journal 1/23/05

Hi.

It’s my 50th birthday.

About 15 years ago, I started a novel, a mystery, called A
Sane Woman. I was publishing the chapters in monthly
installments, in little chapbooks, but then I discovered BBSs
(computer bulletin boards), and I wanted to post my writing
there.

But A Sane Woman didn’t fit into that format, you had to read
whole chapters in order to get the right effect, and on BBSs (as
on the internet more recently) things worked better in smaller
doses. So, I put A Sane Woman aside and started another project,
with no plan and no preconceptions. A few sysops (the people who
ran the BBSs) gave me space to work. I posted a lot of messages,
and gradually it began to turn in a novel as well, a much longer
and more complex one than A Sane Woman would have been.

But then the BBS scene was killed by the internet, and that
project fizzed out, too.

More recently, it started to bother me that neither book had
ever been finished. So, I went back and finished them, and
posted them on the web. And I’m pretty happy with how they turned
out.

One of the problems with writing for the web (unlike the BBSs
and unlike paper), is that everything is always subject to
revision, nothing is ever finished. So, I decided that I would
finish both books on my 50th birthday. And here they are:

A Sane Woman is shorter. It’s a mystery story.

U-town is longer.
It’s a gritty, urban, magical realist story.

A Sane Woman takes place earlier (they involve some of the
same characters), so it’s probably better (but not essential) to
read them in order.

Hope you like them.