"STARFISH'S NEW READERS; SONGWRITING SUCCESS

I'm finding that my book is travelling around to people who need it--exactly the people for whom I wrote it.

One mother found her daughter lying by the side of the road, dumped there by the people she'd been with when she OD'd. A very young widow's husband died suddenly from a heart attack. A mother can't recover from the grief of losing her husband. The book is being passed around--which doesn't help the sales but is greatly appreciated by me because all the work and expense of creating it is proving its value.

In giving talks on the book, everyone wants to hear about how friends can help. Earlier I discussed how to write a letter of condolence. Here's some of what you can do for your suffering friend:

Remember that however normal your friend appears to be, she or he will remain in shock for months. Don't say, "Let me know what I can do for you." She/he won't have any idea how to answer--every kind of help is needed. Take her/him [this pronoun thing is a pain, I'll just say "she" but please know that it's for men too] out to a quiet dinner, just three or four of you. Take her to a comic or mystery movie. Ask her to visit you in the country for a few days and then drive her there and back. The helplessness is hard to understand--but she won't get there on her own. Knowing how much I hate shopping for clothes, one friend forced me to go with her and picked out some new things for me to wear. The friend who brought me a quiche to eat doesn't remember doing it; but she is engraved in my heart.

You can't imagine the waves of pure gratitude that flow through a newly bereaved person at these simple acts of kindness.

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It seems that perhaps I will open a second kind of blog, this for those of my songs that are being published. It is thrilling to me to have ten of my songs--I think of them as sparkling little Christmas tree ornaments--due to be released in Nashville on March 30, 2009. The songs have the singer, the producer, the publisher, the label, the distributor. What may hold them up is the money for production and promotion.