Flumes Volume 2: Issue 1, Summer 2017 | Page 85

on the spot but will we see it by the end of…?

DA: I’m hoping to finish the draft of it by the end of the year and hopefully get it out. So probably not before next spring at the earliest. Sorry.

I’m not disappointed at all. In fact, for me, it’s quite nice to have this much lead time and be to the party this early. I feel as if I’ve been granted a knowledge of something spectacular forthcoming.

JGH: But I have to ask…will this one break our hearts?

DA: Oh, I think so….in places, yes. But all the good books break your heart in some places.

JGH: That’s right. And you’ll put us back together again, right?

DA: Well, I hope so, or set you off in your own direction. Whichever. It’s so funny. You’re going to love this. Right now I’m the Roy Acuff writer in residence at Austin Peay University in Clarksville, TN. I go every other month and I work with baby writers. I met this baby writer, and I’m talking to him and I said, “I did this, and I did this….” And he says, “How many lives have you lived?” [I told him,] “Honey, I’m sixty-seven and I’ve never stopped. I don’t know about living different lives, but you know some of us are born with the need to make a dent in the world.”

Dorothy was wonderful to interview it was all I could have hoped for and I am so thankful that she gave me the opportunity. Spending an hour with her and hearing her call me honey and laugh with me truly inspired me to keep at my writing. I know more than ever that there are too many stories that need to be told.

72