Oh, my goodness. Five years? Has it really been five years since I put fingers to keyboard here and shared my thoughts? I should catch everyone up. I should come up with excuses so any agents or editors who read this will not think I've totally slacked off and left the writing world altogether. No, I haven't. And there aren't really excuses. There is just life getting hard.

What happened is this: A year after my husband died, I became the executive director of an environmental organization and fell headlong into a whirlpool of overwork and activism that burned me out, when I was already burned out from a decade of caregiving and grieving. But I also wrote a novel, a chapbook's worth of poetry, and a score of essays for the local paper. And I had cancer. And sepsis. And various organ removals. Sorry if that's TMI, but sometimes reality hits back, hard.

Like Forrest Gump, that is all I'm going to say about that.

Today, I'm in the midst of researching a new body of work--it will probably turn into multiple books on a new topic, good environmental news from America and elsewhere in the world. I invite you to go to my new website and blog, Good News from American Places, to read about interviews I am doing with stand-out individuals and groups in small rural communities, mid-sized towns and larger cities. Ranging from carbon sequestration to complete utility conversion to localizing food distribution and economies, these people are accomplishing a great deal to offset the impacts of the global climate crisis that is now upon us. They are providing us with models that can be used in other communities and that can be scaled up for the nation as a whole.

There is nothing that feels more important than introducing anxious and even hopeless people to these successful centers of hope and life for our country and our planet. I am thrilled to have this project underway. I hope you will follow me at goodnewsfromamericanplaces.net, which will be live shortly. Thanks for reading!