My Debut Book

Sometime last year I decided to put my (personal) writing on hold and instead spend a full year reading 'inspired' writings (mainly Capote) and then another year journal keeping. Luckily, I've already begun keeping a journal and found it to be very useful.

Lately though, I've been feeling rather 'dry' and uninspired. I'm still trying to finish In Cold Blood, but the problem is that I'm studying it instead of just reading it--underlining, starring and circling words, lines and grammatical structures every couple of pages. Plus, I've already seen several movies based on the book which I probably shouldn't have done prior to reading it.

But last night seemed to find me a moment of clarity. I woke this morning to write this:

Finally, it hit me: Little Red-Hot Devils Within Me. The title of my new book.

It snowed again last night and I was burning up with fever. Every time the snow has almost completely melted, it snows again--which is great for my dry cleaner because every time I walk to and from work, the dirty, melting snow laps up the back of my one pair of Prada pants which I wear to work, daily, whenever possible...

My fever peaked at a hundred and four and I'd spent half the night on the toilet while trying to watch Julie & Julia with Alvie, who woke me just about every few hours to take my temperature. But between the space heater kicking on and off (for some reason, our heat and hot water were not working) and the snow-to-sleet-to-freezing-rain continually cascading against our window, I couldn't sleep; I was wide awake. So I began thinking about the title of my book.

Unfortunately, I grew up Catholic; although, maybe that’s not as unfortunate as I think. It seems most Catholics do end up “O.K.,” except, of course, those that end up in a nunnery or monastery. Those are the real cases. Back to my point. I’ve heard, at least twice, the story about the devil in the house (in this case, the house being man). The devil enters a house, makes an awful mess and performs all kinds of naughty acts while there. Then one day the man gets ‘redeemed,’ kicking the old devil out and cleaning and sweeping up any and all signs of the devil's ill doing. The devil stays away for a while (he was getting bored with the house anyway), but then comes back one day, just to peek in the window. He sees the house has been all cleaned up and put back in order. Then, he goes out and brings seven more devils, more wicked than himself, to thrash about in the newly gussied up house, wreaking all kinds of naughtiness worse than the time before!

So it seems the moral of the story is to just keep one devil in your house at all times.

Unfortunately, I spent three days in a monastery. I have many red-hot devils within me.