Seems There’s Too Much Month Left for Me at the End of the Money

That’s what it’s come to for me in my writing career and so I have to find an answer for that. It’ll take a leap of faith, but I’m a jumper.

When I came to Prague from Chicago in 1993 I was 57 years old, had $10,000 in my pocket that I’d cleared from selling my car, a little Apple computer and the willingness to fail as a writer. I’d always wanted to write and live in Europe.

Prague was cheap in those days, lovely and smoky and down-at-the-heels. Vaclav Havel was president. It was a European mecca for writers, so I came, leaving my profession as a landscape architect behind, knowing no one and not speaking the language. My life-motto had been (and still is) to mentor leaps of faith and I’d done that for a number of friends. Now it was time for me to take my own advice and leap. Leaps of faith are empowered by the willingness to fail, pick oneself up and keep on moving.

The move to Prague has been and still is an incredible experience for me. Writing came easily and I found I was good a…