Mysteries and Such
At last! Finished China's 22nd mystery yesterday: Death Come Quickly. And yes, the title is the name of an herb (pictured above): Geranium robertianum, Herb Robert, which may be growing in your backyard. Death come quickly is one of its folk names, along with Red Robin, storksbill, stinky Bob, and dove's foot. I still have the book's back matter (recipes, resources, author's note) to clean up, but I'm going to let the text sit and cool off. It's not due until the end of next month.
The other mystery I'll be writing this year is The Darling Dahlias and the Money Bush, the fifth book in that series. It's due at the end of August, so I'll start work on it in early June.
A Wilder Rose
Meanwhile, I can go back to my historical novel about Rose Wilder Lane's collaboration with her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, in the writing of the Little House books--now titled A Wilder Rose. After a great deal of thought and discussion with people whose opinions I value, I've decided to go the indie route and publish this book myself. I love my mystery editor/publisher (Natalee Rosenstein at Penguin/Berkley) and I expect to continue writing under the Prime Crime imprint. I have no special problems with legacy publishing in general, either. It is what it is, and while its models reflect a huge investment in old technologies, it serves readers well.
But I love a challenge. I love to learn new things, research new areas, explore new territories. If I go with a traditional legacy publisher, I'll be replicating my quarter-century of experience in writing and producing books. It's time to see what's on the other side of the fence--not necessarily a greener pasture, but a new and larger space, new ways of doing things, new ways of interacting with readers.
So A Wilder Rose will be my first indie book. I'll be blogging about the process here, as well as writing a series of posts about Rose's life. (There's a general post here.) She was a remarkable woman, and while she has been eclipsed by the mother whose author-persona Rose herself created (such a fascinating irony!), she deserves attention in her own right. Look for the book this fall (2013)--probably October.
Reading note. We are never aware of the present; each instant of living becomes perceptible only when it is past, so that in a sense we do not live at all, but only remember living. And we are blind to conditions forming our lives, until those conditions are becoming part of the past.--Rose Wilder Lane, Old Home Town