Hi friends,

As the tens of you who follow this blog will have noticed I don’t make nearly enough use of it. I mean, I’ve been to the movies dozens of times in these summer months and you haven’t heard about it. What could you possibly be doing with your life in such an absence of insight, I wonder.

Second, as I am sure no one has noticed, I deleted my social media accounts, specifically Facebook and Twitter. I just don’t want to live there anymore. At the point where a cardboard sign saying “Will Scroll for Meaning” becomes apropos it’s time to stop. To get really real.

And really I want to do something I’ve shied away from in favor of the sound bites that play well in the digital age. I want to think deeply, critically, but not cynically. And I want to do it “out loud.” So, here’s the deal:

• This website, my Pinterest boards, and my Youtube/Google account are the only places online where you can find me (unless you are one so fortunate as to have my email).
• Tomorrow there will be an Anika Goes to the Movies post about “Leave No Trace.” SO GOOD.
• Then soon thereafter I will be adding a second series here entitled Anika Goes Deep– yes all the puns are intended here. It will consist of me waxing nonsensical about all the stuff I care about and think about on the regular. Some of it will be moral, spiritual, religious, political, philosophical, and scientific. Some of it will be pie-in-the-sky imaginative babblings that leapfrog from “what if” type questions. Some of it may be relevant, others not at all. I’m looking forward to posing questions to you and in turn hearing your thoughts about these matters.
• For the foreseeable future all book news, class news, me news with be posted here in an “Updates” section

Now I know that my loyal 33 subscribers are among the mightiest on the planet, but there might be folk within the sphere of your influence who were relying on my Facebook snark for contact with me. If you could spread this around, give folks a heads up when a good bit of my blathering comes your way, boost this weak, silly signal, I would sure appreciate it. I’m hoping to change the nature of my digital foot print from light laughter to thoughtful ponder.

And I sure hope you’ll join me.

So why “The End-ish?” Well, it’s the end of July and I have not been so pleased to see the back of an arbitrarily defined portion of our yearly sun cycle IN MY LIFE. I spent a good portion of this month contemplating my own end. Ultimately, I realized that there was no way for me to check out of this life that would not further traumatize my children and be a complete slap in the face to all the effort my husband has put into making me feel like a worthwhile blob of sentience. Despite all this upheaval on the precipice of mental stability, I managed to get some significant work done on An Ideal Apprentice. I’m closer to having a draft that contains a beginning, middle, and end that I don’t wish to set on fire than ever before, and once my littlest starts preschool next week I will have time three days a week to dig into it. The finish line is in sight. And with all these new beginnings it feels like there must be others coming to an end, books about to close. And i think, I’m okay with that.

Also, congrats to Tammi who won a copy of UnSpun:A Collection of Tattered Fairytales during Summer Book Trek over at New LDS Fiction.

If you would like to win such a copy, yes a real paperback copy, comment here and let me know that you saw this post, you shared it somewhere, and what your favorite fairytale is. I will pick a winner to be announced with the first Anika Goes Deep post!!

TTFN ~A