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I have written almost 140 pages of my novel, “Dragons and Angels”. My hero, Pol Dairre, has discovered the terrible secret on the top floor of Tallgrave Prison. After having his shop confiscated, he has fled the city of Iovarre on the good ship
. There, he has joined Captain Belias Varney and his crew in their search for the mysterious sea monster known as the Harrow. It’s a book of magic, romance and philosophy, and I feel lucky to be tuned to this particular cosmic channel in order to receive this very strange and wonderful broadcast.
We Americans are very keen on distracting ourselves from the important stuff –whatever that means to us. We watch TV and play World of Warcraft and generally do everything we can do to keep from doing the stuff which really fulfills us. Now, I’m nopt knocking World of Warcraft. If I could see, I’m sure I’d have an account and play a Tauren shaman or something. But my situation has brought me a particular grace which I’m not sure I’d give up, even if offered the return of my eyesight. The thing about being a writer is this: when it’s going well, there’s nothing better: not sex, not food, not the ten thousand attractions of the Web. When, at the end of the writing day, I’ve completed my one or two pages , I do a little dance at my desk. I am creating this wild aromatic world for others to live in for a while: to solve its mysteries, to hunt out its dragon, to conquer its grave malevolent king. Hang onto your lids, kids, because this book is going to be Godzilla in four hundred pages.
I live on just over $1200 a month. I mostly wear T shirts and I have to ration how many bowls of pho I can afford during the week. I can’t see and I have incipient diabetes, among other things. But I still count myself among the luckiest people in America, and certainly in the world. I had to pay a high price, to be sure, a nearly disastrous one. But can you say it’s too high a price when I’m actually content --will grow more content when I start receiving royalty checks-- and almost everyone elseI know is basically just struggling not to throw themselves in front of the number 10 bus?
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