In May 2025, my third book came out. When I received the advance reader’s copy, I was shocked to see that the marketing strategy, as outlined on the back cover, was to focus on “the return of Lori Ostlund for her first book in 10 years”—shocked not by the plan itself but by the realization that ten years had passed since my novel After the Parade came out. Ten years! During some of that decade, I was writing, but there were also fallow stretches, including two years during which I thought I might never write again. Since 2019, my wife, Anne Raeff, who is also a fiction writer, and I have been immersed in—the word to describe normal days—but often overwhelmed by our community work focused on the LGBTQ+ community, particularly its youth. It is necessary work, work that has taught me a good deal about myself and taught us both new things about our relationship and each other, which seemed all but impossible after more than three decades together. Still, there are times when I find myself frustrated by, even resentful of, the hours away from writing.