JUDY EMERSON Author and Personal Coach

I’ve gone live!! Today represents the culmination of a steep learning curve assisted by lots of tech help and the support of friends. Thank you!!

Here’s my first blog post on my new website:

The central dilemma for this novel of mine, Sack of Wrongs, came into my head way back in 1996. I fell in love with these characters, and knew I needed to get to know them better. But I had to establish a career back then, so they didn’t get the necessary attention until I retired in 2016. By 2017 I was deep into a renewed focus on one of my most important personal goals–to write novels. The shape of the story of Ben and Katie and their family has evolved dramatically in the last eight years, through closeted mad bursts of furious typing, feedback from my writers’ group, edits, rewrites, writer’s block, fallow times, back to the keyboard, and repeat. The story deepened and layered and developed into a complex and suspenseful study of how one dysfunctional family weathered their challenges and was changed.

Once, during a phase when I was stymied by why a character would behave as they do, I quieted myself in the prone position in Savasana at the end of a yoga class. And I was abruptly overjoyed to find new insight blooming unbidden in my mind, like a gift from the universe. I saw what elements of that character’s life shaped how far she would go to act on her beliefs. Eureka!

Another time I sat down at my computer with a clear knowledge of the resulting conclusion of a pivotal scene before I wrote it. Yet as I typed the sentences describing the scene, I was stunned that the outcome was far different than I intended. My jaw dropped to recognize that its unexpected shift was organically right for the story. And its consequences opened whole a new direction for the second half of the book. I sat back in awe. It was the right direction.

Stephen King once said, “The book is the boss.” The story tells you where it’s going, if its author is listening. I listened. I think you’ll be interested in where the story took me. Where it will take you. Enjoy.