Hi Chris! Wow. Now, how did I sucker you all into reading my first novel? Thank you for finding it to your liking. What I'm writing, now, is the sequel.

Congratulations on your daughter getting 2 short stories published in the UCSC literary magazines. Is she still in town? If so, we should meet up some time you get out this way.

Sorry your daughter's novel is a mess. If I had tried to write anything that young, I would have been an abject failure. One needs plenty of years to gain apperceptive mass. Until then, you're pretty much a hack.

I was 27 when I left L.A. in 1979, the year I got my Ph.D. and had a baby. (Not in that order.) I think I did it just to prove my mother wrong when she told me I could never write my dissertation with a newborn in the house. Well, I did, and was the first of my class to go from being ABD to D! Had to take written and orals that year, too. L.A. was going to the dogs back then; I don't even want to think of what that stink hole will be like in 2025. We moved out of there right after there had been a fatal shooting in our carport. Gang graffitti was infiltrating Santa Monica, and in one case of a burglary I witnessed, I had to go to court and testify against this guy. I put him away, but he knew exactly where I lived. No thank you.

Well, that's more than you want to know.

Let me know if you and HW are coming into town. (Won't HD be graduating this year?)

Cathryn