And now, an excerpt from “Spinsters Abroad,” the first chapter of Love at the Speed of Email:

I don’t feel ready for kids yet.  I don’t have that powerful soul-deep hunger to be a mother that I hear some of my girlfriends talk about.  I’m not sure I ever will.  But I am starting to catch myself wondering sometimes, in a much more abstract fashion, whether I’m going to miss out altogether on those beauties and struggles peculiar to parenthood or on learning how to be genuinely vulnerable in a way I suspect that only the bond of marriage allows.  And whether, if I do, I’ll wake up in fifteen years and still believe that it was worth it – this choice that I have made again and again throughout my twenties to pursue adventure and novelty and helping people in faraway lands rather than stability and continuity and helping people in a land I claim as mine.

These are melancholy moments.  These are days when I wake up and wonder whether I wouldn’t perhaps feel happier, more fulfilled or less restless on a radically different path.  When I would really like to come home to someone who’s vowed to be interested in how my day was.  When I just want someone to bring me coffee in bed or rub my shoulders uninvited.

Yet, right alongside these wonderings that sometimes dead-end in dying alone at ninety lie other wonderings, other fears.

After a nomadic life that has largely been defined by coming and (always, inevitably) going, am I even capable of the sort of commitment demanded by marriage and children and a place called home?

I touched on this confused tangle of longings recently with a girlfriend for whom I was a bridesmaid a decade ago.  Jane is now living on a verdant pecan farm in Australia ten miles from my parents’ place, complete with a sweet prince of a husband, two little girls, a dog, two cats, a horse, and a veggie garden.

“You know, I want your life sometimes,” I confessed near the end of our conversation.

Jane laughed.  “My brain is turning to mush with no one but the kids to talk to all day, and when you say that you spent – Eloise, I told you to stay at the table while you finish your milk!  Sit back down please – when you say that you spent last week in Boston at a conference and you’re off to New York next week, I want your life.”

-pgs. 24-25, “Spinsters Abroad,” Love at the Speed of Email by Lisa McKay
Photo courtesy of Lisa McKay

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

Love at the Speed of Email is the story of old-fashioned courtship made possible by modern technology – the tale of two people separated by the Pacific Ocean who build a long-distance relationship entirely via email.  Along the way, the narrator – a global nomad who has spent her life as the transient resident of eight different countries – must confront troubling questions about where home really is and what it means to commit to a person, a place, or a career.

Lisa looks as if she has it made.  She has turned her nomadic childhood and forensic psychology training into a successful career as a stress management trainer for humanitarian aid workers.  She lives in Los Angeles, travels the world, and her first novel has just been published to some acclaim.  But as she turns 31, Lisa realizes that she is still single, constantly on airplanes, and increasingly wondering where home is and what it really means to commit to a person, place, or career.  When an intriguing stranger living on the other side of the world emails her out of the blue, she must decide whether she will risk trying to answer those questions.  Her decision will change her life.

Lisa McKay is a psychologist who specializes in stress, trauma, and resilience.  She currently lives in Laos.  Love at the Speed of Email is her second book.  To learn more, visit www.lisamckaywriting.com.

For more fun with this fantastic author, stop back tomorrow for Day Two of this special four-day event!

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

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