Miles Apart

Did you ever want to pack it in and start anew? Abandon your family? Reinvent your life? 'Miles Apart' follows the path of Amelia Morrison, who as a young girl is traumatized and haunted by the loss of someone close. Right or wrong, she blames her father. He is the patriarchal head of a Berkeley hospital founded by his late father, a gambling doctor who returned from the gold mining town of You Bet with a baby, but vague on the identity of the mother. Amelia marries the favored protégé and heir apparent of her father. She tries to play the part of mother and loyal spouse, but struggles with old demons and events out of her control.
From a horse thief in Kentucky to a womanizing doctor seeking riches in a California gold mining town, from a horse ranch in Cody, Wyoming to Berkeley, California in the tumultuous nineteen-sixties, this rollicking novel connects six generations. It follows them through war, disease, tragedy, family disharmony and how the ultimate power of love and family doesn't always overcome disagreement and resentment.

My book is a village. Most of the time my book is going it alone. My book is rewrites, critiques, writers groups, writers workshops, classes, rewrites, red highlighters, yellow highlighters, disappointments, thrills, eternal damnation, and self-inflicting pain. Writing my book is throwing my ego out and accepting feedback, although sometimes, I don't want to. Writing my book is knowing when to say "I don't agree" and be willing to go out on a limb and trust my instincts. Trust my abilities. Writing my book is understanding there are things I don't understand, so I need to keep learning and growing as a writer and a person. Writing my book is listening, revising, and tossing out sentences, paragraphs, and chapters because they don't fit. Writing my book is writing something good and making it better and better again. And sometimes, after all that work, going back to the first version. Writing my book is a mound of files, whether on my computer or in my filing cabinet. Writing my book is paranoia. What if I lose it? What if what I wrote is terrible? Writing my book is my death wish, hoping someone, somewhere, after I am long gone, will pick up 'Miles Apart' an bring part of me back to life. Part of me.