The Talk

Last week my editor and I had The Talk. You know, the one where you sit and converse in lowered voices and not meeting the other’s eyes, and go over those things that will determine your future, your health, and your worth as a human being.

It had nothing to do with sleeping with men, however. Our version of The Talk was concerned with, rather, being a man, in England, in the early twentieth century.

Yes, we were talking about what I’m writing next, following this Martinelli novel on which I am working ten hours a day in an attempt to finish the rewrite before Labor Day, and getting to the end of the day with smoke curling out of my ears, unable to retrieve commonplace words, which makes dinner converstion rather halting.

Anyway. This, too, will end, and then I can go play with my daughter in England.

However, I needed to know what I would be doing on my return in October so I knew whether I was doing research in Europe or just bumming around. And the decision is, research.

Not a lot, and mostly the sort that is more giving direction to an otherwise aimless holiday, rather than buckling down in some airless library for days on end.

Unusually enough, the book has had a title since it first began to glimmer in the back of my mind: Touchstone. It has a male protagonist, set in various places in England, and will probably center around the Great Strike of 1926.

But don’t hold your breath. It won’t go between covers for two years.

I’m so glad we had this little talk.