Dears,

I had the most amazing dream this weekend: I traveled on a series of planes that were on time and encountered no turbulence, to arrive in a place where the people treated me with love, devotion and pie. Indeed, they seemed to know everything about me. They felt like relatives, but even better. Bercaws without the aftertaste. More like Rixeys.

In perfect dreamlike fashion, they drove me around the Kentucky State Asylum and through the most famous horse-grazing-and-raising countryside in the world. And, I stayed in their grand Italianate home in a guest room decorated with African art.

These charming, compassionate, delightful, dream people talked with me at length about a certain man’s brain and my book about him. One of them–the hilarious and clever Sheila–said that upon reading the manuscript she called the other one–the Renaissance gentleman Larry–to tell him that they had a “bestseller” on their hands.

Wow, I thought within my own dream, this must be every writer’s dream.

Between conversations about life and death, we sipped beer, then wine, and later bourbon. At one point, we paused to eat scallops with two fine artists who live on a farm. One of these artists will design the aforementioned book.

Exhausted by the end of the evening, I slept like a baby. Okay, that’s where it gets weird. Babies don’t sleep particularly well and, more importantly, you don’t usually go to sleep in a dream.

DEARS! I WAS AWAKE!

(Except, of course, for the time I actually was sleeping in my African art guest room.) I am living every writer’s dream. I found a publisher for Brain in a Jar who understands and appreciates the story more and better than I could have ever hoped.

And the proof was in that pie.

In Brain in a Jar, there are a few subtle references to Bercaws having pie for breakfast. When I woke up from my slumber on Sunday morning, there was an apple pie waiting for me in the kitchen. This is how closely Sheila and Larry paid attention to my words…to my life…and to years of tears and hard work that went into writing my book.

Sometimes dreams really do come true.

Love,

Gal