I don’t miss Upstate NY winters. I send love and fortitude to my friends and family who live or often visit that tundra. My filtered memory feels certain that in the land of my childhood, winter lasts for five months.

Grace, the main character in Travelers, drives snow and ice-covered roads to her job as a housekeeper. She was my friend Jer Long’s idea. In our fiction-writing class (led by Elizabeth Ferris), Jer provided Grace with a few personality traits—rigid, unwilling to accept change—and handed her to me. My great-aunt and uncles’ home in Binghamton inspired Grace’s beloved Mr. Marino’s house. Their driveway’s incline—in my memory— has become near-vertical.

The way my memory exaggerates and distorts might be similar to how Grace recalls the old neighborhood and her employment with Mr. Marino. Her perception of their relationship and her ensuing dedication to him led her to believe that she was an integral part of his life.

Her attachment to how things once were in the neighborhood and within Mr. Marino’s house won’t allow her acceptance of his nursing assistants or Mr. Marino’s daughter-in-law’s authority in his home. Grace views him and his house as her territory. She disparages the neighborhood’s new landlords and their tenants. She can’t help but criticize the college students’ appearance as they do their best to help her.  

Though seriously injured, she can only focus on the impossibility of her not being notified of Mr. Marino’s death. The story closes with the ambulance siren. Maybe she’s hopeful, or at least relieved, for rescue. Or perhaps, for the more cynical, her fall combined with the loss of Mr. Marino, is the beginning of the end for Grace.

Thanks to El Portal for publishing Travelers.

***

I wish I had news of agent interest in my novel, Degrees of Forgiving. I don’t. I am, however, making excruciatingly slow progress on the current draft of my new novel. I keep getting stuck on plot. Dialogue comes easier and is a lot of fun to write. However, I’m told by all the important writers and readers, besides my characters talking to one another, something must happen.

Happy New Year. Here’s to making things happen.

He’ll do countless things not terrible enough.