Yes it is almost time. Imagine my anticipation. I am about to birth a new baby novel after nearly a decade of purple-faced, teeth-clenching labor. My god it is difficult to put a book together. Have you ever tried it? I should have just stuck an ice pick up my nose; it would have been less painful. On some days it was pure agony. Ten minutes of tending the same damn paragraph seem like hours of torture. You call yourself nasty names. You eat junk food, you do not sleep well. You second guess, third guess and sixteenth guess every single scene, every conversation, every insight. And pretty much no one cares until it is really done. You get no sympathy.

If you are also an artist, as I am, sometimes you attempt to work on a painting for a brief intermission as you are mulling over the words that will come next, and writing is a lot like painting so it seems so logical that it would be a great idea to create  both book and art side by side…thriving in a parallel universe. Both require a distinct voice, a unique vocabulary of expression and gesture, a selection of color, pattern and texture to flesh out the composition or the plot. And the sub-plots. Writing can be a lot of fun, on the good days. Painting can also be quite enjoyable when you are in the flow. But I have discovered through the years that one of those pursuits is capable of blocking out the sun for the other one. They compete for my attention and they dilute what I am doing into less powerful work if I try to excel in both at once.

What was the delay, you ask? Ten years? That’s crazy. What takes so long about writing a book? Well, I had a fabulous story but no ending. Then stuff happened that inspired and informed the book idea and everything fell together in one big loud, undeniable way as sometimes (but not often enough) stuff does. They say that we need to write about what we know and what we are most comfortable with in order to be authentic and genuinely entertaining. Obviously an author would not, in her right mind, take on the task of writing a book about some wild-ass thing or another that she knows nothing about, because faking it always shows. So unless an author has endless piles of money to pay a fleet of research assistants…

I am my own research assistant. Therefore this book is a novel about a contemporary woman artist.

It is now finished.

Soon I will be able to refer you to the book’s website, as a tasty hors d’oeuvre, and then the actual book – we are in “cover design” mode right now. Soon it will be listed with Amazon.com, so no matter where in the world you happen to be you will be able to get your hands on it. It will also be available on Kindle. I’ll let you know when all that happens.

MANY thanks to all of you for following this blog and feeding my artistic and literary soul – I have sharpened my skills within this blog using all of you as my audience and yes, my guinea pigs, but always with great respect for you and  the enhancement of the “some-day” book; this blog and my two previous books have taught me to work smarter not harder, to pull up the best words faster when I need them, to say things sharper and more clearly with fewer words, and to be consistently using my skills. I am going to have a huge celebration when this book is released – you all will hear it from wherever you are, one way or another, through this blog, Amazon, the new book website, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. I hope you can all come….I really would like you to come.

Stay tuned for the first excerpt!

Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Fine Art America – http://joann-brown-scott.fineartamerica.com