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I asked readers of this blog where they would take their next best journey.

Lenore said Bologna, Italy, NYC, and perhaps Senegal and Kuwait. Bee dreamed of Greece. Bermudaonion and wordlily named Asia, Melissa Sarno named Japan, and Kelly H-Y spoke of Tuscany. Inspired by Nora Roberts, Fantast fantasized about living in Montana and Alaska. Pink Dogwood said she would either stay home and live a simpler life or travel beneath the Tuscan sun. Cuileann said "the faroe islands." CK said "the city that never sleeps (New York)." Sarah Unger would like to stay home. Mandy spoke of England/Ireland, Malta, Peru, and the southern US. Steph Su spoke of a life spent partly in San Francisco, Portland, and neighborhoods in Canada, New York, Maine, Nebraska, and Australia. Amy is already planning a trip to a working winery near Sienna. Susan Uhlig spoke of Haiti.

There's no rational choosing from among so many terrific dreams, and so I did the irrational: put the names, literally, into a hat, and drew one out.

The winner: wordlily.

Then I thought, oh what the heck, and I drew a second name out: Bermudaonion.

Then, because I was feeling lucky, I drew out a third: Kelly H-Y.

Get in touch with me, you winners three, and I will send you a copy of The Heart is Not a Size, which will take you to Juarez. Heart is officially here, arriving a little early, at least in my house. With this blog entry, I officially launch this Indiebound book.

It has been walking-and-sitting-outside weather, but I've been inside, piled high with work, feeling sunk beneath innumerable pressures. I'm in the final leg of a major edit of the Centennial novel, finishing up a client project, trying desperately to get the house in order, looking for time to get myself in order, too, before the academic year begins at Penn.

And I am missing books. I am missing easy strolls through bookstore aisles and time spent hovering over recommended reading tables. I am missing time on my deck, a book in my lap.

I am ten pages into Graceling; I'll finish that when some of this work clears. After that, I am headed to the bookstore to find out whether books like A Gate at the Stairs (Lorrie Moore) and Crow Planet (Lyanda Lynn Haupt) and Parallel Play (Tim Page) and Zeitoun (Dave Eggers) and Border Songs (Jim Lynch) and I'm So Happy for You (Lucinda Rosenfeld) are for me. I'll likely come home with some of those; no doubt I'll find and revel in the unexpected, too.

In the meantime, a big hug to Bermudaonion, for her deeply kind review of Undercover today. Bermudaonion has a lot in common, it seems, with my protagonist, Elisa. Which means she has a lot in common with me.

Here's something I've learned along this writerly trail: Throw nothing away. Sometimes we have the words, the scene, the mood, the atmosphere, but we don't know what any of it means. The years go by and suddenly we know. Throw nothing that you write away.

Today, while working on this novel for adults, I remembered a short story I had written years ago that was based on a trip I'd taken to Prague. I'd written the short story. I'd flattened it to a poem. I'd based a (failed) novel around it. I wrote an essay. It never rooted in.

The rooting waited all these years and genres. It waited until dawn, today. It's a scene that begins in Prague, the land of puppets, where this photo was taken. It builds to something else—a winter moment between two lovers. Of course this was no cut and paste. Of course I had to think, and rearrange. But the seeds were there.

I excerpt the final moment here:

Once, when it snowed, he fashioned a sled out of handled serving trays and a piece of rope that he’d had coiled in the basement. He’d wakened her and wrapped her in blankets and carried her out into the night, where they were the only ones alive, it seemed, and the snow was new. She sat with her knees to her chin to stay afloat, which was how it had felt—like floating, past neighbors, past trees, upon the sled. He pulled her—a parade of two for no one—and the snow kept falling, all through that night, and his hair was white, an old man’s color, by the time he dragged her home. Marry me, he’d said, but she’d not answered, not then. She wasn’t ready. He left, he went away, but that time he returned. He brought her an azalea from a winter nursery. For spring, he’d said. A second chance.

On another topic altogether, I have been graced by Kathy of BermudaOnion and Melissa of BettyBooChronicles with beautiful, beautiful responses to Nothing but Ghosts. Oh, I do thank you both. I am running out of words.