Fill the Sky was published. WOW– what a year it has been. October 20th, 2016 seems like a very long time ago. After all, it marks a moment in time when I naively thought a woman candidate would be a shoe-in for the white house, a time before this country put a Twitter-in-chief in office. Can you remember back to those halcyon days?? To say that that momentous event depressed me and almost everyone I know is a major understatement, and it had an equally devastating effect on fiction book sales nation-wide. Not the easiest way to bring a book into the world! Nonetheless, Fill the Sky and its author have been welcomed with open arms into countless bookstores, living rooms, dining rooms, and conversations, and for that I am oh so grateful. A quick recap of the year includes my great friends on the West Coast circling the wagons in Portland, OR at the end of that fateful November and inviting a host incredible people to come meet me and hear the story behind the book, an equally warm reception in Boulder and Denver, an incredible party thrown by my sister in Vero Beach, and one by my dear friend in Barrington RI. The book caught the attention of a host of book bloggers eager to spread the word about an unusual tale in a fabulous setting. It was selected as a Top 10 Debut of 2016, won one fiction award and was short-listed for two more. In the category of living my true dream, I have had the great pleasure of joining countless book groups and hearing first hand insights from readers, letting me into the incredible world of THEIR interpretation of the book. And it is ongoing. I was just at a fabulous book group last night and have two more next week. It is a slow burn, but a beautiful flame. I read somewhere that the impact of a book is 50% author and 50% reader. The book can’t really come to life without the reader’s own imagination, emotions and lifetime of personal experiences overlaid onto the words on the page. So the experience is a little bit different for every reader. Hearing what that experience has meant to such a wide array of readers has been and extraordinary gift. Thank you all! One of my favorite moments came when someone pulled me aside, told me that she had been trying for years to understand and support her best friend’s struggle with an extra-marital affair. She had highlighted a particular sentence in the book and said to me, “When I read this, I finally got it. It has helped me understand it all and now I feel I can be a much better friend.” BAM. That’s it. That is what success is for me. What a wonderful ride! Happy 1st anniversary book! I’m ready to take another trip around the calendar with you and see where we end up.