"I am a writer. Period." I wasn't so sure about that while writing The Bard of Bryn Doon, which was such an intensely challenging experience that I was seriously tempted to give up. Often. And not only on this book, but on *all* books. Somehow, though, I managed to get through it, and I now think that my newest book may be my best yet! I guess I'm going to keep a writing after all!!

If you’ve read the acknowledgments pages in any of my books, you will know that I am highly sensitive to the energy of place and that I always thank those locales that inspired me in writing that particular work. Well, a few days ago, as I was preparing the acknowledgments for my newest book, it occurred to me that of my soon-to-be-19 books, 17 had been conceived, written and published here in the US!

I'm not saying that I could not have been as creative or successful had my car not turned left instead of right 24 years ago today, but as this country is where I have experienced the bulk of my creative output, today seemed the perfect day to acknowledge that.

Although I don't write "gay fiction," Bernie Freed and Erik Donnekin, major characters in all three of my "Sara Stories" novels are gay, and their stories, including Bernie's coming out, are integral to the plots of Sara's Year, After Sara's Year and The Emmeline Papers.

And although the following scene from Sara's Year didn't play out identically in my life, I did have a similar experience with a friend who, with good but misplaced intentions, tried to push me out of the closet by telling me that I was gay. He was right, of course, but it would take another year for me to get to the place I describe in yesterday’s Acts of Surrender excerpt.

It took all the courage I could muster at age 20 to call Gay Montreal and stammer "I-I think I'm gay" into the phone, then take the bus downtown and purposefully talk about it, face-to-face, with a gay man.

Twenty-seven years ago this month The MoonQuest hit me over the head and demanded I write it. I'd never written a novel before and doubted I could. Boy, was I wrong!

I'm excited by this new, surprising direction, which feels like a sort of coming out – both within myself and out in the world. Suddenly, in addition to all the other kinds of writer I am, I'm something else...something I never expected to call myself!

It took all the courage I could muster at age 20 to call Gay Montreal and stammer 'I-I think I'm gay' into the phone and then take the bus downtown and purposefully talk about it, face-to-face, with a gay man.

That was my first coming out; there would be four more: at 39 when I reluctantly dropped the 'gay' label, at 43 when I married a woman and came out as no-longer-gay to my gay friends, at 50 when I lost the 'married' label, and at 54 when I came out all over again as a gay man.

But the first 'coming out' is always the toughest.

When I “landed” in Sedona a year ago today, after one of the most financially and emotionally challenging periods in my life, I couldn’t know that I was about to make this place my home. For the third time

In the Jewish tradition, the number 18 carries special spiritual significance. That's because its letters spell out chai (pronounced "khai"), the Hebrew word for "life." The Chinese also view 18 as propitious, associating it with prosperity and success. In numerology, 18 is equally positive; 1 represents new beginnings, 8 is also a number of success and 9 (1+8) is the number of completion. As well, eighteen is the age when we leave childhood behind and move into adulthood. Here’s why all this is relevan…

Stories are expressions of our humanity, of our universality. In our stories we discover not what separates us but what unites us. We discover not our differences but our similarities. Read others' stories, but do more than that. Tell your stories, whatever form they take. Share your fears and joys, your failures and triumphs. Share your humanity. Let us see you...and let us see ourselves in you. That's how we heal ourselves. That's how we heal the world.

My time in Sedona has also been a time of miracles. Because I kept listening and trusting – even as the voices around me "kept shouting their bad advice," as poet Mary Oliver put it in "The Journey" – I have managed to keep moving forward, even in the midst of the uncertainty and senselessness of these times. How? By listening and trusting. By continuing not only to write and teach but to do my imperfect human best to live what I write and teach.

in every moment, the higher wisdom we all carry within is calling on us to do and be the impossible, even though it makes no conventional sense, even though we don't know where to begin or who we'll be when we're done. All we can do is  listen, get past our resistance and surrender.