Member-only story
writing a pandemic novel was easy. it’s what comes after that’s hard.
The future was more intangible than ever, and so I wrote the future I wanted.
The pandemic, for me, birthed two books.
One was under contract with a publisher already; a nonfiction compilation of the uses of cinnamon, a continuation of an already existing series and borne out of my childhood with a mother whose roots lay in what I now know as Traditional Chinese Medicine.
The other came out of absolutely nowhere.
I’d always known I wanted to write a novel; had known this since I was six years old. “Writer” on my list of things I wanted to be when I grew up came right after “Princess” and “Ice Skater.”
But I could never commit to it.
Ideas that came to me in dreams never could be truly fleshed out; I’d write a few thousand words and exit out of the draft forever, unable to bring the seed of inspiration to fruition.
This time, it was different.
The pandemic instilled in me a deep need to escape, to run where I could not run, to imagine a life so completely different than my own, yet so similar that I could practically feel it as I wrote.
