Well, it’s finally here. My book baby, Forever 51, that pesky little blood sucker that has been gestating in my noggin since 2015 is finally ready to enter the world whether I’m ready or not. And to be quite honest, I’m not. As some of you know, my stepdad died on 9/23 and then my mom went into the hospital with Covid-19 on 9/28. I have been preoccupied with matters that are WAY more important than a book launch. For the past month, I have been on high alert as I was the point of contact person for the hospital and I never wanted to miss a call. It has been torturous not to be able to see my mom and now that she’s gone, I find myself thinking, I need to call my mom. But you see, I can’t.

The day after she died, I was angry, like filled with rage that I didn’t know where to direct it, kind of angry. You see there’s this man in charge of our country and he likes to rile people up and make statements that are callous and not exactly true. I did what any self respecting writer would do, I wrote about my experience to try and make sense of it. You can read what I wrote on CNN here.

So many nice people have reached out to me since that article was published to share their own experience with losing a loved one to Covid. As of this writing, 230,556 Americans have died. To me, that seems like an awful lot of people to die. And the numbers keep rising. I live in Texas and in the county I reside in, the numbers of cases keep going up, but we’re supposed to act like it’s business as usual.

I’m scared.

My business is that I have a book coming out November 5. I am doing a Facebook live event at 7pm on my author page. Link here.

I have an online Zoom event happening with the Fort Worth Public Library. They were kind and generous enough to host me on Saturday, November 7. Link here.

The Dock Bookshop in Fort Worth is having my only live in person event, along with the blood drive on Sunday, November 8. If you want to donate a pint, the sign up link is here. I will be outside in the parking lot to sign books and cheer people on who are donating. I donated a pint today.

So, once I get through this week, I will be planning a Zoom memorial service to honor my mom as I need a ritual.

My first book was about death and death professions, but nothing prepared me for this. Not being able to see your person or to grieve with others is horrible. 2020 sucks.

I have a book coming out this week. Buy it if you want an escape. Or not. But if you do, please read it. Request it at your local library so that others who don’t have the money to buy a new book can read it. And if you enjoyed it, write a short, honest review on Goodreads or Amazon or Bookshop or wherever you buy books. That’s how people discover a new book. It’s all about algorithms.

That’s all I’ve got. The world keeps spinning whether we’re ready for it or not.