I had a pretty productive weekend I suppose. I washed my truck, right before the wind shifted and brought in still more ash from the infernal Zaca fire. I did a little housekeeping; not enough, certainly.

I started a new chapter for my novel, and introduced a character that’s been in the background all along, but never revealed or discussed before. She’s dead, and exists only in backstory, but she needs to be revealed a little. She’s mother to two central characters, grandmother to two others, so she’s crucial to their situation. Want a little nibble? You don’t, but what the hell.

Maybe she had a temper, we don’t know. But this is how her sons remembered her; like an angel in the room, amorphous. Maybe she raged against jackets tossed on chairs and filthy boots worn in on her rugs and just-mopped floors. She was only human. We know that John found her sleeping, completely, in her armchair – dim fabric of roses on a field of pale yellow – one day of soft and steady rain. Knowing nothing else to do, he sat down at the table and waited for everything to change.

Does he sit at the table and weep and wait? Perhaps. I’ll ask him.

So in the past few weeks, I’ve reorganized all the chapters and edited at least 30 of 230 pages. Actually, I’ve snipped and stroked at maybe 20 pages more, like a bored barber, or a topiary gardener at Disneyland. This week, I’ve rewritten one chapter, a long one, entirely from scratch. But the thing I found the most fun was today, drinking coffee and watching the pretty girls in my favorite cafe. I made a list of 20 possible titles for the story; 16 fresh ones, from the damp hall closet at the back of my little brain. New tracks of possible thought, and pretty girls. And French Roast. Life was good.