A finished manuscript is like a hot potato to me. I can't get it out of my hands fast enough. I've promised my agent not to jump the gun, but to send her a perfect story, a story she will be required to read only once. Which means I have to wait until my private readers have gone through it, and I've considered their suggestions and edited the story again and again, until it's as close to perfect as I can get. Which takes such a long time. But at least I can publish the first page myself.

Watching Rhonda Honey

I wasn’t raised Catholic, but I came from a Catholic family. Catholic does not mean you go to church and believe in the Bible and the pope and the seven sacraments: baptism, holy communion, confession, confirmation, marriage, the mass and the holy Eucharist; the Old and New Testaments; the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Catholic is a way of looking at things, and sometimes I’m glad I have that way, that Catholic way, which is a way that understands, first of all, that life is a mystery, and secondly, that we should be ashamed of ourselves.

Who can argue with that? There isn’t enough guilt and shame in this world, if you ask me. Also, the Catholic way wants a confession, but not in a way that says it’s not my fault. It’s because of someone else. It’s because of something I couldn’t help, not me, not my fault. No. The Catholic way wants you to kneel and make a fist with the fingers and strike that fist on your own chest. Mea culpa. That’s a real thing Catholics used to say. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. The Catholic way wants to root around until it finds the worst things so we can confess them and say it’s my fault, my fault, my fault.

If I had thought that Rhonda Honey was sorry for what she did, if she would admit it, if she would confess, if she felt ashamed or guilty, that might have been good enough.

People say it’s up to us to forgive and forget, but maybe that’s because they believe in God. They think God will take care of it. He’ll settle the accounts, teach them a lesson, send Rhonda Honey to Hell. But if you don’t believe that, if you don’t believe in God, then maybe you have to take responsibility for the punishment yourself.