Capers With Carroll

(This series begins here.)

It has been almost three months since I posted Part 11 of this series, and three weeks since I even mentioned Friday 10:03. That is fitting. Over the four decades that I have been working on this book, I have several times gone years without writing a word.

During these three months, I actually have made considerable progress on the book itself. I reached 75,000 words (about 250 pages, probably 70% of the finished novel) and turned that over to David Anthony Durham, my thesis chair. I also had three shorter sections critiqued by other writers at Mount Hermon, and pitched the book to three different editors and two agents. David got back to me with a very thorough critique (Oy vey! Have I got a job for me!), and we agreed that rather than trying to first finish and then rewrite the whole book (a thesis only needs to be 120 pages), I would rewrite a portion of what I already have, be done with the thesis, and finish the novel with my degree in hand.

But now, with the current events updated, our history must jump back to 1972, the year I graduated from UCLA. I did not even bother to walk in the ceremonies. Instead, I walked out of my last final and went directly to a travel agent. There I bought a one-way ticket to Europe. It was my plan to rent a garret in Paris, practice my French, and take a year to write my novel.

Little did I know.