Well, hello again

A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion. – Georg Brandes

Have you been wondering where I went? Fallow, that’s where. (Actually, I am in beautiful–snowy today!— Taos, New Mexico.) Sorry for disappearing like that but the Big Trip to Canada and Back kind of knocked me for a loop, creatively speaking. I needed time to think.

I was going to write a book about that trip, and I may still do that, but not now. It needs to, um, lie fallow for a while. Instead, I’m going to revise and publish a book I wrote seven years ago. If you’ve known me that long, you may have heard of it, or even read along as I wrote it, chapter by chapter.

That was fun but the result was what Anne Lamotte would call a “shitty first draft”. All it needed was some serious revision but I couldn’t face it then. What to keep, what to leave out? I was suffering from a severe case of decision anxiety.

Plus, there were the legal difficulties

Green Card is a memoir of my crazy, 70s, green-card marriage to a gorgeous Greek named Christos. But when it came time to publish the book years later, I realized it might cause problems with the government, so I consulted an attorney. I learned that there is no statute of limitations for immigration fraud, at least not for the immigrant. As a citizen, I was in the clear but Christos could be deported if authorities got wind of our, uh, crime.

[SPOILER ALERT]

The marriage didn’t last, sorry. It was a friendly break-up but eventually, we lost touch. I didn’t know if he’d married again or had a family. And I didn’t want to cause them the upheaval and pain of possible separation and deportation (sound familiar?) even though the odds of ICE hearing about my little, self-published Kindle book were miniscule.

So I shelved Green Card on the hard drive, sometimes going back and trying to turn it into a novel, but that just never felt right. Changing the names wouldn’t be enough, and I am no novelist. Besides, the fact that the story was true made it, I felt, a far more compelling read.

Then a year ago, I woke up to a shocking private message on Facebook:

“Hello LaVonne,
My name is Nick _______ and am the son of Christos ________. I’m messaging you to see if you knew him and to inform you of his passing.
Best Regards,
Nick”

I was, to put it mildly, stunned. I had always imagined Christos somewhere out there living his life, and that someday, we would reconnect. I even searched for him online a few times and finally found him on Facebook. I sent him a private message but never got an answer. Now, after conversing with Nick, I learned that two-and-a-half years earlier, his father had died of lung cancer (he was a chain smoker when I knew him, so it wasn’t surprising.) I realized that Christos may never have gotten my message. He may have been dead by then.

And then it hit me: Sorry as I am that he’s gone, I am now free to publish Green Card with no worry about the consequences to Christos or his family. When I told Nick about the book, he was surprised and pleased, and expressed interest in reading it.

So, I am embarking on a month-long stint of editing and revisions, with plans to publish on Kindle in early June. If you were on the mailing list that got those weekly, first-draft chapters seven years ago, you will receive a link to a free copy of the final book in your inbox.

If you are a patron at any level (even $2), you’ll get the final copy too but you won’t have to wait: you can follow along as I finish editing each chapter (as well as a few behind-the-scenes rants as I pull my hair out. Editing is my least favorite thing.)

And once Green Card is published on Kindle, I plan to record it and upload it to Audible. Fun!