January 2009 (cont.)

What do I want my web site to do? I asked myself. And the answer came back, simple and emphatic.

I wanted to make a connection with my readers. I also and particularly wanted to make a connection with the adults in the children's book world who bring my books to readers. A human connection. A personal one.

Stories make connections, of course, but most of those connections are completely invisible to their authors. Books have a way of going out into the world and, after a few satisfying—or unsatisfying—reviews, leaving a lot of silence behind. They are a bit like children who grow up, leave home and forget to write. (I once wrote and produced a play, and I was astonished at how different it felt to sit in an audience and witness the response to my words. However, the other side of that coin is the fact that when a play is no longer being staged, it ceases to exist. Books, at least, are physical objects that might again be opened one day.)

It was in response to the silence in which my books float that I found myself beginning this journal. It was, no doubt, significant that I began writing shortly after spending a couple of weeks in the hospital watching my son be diagnosed with a brutal and fatal disease. I had come home from that journey feeling lost and isolated, and so I reached into the abyss for whatever connection might happen.