Whatever happened to J. A. Allen? This talented writer seems to have disappeared from the community of writers I follow. I was never in J. A.’s circle which included Anne Rice, by chance, and Dan Alatorre, but after she complimented a piece I’d written in my early days of blogging, I was her fan. Many of you know how awesome it is to get a nod from a writer you respect.

I miss J. A.’s sense of humor and her brilliant storytelling. I hate that I never got to read her work in progress, Old Souls, and I wonder if she ever finished it. I don’t know if Old Souls was a novel, a short story collection, or essays, and I couldn’t find it on Amazon. 

Once, a blog post of hers mentioned writers being introverted yet having to go out anyway and seek a writing community, promote our work, and so on. I wonder if she became frustrated by the challenges writers face with getting noticed and pushing our work.

J. A. seems to have left social media before the Artificial Intelligence age and the trash writing that littered our landscape, so I can’t blame them. 

I’m tempted to reach out to Dan Alatorre since she once mentioned that he was a writing buddy. Dan is a prolific writer, and as I browsed his catalog, I hesitated to query him. Nobody that I am. 

If the awesome Ms. Allen is taking a break, I totally get that. I’ve been on hiatus since the invention of A. I. myself. It seemed so hopeless. 

riders Come back, J. A.! Be my model, my example of a brilliant writer not yet wildly popular, but one about whom everyday fans can say, ‘now that’s writing’. 

If anyone knows J. A. Allen, her blog was Scribbles on Cocktail Napkins, (how awesome is that?) tell her I miss her terribly, and I probably speak for thousands of followers. J. A., f you don’t want to be found at least I gave voice to my feelings about your absence.