REACHING A MILESTONE AMIDST A STARRY NIGHT

Several years ago I attended the "Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience" in downtown San Jose with my family. I remember feeling so moved at one point that I got all verklempt thinking, "That poor, tortured man could never have imagined that his art would be seen throughout the entire world. He could not have imagined how beloved and revered he would also become and remembered as an artistic genius." In that moment, the enduring power of art brought me to tears. I love Van Gogh's work so much that I decided I needed to pay a special tribute to it in my novel, JOURNEYS, writing:

I often think of Van Gogh - how, in the depths of his depression, he created something as beautiful as Starry Night. . . We all have an instinct to make something, express ourselves, and create amid suffering, pain, and oppression. The apposition between the grief of the world and the beauty of the world can be ecstatically agonizing.

~ JOURNEYS by Patty Flores Reinhart

Today marks a great milestone! I completed the narration of my chapters in the JOURNEYS audiobook. We just need to record a couple of the guest narrators for their chapters, and then Sarah will do her brilliant editing magic. If all goes well, the finished product should be ready for publication sometime in early spring!

Coincidentally, I happened to wear my Starry Night shirt today, not realizing that I would be reading the above portion of the book. As I read that paragraph, I couldn't help but smile and point to my shirt as if to communicate to Sarah, "Check it out! Look what I'm wearing."

"You wore that on purpose," she said.

"No, I swear. It was completely unintentional."

She didn't believe me. But it's truuuuue.