This has been quite an amazing year for writing, and for publication. My collection of novellas, Dancing on Broken Glass, was shortlisted for the 2019 Eludia Award, though not published, and a story, "The Pinecone," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Best of all has been traveling back to favorite places on the magic carpet writing weaves and sets afloat into the luring blue beyond, casting a spell by way of all the details that make up a physical locale, a state of being and of mind. I've gone back to Salisbury and Old Sarum, to Durham, Lindisfarne, and Hadrian's Wall, to Lucca and Torre del Lago, to summers on the Russian River and in Santa Fe (that, fifty years ago), to one late October rambling around rural Virginia. Back to Mills College. Back to Mallorca's east coast: an old town with medieval walls, a remote hermitage, and salt marshes alive with birds. I've written too about the place I've come to live, the here and now of Santa Cruz—the ocean and the bluffs, the grand Victorian houses on Walnut Street, the dogwalkers, the shipwreck that happened almost on our doorstep last winter, the haunted Shakespeare grove up on the UCSC campus, Monarch butterflies, the old adobes just across the bay in Monterey. My whole life is reflected in my writing, like the light of grace in this glorious winter pool.
