Does anyone remember the Richard Scarry children's books about various animals engaged in everyday misadventures, like a cat flying a kite that gets caught in a tree or a fox as a carpenter banging his foot? With characters like Lowly the Worm and Huckle Cat? (See the above YouTube video for an animated version of his stories.) Well, I've been thinking of these bizarre remnants from my childhood all week for two reasons. 
       First of all, the characters in these brilliant books all drive cars that echo either their personality, job or both. For example, Lowly the Worm drives an apple-helicopter and the monkey drives a giant banana-shaped car. I loved this as a kid. It made so much sense to me and these whimsical automobiles were so much inspiring than the typical vehicles I rode around in. 
    So, after more than 30 years of dreaming of my own car that mirrors my true persona, I now have my own mermaid-car. Well, sort of. I don't drive a long, voluptuous, half-naked fish woman with flowing locks (yet), but I made my first step in that direction by sticking on a car magnet with the cover of my new novella, Women Float, on the side of my very pedestrian ride.  Now, stuck in traffic, I imagine people looking at me and wondering about the book and how to get their hands on one and how cool I must look with a book car magnet on my door. 
      The second reason I keep thinking of Richard Scarry is because of my daughter. She loves the image on the side of my car and she toddles over to it and points at it repeatedly, a high compliment for her. I also had an 8-year-old girl from the afterschool group I lead at the farm admire it. Mermaids are making me big with the pre-pre-pre teen crowd. Are there any marketing stats on this group? I'd call them neener-tweeners and let me tell you: mermaids are huge. 
     Is it the mythic fish-lady or Richard Scarry that is appealing to my daughter? See, just she started reading her first Richard Scarry book. A friend got it for us at a Carpinteria Friends of the Library Used Book Sale. I understood why the board book was on sale as soon as we got home. Each of the 10 pages included a jigsaw puzzle embedded in the page, all of which fell out and were lost as soon as we got home. No problem. My daughter doesn't worry about something trivial like losing puzzle pieces. She's still got pictures of Huckle Cat riding Lowly around on his bike and then watching him buzz off on his applecopter. And she now gets to admire Sargeant Murphy pulling over the monkey, Bananas, in his banana car. 
      I can't confirm this, yet, because she's not really talking but I think my daughter has re-named me with my own Richard Scarry-esque persona name, now that my car has a makeover. I think I'm now Wawamama. (That's Watermother to you.) I'll let you know for sure in a few months when I can discuss all this, and more, with my little reader. 
     In the mean time, thanks to everyone for their cheers of support for Women Float. Jason, my publisher at CCLaP, told me to tell everyone who pre-ordered that books should start arriving this week. The book is now officially for sale here and I look forward to the book launch, this Friday, in Carpinteria.  Come see me so I can sign your book and we can discuss why so many of the Richard Scarry characters wear lederhosen.  

     Today, my debut novella Women Float launched. I'm at a loss. My book and I existed so well underwater, underground, entombed in that kind of perfect solitary wind tunnel that any artist understands. Input and output, all occurred in secret, a great compost heap of digested memory, experience, fantastic imagining, poof, into the brain and out through the great Play-Doh spaghetti factory of imagination. Never to be seen by anyone looking in from the outside.
        Until today. You'd think I'd be prepared. Ready. It's not like I've never seen my writing in print. For better or worse, I've slaved or scammed a thousand fast and easy stories for weeklies, monthlies, newspapers, websites, anything. When people have asked me what I write, I've sometimes answered, "Anything that pays."
      Is that like literary prostitution? If so, then I'm guilty of being a woman of the write. But writing on assignment, regardless of how minor the water board meeting or major the red carpet, was never like this. Because Women Float feels personal. The book feels like me. 
      I know, I know. I can hear you writing workshop graduates. I am not these words or the ones in my book. But I've cared for my characters, nurtured them, fed their existence and conjured them from air. I want everyone to love them, without judgement, like me. Besides my dear characters being exposed, there's also me, their writer. I'm their creator. I always wanted to publish a book and when I hadn't for so long, I became familiar with that, too. That void, like the unborn child or lost beloved or cancelled vacation. I got used to this feeling of something both precious and unattainable, and then I built stories around it to make myself feel better and then I inhabited those stories and wrapped them around myself like a warm Alpaca shawl, homely but comfortable. 
          Today, I removed that ugly sweater of failed writer-dom. Today I also ate the season's first ollalieberries from the forgotten bushes leftover from my family's abandoned u-pick berry farm. I shared them with my daughter, her first taste of that dark and surprising blackberry. Then, my daughter picked her first ripe apricot and showed it to me. I broke it in half and she pushed the half-moon  into my mouth again and again, smiling as I admired the tartness, flavor. She smeared the leaking orange orb across my face, until the clear juice stiffened like white glue, drying in the sun as a reminder that the world is too much sweetness. 
       This important day of delightful publication is both unprecedented and uncomfortable. Fear of failure sandwiched neatly by fear of success. Today, I bite my first fruit of true writing success and it is all sweet, with no bitterness at all. I force myself to rest here, for one, two, three, four breaths. I will engage just one reader at a time. That is all. That is enough.