Okay, I lied. I’m not going to quit after all. I tried to interest my agent in my Pakistan memoir piece, but she rejected it before I could even send it—at a mere 40 pages, it is too short for a book. I would have submitted it to The Sun, a wonderful literary magazine that specializes in personal pieces and memoirs, but it’s too long.

How to beef it up to book size?

Why not also include my more delicious wanderings, the memories I go to when life pales? Pakistan would be Section 1. Section 2 would be my Peace Corps years in Eastern Nigeria, which I don’t yet have time to write, but, in a Section 3, I could share, page by scanned page, my three Costa Rica sketchbooks, in which I wrote longhand, in ink, on the spot, right on top of plein aire watercolors, the only sustained freehand art I’ve ever had the courage to do. It will be a little hard to read, and of course I can’t edit or improve it, but it’s interesting and, so far, I’ve never shared it publicly.

So stay tuned: “La Finca de las Colebras” (Snake Farm) is coming soon.