Beginning is never easy for me. Some writers get all sorts of great ideas, so many they are forced to jot them down into notebooks, or scrawl them on napkins at bars. I’m not that writer, though I’ve always wanted to be. If I’m lucky I get one good idea a year, and even then it’s somewhat vague. For example, my last great idea went something like this: a novel about a woman who edits cookbooks. Maybe in the ’60s or maybe right after WWII. Or maybe it should be about her secretary. What about a mystery? I’ve always wanted to write a mystery.

Last year my debut novel So Much Better was published by Green Lantern Press in Chicago. It is what they call a “small book,” but the experience was rewarding and working with Caroline Picard and Nick Sarno was really a delight. This is the part where I want to say it took me three years, or five years, or whatever to write So Much Better, but really, it seems impossible to quantify. I started that book at least three times. One time it was about a middle-aged divorcee, another about a young police detective, one attempt featured an aging drug addict. Finally, my protagonist emerged as a thirty-something credit union loan officer who makes poor decisions when it comes to her interpersonal relationships. The idea I wanted to explore was always resident in all these iterations—What happens to the people left behind. A meditation on survivor’s guilt, really.

The final form of So Much Better had many first chapters. The first chapter I wrote, didn’t make it into the book, yet I’m sure still lives somewhere on my hard drive. Then there’s the chapter that I always thought was the first chapter until my editor suggested that my first chapter wasn’t really my first chapter at all. Lastly, there is the chapter that ultimately began the published book.

I am now writing a new novel, and true to form I have LOTS of first chapters. What experience has taught me is that until the published book rests weightily in my hand, I have no idea how the book will start. This month of June will be about beginning. I will post the first chapter of So Much Better, both the one that starts the book and the one I wrongly though was the first chapter. Don’t worry, I won’t post the original first chapter because it really was pretty sucky. I will also post the first chapter(s) of the new novel I am working on tentatively called Will the Last Person Leaving Seattle—Please Turn Out the Lights.

You know what Mickey Spillane said, “The first chapter sells the book. The last chapter sells the next book.” We’ll see.