April 27, 2015 – a freak thunderstorm, the likes of which we hadn’t seen around here in quite a while, knocked down a tree in my backyard that had only just gotten big enough to finally give us a little shade.  The trunk was completely split – not just bent over – and we had to hire guys with chainsaws to come remove its poor little woody corpse.

March 26, 2016 – my husband trimmed the giant bush that sprouted from the stump back into the recognizable shape of a tree.  It’s about the same size now as it was when he first planted it.

Happy Easter!

Limbo, they say, is a concept whose time has passed, an unorthodox idea, now theologically debunked.  But if that is true, why do I find myself suspended, lost, adrift, between?  If a lifetime of Catholicism has taught me anything, it is that the experiences of this life are foretastes that prefigure greater truths that lie beyond the mortal veil.  How, then, can we dismiss the very real experience of being “in Limbo” as something apocryphal and false?

This is what happens when I have no story to write: I become a street corner philosopher.

I do not write quickly.  My novels – of which there have been many, though only one is yet published – take years to unfold.  During that time, the characters infect me.  Their lives become intertwined with mine.  I abhor writing short stories because the process of intimacy I need to go through with my characters cannot happen in the space of just a few thousand words.  I enjoy reading a good short story as much as anyone, but trying to write one feels like I’m forcing myself to trade a healthy friendship for a sordid one-night stand.  Still, even a novel must eventually end, and then there is a void.  My characters and I will always be friends, but when the time comes to drift apart, I am never quite ready to let go.

Then, too, there is the tantalizing seed of the next idea.  It always exists, not developed enough to inspire, but big enough to taunt me.  To plant it requires becoming vulnerable to new intimacy – and, even with fictional people, successful relationships are never guaranteed.  Some of them will turn on me and refuse to speak.  Some will prove to be too shallow to sustain.  Some will be merely insipid; we will part ways with mutual disinterest.  And underneath it all is the knowledge that I created these people, so if it doesn’t work, I can’t legitimately blame them.

Do you think God ever looks at us that way?

Here I sit – stranded – with a story that I can write no more still coating my mind in its residue, and another planted but not yet broken through its hull.  Maybe Limbo is not eternal, but no one will convince me that it is not real.

Karen Ullo is the author of Jennifer the Damned, now available from Wiseblood Books.  To learn more, go to www.karenullo.com.

Did you know there was a papal document addressing the desecration of corpses believed to be vampiric?  Me, neither.  But Eleanor Nicholson, vampire aficionado and editor of the Ignatius Critical Edition of Dracula, will fill you in in her review of Jennifer the Damned for the Jan-Feb issue of the St. Austin Review.

You can read it here: StAR review (1) (Reprinted with kind permission.)

A few days ago, I triumphantly announced the arrival of Jennifer the Damned on Kindle.  Well… hold that thought.  There was a glitch in the file, so the Kindle edition had to been taken down while it gets fixed.  You can still get it in paperback, and the Kindle edition will return shortly.  I apologize for any inconvenience.