This month slipped away in a flurry of editing and writing new chapters for my first novel. Recently I submitted three chapters to Ashley Grayson of Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. The novel tells a story about this region-the Sonoran Desert and American Southwest-during a water crisis. Speculative fiction (2010-2100), it posits what would happen if Tucson ran out of water. How would that crisis unfold? Who would be the most or least resilient? How would governments be able to respond?
I discovered a very interesting thing while editing this month: the real character of my novel is the Colorado River. The last sixteen years of my life have been spent near the river. For most of that time I had the privilege of working closely with native people, ranchers and farmers for whom the river is part of their psyche and livelihood. Now as a Tucsonan, my drinking water-which for the city's history has came from groundwater exclusively-is now mixing in the river's water after channeling it through a 306-mile-long canal across the Arizona deserts.
Go to www.desertscribe.com and click on Featured Writing for a taste of the story.
Susan
