Reading My Mind

I’ve been a reader of books since I was very young, old enough to hold a book and be left alone with words. My favorite book as a teenager was Catcher in the Rye. Some of the books that influenced me most in high school were Catch 22, Animal Farm and 1984. Then in my twenties, my brain was reshaped by Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Dune and Giles Goat-Boy. John Barth was the first author whose books made me want to write books. In 1976, for a course on literature and philosophy at Hunter City College, I wrote a paper on bestiality and moral ambivalence. It’s not as good as it sounds.

Working in the corporate world for decades, I read mostly nonfiction. I subscribed to The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Harvard Business Review, and I read them thoroughly. My Sundays were for reading while my nail polish dried. I could have gone back to college to get an MBA, but that course of action felt slow to me. Reading is how I learn. I would rather read than watch a video of the same content. I would rather read than listen to an audio book. There’s a feeling I get when my eyes touch the words and meaning makes itself known to me. A good read stays in my head for days, sometimes forever. 

Reading nonfiction inspired me to write essays. Although my most entertaining were unpublishable like the one titled Shut the Fuck Up Consulting. My first blog was about farming. Farm and food writing got me invited to do public speaking and for a while I was on the radio. In 2005, I wrote a paper titled Return to Slavery: Will you be eating China’s dust for breakfast? for a course on community-based food systems at Cornell. When I submitted that sort of content to Orion Magazine the editor told me I was too much of a renegade.

In 2016, I sold my farm and committed to becoming a writer. To educate myself, I started reading books and internet posts about how to become an author. One of the concepts that stuck with me is the idea of literary citizenship. I am part of a global community of writers and readers who make meaning together through the written word. When I read, my imagination holds onto the scenes and I’m in there with the characters, a silent piece of furniture essential to the narrative. Writers and readers need each other to generate content, assess meaning, react, renew, and write and read again. It’s a circular process. If the assessment is rejection, my interior can get gloomy. But I persist. I learn to cope with differences. The diversity of opinions about my work accelerates the pace of change. I’m a change junky. I need change to remain engaged.

As a literary citizen I commit to reading the books of my friends and influencers and posting reviews, mostly on Goodreads, because that platform offers a feedback loop from writer to reader and back to writer. For the past few years, I have been trying to read a couple books a month. I read the popular novels, like Lessons in Chemistry, All Fours and Yesteryear, because I want to learn about the content readers are most drawn toward. I have favorites that I’ve read more than once, Station Eleven, The Shipping News, The House of the Spirits, State of Wonder. And then there are oddball books that imprint on my memory like a one-night stand, Geek Love, Stag Dance, Lincoln in the Bardo. The sexiest book I’ve read in a while is The Safekeep. The scariest book I’ve ever read is Parable of the Sower. The most horrifying horror is Tender is the Flesh. The most delicious use of language is Inland.

Reading is more than word processing. I am processing emotions, complex relationships, history, diverse perspectives. As I age, I feel that complexity weaving threads into my latest point of view. I’m changing all the time. Every day. Writing is my knitting. It’s a skill I want to master. Working toward the goal of mastery motivates me. I lurch and pull like a draft horse. 

Now I’ve written a novel that has the force of my personality, an aggression that guides my inner life, a pace that holds my attention, a story of women facing danger and saving themselves. I’m not trying to write something pacifying. I’m trying to inspire you with a show of strength. If we can’t see it, we can’t be it. I’m a fighter. It’s my instinct to fight. Stories of women overcoming the forces they oppose energize me.

I have written a book for women who take risks, flaunt their mistakes and refuse to play by the rules. It’s a hero’s journey through mayhem, mental and physical, in a world that’s changing faster than most of us can adapt. That’s my world. I understand it’s not for everybody. This book is not a soothing romance or a family tale of home-and-hearth. It’s not about women who run with the wolves. It’s about women who run with the robots. A story about modern women like me who have failed bigly over the years, and how we redeem ourselves by taking unexpected action. Each crime has a kernel of good intentions and personal responsibility. But we are flawed. We’re not the type of women to succeed in the traditional world, but by sticking together we earn our happy ending. 

Let this escape be your escape. Really. Imagine if Mark Twain and Octavia Butler have a baby. She is us. Let’s ride.

Ride the Light: How to Escape from Esmeralda Women’s Penitentiary is a darkly humorous novel about friendship, the power of art, and women who refuse to leave each other behind. 

Here is the fabulous book cover designed by Brenda Rose.

Release date:  October 13, 2026. 

Juice the algorithms with a preorder to give this book a boost.

KEYWORDS

women’s fiction with LGBTQ characters

future setting dark humor & smart women

women’s prison escape with flawed characters

diverse cast midlife women heroes using AI tech

women old & young friendship with magical realism

feminist power of women’s art and female artists

future AI surveillance with chatbot hacker escape