“The Invisible Hand” Now In The Big World…

So we finished—I mean, after two years (first date of files “Characters” and “Story” is April 14, 2024) and three passes of editing—our novel. The Invisible Hand…

Um, I emailed it to the editor/friend who generously asked to see it—a year or so ago.

Understand that emailing a 78,885-word manuscript isn’t simple. If you work in Word, which I do, you must convert the whole thing to something called .pdf. I just looked .pdf up and found that it stands for (p)ortable (d)ocument (f)ormat. Very good when you want to send words over the internet. But .pdf is picky. Yesterday I wanted the title page to be in a type called Zapfino. (Beautiful Zapfino was designed by Hermann Zapf in 1944 in Germany, bless him). When I hit “Send,” .pdf said, “Sorry, incompatible typeface.” Zapfino is termed calligraphic—resembles handwriting, and florid handwriting at that, and I guess not easily converted to sending on the Internet. I thought an unusual typeface for the title of our novel might be fun…special. But .pdf said No way, José. So “The Invisible Hand” title went back to Times New Roman. So I made it French blue. A teeny bit of unusuality to launch our little boat.

What Bill said I should mention to you that’s fun (actually, our odd idea of amusement) is what happens sometimes when you give your manuscript (i.e. unpublished fiction) to a friend to read and they don’t like it. What happens—did with us half a dozen times on this book—is that they warmly say they’d like to read it–or maybe that they’re pressed for time but will do you the kindness of squeezing it in–and then…and then…and then…the ensuing silence is deafening. Poor things read a few pages—or a lot, who knows—and thought “Oh my god what am I going to say? maybe if I just say nothing they’ll think I’m sick and can’t read and they’ll forget they even gave it to me…”

So right now, dear friends, if you have a spare candle to light, kindly prop it up somewhere, strike a match, and say, “Here’s a wish for Sylvia and Bill—may their novel be published. So I can READ it!”

Meantime, I can go back to writing for you more often. Such as this contemplative bit…

Oh, and Bill’s Big Wish: I’M CLEANING UP MY STUDY!!! BURIED TREASURE TO BE DISCOVERED! WHEE-HOO!

And I can spend some quiet time out in the garden listening to the dear little creamy mockingbird singing his heart out hoping a young lady in the neighborhood will come and reward his mellifluous ardor…

And should you have a subject you’d like me to treat, please let me know (place at the end where you can write it…such as, “Sylvia, what do you think of This War?” or “Sylvia, what’s your fave way to scramble an egg?” or “Sylvia, how’re you doing with your son David’s death, now that it’s been four months?” and so on.)

Sending armloads of love to you all! and thank you from the bottom of my heart for being there.