So busy I don't even have time to complain about how busy I am

Until, of course, now.

I was willing to go about my business--which was busy enough as it was--until the "establishment" wing of the Democratic Party quite clearly pushed Biden out of the race. I did not want that to happen, in large part because people had been signalling since late 2021 that *of course* Vice President Kamala Harris couldn't possibly succeed him. My position: if Biden was going to bow out, then they needed to replace him with Harris immediately. An actual convention fight would have been suicide. 

Oh hey--looks like tens of millions of people were just as irate as I was, and Harris easily locked up her delegates and raised eye-watering amounts of money very, very quickly. 

A few weeks before that, I had raised my hand and said I'd volunteer to help organize lobbying our senators for the Jewish Earth Alliance. Organizing is always a little running around, but it would be over as of August 8. So fine.

A few days before Biden's announcement, I had been asked to help organize non-partisan phone banking. That is also more than a bit of running around, but that also had an end date--and it was for a good cause. I agreed, and we started planning.

And then the announcement came, and I was emailing like a crazy person. When democracy is on the line, it's not the time to whine about how much work I have ahead of me. Relax after I'm sure we've pushed back a fascist. 

It's coming along--there's more work to be done, but we've got time. It's one of the few times in my life I'm not worried about annoying people--again, democracy vs. fascism. And even if some people are giving me a side eye, or just straight up glaring at me, I *know* a number of them are going to come running later. (How do I know this? Oh, I don't know, maybe because I lived through November 2016 through January 6,  2021.) I don't see my job as dragging everyone into something they don't want to do; I see myself as making things available for them when they are.

I still have a lot going on in my messy personal life, but I'm kind of grateful for that. Isn't that a big part of what we're hoping to preserve?

Deb in the City

Climate Change

Should I entitle this Climate Change 1, or put a date after it? Because it’s not like I’m only going to write about it once.

It’s not that I’m a pessimist or an optimist. Most people don’t fall into neat categories like that, just like most of us aren’t strictly introverts or extroverts. We’re pretty fluid, we human beings. But I do feel good about labeling myself a survivor, as in, I want to keep living and won’t go into a corner and wait for disaster to find me.

It would be a mistake to say I was thrilled when Biden was elected. I voted for him, knowing how warty his record was (sorry, Julian Castro and Andrew Yang were both out of the race by the time it was Massachusetts’ turn to vote in the primaries), but as unstable as Trump was, I didn’t want to celebrate until Biden was inaugurated. And then after the insurrection on January 6, I didn’t want to stop holding my breath until I was sure we would get through the entire day without incident.

We did, and I’m immeasurably thankful for that. One of the only credits I’ll give to Trump is that he made us grateful now for normalcy – and by normalcy, I mean things working according to the law. And as a climate activist, I feel a little more hopeful than I would have if Trump had been re-elected. To say it’s easier to work against climate change at the federal level now is such an understatement, it’s almost snide.

So why only a little more hopeful? Because if Biden hadn’t won, there were still things we could do at the state and municipal levels. We know states can limit what can be sold in their borders (hello, California), but cities and towns can also limit who’s allowed to have a permit to run a business in their cities, and can control what goes into the waste stream. It’s a hell of a lot easier when there’s coordination at the federal level, but it’s not impossible, and if Trump had been re-elected, it would have been imperative.

Who am I kidding? It’s still imperative, and the states need to stop trying to prove their fealty to, what, coal and oil, two industries that are dying already, or biomass, one of the most inefficient and damaging energy “solutions”, and start thinking about how they can augment federal regulations, not stimy them. I read recently that we’ve lost ice in the last few decades that was the equivalent of the size of the entire UK, and the melting of said ice has an added an inch to the level of sea water around the world.

How about this? If I do choose to go into a corner and die, it won’t be so I can drown. Keep at it, because life as we know it doesn’t end unless we let it.

Book Release Day: The Golden Boy Returns (Book Five of The New Pioneers) (New Release, Giveaway)

Today is the day I finally bring to everyone The Golden Boy Returns, the book I hemmed and hawed about more than any other I've written. Silly, if you think about it: in addition to romance and The Journey all characters go through, I knew you guys could handle complex family relationships, long harbored secrets and, perhaps hardest of all, domestic violence. So of course you can handle some politics! And I promise that while I do reference some policies (briefly!), you will not need a degree in political science to follow along.

Amazon | Barnes and Noble |Kobo |Smashwords | iTunes

A few words about the cover: I loved the covers for my first five books; the illustrations and designs perfectly captured the balance of whimsy and drama I'm going for in all of my work. But when it came time to design a cover for my Korean American hero and my Indian American heroine, I could not for the life of me find any illustrations that came close to the others. I could have gone with something more abstract by the same artist, but David and Kasi deserve a visual as much as any of my other characters. A big thanks—once again—to Erin Cawood for bringing these two alive.

To celebrate the release, I'm running a giveaway until March 31st. Join my newsletter list (only my publishing news, never spam) and you'll get a chance to win a $20 Amazon gift card and e-copies of The Smartest Girl in the Room and The Art of The Second Best.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Here's a little more about the newest edition to The New Pioneers. Hope you like it!

The Art of the Next Best: A New Pioneers Short Story

Sooo...I guess it's time to let everyone know my next book is coming out on March 17th?

:-)

The Art of the Next Best is a short story—very short—but it helps set the table for The Golden Boy Returns, which is available March 28th. I do hope you like them both.

Here's a little something to give you an idea of what it's all about...

Double Down: Game Change 2012 by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann

If you think you're going to read a book like this and come away with a better understanding of any candidate's policy on anything, you're mistaken. This is all political calculation with a big dose of gossip and some armchair psychoanalysis. Once you accept that, you can enjoy the ride.

This book lacks the fun factor of Game Change in part because the 2012 campaign wasn't nearly as much of a circus as the 2008 one. The Republican field was filled with unstable lunatics (calling the candidacy for Romney early on was easy) but, obviously, the Democrat's nominee was known from the get-go. And while the Obamans may have been as dysfunctional as any political operation, that's just not the same thing as John Edwards trying to get past his own mistakes and Hillary Clinton trying to overcome her reputation (and establishment sexism). On the GOP side, while Bachmann,Gingrich, Cain and Perry provided plenty of amusing and cringe-worthy episodes, they were never nearly as important as the star of 2008's GOP debacle, Sarah Palin. Oddly, there was almost nothing about Ron Paul, arguably the wackiest of all of the candidates.

People who watched the Republican presidential field closely might be surprised by how many, well, sane and sagacious characters there were: Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush most prominent among them. All of them had reasons to stay out of the race and away from the national stage, but they saw pretty clearly on that Mitt was a weak candidate who would create a vacuum that would invite a freak show.

The candidate that many thought had the best chance: Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. Although he flirted with the idea for a few weeks, ultimately he decided that his bona fides weren't strong enough. Once he made his decision to stay out, putting his clout behind Mitt was the obvious choice. While many thought he would make a strong candidate for VP, the vetting process dashed that notion pretty decisively. Suggestion: don't bet on Christie in 2016 (even if he clears BridgeGate). Who else will you probably not see again? Jon Huntsman, the ostensibly reasonable and moderate candidate who turned out to be not nearly as wealthy or principled as his public image led observers to believe.

The story presented here is that Romney lost because he refused to apologize even when he knew he had made a mistake and because he was so desperate to keep the conservative base that he wouldn't take on obviously offensive positions that he didn't agree with (e.g., Rush Limbaugh's insults to Sandra Fluke). While I agree that these were mistakes, I think it's odd that they didn't speak to the other obvious observation about the Romney candidacy: he lied and frequently, and his statements such as the infamous 47 Percent remark highlighted the electorate's worst fears that he was a plutocrat who didn't understand middle- or lower-economic-classes. (His team's explanations for why they lost only seemed to confirm those fears.)

Is that a lot of Romney? Yes- and perhaps it's even clearer why the book lacked the fun factor of Game Change.

Recommended for political news junkies who aren't interested in policy.

Finding the balance

November and the NaNoWriMo of it all forced me to finally put pen to paper- and fingers to keyboard- and start writing the fifth book of The New Pioneers series, The Golden Boy Returns. I've mentioned before that I'm introducing two new major characters (although you'll actually get a glimpse of one in Let's Move On, and another one has a connection to someone you've already met). What I don't think I mentioned is that I'm also introducing a new theme, and that theme is politics.

If you've read The Family You Choose, you know that I also talk about (or at least around) wealth and power. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that appearances and history are not what they seemed to be, at least not to my initial heroine Emily. I promise: all of the questions she- and the readers- have had since The Smartest Girl in the Room will be answered, and then some. As a reader, I appreciate a payoff.

Harrison Gray Otis, a Mayor of Boston and a Senator from Massachusetts- and an early example of corruption in American Politics.

However, I have not forgotten that the anchor relationship of the series- that between Emily and Zainab- got its start in the Student Government Organization of the university they attended. They both left, albeit for very different reasons, but politics was their initial shared interest (even if Emily's was a wee bit compromised by something else).

I've said before that there are pieces of me in all of my characters, and this interest is no exception. Anyone who follows my personal account on Facebook or my standard Twitter feed knows that I am passionate about politics. You've also probably figured that out I'm both deeply cynical and stubbornly optimistic, and my opinions have been known to run directly opposite of "the party line". I bring those orientations into my characters' dealings with politics, I assure you.

As much as I've been an observer of local and national politics since I was a little girl, my research for this book has been fascinating, and it only strengthens the direction I was going in. I'm having a ball writing this, but I'm very aware that while I think politics has always been the trashiest reality show ever, others might not agree. And the earnest citizen in me also knows that while it's incredibly entertaining to read about the powerful getting caught with their pants down, that isn't all of politics. Plenty of people enter that arena because they genuinely want to help, and many of them don't want a spotlight and stay in the background.

But do those people still want power? And if they do, when does it cross a line that compromises their work?

And that, dear readers, is the question, and that's why I'm determined to get this right.