My name is Holly.
This story is about me—
a writer who’s way behind
on her deadline.
But, honestly,
how can I concentrate on my work
when my fiftieth birthday’s
rushing at me like a freight train,
my hormones are making me feel
like a Szechuan flambé,
and my eighty-year-old mother’s
biting her nurses?
Not to mention the fact that my daughter’s
just begun applying to colleges
(none of which are within
a thousand-mile radius of home),
and lately my husband’s been acting like
such an irritating, finger-pointing stinker
that I’ve found myself dreaming of ways
to spend his insurance money …
My name is Holly.
This book
tells my story—
a coming of middle-age story.
I didn’t mean to write The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus. In fact, I tried very hard not to write it. But every time I sat down to write the young adult novel I was supposed to be working on, I found myself wanting to write about the issues that were pressing in on me at the time—my hormones were taking me on a wild ride, my son was getting ready to leave for college, and I was way behind on the deadline for my book.
I fought this wicked urge for awhile, but eventually I gave in and let myself write my first book for adults. It began as a sort of memoir in poems, but I soon realized that the tale I wanted to tell wasn’t just my own story, but every woman’s story.
Copyright 2004-. Sonya Sones. All rights reserved.