The End of the Beginning

A year ago today, I started a book project as a blog for which I promised to write a short introduction to an in-your-face woman every day for a year. 2012 happened to be a leap year, so here we are, 366 days later, and I never missed a single post. I delivered 366 stories of in-your-face women to you, my Faithful Readers, and from what I can gather from the stats and your comments and emails, for the most part, you enjoyed them greatly.

While I busily wrote my daily posts, my university public radio station started recording me reading some of them, which went so well, they ultimately archived them on the Public Radio Exchange for use by any public radio station in the world, routing their listeners back to my blog. Then, in the fall, I heard from one of the most prestigious girls' college preparatory schools in the nation that they might want me to come spend some time on their campus as an artist-in-residence. There's been some talk of subsequent spin-off projects in the not-so-distant future. And now, I'm going to scout out a few agents and see if any would like to represent me on this hobbit journey called publication and its aftermath.

So where does this blog go from here? I cannot possibly continue to write daily posts as I have for the past year. The plan was just to use this blog to complete the first volume of In-Your-Face Women (the book) consisting of 366 mini-bios in alphabetical order -- one for every day for a year -- so that women and girls (and anyone else who chooses to read them) could get a whole new perspective on the women of the world since time began. I followed the plan and finished step one. And frankly, it was pretty tough. Especially considering that I have a full time job with major responsibilities and some of the bios took hours to research and write.

In any case, other steps lie before me now related to In-Your-Face Women and other projects. And I am excited to move forward, but I don't what to just walk away from this blog. So, I've decided to post stories about more in-your-face women. Just not so often. I'm thinking one a week (maybe on Sundays?). And not in any particular order. You could suggest women you think I should check out. I could write occasional other pieces, listing their titles on the right hand side of the blog posts, starting out with an open letter to Diana Nyad, the sixty-three-old in-your-face woman who tried to swim from Cuba to Florida last August.

Regardless, I'm open to input at this point, so feel free to comment on this post or email me directly. And I will see you around the corner, I suspect. I'll be the in-your-face woman with the gleam in her eye coming at you when you least expect it.
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NOTE: The graphic above is Somnium Sacrum (Sacred Dream), a giclee print by Steven Graber. She looks over my shoulder while I write this blog.