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Throughout her career, singer-songwriter Judy Collins has touched lives with both her passionate social activism and the pure soprano that distinguished such hits as "Both Sides Now," "Amazing Grace" and "Send in the Clowns."
Recently, however, her art, which has expanded to include writing fiction, helped with her own emotional mending following the 1992 suicide of her 33-year-old son, Clark Taylor.
"Artists deal with their pain and suffering all the time; it's not just when a particular situation happens," offered Collins recently in a phone interview from Denver, where she was joining in the celebration of her mother's 80th birthday. "I think that's how we heal, and that's something people know because they hear and see things {in you}, and then they understand."
Although she stopped working on her first novel for a time after her son's death, she ultimately returned to it. "Shameless," a rock 'n' roll-themed romantic suspense thriller that took eight years to finish, was published last summer by Pocket Books. It is scheduled to be released in paperback in July.
Her novel is unlike her 1987 autobiography, "Trust Your Heart" (Houghton Mifflin), which documented, among other things, her own suicide attempt at age 14, plus her battles with polio, bulimia and alcoholism.
"Shameless" is pure fantasy, says its author, a romance novel that's...