“She wants to do something new with her life, 
but she may need the dead to help her do it.” – Kohelette: A Novel

How do you feel about doing new things? Energized and excited? Uneasy? Overwhelmed? I’ve been paying extra attention to how I answer that question as we’ve entered the new year.

To be honest, I can go either way on how I feel about new things. If I’m in a phase where I’ve already tackled multiple new situations or difficult tasks in quick succession, or if I’m grieving in any way, then my skill in handling new things takes a hit. The “new” becomes hard.

I wrote the novel Kohelette with those times of life in mind. The main character for whom the novel is named has tackled too many new things, including loss. She’s gotten stuck, not quite knowing how to move forward. 

And who of a certain age hasn’t been there? It’s possible that someone could reach middle-age without fumbling at least somewhere in their lives and needing to regroup, but that hasn’t been my experience. So, Kohelette’s disorientation is close to my own heart. I think sometimes getting stuck for a while is simply part of life. 

While I won’t say that I got “stuck” in writing Kohelette, the novel has taken a while to reach its almost-publication stage. It began life in 2023 as a serial novella titled To Tend the Wind, a project that came out of my year-long study of the book of Ecclesiastes with the Religion, Spirituality, and the Arts (RSA) Seminar at Herron School of Art + Design in Indianapolis. Ecclesiastes may be the most discouraging book of the Bible, and I suspect its author (Kohelet, Qoheleth, the Preacher, the Teacher – the author of Ecclesiastes has been called various names in various translations) had gotten “stuck,” himself. I was glad the Bible claimed such a voice, sharing with the world someone who declared, “I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun, and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14 NRSV).

I applied to participate in that seminar about Ecclesiastes because I already had in mind – albeit vaguely – wanting to write a story that began with despair. A story beginning there, mind you. I also wanted to write a story about a woman climbing out of that place where she found herself. 

Enter Kohelette.

Kohelette is a story about every day, real-world, tangible things. It’s about spaghetti cooked in the evening and dishwashers breaking when there’s not enough money to fix them. It’s why you could put this novel in the “domestic fiction” category. But there’s more to it than that.

Kohelette is also about the less-than-tangible things that impact our lives with equal power, things like grieving loved ones and finding how many ways they stay with us even after they’re gone. This is why I also wrote with “magical realism” in mind. This genre weaves a bit of the fantastic into everyday life, and I felt the story needed that element to get at experiences that literal realism couldn’t fully evoke. After all, part of Kohelette coming to terms with her life involves discovering the legacies she hadn’t realized her ancestors had left her.

I’d say that Kohelette is, in the end, a story about someone learning to come back to life. She’s experimenting with dreaming again even after her old dreams and her old life have crumbled. So, there you have it: Kohelette: A Novel is forthcoming April 1, 2026, from Clay Patin press. I’m looking forward to sharing her with you! 

The Kindle version of Kohelette is now on pre-order special for $0.99 for January only. Your pre-order ebook purchase will give the novel a ranking boost on publication day, so thank you, in advance, for considering a pre-order purchase! Though the paperback version won’t be available for pre-order, both the paperback and the Kindle versions will be available for purchase on Amazon by April 1, 2026, and on Bookshop.org soon after. 

In the meantime, I’ll be mixing up my blog content this year to include both nonfiction reflections and more short pieces of fiction, some of them dealing with topics and characters related to Kohelette. So, keep an eye out for that. 

And most importantly, I’m wishing you the very best in 2026. May it bring all you need to welcome the new things this new year brings your way.