Its impossible to control the reception of your work - the only thing you can control is the experience of writing itself, and the work you create.

Either things grow and change or they die.

They turned a distracted gaze on the world, wide-eyed, somehow, and questioning.

Norah watched him, serious and utterly absorbed in his task, overcome by the simple fact of his existence.

Norah looked at her son’s tiny face, surprised, as always, by his name. he had not grown into it yet, he still wore it like a wrist band, something that might easily slip off and disappear. She had read about people – where? she could not remember this either – who refused to name their children for several weeks, feeling them to be not yet of the earth, suspended still between two worlds.

So something had begun, and now she could not stop it. Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement. She could leave this place today. She could start a new life somewhere else.

He had never even glimpsed her.