Unremembered Lives is about ready for my agents to send out to publishers. Usually I have a little break between novels, but this time I started the next one almost immediately.
It’s a story I’ve thought about telling since before I started writing The Sparrow back in 1992. Now’s the time to tell it. This one will bring me full circle — back to anthropology, back to religion, back to elements of history that have interested me for decades.
The first two chapters just flew into existence. The structure is clear to me. The tone feels natural. This is going to be a walk, right?
Reality set in yesterday. It’s like I was on a hike that started with a very gentle slope on a path that took me straight to the bottom of a gigantic mountain of ignorance.
Yes. I went into a swoon.
But this is typical. All my novels have required a lot of research. Today I will start ordering books and digging through the Internet and accumulating what I need for the next chapter and the next and the next. One step at a time.