Are You Ready For The Night Train?

Hey, y'all. While I'm:

-- putting the finishing touches on the Aurora County Shoestring Tour

-- buying faucets and floor tile and a toilet

-- paying bills and catching up on email (please, please)

-- working hard to get the end of the 1962 novel just-right (endings are hardest for me),

Here is something that's making me laugh. While workers are gutting my bathroom at home, I'm sitting at Mighty Joe's Espresso this morning, my local coffee shop, where the muzac is too loud and effervescent owner Eva knows everyone, so there is constantly running conversation, not to mention an ongoing baristas vs customers Scrabble game being scored, cheered, challenged.

I've brought my headphones. I'm listening to James Brown sing "Night Train" with his Famous Flames. This was first recorded at the Apollo Theatre on October 24, 1962, during the very week I'm writing about. This video is (as the poster writes on the YouTube site) ridiculously happy.

What moves! What joy! What silliness! And, for me, what a refreshingly different look at that week in our history.




I am ridiculously happy this week, too. I spoke with editor DavidL. yesterday -- such laughing, such relief, such ebullience! It's good! The novel is good! It's almost there! It's going to be a good book! It is! Hahahahahaha. There's nothing quite like a good editor's good words. There's nothing like a conspiracy of two, when you both know you've got your hands on something you love, and now the work begins, to bring it to life for everyone else.

(Later, the angst of "will they love it like we do?" can begin -- no time for that now.)

There's lots of work ahead -- the ending, particularly, needs to be FINISHED -- but the very hardest part, making it all up from scratch and pulling my hair out as I plot and structure and characterize and back up and go forward again, is done!

So here I sit, at Mighty Joe's, channeling James Brown and that Night Train energy.

Next up: Shoestring Stuff.