Essays

Writing a monthly newsletter that is at least mildly amusing is like climbing Mount Everest twelve times a year. Every month, I endure altitude sickness that comes with performing at such a high level of creativity. The nose bleeds and leg cramps quickly become almost unendurable, and yet I endure them. Tragedy strikes a few times every year when one of the Tibetan guides who carries the supplies needed for the ascent falls to his death.

There are times when this task is less like climbing Everest than like surviving a giant tsunami as in that movie The Impossible with a fantastic performance by Naomi Watts. The need to write several brilliant paragraphs and also meet a deadline slams into me like a hundred-foot wall of water, and I feel that I am drowning. I have often reached out to Naomi Watts to save me, but she never returns my calls. I am neither offended nor disappointed by her failure to respond, for I know that she is a lovely and compassionate person who has many obligations to meet in her own life. It is also true that I have reached out to her to help me deal with a rude shoe store clerk, open a jar of pickles with a stuck lid, find my car keys, and assist in other crises, so I suppose it’s possible that I have reached out too often.

In addition to being as arduous as climbing Mount Everest or struggling to keep one’s head above water in a powerful tsunami, writing a monthly newsletter can be as frightening as being alone in a room with Hannibal Lecter when he has a sharp knife and a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. The fright is of being told your newsletter sucks. If you’re not a writer, this might sound like too small a thing to be afraid of. However, many talented and highly successful authors who write novels with confidence are known to break into an icy sweat and have to change pants every time they hear the word “newsletter.”

Just for the record, Anthony Hopkins also did not return my calls when I left a voicemail listing people who had spoken ill of my newsletter and needed to be cannibalized.

So here we are in July, the month of my birth. By that, I do not mean I was born this July. If I were only a month old, I wouldn’t have published dozens of books. Maybe two, but not dozens. You would think that, during the month when I celebrate my birthday, my publisher and editor might allow me to skip the newsletter just once, but although I placed 87 calls to that effect, none was ever returned.

Therefore, I must tell you that my upcoming novel, The Forest of Lost Souls, will be published in September and can be preordered at this time.