Greetings from Park City where the world outside my window swirls with snow and the world inside my head swirls with story—from all that I saw at The Sundance Film Festival, as well as daily reading and writing. This includes re-reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and Middlemarch by George Elliot with FrizzLit. I highly recommend his book clubs!

A snowy President’s Day Weekend, skiing with my sons and friends in UT.

I’m also busy preparing for the publication of Daughter of a Promise on April 2, completing interviews, writing articles, scheduling live events, as well as recording podcasts. If you haven’t yet preordered, please consider doing so! Let me know when you do and I’ll send you the e-reader version of my debut novel, Eden, as a thank you!

I am very proud of the protagonist in this book. Never has one of my characters undergone as much transformation as Bets Ruiz. She begins young and idealistic, a recent college graduate on the threshold of adulthood. She’s at that stage in life where she’s filled with hope and anxiety in equal measure. The novel is told from her retrospective point of view, in the form of a letter to her unborn son, about one fateful year. It is a year filled with desire, love, and tragedy – a year that breaks her open and ushers her into womanhood.

I’ve heard people call personal transformation reinvention – as if we always have a choice! I recently read an excerpt from Alain de Botton’s new book in Oldster Magazine that got me thinking about the change we choose to initiate. The author encourages people to not measure their lives in years but instead by the richness of those years. His theory hinges on a view that time exists in our minds, expanding or contracting based on how engaged we are in the present moment. When absorbed in something new, time is expansive. Being in a rut or stuck in a predictable routine, however, gives the effect of weeks, years, and decades passing by quickly. Initiating change may seem like a luxury not everyone is prepared to take on. However, it’s interesting to consider what holds us back. 

Extending the growing season in the upper Midwest

One thing that holds us back is fear. Deciding to dedicate myself to Flynn Creek Farm required I overcome fear. And it still does! Farming is incredible during the growing season surrounded by green land, with time expanding as broadly as the big blue sky. In the middle of the night, however, when Wisconsin is dark and covered in snow, I confess to waking in a panic.

Nonetheless, embracing change and tackling fear seem to be integral on my journey. I love skiing because of the opportunity to bite off chunks of fear. Publishing a novel, moving to a new town, and taking on a big project have all kept me awake at night with different degrees of doubt, but they have also resulted in immense joy and satisfaction. They have slowed time. Letting go of the past to make room for new things is my way of affirming life, my acknowledgment that there are many possible paths in this world and I needn’t settle for only one.

I’d love to hear about your experiences or philosophy of adopting change. Leave a comment below or on my Substack!