I’m not going to enter into the year that was conversation. I think it’s too early.
I will say one thing that kept me going this year was being able to read to you in a podcast. In my isolation it was one way I could contribute, if only to help pass the time.
My sister in-law, a very nice, very acerbic Connecticut lady listens to the novel while knitting. She told me the day after Christmas as I was driving, masked up, to deliver a gingerbread cake across town, that she was having trouble with the speed of the delivery.
I panicked. Had I done something wrong posting the recording? Would I be able to fix it? Oh no. I knew the technology was beyond me! I was just about to say, “What did I do wrong?”
When she said, “I get to your tagline, the part where you say, if you’ve enjoyed this story please tell a friend, and I want to shout — f-ck you, b-tch! Where’s the rest of the story! I want to hear the rest of the book!” Except she supplied the necessary vowels to complete the expletives, and I cracked up. I haven’t laughed that hard since before the pandemic.
That’s what I call constructive feedback.
Some of the political and pandemic zeitgeist entered into the reading just because I was writing and recording at the same time. So thank you for listening and know we are coming up to the end of the novel, only three more episodes. I wanted it to last for the duration of this very odd time, it will fall a bit short. We’ll talk, maybe I’ll have to write and record some more chapters to bring us up to date, or perhaps it will be an entirely new story, in a different era, with an entirely new cast of characters…
Hold on, this is just for my friends friends friends friends (I’m leaving so many out, forgive me!) and wonderful readers, excuse the outrageous accents, and Happy New Year: