Altitude Sickness, A Love Story, is about to be rebuilt from the foundation up. Draft #16 begins now, June 2019, the month I am calling NaNoReWriMo (my personal National Novel Rewriting Month) in honor of this manuscript’s humble beginnings during the official NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November of 2013. Time to take the story down to the concrete and the steel nubbins and start the redo. I will post updates. Here we go. See you somewhere in-between and on the other side.

These are the tomten who live in our house. They are michievous and tend to jump around unexpectedly. They have been spotted riding the train under the Christmas tree, peeking out various windows, and trying to blend in on bookshelves. According to Swedish legend, these guys live in the barn and should be appreciated or you will live to regret ignoring them even though they work hard not to be seen. It is best to keep them happy and leave rice porridge and cookies for them on Christmas Eve. Mother read stories to me about the Christmas Tomten. I must say these elusive spirits came in handy when cookies went missing from the cookie jar. “The Tomten ate them,” worked well for me. These two have eaten their fair share of goodies in the years they have lived in New Mexico with this transplanted Swedish-American.

We interrupt our blog series on micro-memoirs for this bulletin.  I am in love with Delia Owen’s book Where the Crawdads Sing. This is a completely absorbing story about Kya, the Marsh Girl, feral child off the coastline of North Carolina. Mystery embedded in the story, but also a treatise on the nature of loneliness, secrets,  and the importance of the natural world. Go find yourself a copy. Really.