Darrell Spencer, a professor of mine at university and an award-winning writer of short fiction literature, said that nothing new can be created if you are fixed solid on your story’s ending and drawing solely on your own mind to fill in the matter in between. I don’t know if that golden nugget of information is correct for everyone, but it certainly has been for me with RING OF SALT AND STONE. As I struggled with neurologic difficulties made worse by an incorrect diagnosis and the wrong medication, I wanted to write, but found it too difficult to sit down and try to write a novel. Instead, I pulled five to ten things out of my writer’s journal each day, put them down on a page and then tried to force them into making sense together in what I called a “noodle” (because it was stringing words together). I made characters. I made scenes. I made vignettes. I made them not thinking they would ever be anything more than what they were - unrelated piles of pages. After the coma, I took up the habit again and eventually realized I was well enough to write more than noodles. I decided to use bricolage again, and try to make something by piecing together all of the little scenes, characters, details, etc. RING OF SALT AND STONES is the result of that effort. Each day I sat down to write, excited to see what was going to happen next, just as you will be when you read the book. The end result is just as Darrell Spencer predicted: something new, unique, unpredictable, and exciting. I can’t wait to share it with you.

Bricolage - making do with whatever materials are available; in my case, a mish-mash jumble of details, facts, stories, and history that I found interesting enough to make note of and then turn into something else.