I know this pandemic has had impacts on everyone both professionally and personally. We’ve experienced one death in our extended family and know several people who’ve contracted the virus.
As a writer I had a novel, Hostile Territory, come out about 6 weeks before the shutdowns began in March, and, for good reason, had six book events cancelled for the Spring and early summer. Then the branch of Macmillan that published Hostile Territory closed. My two books with them (The Wild Lands and Hostile Territory) will be reassigned to another house within Macmillan and will still be available in hardcover, paperback, e-book and audio book anywhere books are sold.
I have another forthcoming novel, Follow The River (Move Books), where the release date has been delayed due to the pandemic.
My job as a Special Education Teacher (grades K thru 3) has bounced between in-person and remote instruction. I’ve adjusted to teaching with a mask on while in-person and consciously taking screen-breaks when my job is more zoom-heavy like it is now. Even though I know that zoom instruction pales in comparison to in-person, I am continually amazed and impressed by the resolve my students have to show up and try. As a writer, that’s my basic formula for seeing a novel through from start to finish—show up and try.
As I look at what I’ve written above, I know that I am extremely fortunate, and that others have lost close family and friends, have seen their jobs evaporate, and seen their own children significantly impacted by distance education. I hope everyone’s lives are re-balanced in the near future with the prospects of a vaccine on the horizon.
During the pandemic, I’ve taken solace in the outdoor spaces abundant in Alaska. While taking a hike, a snowshoe, a run, or a ski, feels normal on one level, in the backdrop there’s still this feeling that all is not well with the world, like we’re all moving about on a thin sheet of ice.
Below are a few recent photos of landscapes I travel through that feed my soul.
Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection and Hostile Territory (Macmillan Jan. 2020). Forthcoming is Follow the River (Move Books Winter 2020-21) . You can order all of Paul’s books here.
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