But I can imagine them.

And a novel would be the way to talk about how water and power

are perennial issues in California --- and really, these politics of water and power are the politics of the nation and the world.

But more important to me is the more foundational issue of -character-, and how it gets affected by money. My princeling was basically a good guy, but, at least as I knew him, he wasn't courageous and he wasn't strong. How did his innocence get finally corrupted? How did he become this person I know in no way he wanted to be? He gave into what his class background demanded he be; a fundamentally sweet man who had clearly been involved in corporate shenanigans for more than a decade.

And that's the material for a novel: how character gets corrupted, how a good soul goes bad, and how people get caught up in the circumstances of their time.

So here it is, 2006; and we've watched the disasters that are Katrina and Rita, and more recently the floods in Napa, and everyone's PG&E bills have shot up this winter. And it's all about water and it's all about power.

There's a novel here. And until the MacArthur Foundation clears up its clerical error, I doubt I'll ever be able to write it.