Once in a Blue Muse

And done

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 04:41:00 +0000

Screenshot of the chapter and scene info. The overarching reminder for me as I was writing the story is that everyone is where they need to be, not necessarily where they want to be.

I completed the manuscript for EVERY SKY A STRANGER this week.

Here are some metrics:

Total words: 82,000

Number of POV characters: 9

Chapters: 17

Scenes: 53

Writing progress:

18,000 words between January 2024 and December 2024

I had recently finished LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD and was preparing for its February 2025 release. After working on book 1 for close to six years, I was worried that I would have the same problem with book 2. I spent a lot of time reviewing my half-baked notes early in 2024. While I had had a plan for where book 2 was going to begin, once I got into the first few chapters, I realized the story wasn't really moving forward. I had all these characters standing around waiting for stage direction. Not good. I quickly shifted the entire plot plan (such as I had) and made life harder for my characters. Much better.

34,000 words between January 2025 and December 2025

I made steady progress through the story's middle in 2025, though I knew it would need to be stronger. And until fall of 2025 when I attended the Writer Unboxed Unconference in New Mexico, I wasn't sure how I was going to fix it. I took dozens of pages of notes that week and in the margins, I had this note to myself: Each major character needs to have a "trolley problem" moment. Once I figured this out (and it took me until the end of 2025), I was able to see the entire structure of the story, as well as the overarching structure for all three books of the series.

30,000 words between January 2026 and March 2026

This is where my fingers flew over the keyboard, but it wasn't without work. In early 2026, I was working up to the book's climax when I stumbled and didn't know how to proceed. So I assembled each of the major plot threads separately as if they were their own books and read through them one at a time. (I do not recommend working with a complex structure like this. It was the only way to tell the story, but it tested me as a writer.) This allowed me to see where the writing needed to be smoothed or expanded or changed and set me up to create a cohesive whole.

In the final month of writing, I drafted the entire last 25% of the story.

At this point, the first half is at least on its 3rd revision. The middle at 2nd revision and the last 25% has been revised once. This is typical for my process. By the time I get to the last sections of the book, my writing is much bolder and more confident. Those last few chapters typically need the least amount of revision.

I've sent it out to a handful of trusted readers - trusted in that I can trust them to be honest with me to help the story be its best before it goes off to the editor.

The metrics only tell part of the process. More importantly is how I feel about this story. And how I feel having finished it.

I am quite pleased with the shape of it. The characters - despite how well I know them, despite the fact that I created them - still have the power to surprise me. Their voices have become distinct in my mind and on the page. I found an ending that is both surprising and inevitable (and, I hope, satisfying). Certainly it sets up the starting place and conflicts for book 3.

Sitting here, I feel as if my brain has been hollowed out. For the past 2 years or so, I've been living with this story and these characters in my mind. This was especially true in those last writing months. And now that it's finished, the sense of their company is gone. I know they haven't gone far and they will return when I start drafting the final book in the trilogy, but for now I feel empty.

EVERY SKY A STRANGER will be my 10th published novel. I'd like to say the process gets easier with each book, but that's not really true. Each book is a universe of difficult in its own way. Honestly? I welcome that. It means I'm stretching and growing with every piece I write.

Each story changes me. And that alone is reason to write.

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction in multiple drm-free formats. Your privacy will always be respected.

"Despite Everything, Create"

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 23:41:00 +0000

Button a gift from ZZ Claybourne

Being a writer, I meet a lot of other writers in the virtual confines of social media. Others, I meet on the rare occasions we gather in meat space. One of the writers I met physically before we connected virtually is ZZ Claybourne, AKA Zig Zag, AKA C.E. Young, C. Young, Clarence Young, and Thor MF Jones.

He was wearing the most amazing and lush purple great coat and had a fabulous presence and smile. Of course I had to talk to him and buy a copy of the book he was debuting at the time THE BROTHERS JETSTREAM: LEVIATHAN. (which I absolutely loved!)

I enjoyed the hell out of meeting him and have gone on to enjoy the hell out of all his subsequent books.

But that is not the point of this blogpost.

The button in the photo above is from Clarence and I have looked at it every day since he gifted it to me.

The one thing in this life that belongs to me is my creative imagination. For me, that looks like a few different things: but mainly knitting and crochet, ceramics, and writing. And what the pin's motto means shifts depending on the context.

One day, it may mean create the hell out of things, no matter who is watching/reading/participating. One day it may mean create your weird-ass corner of the world so you have something that belongs only to you, where you can dance badly and joyfully. Another day it means create your big old fuck you to the universe.

I'm crawling toward the finish line for the sequel to LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD. Some days it's a handful of words at a time. 'Cause if you don't know, creating is hard. And when the world is showing its cruelest face, it's even harder.

Sometimes, the thing you're trying to create is like a mean old bass on a line, refusing to be reeled in.

And sometimes it's both.

That's where I've been lately. Stunned nearly mute by the cruelty our species is capable of. And struggling with a story that is just plain difficult.

So at the beginning of the week, I deleted some social media apps from my phone and programmed in a hard limit of 30 minutes a day for others. What I noticed, almost immediately, was my head was full of story instead of dread or static.

I was able to sit with the characters when the writing felt hard instead of looking for an easy dopamine hit.

It feels a lot like magic when the words find their path to the page and snick together in just the right way.

This is me creating. Despite anything. Despite everything.

Come join me. Let's dance.

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One Year Ago and Today: Why Bother Writing?

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 02:28:00 +0000

Happy 1 year book birthday to Litany

I was starting to make a packing list for this upcoming weekend's Boskone science fiction and fantasy convention in Boston when I realized it's been one full year since LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD was released.

Getting the manuscript from idea to finished novel was a long journey - over six years, in fact. While staying with a project that long can be frustrating, I don't regret the time and effort that went into its creation. Working on this book was, at times, so difficult I tried to abandon it. At other moments, the joy of telling these characters' stories was intoxicating. Ultimately, it challenged me to grow as a writer in ways I had not anticipated.

The story, itself, shifted and morphed in ways I hadn't planned. My initial notes have almost nothing in common with the completed story. They way I see it, this is not a bug, but a feature of the creative process.

This week, the writing internet was rife with critiques and hot takes about AI generated novels. (There was a story in the NYT business section about a romance writer using LLM/Generative AI to write whole novels in under an hour.) My feeling about LLM/generative AI is clear: No. Absolutely not.

As in no, I won't use it. Not in any part of my writing process. I won't reiterate all the ways the tech is energy and water wasting, the way it has been trained on stolen work (my own included), the way it cannot be trusted to output correct and factual information to queries, and many many more arguments you probably have already read hundreds of times.

Could I use LLM/Generative AI tools to write hundreds of novels in the time it took me to complete LITANY? Probably. Aside from any discussion of quality (a loaded word, and one nearly impossible to define), I can honestly say that no LLM could have produced a book as layered and complex as LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD.

Why not? Because this wasn't a story that could have emerged from prompts. Even the questions I grappled with didn't start to become clear until after I had written, deleted, and rewritten the beginning of the story nearly a half dozen times. They continued to deepen and expand all through the drafting process. I literally had to write the book before I could have crafted a prompt to capture even the smallest part of it.

No sophisticated mad-libs program could have found a short cut to that destination.

My main reason for writing is to discover the heart of a story. Sure, having my work sell, win awards, be read, be appreciated and enjoyed is all great, but none of that is possible or even of interest to me without the journey.

And if that journey takes longer than I planned? Well, that's where the journey gets fascinating. That's where all the best adventures and stories come from.

If you are looking for a very human tale, filled with emotion and hope, with earnest characters coping with loss and searching for connection, please give LITANY a try. I have always written the books I needed to read. Perhaps you need this story too.

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

"They may think it's a movement"

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:25:00 +0000

The first MTI cap fresh off the needles

Like so many of us, I have been watching - bearing witness - to ordinary citizens being subjected to brutality by their own government. Unlike so many times in history, this isn't happening in some far away country while we sit on our sofas in front our our televisions wallowing in smug satisfaction over our democracy. No. This is our crisis. This is our country falling into ruin before our eyes.

I live in a "blue" state - I put that in quotes because I think that classification of blue vs red states is a false dichotomy. Yes, our nation is fractured, but it's not so easy to delineate where those fault lines are. And it's certainly not purely geography.

And while there have been incidents of ICE disappearing people here in Massachusetts, we have not seen the militarization of our state by swarms of masked armed and booted thugs like Minnesota and Illinois and Oregon and Washington, DC and so many more have.

I feel powerless against this. What can one person do against an impending avalanche except stand there and wait to be swept away?

So, I write letters and leave messages for my elected officials. I donate to mutual aid, activist, and charitable organizations in places that need it most. I have invested my time, energy, and money into my small community because the old hippie saying "think globally, act locally" is still true. Still critically important.

It doesn't feel like enough.

I'm a 62 year old woman recovering from major surgery. I can't put my body on the line in a protest - at least for now. There are stand outs in many of the little communities near me that I have participated in and will go again. Being around even a small group of people who believe as I do that no one is illegal and constitutional rights are granted to all is energizing. These small gathering aren't going to make ICE leave Minneapolis, but they add to the chorus of voices all over the US saying this isn't right. And that's important.

This week, protest has looked like a lot of red yarn on knitting needles and crochet hooks. I attend a weekly knitting group made up of mostly other post-menopausal ladies with white hair. We are just ordinary women. Making items for our loved ones and ourselves. We bring in our works in progress to ooh and ahh over. I am working on mastering cables. Another woman, toe up socks knitted two at a time, Still another, stranded colorwork.

We are setting aside those projects and making the "Melt the Ice" red protest hat.

Does it matter?

I think it does. I think seeing a handful of woman walking around town wearing tasseled peaked red hats is a symbol. And when each of those women make several more hats (I'm on number 3) and more and more people walk around wearing them? Well, in the immortal words of Arlo Guthrie from 'Alice's Restaurant' well, "they may think it's a movement."

I understand why there are some criticizing this as merely performative. But for one thing, the pattern has been purchased by thousands and thousands of yarn artists with all the proceeds going to support immigrants in Minnesota. (You can buy the pattern here.) That's not nothing. Several hundred thousand dollars and going strong. But mostly, here's what I think: We need to show who we are and what we believe. Staying silent in the face of evil is evil. And if one person stops me and asks, "hey, what's with all the red hats," maybe that's a chance to divert the avalanche.

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Radical Empathy; Fierce Kindness

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 20:07:00 +0000

Gigi - our dog who, like Aloka, brings peace to our hearts

The contrast between my internal life and the external world is stark. Painful. It's not as if I don't know what's happening in places like Minneapolis and all the other cities where innocent people are being terrorized by uniformed thugs. It's not as if I don't write my elected officials, make calls, go to local rallies, provide money to mutual aide. It's not as if I don't witness, horrified, as executions are taking place on our streets and we are being lied to at a scale that feels apocalyptic.

I live in a tiny, rural town on 50+ acres of woodlands. It is a place of profound quiet. The chatter of birdsong and rushing water. The wind through trees. The call of coyotes. On clear nights, the stars are intensely bright.

It's hard to reconcile that peace with the horror. How can both of those things exist at the same time in the same world? And yet, it has always been so. That is the terrible irony of being human - that we are capable of such beauty and such cruelty.

During the same weeks as Renee Good and Alex Pretti were murdered, I have been following the journey of a group of Buddhist monks as they walk from Texas to Washington DC spreading a message of peace. One of the aspects of their walk that has captured my heart is the story of Aloka, the Peace Dog. Aloka was a stray dog in India that began to travel with the monks, adopting them as his charge. The photos of him and the Monks caring for him illustrates some of the best of humanity. There is power in the simplicity of caring.

I weep for Renee and Alex. For their loved ones. Their friends. The lives they touched. She was a poet. He was an ICU nurse. Decent people trying to make the world around them a better place. Their passion and caring didn't protect them. It makes me want to rage in fury at the unfairness of it all. It makes me afraid.

I have two sons who are kind and lovely people. The type of people like Renee and Alex. They, too, have spoken out against fascism. They, too, have been to protests. I could see either of them doing what Renee or Alex had done - witnessing and protecting because it is the right thing to do.

Doing the right thing will not save us.

Empathy and kindness are not shields against bullets.

And yet.

Without radical empathy, without fierce kindness, we have no humanity.

I don't want anyone's child or partner or parent or friend in harm's way.

Doing the right thing will not save us.

And yet.

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.
Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction in multiple drm-free formats. Your privacy will always be respected.

"What is Essential is Invisible to the Eye"

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:50:00 +0000

“What is Essential is Invisible to the Eye”*

Lisa Janice Cohen
January 14, 2026

The road curves. It leans into hillsides shaped

by the ghosts of trees long since felled to make

way for hardscrabble pastures, stone walls, dour

farmers who believed in progress until the day

it flattened them beneath its broad wheels. Houses

ground to rubble and sticks, moving the dead

expedient. Only the living left to complain.

In the end, we are the ones owned by geography.

What grows is changed by sunlight and soil

until we rarely recognize ourselves outside

of the places we were first planted. We are all

interlopers here. Even those who count lineage

through faded headstones and common names.

I am still new enough to be struck silent by the ice

coated glitter of a bare maple. A white birch

glows against the leaden sky and I want to weep

with the futility of explaining why

you should care about a single ordinary tree

when the world contains forest after forest.

It would be easy to blame the first miner

who carved coal from a seam deep in the earth.

Or the first roustabout who drove a drill

through the ground for oil. But we have always

been remaking the world, deciding this mountain,

this lake, this town means little in our abundance.

Trading our futures for gold as if joy and sorrow

both were fungible assets. The sky spits

rain and snow, unable to decide the season.

I return to the road, now cut through a farm

on the valley floor. Horses in winter coats

graze, incurious about the ribbon that divides

their pasture. None of the beauty that undoes me

is ancient or original. Everywhere, everything

is built on loss. Not far from here, a farmer

discovered a single elm sapling growing

straight and true toward the sun, splitting

the rotted stump of what we were certain

had already died. Maybe the universe

isn’t finished with us yet. I choose to believe

this is a promise, not a threat.

* Title is a quote from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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Nurturing Creativity: looking ahead to 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 15:23:00 +0000

You are not obligated to complete the work of perfecting the world, but neither are you free to abandon it.
—Rabbi Tarfon, Pirkei Avot

“…give us the vision to see that the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth, too small for anything but love.”
—William Sloane Coffin, from Memorial Day: A Prayer*

When I look back on my creative life in 2025, I am so very proud of this book. Over 6 years in the drafting, revising (and revising), editing, and production. This was the book that almost broke me as a writer. The story that wouldn't let me abandon it, no matter how many times I tried to walk away.

It's a different kind of story than I had written before - still in the realm of speculative fiction (it is a multiverse story, after all), but it's set in the real world of current day Boston, primarily in a makeshift homeless encampment. Not the usual fare of science fiction or fantasy.

I honestly believe it's the best thing I've ever written. And while it was hard to write, and I promised myself the next project I tackled would be lighter and have fewer points of view and storylines, I realized the story arc wasn't complete. So I'm back in this complex world and 2/3 through the sequel. The provisional title is EVERY SKY A STRANGER and my timeline is to have it published by summer of 2026.

The landscape is hard for writers now. Especially for ones like me who are indie published. I would love to see this story find a wider readership. If you've enjoyed any of my work, please give this one a try. If you've read it, please leave a review and recommend it to a friend. If you have a book blog and would like a free ebook copy for review, let me know.

And not only is the business of writing difficult, but the landscape of creativity is as well. There are some artists who are able to use their creativity as a way to push through the chaos of the world. And there were times in my life when I could use my hyperfocus to write, despite (to spite?) the difficulties I encountered. For me, that led to massive burnout which was another reason LITANY took so long to write.

I am learning how to be kinder to myself, to nurture my creativity rather than see it as something to be consumed. If that means the writing will be slower and more deliberate, I will accept that. Because the alternative is to quench the spark that ignites my stories.

I have to quiet the inner voices of fear that try to convince me if I don't publish more and faster, my work will be irrelevant, neglected, unread. First of all, I write because it's how I navigate and comprehend the world. Second, (here comes my snarky self) who am I to believe I'm owed an audience? That's ego talking. (Yes, yes, I know I spent the first part of this post complaining about a lack of readership. I'm human. I embrace my contradictions.) And third, (something I know and have to remind myself of over and over) there are seasons of plenty and seasons of lying fallow. This is as true in growing a garden as it is in living a creative life.

My intention going forward is to practice compassion and patience, both for myself and in my community and live according to the principals in the quotes that begin this post.

May 2026 bring creativity, light, and joy to you.

*These quotes are the epigraphs that begin LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD.

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December, Then and Now

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 18:28:00 +0000

The new and improved bionic me with a pixie hairdo.

15 years ago, on December 1st, it was a cold and blustery early morning when we were woken by the scream of smoke detectors. All of us - my spouse, me, our 2 children, the international teacher staying with us from China, and our dog all escaped the burning house. The dog without her leash, the rest of us barefoot and in pajamas.

We were lucky. We were all unhurt. We were together. What we lost were things that could be replaced, or let go as unimportant. We were supported by friends, family, and community and were able to rebuild and return to our home ten months later.

The beginning of December has become a time of reflection for me ever since. A time to take stock of what is and isn't important. To embrace life, to appreciate blessings, to be grateful for the love that surrounds me.

This year, the beginning of December brought another challenge. This time, on December 2nd. That morning - exactly 21 days ago - I underwent extensive surgery to take the pressure off my spinal cord at two levels in my neck. Over the past year or so, I'd been slowly losing strength and sensation in my hands and arms as well as noticing balance problems in walking. Over the last few months before the operation, I'd been awakened nearly every night with severe cramps in the muscles of my lower legs, feet, and toes.

Because of my background as a physical therapist, I knew these were serious signs. And it still took me longer than it should have to get the work up and surgical consult I needed.

While I consider myself a fairly active healthy person, I have had more surgeries than the average bear and I had pretty much decided I'd been cut open enough thank you very much. While I no longer had all my factory installed parts, I figured I'd be able to keep the rest.

But when your surgeon sighs after looking at your imaging studies, gets inadvertently kicked when testing your reflexes, apologizes for needing to do a complex operation, and cautions you that 1/3 of patients get better and 2/3 just don't get worse, well, you realize you don't really have a choice.

The Good

I am in the very lucky 1/3. Pretty much immediately post surgery, I had improvement in strength and sensation and balance. Critically, I'm getting back the subtle proprioception - that sensation that tells you where your joints are in space without needing to look at them. This means that things like touch typing, knitting, crochet, and ceramics are all going to be easier and better. I can stand on one foot with my eyes closed and not lose my balance. And I haven't been woken up with leg/foot/toe cramps since the surgery. All of this tells me my spinal cord is a lot happier.

I am also extremely grateful for the support I've gotten from friends, family, and community. We've had a fridge full of meals and gifts of cookies, teas, and other goodies. And my BFF spent a week visiting from NYC keeping me distracted and ensuring I took care of myself.

The Bad

My impatience. I struggle with letting others help me. I get frustrated when I can't just bounce back and do everything I want to do. It's not like the surgeon didn't council me that this was going to be a healing process measured in months, not days. My inner cranky-pus says it's been almost 3 weeks. Why aren't I all better yet??

The Ugly

Honestly? Other than the lumpy scar down the back of my neck, there really isn't any. And that will likely heal in time. I've even embraced my new pixie haircut - a necessity since they had to clip all the hair halfway up the back of my head for the surgery.

Two Decembers, 15 years apart

Two very different experiences, tied together by having to face my fears. I vividly remember how aggressively I coped in the aftermath of the fire. How I kept the terror hidden from everyone in my life because I was afraid if I let it out, I wouldn't be able to support my spouse and my kids. I never cried in front of them. But when I was alone in the car, parked somewhere, I would fall apart. People's kindness nearly undid me. And I buried myself in the work of cataloging what we'd lost and acted as the liaison to the general contractor for the firm rebuilding our home. It took a lot of therapy to come to terms with how vulnerable the fire and its aftermath made me.

I wish I could say that 15 years later, I have learned to be open with my fear, but I'm not sure I've made all that much progress. I know my spouse saw how freaked out I was ahead of the surgery, but he let me keep the fiction that everything was going to be all right, damn it. A day before, I wrote him a letter on my computer. Cleaned up most of the cluttered icons on its desktop, and left it in the middle of the screen for him with his name on it. It was a worst case scenario letter. And the first thing I did when I could sit up comfortably enough post surgery to work on the laptop was to file it in my journal. Maybe some day, I will share it with him. But honestly, I don't think I ever even want to read it again. Writing it was hard enough.

Even if the only person I completely expressed my vulnerability with was me, that is growth and change, right?

Now I've confessed it here. To everyone. And if I'm being fully transparent, it's in everything I've ever written. All my poems, all my blogposts, all my fiction.

So who am I fooling, really, other than myself?

Certainly not you, dear reader. As ever, I appreciate that you let me ramble, both here and in my stories. And I promise to continue to work on being open, vulnerable, earnest, and truthful. Even if it's hard. Even if my impulse is to wave it all away and tell you I'm fine.

What I am is healing.

What I am is a work in progress.

What I am is grateful.

And all of that is enough.

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Another One and a Headscratcher

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 03:53:00 +0000

Since I wrote my last post on the absolute deluge of spammy, scammy AI generated book marketing emails, I continue to get them. Every single day. Multiple emails a day. But this one takes the cake.

First of all, there's no salutation. Just a "Hi".

Second, it's about a book I've never heard of. I didn't write Champagne at Seven! Nor did I have anything to do with its publication.

Third, I don't write "binge-worthy women's fiction."

And finally, I have no idea who Olivia Wyatt is.

Why on earth did this get sent to me?

Whatever these spammers paid for this AI email generator, they definitely overpaid.

-----------------------------------------

It's hard enough being a creative person in a mostly indifferent world. This kind of predatory crap is infuriating.

I'd hate to see any writer get conned into spending precious money chasing empty promises.

Be careful out there, people.

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Anatomy of a Scam

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 01:34:00 +0000

One of two similar emails I received from the same scammer 1 day apart.

Several times a week, I get solicitations from email marketers, book bloggers, and other writing service industry people wanting my money in return for some promised promotional outcome.

Most of the time, I delete them out of hand. They are nearly always generic, clearly mail merge letters. Sometimes they will have something that tries to be personal, but that's rare.

This one was the rarest of the rare: it references the title and themes of my most recent novel. My curiosity led me to first search the internet for the company and the person. A combination of "Book Niche Alliance" and "Rachel Key" found nothing. Which got me even more curious.

So I fired up a private browser and copied/pasted the website link. That's where things got interesting. This is from their testimonials page.

If this company is good enough for John Grisham and David Baldacci, it's good enough for me...right?

Why on earth would a spammer use such well known author names/photos for such generic praise? But that wasn't my first clue. No, the first clue was a wix address. And the wix banner still over the home page.

The URL - with a ".wixsite.com" address and the banner says amateur.

Then I looked at the so-called staff looking for Rachel. And here she is...


She looks like a lovely person. Too bad she's a model in a corporate headshot gallery

Perhaps Rachel is one of a set of triplets who dress identically, because I found her in a reverse image search in a lot of other places.

How much do you want to bet none of the team members are real?

But here's the thing: the pitch was personalized and relevant to my book. The why is easy to understand - who doesn't want to be flattered by someone who seemingly read and loved your novel?

The how is a little harder. My 2 theories are:

Someone posted a review with this information in it or
(and worse/more creepy) the book was fed into a LLM and this was its summation.

The first email had this subject heading and content:

A multiverse story with emotional depth — let’s help it travel further

"We recently discovered Entangled Realities and were struck by its beautifully layered exploration of the multiverse. But what truly stayed with us was its emotional heartbeat the way it speaks to grief, displacement, and healing with such care and resonance."

From the second email, screenshotted at the top of the post:

"I recently came across your novel Litany for a Broken World while browsing visionary and metaphysical sci-fi in the Kindle Store, and I was immediately drawn to your layered, emotionally intelligent premise. A young girl lost in the multiverse, a grief-stricken doctor, a lonely seer and the convergence of their brokenness across dimensions this is the kind of story that not only entertains, but resonates on a deeply human level."

So, would I have liked this to be a real human being so deeply moved by my book? Yes. Absolutely. And indeed, I have had readers tell me how meaningful and powerful they found it. Perhaps as it wends its way into the world, others will be profoundly moved by the story. But it will have to manage without the help of the equally fictional Book Niche Alliance.

Have you received a similarly weirdly personalized pitch? Let me know!

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Five Years Ago Today

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:22:00 +0000

Struggling green, March 2020

Five years ago this week, when a handful of cases of a new virus was making the news, my husband insisted that I pack up what I needed and take the dogs out to our farm in Central Massachusetts for an indefinite stay. I had to head out there from Boston anyway for a meeting, but I had fully intended to return home after one overnight.

That was the start of lockdown for Covid-19.

My husband - a physician - spent much of 2020 and beyond as part of a specialized team putting central lines in ICU patients hospitalized with covid. He was adamant that I not come home.

Remember, this was long before we knew that PPE would be effective in limiting transmission of Covid. Long before we understood that Covid was airborne. Certainly long before any vaccine or any kind of treatment. We lived apart for the longest stretch of time since we had been married in 1988 because he did not want to risk me being exposed to the virus.

I spent many weeks in this liminal space where the days were all the same, worried about my husband. Worried about my adult children and extended family. Isolated.

In some very profound ways that I am still not able to fully articulate, I am not the same person I was five years plus 1 day ago.

My sense of how fragile life is has sharpened. Perhaps I worry more, but I also revel in the small marvels of my world: A green shoot pushing through thawing ground, the cacophony of birds clustering at the feeders, the full moon shining through the cupola in our house, the peepers chorus in the woods, even a surprise spring snowfall.

I take more time, both for myself and others. Ironic, as I know I have fewer years left in my life than I have already lived, but not feeling pressured by ambition suddenly stretches out the minutes and the hours.

I am more patient that I once was. Is that a natural consequence of aging? I am now 61, not 'old' (whatever that means), though certainly not young. And contrary to popular wisdom, I have gotten more liberal as I've aged. More certain than ever that what will make society thrive is ensuring everyone has the basics as a matter of course: housing, medical care, education, healthy food, clean water, leisure time.

In my naivete, I had believed that the world's brush with Covid would force us to see that we survive together or not at all. That my neighbor's health and well-being directly effect mine. That hoarding - wealth, knowledge, power - makes us less secure, less well-off. That we would learn to both offer and accept help with grace.

The world we inhabit five years on is not that world.

It would be natural, easy even, to despair.

But there is no future in despair and I am at my core, too stubborn to give into it. This quote, by a Jewish sage (Rabbi Tarfon) has always been a source of hope and comfort. I've even used it as one of two epigraphs in my latest novel.

"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it"

("Pirkei Avot" 2:16).

I will hold onto what living through 2020 taught me. I can't heal the world's grief, but I can continue to walk this path with gratitude, with compassion, with hope.

I will continue to write my strange, earnest novels, believing that the right readers will find them.

I will continue to make knitted and crocheted things for my loved ones, imbuing every garment with caring and love.

I will continue to make pottery and find joy in playing with clay.

I will continue to tend our fruit trees and plant for next autumn's harvest, sharing the bounty with our community.

None of these acts will change the world, but they will nourish and enrich me and those around me.

And if you are reading these words, I wish for you to find what strengthens and feeds you for the work to come.

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Feeling at loose ends

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 19:56:00 +0000

The author, cosplaying confidence at the Boskone Book Release Party

I'm home from Boskone.

Litany For A Broken World is officially out and will take on a life of its own. There will be people who are moved by it. There will be people who don't enjoy it. And some will actively dislike it. That is the case for every piece of art, literature, music, and craft in existence.

My job as a creator is to let go of what I have made and move on to the next thing. If only this was easy.

I am feeling uncertain and restless. To be a creator is to know the curse of dissatisfaction - the more you work in your chosen space, the sharper your critical facilities get and the harder you are on your own output.

The positive aspect of this is it drives you to get better; to avoid complacency. The negative? You get so mired in self-doubt and self-loathing you are sure the work is worse than worthless.

I have been in this place before. I will most assuredly be there again. That is the dubious blessing of having completed the cycle of creative work more than once: it teaches you that it is a cycle.

What I am feeling now isn't what I will feel forever. If I allow myself to name these emotions and accept them as part of the process, it's easier for me to keep moving forward.

Today, I added 500 words to book 2 of Entangled Realities. Are they good words? I have no idea. But I showed up to do some work. A little bit of writing and some quick research. It took me several hours to even get that far. I kept working even though I felt like a fraud, or worse, a poser - a writer wanna-be.

This is my lizard-brain getting mired in fear.

This is my autonomic nervous system pushing me to fight, flee, or freeze.

But there are other options.

I can take those emotions and use them as fuel.

May you find your creative rocket-fuel today and in the days that follow.

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Dealing with Vulnerability

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 15:22:00 +0000

The author in her preferred state

So, I have a book out this week.

Which means I've been talking and writing and otherwise interacting with a whole lot of people in support of the release. And it's exhausting. Not just because I am -- like so many of my fellow authors -- an introvert, but because being noticed means I make myself vulnerable.

I had been prepared for the energy cost of the intense social interactions of back to back appearances: Arisia, a group reading in Brooklyn, Boskone. I had not counted on the deep fear that has come along for the ride.

Those that know me would never describe me as fearful. I've spent my life advocating and speaking out for what I believe in. If I were to pick a single word to represent my personality, it would probably be determined. (A more polite way to say stubborn, ornery, unyielding...just ask my spouse and my children.)

But fearful?

Yeah.

Give me a cause to rally around, and I am all in. Put a bully in front of me? I'm all "you shall not pass". But have me stand up and promote myself? My work? I'd rather face that Balrog.

Tomorrow, I will be traveling to Boskone in Boston and celebrating the release of LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD with my science fiction/fantasy community. I will need to cosplay a confident, functional adult author. All the while, my insides will be squirming and I will have to work to keep my hands from flailing around in distress. (One of the reasons I'm usually knitting at cons.)

If I didn't care so passionately about this story, it would be easy. And while I know I am not my book and my book is not me, it is still the deepest expression of my innermost self. So, in a way, it represents me. It's important to me and as an artist, I believe the work can't reach its true potential until it's experienced by the reader.

Truly, most creators I know are -- like me -- balls of anxiety wrapped in a human suit. So if you encounter me at Boskone, please be gentle. Approach as if you were nearing a feral kitten because I will be torn between wanting to flee to hide under a table and needing to be (metaphorically) petted.

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Where to Find Me: Book release edition

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 20:28:00 +0000


Photo of me with one of my fellow readers, Donald Maass at Brooklyn Booze and Books	.

Two weeks from today, LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD will be released. (!!!!!) It's been a long road from original idea to finished novel and it doesn't quite feel real to me yet.

The work of being an author isn't only in writing the book. It also includes doing what you can to help it find its readership. But authors are notoriously shy creatures (many of us, anyway) and self-promotion is a terrifying process.

So we do what we can, hoping that the readings, the interviews, the cover art reveal, the convention panel appearances all conspire to pique a reader's curiosity.

To that end, I was a guest participant at Arisia in Boston last weekend, then took a train to NYC Tuesday morning to participate in a group reading at Barrow's Intense tasting room in Industry City in Brooklyn. The reading was to celebrate an anthology series (Of Gods and Globes) that the readers had contributed to. I had the opportunity to show off the ARC of Litany (yay!) and read a short story from volume 1 of the anthology series that I hadn't ever read aloud to an audience before. ("Perpetual Silence").

It's a story I wrote B-C (Before Covid) and one that I haven't really looked at in quite some time. I was happy to see that it held up and for 20 minutes, I was able to capture the attention of everyone in the room. (It's a powerful story. I'm so glad Past-LJ wrote it.)

I was recently a guest on Max Bowen's CityWide Bytes YouTube interviews. You can watch the short video here, where we talk about Litany and its influences.

An early review of Litany is up here, as well.

If you're going to be at Boskone this February, I'll be reading from Litany during the Broad Universe Rapid-fire Reading and participating in the Boskone Book Release party, where you can snag a copy/get your copy signed.

As a reminder, ebook pre-orders are live and print orders will be open on release day (Feb 10). If you are considering buying the book, pre-orders are really helpful for a book's visibility. If buying the book isn't in your budget, spreading the word about it and marking it as 'want to read' on Goodreads can be the boost a book needs to get noticed.

Many thanks!

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Litany For A Broken World

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 19:22:00 +0000

Cover* for Litany For A Broken World

After six years of work ...

After 3 (or maybe 4) false starts where I discarded 20,000 words and began again ...

After multiple crises of faith in my ability to write ...

After the help and encouragement of my family, writing friends, and communities ...

After a writing residency at the Eagle Hill School ...

After a computer meltdown and repair ...

I give you Litany For A Broken World.

A modern adult reworking of/homage to The Wizard of Oz that takes place in a Boston homeless encampment.

A young girl's disastrous first foray through the multiverse cleaves her from her family and abandons her in a homeless encampment, adrift in a world and a body not her own.

A doctor struggling with grief volunteers for the annual Boston homeless census and is confronted by the impossible and her deeply buried childhood trauma.

A lonely, disaffected seer rejected by those he seeks to help is drawn from his home by a desperate call across the world walls.

When the three strangers, each broken in some way, are drawn together in a conflict between those with the ability to travel the multiverse and the organization seeking to exploit them, they must risk everything that matters to heal the fractured places in themselves and throughout reality.

Coming February 10, 2025

Pre-orders are now live for the ebook version. (Available at all retailers). Print is forthcoming.

______________

This is the book that nearly broke me as a writer. One that wouldn't let me go once the characters took hold in my subconscious.

As frustrating as my slow writing process was over the past 6 years, I don't regret the work this book required to reach the finish line. It was an ambitious story. 6 years ago, I didn't have the skills to do it justice. None of what I wrote and discarded was ultimately wasted, even as it wasn't used in the novel. Those words, those attempts, were all part of what I needed to level up in my writing ability.

And isn't leveling up critical to the creative process? I'm not in competition with any other author or book out there in the world. I'm here to work harder and write better than my past self. To grow as a creator. To fail better in the immortal words of Samuel Beckett.

I hope I have failed better with Litany. And I will continue to work and stretch as I complete book 2 in the Entangled Realities series, Every Sky A Stranger. I'm currently just shy of the 25% mark in drafting and making good progress.

_______________

If you are a reviewer/book blogger and would like a complimentary ebook copy to review, please email me: lisa@ljcohen.net

*Cover art created by the lovely and talented Chris Howard

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What gets in the way

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 15:55:00 +0000

Mya, soaking up the sun

There was a time when I was able to write 1000 words a day/5000 words a week on whatever project I was working on. I did this for years, writing a novel a year from 2004 until 2016 or thereabouts.

Somewhere, after writing and publishing A STAR IN THE VOID, the 5th and final of the Halcyone Space novels, I hit a wall. I started projects, ground to a halt, abandoned them. Every day, I would dutifully sit at my laptop, stare at a blank page, and then click away to facebook or twitter and fritter away hours. When I look back at that time, I can see that there were a number of things at play. The political landscape was such that I felt I had to be hyper-vigilant at all times just to feel any sort of control over my life. I know it doesn't make sense - immersing myself in the constant churn of news only increased my anxiety, which is not conducive to creativity.

And then covid hit. My physician spouse sent me away to our farm in Central Massachusetts while he stayed in Boston on the front lines of treating ICU patients. I was isolated and depressed. Desperately worried about my spouse's health, physical and mental. Also not conducive to creativity.

I know a lot of my writer friends were able to channel their anxiety into their work. I was not one of them.

What I did instead was a lot of yarn work - knitting and crocheting baby blankets to donate to a hospital - while watching a lot of television. When I did write, it was mainly poetry. I had an idea for a novel, but it seemed I was only able to write myself into dead ends. Several years worth of them. I think I discarded at least as many words as I kept for what became LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD.

Ultimately, with the help of my writing community and several zoom sessions a week of co-writing, I was able to finish the draft of LITANY after more than 5 years of struggling. That manuscript is in the hands of my editor now and I'm working on the sequel.

I'm almost ashamed to say that I'm only working on it once a week. I have a scheduled zoom write-in with Broad Universe on Tuesday mornings. When I write, the writing is going well - I have a solid sense of the conflicts in the story and a hazy view of the ending. But writing 500-1000 words a week is less than optimal. Not only because drafting the novel is going to take a long time, but also because I lose momentum and have to backtrack every time I sit down to write.

I realize my hyperfocus on wordcount in the past may have generated a lot of writing, but it wasn't great for my mental health and life balance. Writing only once a week isn't great for my sense of identity as a writer or my goals. So I need to find a middle ground.

Part of finding that balance was getting away from social media and returning to somewhat regular blogging. Sitting down to create a blogpost is the equivalent of morning pages - it primes the pump for my other writing. I've also tentatively scheduled two additional writing times in my week. I'm hoping that as I find my discipline again, it will be self reinforcing.

But life does keep intruding. The political scene is still fraught. And on a personal note, one of my dogs has a developing and as yet undiagnosed medical problem. I'm a person with very porous emotional filters. It's part of who I am and if I could change it, I'm not sure I would. But it does make it difficult to set all the external worries aside and focus. (Which is what I did for years. Until I experienced burn-out.)

So now, I'm trying another path. Where I acknowledge the outside concerns instead of cutting myself off from them, using them as fuel/energy to do creative work.

Life and art are messy. I'm not sure there's any way around that.

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When Fandom meets Craft

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 21:33:00 +0000

Finished and blocked!

While I learned to knit as a child, I didn't do much with it until I rediscovered the craft in my adult life. And thanks to youtube videos and the folks who run the Handknitting Association of Iceland, I learned how to make stranded colorwork yoke sweaters in the past year or so.

The first few sweaters I made, I followed specific patterns, but then found a wonderful book about the process of creating a stranded colorwork sweater by Tin Can Knits called Strange Brew.

I decided that I was going to make a bespoke sweater for myself with motifs from my favorite fandom: Doctor Who.

A trip to Webs Yarn and I found Debby Bliss Fine Donegal - the perfect fingering weight wool and cashmere blend in the exact color I wanted: TARDIS blue. (It wasn't called that, but it should have been!)

Then it was time to design the sweater and plan the motifs. First I did a sketch.

Initial concept sketch

I have a kindle scribe which I use for a lot of purposes. It was purchased primarily so I could edit my manuscripts on it, but it's also amazing for notating/adjusting knitting patterns (you can write on pdf's) and for sketching out concepts.

Motif design for the TARDIS

Motif design for K-9

Then it was time to do some math. (Or maths as my friends across the pond say.) After making a swatch and measuring gauge (yes, it's a pain. I hate doing it. But I did it anyway.), I chose the size M/L in sock yarn as the template in the Strange Brew pattern book. That meant I knew how many stitches I had to work with around the cuffs, the waist, and the yoke, so I could layout the motifs and know how many repeats I needed to do and how many stitches I needed to put between them.

For example, the question marks were 6 stitches wide by 11 stitches high.

I had 60 stitches around the wrist to work with. That meant 6 repeats of the motif, with 4 stitches between them. (making the motif 10 stitches wide including the background color stitches.) Sleeves incorporate increases, and the overall pattern called for increasing 2 stitches each 6th round, but there's definitely wiggle room, so I did the increases before and after the question mark motif rounds without any issue.

A tip for motifs: put in stitch markers all around to mark each repeat. For the question marks, that meant every 10th stitch. That way if you make a mistake, you catch it after a single motif instead of at the end of the round.

A second tip for motifs - set the 'beginning of round' to be at the back of a shoulder to hide any jog of the pattern. You may need to use some math to figure out where the first repeat starts so your design is centered the way you want it.

The entire project took me from initial design and starting on the sleeves in January of 2024 (if you saw me at Arisia or Boskone in Boston, you might have seen me working on it) to blocking the finished sweater in September of 2024. I did a few other smaller projects in between, so maybe 6 months of actual knitting time. That's actually not bad for a sock weight yarn and size 4 needles.

I may turn this into a cardigan at some point, so I laid out the motifs so there would be a clear line down the middle to steek, but for now, I'm happy with it and will be wearing it at Arisia.

I highly recommend getting the Strange Brew book if you have any interest at all in creating your own yoked stranded colorwork sweaters. The geek in me loves to know how things work, so it was definitely something I knew I wanted in my library. Or if you have a sweater pattern that you like the fit of, you can always just use it as the template and create your own fandom designs with a little math and patience.

Closeup of the motifs during blocking

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Harvest what you plant

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 13:59:00 +0000

Some of what our garden has gifted us

There's a common expression 'you reap what you sow'. While technically, it's the same as the title of this post - Harvest what you plant - it's connotation is much darker. Almost threateningly so.

I've had enough of cautionary tales.

What I'm looking for now is something to reach for, not something to run away from.

I want more possibilities, not fewer.

We have a large garden here at StarField Farm. Multiple gardens, actually. We have the large plot at the bottom of the driveway, the recently established miniature orchard, a side garden, a terraced garden, and the kitchen garden. We grow all kinds of fruit and vegetables - I like to say from asparagus to zucchini (though we didn't plant any summer squash this year. We get enough from neighbors. And yes, folks here do leave bags of zucchini on front porches). Yesterday, I harvested about half of the 60+ potatoes we planted in early spring.

pinto potatoes from a freshly pulled vine

Yes, that's a lot of potatoes. And tomatoes. And beans. And kale. And peppers. And...

We planted all of this food during still chilly days last spring. You could say gardening is an act of faith and you wouldn't be wrong. So many things need to go exactly right to harvest a crop. The correct amount of sunshine, rain, warmth, nutrient rich soil. And even then, there are pests and animals who can decimate a garden before you get a single floret of broccoli.

This year, squirrels ate every last peach from three carefully tended trees. Hundreds and hundreds of peaches gone.

Here's the thing: when you plant something - a seed, a sapling, an idea - you don't know what will come of it. You hope that there will be juicy peaches in late August, but it's a long time between February pruning and peach pies. So much can happen, mostly out of our control.

But every year, we tend the garden. Feed the soil. Nurture the seedlings. Prune the trees.

Writing stories isn't all that different. It starts underground in the fertile subconscious. The words need to be tended, weeded, protected. Sometimes the garden of ideas is orderly, other times it grows wild like a pumpkin patch. Not every story makes it to harvest and some offer amazing bounty. If gardening is an act of faith, so is creativity.

My garden feeds and sustains my body.

My writing feeds and sustains my soul.

And that is a harvest worth working toward.

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What are we?

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 01:18:00 +0000

In a series of conversations with a friend staying with me at the farm, I had this realization about what it means to be human.

We are connection seekers. We spend our lives sending out these pings into the universe, fearing and hoping for an answer. Like little satellites trapped in orbit around our own loneliness. And because we are terrified of asking for what we need and not getting it, our signals are full of static.

We are meaning makers. Desperate for it all to have a purpose, to make some kind of sense. So every interaction gets re-litigated and scrutinized for hidden clues and subtext. We obsess over what we said, how we said it, how it was received. How exhausting it all feels. But it gives us a sense of control because otherwise, isn't everything random? Chaotic?

We are story tellers. We want there to be a narrative that gives us a sense of where we are on the journey. Beginning, middle, end. There's predictability to this kind of arc. So we superimpose it over what is otherwise just a muddle of days and events.

These three essential human needs: connection, meaning, and story are what drive us to create. What is a piece of art, a song, a poem, a novel if not a way to transmit the core of who we are to someone else. It is a way to say I am here. This is what I believe. This is who I am.

I'm not sure where I'm going with all of this, but it's what bubbled up to the surface of my mind this evening.

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It's been a minute

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 16:29:00 +0000


The view from my office window

It's honestly been a lot longer than a minute. There was a time this blog served as my virtual journal, where I wrote without thought to who might be reading it. Then somewhere along the way, I got suckered into the clicks, the metrics, the shares and spent my time boosting posts into my social media timelines. It suddenly became more important to be noticed than to be creating.

Which wasn't good for my mental health or my writing.

Creativity is a tiny flame in the darkness, vulnerable to wind and weather. I had forgotten how carefully it needs to be tended.

It doesn't not slip my notice that my endless scrolling on social media and craving for the external validation it sometimes provided coincided with the long slow slog of my current manuscript. I've said this before and I'll repeat it here - if only to hammer it home in my mind - to write means being able to sit with the discomfort when it gets difficult. Having social media as a crutch meant I had a ready exit from the work.

Not only that, but the rapid fire nature of a social media feed seemed to obliterate my ability to focus my attention on long form work - both reading and writing.

If anything is the death knell for a writer it's the inability to read and think deeply.

It's also been a year full of radical changes in my personal life. In 2023, my spouse left a toxic job and is now semi-retired. We sold a house and moved fully to our homestead farm in Central Massachusetts. (We still have a storage unit full of unpacked boxes to prove it.) I won't even mention the cataclysmic changes in the world at large.

Everything culminated in my decision to step away from most of my social media streams. I haven't checked my personal Facebook feed in 2 weeks.* And in just those weeks, feel like my mind and thoughts have room to grow. I've engaged with my writing more fully and more deeply than I have in a long time.

I'm letting myself be bored instead of reaching for my phone.

I'm emailing long letters to friends. I have a bunch of cards I'm planning to mail as well.

And most remarkably, the days feel longer. Story is swirling around my mind again. I spent several intense days doing a final read through and light edit to LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD ahead of sending it to my editor. After all the time struggling to write it, rewrite it, multiple revisions and changes, it finally says what I wanted and needed it to say.

Whether or not it finds its readership isn't up to me. I can't make that happen through social media or promotion. I will be releasing it just after the new year. What happens after, happens. There will be a book 2 (Working title EVERY SKY A STRANGER). There are other stories tickling my back brain.

There will be plums to harvest in a week or so. And blackberries. The kale and chard are taking over the garden. Everything grows and matures in its own time. The garden, the orchard, stories. Our lives are a process. Not a destination.

I'm still here. I hope you are, too. Wherever you are in your process, I hope you find the breath and time to simply be.

With fondness,

*You may still see me posting on IG, because there's never a bad time to add beauty to the world. Most of what I post there are photos of StarField Farm, knitting, pottery, food, and of course, my dogs.

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Litany for a Broken World

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 15:03:00 +0000

I am still here, though you might not know that by looking at my (sorely neglected) blog or my spotty social media presence. Finally, after 5 years of word-wrangling, I have finished my latest manuscript.

A young girl's disastrous first foray through the multiverse cleaves her from her family and abandons her in a homeless encampment, adrift in a body not her own.

A doctor struggling with grief volunteers for the annual Boston homeless census and is confronted by the impossible and her deeply buried childhood trauma.

A lonely, disaffected seer rejected by those he seeks to help is drawn from his home by a desperate call across the world walls.
Three strangers, each broken in some way, become targets of an organization exploiting those with the ability to travel the multiverse.
Drawn together into a conflict that has already destroyed generations of multiverse Travelers and damaged countless worlds, the three must risk everything that matters to heal the fractured places in themselves and across reality.

This is Litany For a Broken World.

I'd like to share the first chapter with you.

Chapter 1

Reina Vettel

Reina woke in darkness, her heart pounding. After all the preparation, the endless delays and disappointments, it was finally happening. For once, she didn't even mind the rush of cool air around her bare legs as she tossed the covers aside and leapt out of bed.

The house was silent. Her parents must still be asleep. Reina had retreated to her room last night to the echoes of their angry voices. No matter their assurances, she was sure they were fighting about her. She just didn't understand why.

They'd been preparing her for months now. But the closer they came to choosing the day and the destination, the worse and more frequent their arguments had become. Reina sighed and rifled through her closet. Maybe once she’d made a successful transit, their worry would ease and their family's life would return to normal. For now, all she could do was ready herself for the trip and stay out of her mother’s way.

Whenever she'd asked where they were going, Papa kept assuring her she would be safe. Her mother would quickly change the subject, leaving Reina alone with her doubts. She reached for the new trousers and tunic her parents had gotten for her. The fabric was soft and supple, the embroidery made by a fine hand. Certainly this counted as a special occasion.

She paused. Maybe better to wear something old and familiar, more a part of her. Even Travelers didn't fully understand why some things passed easily between worlds and others didn't. Reina had had more than one nightmare of arriving somewhere naked.

The sky lightened slowly as she dressed, casting a soft pink glow through her room. She glanced around the space as if it belonged to someone else: the bed filled with soft pillows in the shapes of animals, the desk piled with books, drawing paper, and inks, the rainbow painted around the walls. The next time she returned here, it would be the same, but she would be different.

Reina tiptoed through the hallway, past her parents' room toward the kitchen. A soft clink made her freeze in the doorway. Her mother sat silently, staring at the steam rising from the tea cup clutched in her hands. Of course she was already up. Had she even slept last night?

Her frown accentuated the lines across her forehead and the downturn of her lips. Her dark wavy hair glinted with new silver in the morning light. Papa's sickness had been hard on all of them, but he was finally feeling better. And he'd promised Reina that everything would be better, now. That's part of what this trip was for — to celebrate, now that she was old enough to Travel. Perhaps her mother still thought she wasn't ready.

It used to be her mother who'd secretly told her stories about their grand adventures Traveling from here to there, fixing the broken places. When Papa had fallen ill again last year, she wouldn't talk about it anymore. Even during the past few months when the fever-brightness had left his eyes, and the nightmares no longer woke him screaming, her mother still seemed distant and unsettled. Too many of their interactions ended with Reina retreating to her room in tears.

But Papa said he believed in her. And today she would prove him right.

"Good morning!" Reina strode into the kitchen as if she'd just come down the hall.

Her mother startled. The cup jerked in her hands, spilling tea across the table cloth. "Reina!"

"Sorry!" Reina grabbed a towel and mopped up the spill.

Her mother sighed and slid a second cup toward her. "There's more in the pot."

Reina looked for a third cup as she poured for both of them. “What about Papa?”

Silence was her mother’s only answer. Reina stared into the murky tea, confused. The past few years had taught her there were some questions that couldn’t be asked, but not why. She swallowed her uncertainty with a slug of the hot brew when the air around them shimmered and a low hum resonated through her.

Her mother shivered. "Do you feel that?"

Reina set down her cup, wide-eyed. "I do," she whispered. "Is it time? Is Papa ready?"

"Almost time." Pausing, her mother took a deep breath before continuing. "He went on ahead."

"But he promised!" Reina winced at the flicker of anger that crossed her mother’s face. This wasn’t right. They were supposed to be together. What if something went wrong? "Why didn't he wait for me?" She hated how whiny she sounded.

"It will be fine." Her mother's voice was flat.

Reina felt her face heat up. Was her mother mad? What had Reina done wrong this time? Everything just seemed to be wrong these days. Between her parents. Between her and her mother. Reina sighed and cradled the mug close letting the steam soften the air between them. This wasn’t the time for another argument. This was supposed to be her special day. Why did Mama have to ruin everything? She studied her mother’s face trying to sort out what to say next that wouldn’t cause an even deeper rift between them. Her eyes were red and swollen. Had she been crying?

"Mama?" Reina said softly. "Are you okay?"

Her mother shook off the question. Like so many others. As if Reina’s concerns were not at all important. The anger burned again in her chest.

"Remember, it's like a cross tide in the ocean. Don't fight it. Let it carry you a while. It will build —"

"I know," Reina snapped. "Look for the Moment's shadow and slide through it. Just like we practiced." Just like Papa had told her.

Her mother stared at her briefly, then sighed and turned away, fiddling with the silver band on her right thumb. Her father wore its mate on his left. A beam of sunlight struck it and dazzled Reina's eyes.

The last conversation she'd had with her father had been about what she should bring as her focus. He'd been standing in her doorway, silhouetted by the hallway light.

"What means home to you?" he had asked.

She knew he didn't mean the physical place. Her room was full of the things she'd collected — smooth stones from the shore, iridescent bird feathers, her animal pillows. In her closets were other treasures, once hoarded, now outgrown. "I'm not sure."

He tightened his left hand around the ring on his thumb. "When the time comes, you'll know."

Now he was gone.

And she still didn't know what to take.

"Reina?"

She jerked her head up. Her mother was studying her intently now. Reina fought the urge to look away, determined to prove she was more than prepared for this.

"Do you have your focus?"

"I left it in my room." It wasn't a lie, exactly. Surely something in there would work.

Her mother's eyes widened. "Get it. Now."

"Now?" Reina's voice squeaked.

"Now."

Reina leaped out of her chair and ran down the hallway. Her stomach churned and she was glad she hadn’t risked eating anything. Glancing through her room, she desperately hoped some particular thing would call to her. But the problem was, she had changed this past year. Her room seemed to belong to someone else.

"When the time comes, you'll know." Her father’s voice echoed in her mind.

Well, the time was here and she still had nothing.

"Reina!" Her mother called, sharp and urgent.

Her heart thudded and her breathing quickened. She glanced at her bed and the quilted creatures she still slept with. There was the crow with shiny beads for eyes her father had made for her. Or the little dog that had been her mothers from her childhood, and loved well, it's fabric thin and worn. No. Something small. Something she could slip in a pocket. A bowl on her desk held her beach stones. She found them soothing to hold and had rubbed many of them smooth. Her favorite had shimmers of blue and black through the white. It was right on top, as if waiting for her to choose it.

"Got it!"

Reina raced back to the kitchen, opened her palm, and showed her mother the stone.

"Are you sure…?" Mother started, before shaking her head. She took a deep breath. "It's time."

Golden light shimmered through the kitchen. It thickened into an opaque curtain.

Her mother tried to set down her tea cup, but it tipped over again. Tea darkened the lace table cover and dripped to the floor. Reina reached for the already tea-stained towel.

"Leave it."

"Mama?"

"Remember, follow exactly in my wake. It will ease the way."

Reina's cheeks flushed. Anticipation and fear had chased away the resentment. "I know."

Her mother took her hand. It was cold, clammy. Reina looked at her and frowned. Why would she be afraid? Where was her father? What weren’t they telling her?

As the Moment solidified, their kitchen faded into a hazy outline of vague rectangular shapes. Reina counted her heartbeats as they raced by. Her mother squeezed her hand. Dancing lights surrounded them both.

"Go. Now!" her mother shouted, taking a single step into the shimmer.

Reina followed. The light embraced her body in a gilded second skin.

Time stopped.

Her home vanished behind her.

Her mother's hand faded into a memory of warmth and pressure.

"Mama!" Reina cried out, but there was no sound in the emptiness. She tried to hold onto her father’s voice, the memory of him teaching her and his very first lesson was that all Travelers journeyed alone. This was fine. This was normal.

But still, she felt — nothing. No heartbeat, no breath, no warmth or coolness or pressure. All connection to her body had vanished.

And all sense of time. How long had she been here? Her thoughts were a storm of urgency and panic, even as part of her mind watched, as if from a great distance. It was like drowning.

Then memory broke across her like the wave that had pulled her under when she'd been just a few years old, collecting stones and shells at the beach.

Her father had yanked her sputtering and choking from the water. Through the day and night that followed, Reina wouldn't open her hand and the small stone she had grasped left a geometric scar on her right palm.

The stone.

Reina forced herself to recall everything about the unusual stone, the focus she had chosen to take with her on her first journey.

Her panic receded, like the wave had. Her father’s voice whispered in her mind and she remembered. This was the void between worlds. Her parents had warned her about it, but learning about it and being suspended in it were very different things.

Reina concentrated on the stone, a dull lump of white shot through with blue and black streaks. Slowly, she built a sense of self from the hand around its uneven shape, to the arm connected to that hand until she had reclaimed her body from the emptiness.

"Thank you, Papa," she whispered. This time, she imagined she heard the sound of her voice and felt his warm approval beaming over her like sunshine.

Now there was a sense of directionality in the void. As if she were a feather caught in a wind current. Or a kite on a string. And finally she felt it — the thinnest of threads that joined her to her parents. Reina stopped fighting and let them tug her. The stone warmed in her hand. It had been the right choice.

Now that the panic faded, a fierce joy sang through her. She was a Traveler. When the Moment collapsed, she would be in a different reality.

Her father would be there, too, waiting for her and the illness that had plagued him would be a memory. The anger and the secrets could stop. Their family would be whole again.

A shadow fell across her mind.

Something cold and sharp abruptly severed her from her mother and father. From the connection she had reclaimed to her own body. The pain of it bore through her, driving out everything except an icy dread as she tumbled out of control.

Reina tried to scream. The void swirled around her, tightening down like a caul, cutting off her breath. She clawed at her throat, but her hands felt nothing. Her hands didn’t exist. The stone she’d once held in her palm gone as if it never was.

Painful memories tortured her: Her mother storming out of the house and vanishing for days at a time, only to return without explanation. The first time she found her father collapsed in the kitchen, his limbs jerking and his eyes rolling far back in his head. The unendurable silences after her parents’ arguments when Reina was afraid to say or do anything that would start the shouting all over again.

And still, she kept falling. Could feel the shriek of air as she tore through the emptiness faster and faster. Knew she would die when she hit the bottom of the endless plummet. There was nothing she could do except desperately long for the end to stop the terror.

“Mama, Papa, help me!” The words reverberated in her mind, trapped in nothingness.

As fast as she could form them, her panicked thoughts were torn away by the wind.

“Papa, Papa,” she whispered. But he had been beyond her reach for far too long.

Light and shadow flickered past as if a thousand days and nights each lasted an eyeblink. A roar of sound blasted by her, the pitch wailing then fading. Voices shouted in an alien tongue, the anger far too familiar. Her senses burned raw with fresh pain.

“Please,” she cried, knowing no one could hear her.

The echo of a dog’s sharp bark filled her awareness and chased away the barrage for a bright instant. Before she could take a breath, it cut off abruptly leaving her suddenly bereft in an unnatural stillness that was even worse than the endless plunge.

She hung, suspended in emptiness, waiting for the next horror.

Below her, rectangles sketched themselves out of the darkness, getting larger and larger, rushing towards Reina as she watched. Dizziness overwhelmed her senses. One by one, the shapes vanished into the periphery until only one remained. A crumbling brick building, its windows broken and covered with splintered wood grew to fill the black void of an unfamiliar sky.

Without warning, she slammed into it, her mind disintegrating into dust and agony. Time stopped. How could nothingness hurt so much? Slowly, slowly, the world coalesced around her once again. Reina gasped for breath from rigid lungs that refused to inflate. A terrible pressure slammed against her chest over and over again.

A strange voice rang in her ears, the words running together in a string of nonsense, the urgency needing no translation. And then a bolt of lightning struck her and she was sure her heart would explode.

Pain burned in every muscle in her body. Her head throbbed. Her hands felt clumsy and distant. She struggled to conjure up her stone, but it was gone. It was so dark, she couldn't even tell if her eyes were open or closed. Cold seeped up from the hard ground until she felt as stiff and frozen as something long dead.

--From Litany For a Broken World, by LJ Cohen

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When every day is blursday

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 17:51:00 +0000


Winter finally arrives at StarField Farm

The past few months have gone by in a blur of family stress and change. And even when change is ultimately positive, it is still difficult.

My spouse left the hospital he had worked at for the entirety of his 30+ year career. At my urging, he has taken January and February off to decompress from the traumatic years of covid, among other stresses, before he decides what's next. Which means neither of us have the external markers of time passing. Hence the title of this blogpost.

Despite everything, I have managed to complete the (as yet unnamed) multiverse novel and am deep into its second revision. In the process, I have unlocked the conflicts at the heart of the sequel. Now I'm eager to complete book 1 and move on to drafting book 2.

Book 1 takes place over a few day span in a Boston winter, so in a way, I've been living in those brief moments in time for several years. Blursday, indeed. When I look out the window today, the landscape finally matches my internal sense of place.

Living in the Northeast US, the other way I have always kept track of where I am in time is the march of the seasons. And that, too, has been changing in ways that I find quite disorienting.

In my lifetime (I'll be 60 this year) I have watched the seasons skew, more extreme "100 year" storms, & overall less predictable seasonal weather patterns.

There's already word that there will be no stone fruit in New England this season because of the weather extremes we had earlier in the month - from 50 degrees F to -13 within days.

I am a scifi geek, so I often reflect on the ST:TNG episode The Inner Light where Picard's consciousness is snagged by a memory beacon & he lives a lifetime with a civilization coming to grips with its own extreme climate change as its sun ends up as a supernova. Ah, Science Fiction shining a light on the present since forever.

This is heavy thinking for a beautiful snowy morning in Central Massachusetts, so I will leave you with a haiku:

round bellied birds perch
trees snug in coats of fresh snow
how still the world waits

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The False Urgency of Commerce

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 15:42:00 +0000

I have deleted hundreds of emails and text messages in the past week exhorting me to Spend! Buy! Save! Donate!

To be honest, I love shiny things as much as any crow, but I'm done with the false urgency of commerce.

These not-so-subtle messages embedded in all these communications is that w are not enough. That we need to fill our emptiness with stuff. That we are judged on our acquisitions.

I guess our society has always had this lurking, but it feels like it's ramped up to eleven this year.

Fuck that noise.

We are wonderful for who we are. (Thank you, Mr. Rogers).

So share your weird and wild selves.

We are the gift.

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Work doesn't love you back

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 15:11:00 +0000

Is it any wonder the message at large is that young people are lazy and don't want to work?

I don't make any secret of my age - I turned 59 this year. What that means in the context of this post is I was raised and came of age during a time when the workplace was sold as a second family and loyalty to work was something expected, as an unwritten, uncompensated requirement of employment.

Despite the erosion of worker protections (this was the era of the slow disappearance of pensions as a new benefit and the abrupt loss of pensions to already retired workers), the message was still couched in the language of mutual obligation. "Take care of the company and the company will take care of you."

Things were starting to change in small ways and in certain occupations by the time I was in my late 20s. I distinctly remember a conversation with my sister - 7 years my senior and working as an accountant in one of the big firms - where she was appalled that I would leave a job after a mere year or two. Her exact words: "no one is going to hire you with that resume."

Well, there were distinct differences in the world of health care and as a newly minted physical therapist in the late 1980, I was in high demand, practically at any hospital in the nation. Still, the notion of your colleagues as a second family was definitely encouraged and as a young single person, I did spend a lot of time after work socializing with my work mates. And many friendships were forged along the way.

However, there is an insidious undertone to this work-as-family theme: it places management in a kind of loco parentis, or at least as the authority figure with all of the subtle and not so subtle power imbalances that exist in family constellations.

In truth, management does not consider the worker (except in exceedingly rare cases) as family. The worker - and this can be at any level, in any profession (ask me how I know...) - is simply a number on a spreadsheet and is completely exchangeable and expendable.

These are the lessons I have been slowly learning from my children's generation. They have a much more realistic view of work and its place in a life. They see through the con, which definitely doesn't serve management/ownership. Is it any wonder the message at large is that young people are lazy and don't want to work? My 20-something children work and work hard, as do their friends. They are just better equipped to understand that work is purely transactional: their labor in exchange for fair recompense.

Theoretically, you could work as a highly technical and highly skilled professional for many decades at the same employer, have a national reputation in your field, be lauded by your colleagues and professional organizations, have commendations from your employer regarding your exemplary contributions to the institution and none of it matters when it becomes convenient or expedient for the employer to sever your employment.

Work. Does. Not. Love. You. Back.

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The Way Baseball Connects Us

noreply@blogger.com (Lisa Cohen) — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 19:37:00 +0000

A once-in-a-lifetime experience: Neil & I with David Ortiz on a trip to Cooperstown

My story doesn't start with a raffle ticket we bought in support of David Ortiz's Children's Charity, and organized with the assistance of The Red Sox Foundation, though that's what directly led to the amazing photo posted above. Actually, my story starts with my late father - who grew up playing stickball on the streets of Brooklyn during the depression. A man who became a huge Brooklyn Dodgers fan. Who told me stories of seeing Jackie Robinson play, both in AAA when my father was in Rochester after his WWII service, and also at Ebbets field with the Dodgers.

The only poem my father knew by heart was Baseball's Sad Lexicon by Franklin Pierce Adams. And I can still hear him recite it in my memory.

These are the saddest of possible words:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double –
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."

I was born after the Dodgers broke his heart and grew up a Mets fan after he switched his allegiance. I was a kindergartner the year of the "Miracle Mets" and my earliest of baseball memories is sitting in the driveway with my Dad, listening to Mets games on the car radio.

I still think a well called game is a thing of beauty. And the sounds of the game bring my father back to me like very little else does.

My connection with baseball is very much tied to appreciating the game as a fan, rather than as someone who played it. Title IX wasn't law until long after my childhood and where I grew up, girls weren't encouraged to play sports. I went to the occasional game in my graduate school days in NYC and then when we moved to Boston in 1990, I was happy to trade one losing team to another and switched my allegiance to the Red Sox.

My children grew up Red Sox fans the way I grew up a Mets fan. The only time we could watch TV during a meal was if a game was on. Car rides equaled games on the radio. My children learned that baseball could break your heart when Nomar Garcioparra was traded.

2004 tied three generations of baseball fans together: My father, retired in Florida, had adopted my team and became a Red Sox fan, me, listening to tight games from the hallway because I was too nervous to watch, and my sons, falling asleep in front of the TV during the late games and demanding to know the score and play by play first thing in the morning.

Somewhere along the way, my husband became a fan as well. Not just of the Red Sox, but like me, of the game itself.

One more brief digression before I get back to 2022 and David Ortiz.

During the Summer of 2010, my eldest son and I stopped at Cooperstown while we were visiting colleges the summer before his senior year in High School. It was the first time at the Baseball HOF for both of us. At a local bookstore, we picked up a copy of Joe Posnanski's book about Buck O'Neil and the Negro Leagues and one of my fondest memories of that summer is my son reading me passages during our trip.

Fast forward to 2022. Our kids are grown and on their own. Baseball is still something that connects us. I'm still an avid fan of the Red Sox and especially love listening to games on the radio. (Have I mentioned that a well called game is a thing of beauty?)

And so my husband buys a raffle ticket. He buys it because we support good causes. We are big fans of David Ortiz and his charity raises money for children's medical care. All of our sweet spots. We have no expectations of winning anything.

And he gets an email that he's won. Not just any prize. The *Grand* prize: a private plane trip for 2 to Cooperstown, traveling with David Ortiz. 3 nights in a hotel. VIP seating at the Induction Ceremony.

Where, not only did we get to cheer for the one and only Big Papi (who is a completely lovely, authentic, and welcoming person), but we also celebrated the inductions of Gill Hodges - a player my father loved, and Buck O'Neil - the player my son and I bonded over more than a decade ago.

This weekend was an experience I will cherish my whole lifetime. Perhaps I will be able to tell some future grandchild that I got to meet Big Papi and add another link in this chain.

The connections between generations are as solid as a perfect double play, as joyful as a blue-sky summer afternoon at the park, and as enduring as the hope of a walk-off home run.

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