribbing from Asimov, includes magic with the Force. The creators of Star Trek did their best to invent science to back fantastical elements of the series—the transporters, as one example. A classic science fiction novel, Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, involves space travel by the main character in close-to-speed-of-light where the main character’s travels puts him increasingly out of time with Earth. Alan says time-travel going back in time would be scientifically possible—”you can get there from here”—but a move forward is not (unless I’ve got that backwards?). I am nearly through the third of Blackout, Connie Willis’s third book about Oxford-based time travel. Clearly not scientifically possible, but deeply reliant on science as a factor in the plot. Hence, I’d call it science fiction, which is where you will find it shelved.

On the other hand, Margaret Atwood vigorously rejected applying the term “science fiction” to her MaddAddam Trilogy, preferring “speculative fiction” though clearly it’s written like science fiction. Her resistance seemed born of a bias against genre fiction. Ursula K. Le Guin, by contrast, wrote realist, fantasy, and science fiction and was protective of the reputation of genre fiction. When Atwood came to share the Portland stage with Le Guin, people expected fireworks. Instead, Le Guin asked what Atwood considered to be SF. Atwood offered Star Trek and Star Wars. Le Guin responded, “Ah, media,” and promptly changed the subject.

Perhaps intention is part of our definitions of these terms? My speculative novel includes an unidentified disease (a pandemic on steroids), attack on plastic via accidental widespread release of a microorganism, climate change, and asexual reproduction. Editors were determined that I would include magic, which I resisted. Not fantasy, not magical, but the world we know, though we can’t get there from here. And that’s why we need the term “speculative fiction.”

Travel is tricky since I haven’t driven with any regularity for years and Gary and I are both old. We’d intended to stay the night at a hotel we like that is between Portland the the beach. Instead, we’ll lunch with a friend on our anniversary, and we’re driving to visit friends on another weekend.

Consider the places I have “always” wanted to go: The Basílica de la Sagrada Familia has been on my list since I was ten years old, that is, more than 60 years; Knosses too, for about that long; the Minoan Civilization (c. 3100 – c. 1100 BC) was a generally peaceful, seafaring and trading culture with plumbing and sewage systems; and I added Hagia Sophia in college because of the slides by Hermann Pundt, who taught in the School of Architecture at the University of Washington. The Basilica is finished now, Dr. Pundt died in 2020, the Wikipedia entry for the Minoans fails to note that the only deities found in that culture have been female and despite some translations support the anthropological bias I knew fifty years ago where the status of Women is a separate line item like Food and Art; and Hagia Sophia has been reconsecrated as a mosque. These great architectural site all require tickets for entry and I will never see any of them in person. I can make myself pretty sad if I think about that.

One of our neighbors has been falling. Often. They’ve been taken to the ER three times in the last year, twice from home and mostly from the grocery store. Gary helped recover their car and has been calling to check on progress and we’re both worried about what is coming.

Hope. I am at base a hopeful person. What I see happening not only in American politics, but worldwide is depressing. I’d like to believe the future will turn us toward being a kinder and gentler nation, but like a friend who expressed doubts, I fear I may not live long enough to see it. I’d like to see that brighter future.

When I was teaching, I used to outline universal values. Murder is and has always been recognized as wrong, though how we define “murder” varies. Killing an animal, an insect, war? Theft, too, but definitions vary there too. Care of children? Honesty? Respect of family? Respect for Truth and God and Righteousness? All are universal values sometimes applicable only within a community. So are kindness and sharing and altruism. Jesus and many other philosophers demand more in the name of goodness.

Years ago, I offered students “The Selfless Gene” by Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist, which details how altruism is not a theoretical or rare virtue but a survival strategy shared by many species. The one sacrifices for the many and that is how we thrive. Judson was writing back to a common misunderstanding of Richard Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene. This morning I read another essay in The Atlantic by Nancy Walecki about her haw father was instrumental in serving musicians in the last century.

Dad started working on Westwood Music’s sales floor in grade school. Once, he bragged to his father that he’d persuaded a man to buy more expensive strings than his cheap guitar required. Hermann made Dad chase the guy to his bus stop with his change and the strings he actually needed and could afford.—Nancy Walecki

I wonder how many fathers would have said, “Good job, son” instead of teaching a boy to be a decent man?

As a nation, we have been on the wrong side too often in my lifetime. As one example, we’ve sided with bad people because we disagreed politically with good people. We ignore an ally who is deliberately starving a nation out of existence. We ignore horrific wars because they “do not concern us.” We are at risk of becoming not only the bullies of the world, but the bullies of all times. I used to tell my students that the UK held that title because they’d been at it longer.

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”—A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

Hope, please. Hope that I will again be able to walk any distance, at least for a few more years. Hope that one way or another my book will be printed. Hope that my husband and I will continue. Hope that my country will again make me proud. Keep the faith.