I had one of those classic coming-of-age summers. I should know—I’ve been coming of age for decades. I spent thirteen weeks on Ghost Ranch, a 21,000 acre spread of sand and rock, roughly midway between Santa Fe and Taos in northwestern New Mexico. The ranch is a curious, life-and-death-by-murder kind of place: God’s country and Gulag, shadows and shades of red—a sort of desert Halfway House for Peculiar Adults. So I liked it very much right up almost to the very end.

Now I live in a small town in Galicia where the locals herd wild horses down from the mountains. It’s a poor town. There are no Starbucks or tourists. The shops close every afternoon and don’t open at all on Sundays. I am far removed from the seats of strife and striving. I like the idea that I will finish the book that I began in New Spain in Old Spain. I like the idea of finishing my book full stop. I’m nowhere near the writing stage where you can gently chip away at your hulk of raw material with a chisel. I’m using a mechanical digger and a dumpster.

There are ghosts in my book. There were ghosts on Ghost Ranch. The whole of New Mexico heaves with ghosts. There’s an ages-old feeling of death about the place. Georgia O’Keeffe said that, and she was right. Juan de Oñate y Salazar was the first governor of New Mexico and he brought the feeling of death with him on his skin. In 1598, he set off for el norte. He was then in his forties, a strikingly beautiful man with a neatly trimmed grey-streaked black beard. His eyes weren’t brown or blue; they were hazel, and they had in them the faraway look of a man who has known war. As a teenager, he had fought against the Chichimecs, a tribe that skinned their Spaniard prisoners alive and hung the bloody flesh on sticks along the roadside as a warning.

Oñate survived that war but he didn’t get a happy-ever-after. His wife Isabel, the life in his life, got sick and died. In the abyss of his grief, Oñate looked to go north, to the then unconquered territory of New Mexico, as a way of distracting himself from himself. He brought with him as his second-in-command, his young nephew, Juan de Zaldívar, along with two hundred soldiers and their wives and children. Oñate had to foot the costs of almost the entire expedition himself. In return the Spanish Crown granted him the title of Governor of New Mexico and an annual salary of six thousand ducats (about $2.4 million today according to some helpful players on the ParadoxInteractive games forum). The Spanish King also footed the bill for the cost of five Franciscan friars to accompany the expedition.

It took six months to reach Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo on the banks of the Rio Grande. Oñate renamed the village San Juan. (In 2005 the original name was finally restored but the friends I made at Ghost Ranch who live in the pueblo often still call it San Juan out of habit).

Oñate was a rare breed of conquistador—he wanted to conquer the territory without bloodshed or stealing land. He didn’t kill or injure any of the native people or seek to push them off their lands. And the natives at the pueblo were hospitable to the newcomers. One of the friars remarked that they were the best infidel people he had ever seen. 

After having built a church large enough to house the entire new colony, Oñate took a squad of soldiers with him on a survey expedition. He sent a messenger back, with instructions for his nephew, Zaldívar, to collect reinforcements and catch up with him on the trail. But Zaldívar never did catch up. He and ten of his men were ambushed and killed at Acoma Pueblo. The reputation of Spanish conquistadores had preceded their arrival in Acoma.

It was near nightfall in Oñate’s camp when the news of the ambush arrived. Oñate insisted on passing the night alone in his tent. And all through the long dark hours, he knelt before a cross, praying and weeping. To his men outside the tent, it seemed certain that the new governor and the new colony were finished.

But Oñate was once a soldier. At sunrise, he rose from his knees, kissed the cross and set about planning an attack on Acoma. It wasn’t an attack—it was an annihilation. In avenging eleven deaths, the Spaniards killed six hundred Indians and burned their village to the ground. All of the survivors (about 500 in all) were marched back to the new capital. In February 1599, Oñate handed down their sentence:

Men over 25 to have one foot cut off and to spend 20 years as slaves;

Men between the ages of 12 and 25 and all females over the age of 12 to spend 20 years as slaves;

Sixty girls under 12 to be sent to Mexico City for service in convents for the rest of their lives; and

Finally, two Hopi selected to each have a right hand cut off and be set free so that they might convey to the natives news of the Spanish Catholic retribution.

I think that the banishment for life for sixty little girls was the most chilling part of Oñate’s sentence. But of course, measured against the standards of our own time, the sentence seems relatively mild. Today, September 28, 2016, is the 898th day since the kidnapping of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls: 276, not 60, girls, effectively banished for life. Their fate is to be sex slaves in the jungle or groomed to become suicide bombers. A life on your knees scrubbing convent floors in Mexico City looks almost attractive in comparison.

And here we all sit on our comfortable couches, with all of our modern means, our social media campaigns, the six and a half million tweets (mostly by teenage girls), the protests held on the streets in Nigeria, the voice of First Lady, Michelle Obama, the provision of experts by foreign governments, and yet still, the government of one of the richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources does not bring these girls home. Would these girls still be missing if they were rich . . . or if they looked like the girl in the photo?

The global economy would grind to a halt without the participation of women. If the women of the world joined together and went on hunger strike, the girls would most definitely be brought home. We should strike—if even for a day. Who will lead us?  Not Hillary! She’s too focused on her grab for personal power.

There are sixty little girl ghosts wandering through New Mexico, always seeking to find their way home. They will never make it. But there is still a chance for our Nigerian sisters and daughters. Here’s an opportunity for Pope Francis to remediate the wrongs done to indigenous girls in the past in the name of the Church. We need to petition the Pope to call for a global strike by women and girls. We can all starve for a day!

The only obstacle to my move across the country to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico was my own name, specifically, the inclusion of my name on the lease to a Brooklyn apartment. So, as soon as my place at the ranch was confirmed, I took photographs of the apartment from carefully selected angles and posted an ad on craigslist to sublet my room.

The first response arrived within fifteen minutes.

“Hi, I’m Lisa. About the share -- the apartment must be nice and clean!!!! I’m really into clean. Is it clean?”

 “No, it isn’t,” I texted back and resumed working. Ten minutes later, I received another response.

“Hi, is the place 420-friendly?”

That’s code for smoking weed. I had to google to decipher it. Huh, really, that’s his first and only question about the place!

“No,” I texted back, “it isn’t.”

Finding a suitable replacement wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just dump my two cool kids flat-mates with any random body. As well as having the ability to make rent, the person had to reach the minimum character standard– don’t be annoying.

I had a very confusing telephone call with the third prospect. Finally, I figured out that he was seeking to rent a studio in the Bronx, not a flat-share in Brooklyn. He hadn’t troubled himself to read more than two or three words in the ad. The fourth and fifth callers were seeking to scam cash from me. Luckily, I didn’t have any.

The next applicant sounded fine and we arranged for her to come see the apartment that evening. She didn’t show up. Maybe that was because her scheduled visit coincided with two people getting shot a block away. (Both victims survived and are expected to fully recover. The shooting turned out to be a work screw-up by undercover narcs). I resumed the search, which dragged on endlessly like a long day’s journey into a nightmare. The road to New Mexico began to seem cut-off by a swollen deluge of dysfunction.

And then a twenty-five-year-old water polo player surfaced. My flat-mates liked him. He was able to make rent. He wasn’t waving any obvious red flags. The road to New Mexico opened up wide and clear in front of me until a roadblock went up: having just split from his live-in girlfriend, Mr. Water Polo Player was only willing to sign on the dotted line if he could move in that very weekend. Instead of him being the one desperately in need of a place to live, that would be me. I hesitated briefly, assessing the risk. With an upcoming trip to Ireland, I would only be homeless for a few weeks. That seemed preferable to resuming the search. “Okay,” I said, and thoughtfully invited myself to stay with a friend who lives down south.

In the dark early hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning, I moved out of what had been home and onto a Greyhound bus departing from the Port Authority at 3:45 am. Our first stop was Washington, D.C., or as Sam, the African-American, Gulf War veteran bus driver put it, “the home of Barack Obama.”

To my surprise, the bus was full. If you are wondering who takes a bus from the pit-hole of the Port Authority at 3:45 a.m. on a Sunday morning, the answer is: meth addicts, veterans, foreign students, immigrants who commute between night shifts and day shifts in two different cities, a guy selling pirate DVDs and snot-colored Queen bed sheets, people down on their luck who have never been up on their luck, and the odd writer.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the atmosphere on the bus was cheerful because there’s nothing cheerful about poverty. But I was surprised by the total absence of self-pity. Everyone was just getting on with it. There was none of the petty complaining and turf-wars over arm-rests that occur regularly on flights. It was peaceful.

Having personally checked every ticket and loaded every bag on board, Sam stood at the top of the bus and gave a pre-departure pep talk:

“Listen up! If you leave some expensive fancy computer behind you on this bus, right now is the part where I explain what you need to do. It’s very simple. You go to your local BestBuy and you drop a thousand dollars buying a new one. Are we clear on that? You don’t call up Greyhound looking for a missing property office because that property is missing forever. You go to BestBuy! Get that! So take your belongings with you! And no sleeping on the floor. Because just outside of Baltimore, we reach a rest-stop. I’m going to stop to take a leak and I’m going to walk down the aisle of the bus to exit the back door. It is dark and if you are lying on the floor, I will step on you. I repeat, I will step on you. Any questions?”

There were no questions but there were some smiles. I admired Sam. I admire anyone who does their job well. And he did his brilliantly and with respect and compassion. Among the passengers was a woman in her eighties with a walker. There she was, hobbling along, boarding a bus alone in the bowels of midtown Manhattan at 3:45 in the morning. Sam treated her as if she were the Queen of England. I would vote for him for President if only that were possible.

More than a month has passed since my initial bus trip. I’ve been to Ireland and back. I have jet lag. I am in a dimly-lit motel room in Albuquerque, my penultimate stopover before I reach Ghost Ranch. The motel is located on a busy stretch of highway, nestled between a Waffle House and an IHop. I am sitting on a king-sized bed. If the color of the duvet was a nail polish, it would be called, “tired red.” The curtains would be “exhausted red.” Because the bulb is missing from the bedside lamp, I can’t make out the color of the carpet. I am okay with that. I have a pleasant view of a car park. I am not being sarcastic. The light in New Mexico is so fine that it can even brighten up the face of a car park.

The Americans in Albuquerque are not like those back east. Here they speak in low voices. The motel manager is named Harry. He said, “Bear with me partner” to the man checking-in ahead of me. I felt a delicious thrill. I have reached the southwest, and I am wide-awake. 

     My YA thriller, The Exclusion Wars, is about a teen Hispanic immigrant in hiding in New York after a Donald Trump character has become President. Unsurprisingly, back in 2013, when the I wrote the book, the publishing industry thought that the premise lacked credibility. So did I.

     Now that the book has been released, strangers sometimes say to me something along the lines – wow, it’s great for your book that Trump is on the up and up, bet you hope he goes all the way and becomes President.

     This makes me feel sick. No, I definitely don’t want to see Trump become President. I answer by asking them to look at me. Who am I? I’m not just pro-immigrant; I am a woman.

     Nearly twenty years ago, on May 19, 1997, The New Yorker featured a profile of Donald Trump, written by Mark Singer. A few weeks before, Singer had visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago spa resort in Palm Beach. During a tour of the exercise room, Trump introduced Singer to a beautiful young employee, “our resident physician Dr. Ginger Lea Southall.”

     Singer asked Trump where Doctor Ginger had done her medical training.

     “I’m not sure,” Trump replied. “Baywatch Medical School? Does that sound right? I’ll tell you the truth. Once I saw Dr. Ginger’s photograph, I didn’t really need to look at her resume or anyone else’s. Are you asking, ‘Did we hire her because she trained at Mount Sinai for fifteen years?’ The answer is no. And I’ll tell you why: because by the time she’s spent fifteen years at Mount Sinai, we don’t want to look at her.”

     I wonder if some day soon Trump will find himself on his back in Mount Sinai in need of emergency surgery. Will he want to look at his surgeon then? But I wonder more about her, the woman who has devoted the last fifteen years of her life to developing the skill to save lives. Will she look at him? Or, given his commitment to equality, will she choose to perform his surgery blindfolded so that she doesn’t have to look at him either. I picture her cheerfully scrubbing up, the nurse blindfolding her and leading her to the operating table where Trump is waiting. Her face will be the last one he sees before he succumbs to the anesthetic. The nurse places a scalpel in her hand. “Right, let’s give this a go. Shall we Mr. Trump?”

     Almost every day I find myself scrutinizing the female Trump supporters that pop up on our screens. They don’t look anything like Dr. Ginger. They don’t look anything like Donald Trump’s wife. They are not young. They have lived-in faces and bodies. They did not marry rich old men and devote every day of the last fifteen years to highlighting their hair and injecting filler into their lips. They look  like the kind of women that Trump does not want to look at. They look like they’ve been raising families without nannies and trying to make a living. And they are struggling economically. Their grievances are real. They feel ignored. They want change. They want to be seen. But they are looking to the wrong candidate. Trump thinks that they should be invisible. Or maybe it would be enough for him if they hid their faces and bodies behind veils. Perhaps the media has been unfair to Donald Trump. Maybe he is not so anti-Muslim after all.

     Trump cannot win without these women. I hope that they will see him for who he is.

       Rock. West Diamond. Prairie. Mojave. Black-tailed. Massasauga.  Ridge-nose.

       Have you noticed that the rattlesnakes in westerns always look like the exact same snake? But in Mexico there are sevendifferent species of rattlesnake. I’m not particularly eager to meet any of them. I grew up in Ireland where our most fearsome wildlife is the hedgehog. But, in light of my upcoming move to the high desert plains of the southwest, I’ve been trawling through the literature on what to do if bitten. The various New Mexico state government circulars and information sheets advise:

1. Keep calm (Not likely);
2. Put a safe distance between you and the snake;
3. Do not attempt to suck out the venom. (No human mouth is capable of sucking out the poison quickly enough for it to be effective. I feel very misled by the movies on this one);
4. Avoid stimulants like coffee. (I marvel at the composure of the type of person whose instinct upon being bitten by a rattler is to reach for the kettle); and
5. Get anti-venom as soon as possible. All hospitals in New Mexico stock it.

       I feel somewhat prepared to strike out for my new temporary home in New Mexico, which I found courtesy of the British scientist, Alan Turing. Let me explain:

       My writing this year has been uncomfortable, at best. I kept jumping between projects, unable to commit. Everything I wrote sounded like I was trying too hard. Not only was I plagued with indecision about which book to write, I couldn’t figure where and how to write it. I had no clear vision; I had no vision. I was stuck. I knew that I needed a change of battery. But I can’t even change the batteries in the remote without reading the instructions. WHERE ARE MY INSTRUCTIONS?

       For me, writing a book is similar to solving a crossword puzzle. When I get stuck, I go back and read what I’ve already written. I always find clues telling me what happens next in the story. One cold night in Brooklyn, sitting cross-legged on my patent pending iBed, I decided to try the same process for determining what happens next in my story? On the back of the Metropolitan Public Pool swimming schedule, I scrawled a list of the writing projects I’ve been fiddling with over the last couple of months.

1. A comic-fantasy book for children about ghosts.
2. A rake of interviews and guest blogs and articles in connection with my YA thriller, The Exclusion Wars.
3. An-amusing-incident-with-a-kebab type article about a fall from a horse at Dingle Riding Stables in 2012.
4. Research for a non-fiction book about Sybille Bedford’s 1946 trip from New York City to Mexico City.
5. New Ideas.

       I stared long and hard at the list of the five clues trying to figure out the solution. Nope, the only flashing vision I had was of a beef tacos-for-dinner question mark sign. Like T.S. Eliot, I could connect Nothing with nothing.

This is hopeless, I thought. It’s like trying to crack the Nazi Enigma Code . . . except, hang on, they did break the code. Alan Turing built a computer to do it. My mac, a direct descendant of Turing’s machine, lay conveniently beside me. I typed the key words from the five projects into Google in one long stream and hit return. A cyber-ripple later, there it sat, shimmering at the very top of the search results, GHOST RANCH, Abiquiú, New Mexico.

       Ghost Ranch, Ghost Ranch, Ghost Ranch. I doubt if there’s a writer dead or alive who wouldn’t feel the magnetic pull of those words. It’s a direct hit on the soul. I read on.

       Ghost Ranch is a 21,000-acre estate sixty-five miles northwest of Santa Fe. It is famous for the beauty of its red, wind-carved mesas, for being the home of the artist, Georgia O’Keeffe and the site of Easy Rider and City Slickers and a host of other westerns, famous too for its dinosaur fossils and its horses and its education center. Browsing through Moving to New Mexicoforums, I noticed that visitors often asked, “Do I need a passport?” or “Do I have to be able to speak Spanish.” I certainly didn’t mock them. They wanted to learn. So did I. My own knowledge of the state of New Mexico was of the barely-scratching-the-surface kind.

       The next morning, I emptied my suitcase, dumping my summer clothes on the floor, and took a trip to my favorite institution, the mid-town Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library. I borrowed up to the library’s checkout limit, fifty books. One of the librarians helped me cram them into my suitcase. They wouldn’t all fit. The patient reader behind me in the queue, donated a Bloomingdale’s canvas shopping bag for the rest.

       Abandoning my Browsings reading list to the usual tragic fate of new years’ resolutions, I buried myself in Georgia O’Keeffe biographies, histories of the Southwest, Pueblo Indians, Desert Dinosaurs, the Spanish colonization of New Mexico, the Navajo Nation, D.H. Lawrence and New Mexico, kangaroo rats, the Benedictine Christ of the Desert monastery, the gypsum crystals of the White Sands National Monument . . .

       I searched for connections and I found them. And then I began my quest the way new expeditions have always begun—with hope, passion, and in writing, “Dear . . .”

       With great gratitude to the good people of Ghost Ranch, I will be free for four months to live and write in that raw, dry red, barren landscape, so far removed from the familiar green softness of an Irish drizzle. I have so much curiosity about the community and the visitors: the wranglers, the gardeners, the artists, the cooks, the paleontologists, the silversmiths, the basket weavers, the hikers, the bluegrass musicians, the film-makers, the pilgrims, the new agers and the old agers, the anthropologists, the tourists, the dreamers and the ghost-hunters. They are the searchers. Me too. I’m excited and a little scared.

       In the first week of May, in a divisive election year, I go west. Come visit if you can. And good luck with finding the back road to your own ghost ranch. 

       I don’t know when I became this boring. When did I stop taking risks and start refusing chances of being seduced by strangers? I guess that all of the gut-wrenching disappointments I’ve been forced to deal with during the years didn’t help. But even so, there’s no good excuse for being a boring reader. That’s unforgiveable. I don’t how that I let that happen. I’m totally fine with taking chances in my romantic life. I go out with every single person who asks me. And I really enjoyed both of those dates last year.

       So this year, I’m changing my reading habits because somewhere along the way I got fixated on only reading books which I knew for certain that I would like. So, with the exception of YA/children’s books, I read mainly non-fiction. Our time is precious and let’s face it; there are far less risks with reading non-fiction books. Even if they’re badly written, you’re bound to learn something; it’s never a total waste of time. And most of the books I read last year were brilliantly written: “In Manchuria,” “H is for Hawk,” “Team of Rivals,” and “Confederates in the Attic.” But they all fit neatly into my headspace. I knew that I would like them. That was the problem.

       I can’t even take credit for recognizing how boring I’d become. Nope, I had to hear it from a stranger–Mr. Michael Dirda, courtesy of his book, Browsings. Books about books usually discuss literary classics which you’ve already read or which you didn’t want to read, and you still don’t want to read. But Mr. Dirda’s book is different. He discusses all kinds of interesting books with a special shout-out for science fiction and detective fiction, two genres that are pretty much virgin territory for me.

       I’ve compiled a random reading list of two hundred books from Browsings. So far I’ve read books by Robert Schekley, John Buchan, Barbara Pym, Philip K. Dick, Terry Pratchett, Frank Gruber and Diana Wynne Jones. I was enraptured by all of them (and I read one other book which I didn’t enjoy at all).

       My goal is to have a “B” for Browsings Year and read all of the books on my list in 2016. I feel like A.J. Jacobs who chronicled his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a year. (Great idea and great book!). If you want to join in my noble quest, please get in touch and I’ll send you the reading list. No matter what degradations 2016 might have in store for us, if we stick to our reading list, we’re still bound to have at least a “B” year.” 

       With all the must-do reading ahead, it’s a little inconvenient to have to make time for work and that small “b” for bill-paying. Luckily, I find the work very fulfilling. I’ve got a book to finish writing, and I’ve got two books to promote, my thriller, The Exclusion Wars (newly released in the eBook edition), and the second Evie Brooks novel which comes out in the U.S. and Canada on March something.

       I mostly enjoy the challenge of doing the promotion. But when I feel jittery, I browse tech start-ups sites. There’s a lot of good energy and inspiration and practical business wisdom on those sites. I especially like stories where successful founders talk about the year they spent living in their car . . . although I enjoyed those more before I received that email from my parents informing me that they’d sold my car.

I try all kinds of marketing/promotion avenues; some work and some don’t. I don’t feel shame about doing it. Back in 2011, the billing rate for my services as a litigation attorney was the standard New York City law firm rate of $605, yes, six hundred and five dollars per hour. (It’s the five dollars tagged on at the end that I found the most embarrassing part). So asking people if they have any interest in reading a very good book (Eoin Colfer says so!) which costs only a few dollars, doesn’t feel like something to be ashamed about. I think I’d feel ashamed if I wasn’t trying as hard as I could.

       I don’t mind if people aren’t remotely interested (which is handy because often they are not). The only response I received that irked me was from my older brother, and it was actually a nice response. I think we just expect a lot from our families. And, when I received his response, I’d just reeled out of the cinema after watching The Hateful Eight. I was in a disturbed frame of mind.

My brother’s very innocuous text said:

       “Happy New Year Sheil. I’m looking forward to reading your book but you know what a slow reader I am!”

       I snorted. I know nothing of the sort! What do you mean you’re looking forward to it? You mean you haven’t started reading it yet?

       I began to tap out a response on my phone with a sudden fury:

       “Right. Well, I DEDICATED THE BOOK TO YOU!!, something you’d know if you’d actually bothered to click the book open!”

       Hmm, I thought, it is the new year. Maybe, it would be nice to refrain from starting it on a sour note. I deleted the email and tried again.

       “Hi! You know my friend Sandra, don’t you? Her brother, Alan, read the book. Wow! I’ve never even met him! And he has quadruplets, 4 girls, eighteen months old. AND guess what was almost the first thing that happened after they brought the babies home from the hospital? Yes, good guess! His wife got pregnant! So now they have five baby girls. AND Alan has a full-time job as an engineer, AND the Dad left him the farm in Meath so he works on that as well in the early mornings. Oh and he takes care of their elderly mother. Makes her lasagna. Every single night! Because that’s the only thing she will eat now. And despite all of that, he found the time to read my book and even post a review online in THREE DAYS!”

       No, I did not exaggerate one word of that! It is phenomenal. My friend Sandra’s brother Alan is my favourite person in the whole world and I don’t even know him.

       But after tapping out my email at hyper speed, my thumb hovered over "send." No brother would enjoy being compared to Super Brother. I don’t think my brother even knows how to make lasagna. And, on reflection, Alan did have to stay up all night with all of those babies. So he had a lot more reading time than most people who sleep all night through.

      I deleted that whole response as well and typed a new one.

       “Happy New Year! Ok, that’s fine, get to it when you have time. It’s not War and Peace.”

       I didn’t need to add a smiley face. My brother would get that that was a joke and also not a joke. I felt that I had struck the right balance, i.e. I’m a teeny bit peeved but not a raving lunatic. I think that’s a reasonable start to a B year.

I wish all of you adventurous reading in 2016 and at least a B+ year!