My current needlepoint work-in-progress: I'm starting on the borders now. I like it when I get to this stage, because borders somehow pull everything together and provide definition. (Is that a metaphor for what happens in life? Probably so.) I'm a little slow with this one, because I've been doing some interesting research reading, which competes for the evening hours. And we've also had several good films lately: especially Henry V (the Brannaugh version & the very best, IMO), and last night David Copperfield (the Masterpiece Theatre version). We've seen both before but that doesn't matter: both are excellent, and very rich fare.
On the writing desk, the current WIP is Hick and Eleanor, about Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt. I'm making progress (now into the fourth chapter of the first draft). But biographical fiction goes much more slowly for me than my mystery fiction, because I'm working within real-world historical constraints. There is a lot of fact-checking, since the timeline of the events in the novel need to match the real-life timeline. And I need to take reader expectations into account: I've given myself freedom to invent scenes and dialogues, but these need to fit what readers already know about both these women--or if they're different and "unexpected," the reader needs to know how and why that's so.
I've always enjoyed biographical fiction, especially women's novels. A couple of my current favorites: The Aviator's Wife (Anne Morrow Lindbergh) and The Paris Wife (Hadley Hemingway). Do you have favorites in this genre?
Also coming up for m e: the copyedit of the revisions of A Wilder Rose, which is now scheduled for re-launch by Lake Union Publishing in early March, 2015.
Garden report. No fall garden for me this year. I'm going to a Colorado conference in a couple of weeks and then to our place in New Mexico for two or three weeks of working vacation (Hick is going with me.) I didn't want to leave Bill with garden chores--he'll be busy, anyway, with pecan harvest. And I'm not taking the dogs with me, so he'll have his hands full, especially with our geriatric cat, who needs lots of special attention.
Big thanks to those who took advantage of the special Rose ebook sale. It's still on through October 8, so if you missed it, here's the link. This sale boosted total sold copies of Rose to nearly 20,000 books--pretty sensational for an author-published novel!
Reading note. Making the best of things is a damn poor way of dealing with them. My life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand.--Rose Wilder Lane