Patricia Harrelson

I spent the last month finishing a book project. Twelve hours a day, day after day. I loved it! My back ached from sitting; my wrist ached from typing. My nights were filled with thoughts about the book to the point that I couldn’t tell if I was dreaming or thinking. I’d wake at 3am or 4am and wish that 5am would come so I could get up (at a reasonable hour) and get back to work. Thirty marvelous days of writing. What a gift; what a privilege. This was the end of the project, during which I completed the last 75 pages or so.

But the project actually started years before when I had lunch with my friend Julia. The idea for The Right Sisters was hers. She came up with the title and she did tons of research before I ever got invovled. At lunch that day, I absorbed her enthusiasm like a plant collecting energy from the sun. The photosynthesis took eight years before that energy was fully transformed into a book.

When I think about it, the book project really started years before that lunch date, back when Julia and I first met and I reveled in her smile, in her joy of life, in her swinging blond hair and willingness to jump when I was merely tiptoeing . Way back in 1977, we started the partnership that would make a book thirty-three years later. We were the right sisters!

Thanks Julia, for being a part of my life, for shining your light on my creative life.