The upcoming (March 17) Lake Union reprint edition of A Wilder Rose now has a beautiful new cover! I loved the first cover (done by Sherry Wachter for my Persevero Press edition) and am delighted that this one is so strongly evocative of Rose's journey. I'll see the page proofs later this week, and will have a better idea of what the book is going to look like.
I'm also delighted to let you know that there will be an audio edition of the book, from Brilliance Audio (known for its outstanding productions). The audiobook is already listed on Lake Union's page, so if you want to preorder or add to your wish list, please do.
It's been interesting and fun to be a part of the Lake Union team on this project. They are professional, speedy (their production schedule moves right along), and they stay in touch at every step of the way. I've worked with quite a few publishing teams in the past three decades, and this one is up there at the top.
Book report. I'm now into the second half of the current work-in-progress, Hick and Eleanor. I'm still updating my Goodreads Roosevelt research shelf, which has proved a helpful way of organizing the background material. I'll stay with Hick for the rest of this year, hoping to get it substantially finished so that Kerry (the project's agent) can send it around in early 2015. Next up: A Malted Murder, the 2016 China Bayles mystery, due at the end of March. It'll be very good to get back to Pecan Springs again. After that: finish Hick and publish it via Persevero Press if we don't find a publisher. Then get back to the memoir my brother and I are writing. Lots of good stuff to look back on in 2014 and look ahead to in 2015.
Question for you. I'd like to get a notebook computer that I can use in the evenings, while I'm reading away from my desk, to make notes on current/future writing projects. Do you have a recommendation (pro or con)? If so, please post a comment.
Garden report. I'm back home in Texas (after a lovely, productive month in Colorado and New Mexico), and already beginning to think about the new gardening season. The only thing growing right now is garlic (just coming up) and the perennial onions. I'm waiting on my order of seed potatoes (Reddale and Yukon Gold)--I'll pre-sprout them and plan to get them in the ground after Christmas. Yes, I know that will sound very early to you Northerners. But I've been planting earlier every year, with better results every year. I do have to cover, to keep the tops from being killed by a hard February freeze. And of course you never know. But gardeners are gamblers at heart, always taking chances with the weather.
Reading note. I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.--Wendell Berry