Good morning, readers and fellow writers. Happy New Year! On Sunday, December 31, at approximately 2:30 p.m.. I submitted my memoir My Brother, My Witness, Remembering Tony to a writing contest. This has been a twenty year project.

Writing about someone you love more than you love yourself is an enormous and complicated undertaking. Because my brother Tony was older than me, I worshipped the ground beneath his feet. He was far from perfect (like all of us) but it was difficult for me to view him as anything but godlike. This made it so hard for me to write about him as a three dimensional character.

Writing “in scene” helped me overcome my bias. Just the facts. ma’am. Imagine you’re in a movie. All of the advice from my astute and beyond amazing mentor, noted author Kim Barnes came into play. Plus, receiving honest feed back over the years from my loyal editor Kami Westhoff was integral. So many revisions.

I will keep you updated if I hear any news. Even if the book doesn’t win the contest, at least it’s abandoned for now. Able to be refined and submitted again. Now, it’s onto the next project. Woo-hoo.