Scarcity vs. Abundance

This past week I was speaking to my friend about living with a sense of scarcity versus abundance. We were musing that we can be unduly affected by our elders who had gone through wartime and financial austerity. So at times we can be stingy, not only with others but with ourselves.

I started thinking about this about this stage of my writing career. I’ve been pretty much a paperback writer ever since SUMMER OF THE BIG BACHI made its mystery debut in 2004. Sure, there have been a few novels that were in hardcover, but they were promoted at the same level as a paperback or perhaps even less. So I’ve been operating in a scarcity mode, in terms of what I needed to do to market my fiction to ensure I could continue to write books.

Now about a month away from turning 59, I’ve realized that I’m tired. I paid for air travel all throughout the US and even Canada (!) to participate in book events. I slept on friend’s couches and air mattresses to save some money. I’ve been juggling multiple and simultaneous writing projects because anyone in our industry knows that you can’t get rich by writing novels.

But now as the advance reading copies of CLARK AND DIVISION are making their way to librarians, reviewers and journalists, I’m discovering that multiple individuals at my publishing house are working toward this novel’s success. An audiobook will be released on the pub date of the hardcover–also a first for me. (My agents and I had to hustle to sell audiobook rights years after the initial release of my books.)

For once, I feel that I don’t have to scratch the dirt to make things happen. I can relax a little. And ironically with virtual events still being embraced by libraries, I can participate in important seasonal programming without having to travel. There is a flow of abundance buoying the success of my first historical mystery. I don’t take this for granted, of course. I know that after this book, I may be scratching the dirt again. But I’ll never forget this moment of time, this beautiful feeling of abundance.