One of my all time favourite titles comes from a short story collection by the great Grace Paley – Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. The past ten days have felt like that, and although some of the changes have been a long time coming, once they arrived it felt like time collapsed.

      * the Marathon Bombings began and ended all within a few days but they brought in a real loss of innocence and, I believe, provincialism for Boston. Boston is a city that has always focused on itself and felt, in many ways, removed from, and sometimes superior to, the workings of the rest of the world. It can no longer feel that way. The city is now safe, but no safer than the rest of us. (I’m taking a quick trip over there this weekend to give my son a hug).

     * Act I is over. Act II is beginning. My husband has left his job and position of 17 years and will be taking on a new position in a new place starting September. This summer, he’ll be taking the sabbatical that was owed to him but that he was never able to take — he’ll play beach bum for a few months and work on a friend’s charter fishing boat. I can’t overstate how huge a change this is for  him and our family. Thankfully, we will not need to move and we can continue to live in our wonderful flat in London. But that is about the only thing which will remain the same.  This is not retirement, but it is definitely the end of one huge chapter of our lives and the beginning of another one. Getting to this point has been incredibly stressful, but all has come together well, and we’re happy though, to be honest, a bit nervous.

    Those are the two big things. Now for some smaller, though interesting, ones.

     * My next novel, Out of the Ruins, the second novel in my Cambodian trilogy, will not be published in September as I had originally said. Ward Wood will publish it in January instead for a series of compelling reasons which I will write about later this week.

     *  I have been asked by a friend who is an academic, a social scientist and a writer to co-write a How To book. I won’t say any more about this now, but even if it doesn’t happen, it signals a switch in my thinking. People have suggested I write some non-fiction before but I’ve never felt ready or interested. I’m ready and interested now.

     * I’ve put away my winter coat, hat and gloves. Spring and its warmer weather is finally here!

It really has been an unusually stressful ten days, and being a writer means I need to put it all into words in order to make sense of it and to gain some perspective. That’s a pretty good reason to write a blog post. Thanks.