Let me tell you a little something about this boy …
 
As of tomorrow, January 25, he’ll be 3 years old. And because I’m nearly 52 and have learned how fast time seems to go, I have to check myself sometimes against pre-emptively mourning what will happen if the actuarial tables are true for both of us: I’ll have to say goodbye to him and let him go. Most of the time, I can get my head straight, tell myself to enjoy the time I have with him, but sometimes I get fixated not on the past, as is my wont, but on the future. This is one of those times, because he’s hit this milestone.
 
Contrary to the old saying, he's not my best friend. That is and always will be my wife, as she should be. But he’s my best buddy. I’ve lived to an age—and lived through a pandemic, so far—that has calcified my lack of interest in spending great scads of my time with other people. I’d rather stick to my house and my patterns and our tight little circle here, two people and a cat and a dog. I say again: He is my best buddy. He goes where I go. He hears my thoughts. I check in with him, and he checks in with me. We move around each other like an old married couple, which we're not, but it speaks to the familiarity.
 
So, anyway, three years ago …
 
It was Jan. 27, 2019, and Elisa and I were about to step into a movie theater in Brunswick, Maine. Before we did, I checked my email via phone. I had a message from Doxy Den in Mechanic Falls, a breeder (I know, I know—I wanted a dachshund, and this is not a mill; it's a family that loves their dogs):
 
“The puppies arrived on Friday! We had 5 boys! I have 3 black/tan long hair males available! There are pictures up on our Facebook page. Groot, Drax and Rocket are the puppies that are available. Rocket is tiny but strong and doing well. Groot has a little bit of white on his chin and the tips of his toes.”
 
I went to the Doxy Den Facebook page, looked at the pups, and made my choice: I’d take Groot (but not the name).

I’ve had many dachshunds, and I’ve loved them all. Just get me going on Sniffer and Mitzi and Zula and Bodie. I loved them equally, but they came to me at different times in my life, and thus their impacts have been different. Fretless’ importance to me has, perhaps, been a little outsized. My world has gotten smaller these past three years. He’s filling more of it than he might have in another time.
 
Fretless came to me at a time when we lived in a beautiful place that didn’t feel much like home, and we were still struggling with what to do about that. Fretless and I, almost immediately, began taking long walks in the woods, and he helped me make my peace with Maine. In hindsight, I can see how much I needed that.
 
Long may he be with me. We're not near done yet.

This is not a résumé.

Nearly fourteen years ago, I drafted my first novel in twenty-five days, in manic bursts of activity—late at night, after I’d come home from my swing shift at the Billings Gazette, pouring coffee down my gullet, then returning to it in the late morning and early afternoon, before work beckoned again. I was at a small desk jammed into a corner of a small loft condo, my back to the door (bad feng shui!), and for those nearly four weeks, I did little other than work, write, sleep, write and take the dogs out. I liked to joke, after that book (600 Hours of Edward) came out, that it was the month my wife and I test-drove divorce, something that wasn’t nearly as funny after we did divorce some years later. But this isn’t about that.

I wrote my second novel (The Summer Son) in the same physical space but in a different headspace. The writing bursts weren’t bursts at all; rather, they were hard, slow-going, bear-down-and-get-it-done sessions—still late at night, for I was still at the Gazette, but not so much in the other hours, and over a much longer stretch than twenty-five days. I rewrote it three times, major revisions, over the course of nearly a year, and it remains the one I’d write again if I had a crack at it. I don’t, thank God.

Novels 3 and 4—oh, man, that was the life. I had a basement office with its own full bathroom in the bungalow my then-wife and I bought when the marriage was simultaneously dying out and still worth the effort of trying to save. Novel 3 (Edward Adrift) played off the re-release of Novel 1 by a new, bigger publisher, and Novel 4 (The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter) was supposed to be my breakout (it wasn’t, but that’s not what this is about).

I was making enough money writing to not have to do the daily journalism grind, so I granted myself release and wrote Novel 5 (This Is What I Want) back in that one-bedroom loft condo, my desk still jammed in that corner, my back still to the door (bad, bad feng shui), because the marriage was over—the kind of over that hurts at the time, as it should, but everybody’s happier now, no hard feelings, and there are occasional friendly notes or chance meetings somewhere. It's nice to say it's all good and mean it. I finished that novel in a hotel room in Missoula, Montana, where I’d gone to lick my wounds and get away from my upstairs neighbor, my father, who, well intentioned as he was, couldn’t have understood the way my heart at the time was afflicted and inflicted, no matter how many ways I might have tried to tell him. But this isn’t about that, either.

Hello, 2022 ... and all of you here to see it. It's been a trip, huh?

Just before Christmas, in a final furious week of drafting, I finished the first pass at a new novel, which I'm calling Dreaming Northward. It is, as I expected given the brisk pace of my finishing kick, both a fully satisfying arc and a manuscript that needs a lot (A LOT) of work. That's how these things go, at least for me. I write them to see I can get from here to there, then I spend a lot of time cogitating on what I've done, then I rewrite to more fully expose the story I think I'm trying to tell, then I revise, revise, revise to really hone whatever it is that I have. (Followed, of course, by even more editing if—knock wood—the thing gets published, followed then by a beautiful, finished book that I immediately wish I could have another crack at.)

Anyway, I hope to share it with you ... sometime. Probably 2023. We'll see. A lot left to do.

I mention this because my friend Jeff Deck reminded me of something on Facebook today. Here are Jeff's words, which are much more eloquent than mine:

I'm Random Penguin House author Jeff Deck, and I have an important message for you today:

Getting published by a major house will not make you rich.

It will not pay your mortgage. It will not clear up your skin. It will not get rid of those love handles.

It will not make you a bunch of friends, nor will it get you laid. It will not make your distant parent say they're proud of you.

It won't relieve you of the onus (and cost) of marketing your book yourself, either.

What it will do is get your book into physical bookstores. And potentially improve your chances of getting a second book traditionally published. But mostly it's the distribution thing.

Many people fix their eye — and their hopes, and their self-validation — on getting published by a major house. My wish for you is to recognize the value in your work no matter how it ends up being published, whether via the Big Five (Big Four?), a mid-size or small press, or self-publishing.

Recognize the value in it BEFORE it's published, too. The work you put into your story is real. The time you spent improving your own skills along the way should be recognized, and celebrated.

Goals are important for motivation. But you are "worthy" *right now*. And you will continue to be worthy every step of the way.

Writing is a long journey, even (especially) after publication. No matter which publishing route you choose. Belief in your own value — and a daily celebration of your own work and words — will sustain you along the way.

Every word is absolutely true, by the way. I often tell folks that they should celebrate having done the work as much as they celebrate anything that flows from that work. Sometimes, they think I'm bullshitting them. I'm not. The work is sustaining. The rest is ... the rest.

The rest

Received some lovely news yesterday. And It Will Be a Beautiful Life was the bestselling book for 2021 at my local independent bookstore, This House of Books. I'm grateful to the bookstore—where I'm a proud member-owner (it's a co-op)—for being such a wonderful supporter of not just my work but of the many, many fine regional writers who are doing such important work here. And I'm grateful to the folks, near and far, who bought a copy from THoB and kept the oxygen flowing to an independent bookstore. The cultural life in my town is much the richer for its presence.

If you'd like a signed copy of the book, THoB will be happy to fulfill that desire. Simply order online and mention in the comment field that you'd like it signed, and I'll hop into my trusty blue Toyota, drive downtown and sign it for you.

And, hey, if it's a paperback you want, I have good news:

The paperback version releases in May, and you can preorder through THoB (I'll be happy to sign those, too, once they come in), through your local independent bookseller (please!) or wherever you get books.