Lifescapes

Works In Progress

The current fiberwork WIP is cross stitch--and a very large project (11" x 19"). Love the detail work and the precision, but I have to confess that without my magnifying lamp, I couldn't do this. It's 18-count Aida cloth, so the stitches are very small.

Here's what it will look like when it's finished.

 

The previous WIP--Calico Stars, a needlepoint--is finished! 

If you'd like to see what I've done with it, look here: http://www.storycircle.org/raffle/ 

Book report. Also in progress, the 2018 China Bayles mystery, Queen Anne's Lace--working on Chapter Four. But I need to put it aside this week and work on the copyedited manuscript of The Last Chance Olive Ranch, which flew here from New York yesterday. I'm hoping to wrap that up by Monday. Another WIP that you'll see next April, as a book.

Homestead report. Rain, rain, 7" of rain so far this month. The fire danger is down, and everything is a green jungle. The garden is in its usual summer dormant state, but The Girls are laying nicely and Bill is looking forward to a giant pecan crop. We're keeping an eye on the Gulf of Mexico, which is likely to send us even more rain next week. If it does, that may cool the soil enough to allow me to plant the fall potatoes.

We live in a culture that thrives on thrills, craves crises, and delights in debacles. What goes on here at Meadow Knoll in the summer may, in contrast, seem boring and blah. But for me,these days of quiet, slow, measured life offer opportunities for finding small pleasures. The gleeful cackle of a chicken who's just laid an egg. A silent visit from two does and their four spotted fawns. The sight of a Cooper's hawk on the fence post, of a painted bunting at the feeder, of a spiral of buzzards riding an invisible thermal into an infinite sky. The remarkable, extraordinary variety of very ordinary days. This is my world, a work in progress. I love it.

Reading note. Everything happens in life. Some of what happens is terrible. We know this is true because it has always been true. But there is another truth available, an inexplicable and sometimes crazy truth that is no less compelling. The living of a life, day by day and moment by moment, is also wild with joy.--Reeve Lindbergh, Forward from Here

 

Latest Needlepoint WIP Finished!

It's finished! And I've given it to Story Circle for a raffle.  Story Circle is the women's writing organization I've worked with for the past 20 (gasp!) years. They'll put the money to good use to fund their women's writing support projects. The winner receives the needlepoint and a signed/personalized hardcover copy of Loving Eleanor, my latest biographical/historical fiction.

Homestead report. A rare August rain today, a spin-off from the deadly flooding that hit Louisiana this weekend. Not nearly so intense (we hope) and badly needed. The waters in the Gulf are very warm (even for August), and if this storm track had been just a little further south, it would have been a hurricane. As it is, we're expecting a couple of inches. The trees are rejoicing.

Book report. The beta readers of The General's Women (the group of careful, skilled readers who agreed to read/critique the final draft) have all reported in, and I've made their corrections. I'm especially grateful to the experienced copy editors among them, and to the military historian who pointed out a couple of important historical issues. It'll be another few weeks before I decide whether to submit to publishers or publish this under my own imprint, Persevero Press. Now we're getting to the fun part! I'll keep you posted.

Reading note. Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.--Margaret Atwood 

On Writing Women's Biographical/Historical Fiction

 

Most readers know me as a mystery author, but for the past five or six years, I’ve been exploring biographical fiction. My first biographical novel, A Wilder Rose, told the story of Rose Wilder Lane, the woman who rewrote the family stories her mother—Laura Ingalls Wilder—had written down. Together, they created the Little House books. When publishers weren’t interested in the book, I published it under my own imprint, Persevero Press. A Wilder Rose has sold 80,000 copies and has been optioned for television.

My second biographical novel, based on letters held in the FDR Presidential Library, tells the story of the decades-long friendship of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. Loving Eleanor was also published by Persevero Press and has won numerous awards. The third, set during WW2, is about Kay Summersby, Mamie Eisenhower, and Ike, the man they both loved. Entitled The General's Women, it is based on Kay’s memoirs, Eisenhower biographies, and letters I found in the Eisenhower Presidential Library. It, too, is an award-winning book.

Writing biographical fiction is—for me—deeply satisfying work, for I am more interested in history than in fiction. But I am more interested in her stories than I am in his stories. I want to know about women who have set out to do things, discover things, make their way in a man’s world. Women who want to change that world and the people in it. Unfortunately, history—that is, our public memory, the culture’s corporate record of events and ideas—is not only written by the winners but written by the men who have won. The stories of women are hidden in history, behind his stories, because their achievements often challenge commonly-accepted beliefs about how women behave. So I spend a lot of time digging around in unpublished diaries, letters, autobiographical fragments, pieces of memoir—listening for voices that need to be heard. Silenced voices, misunderstood voices, whispers. Not history. Her stories.

It’s a good thing that I enjoy research, because any kind of historical fiction—fiction set in the past—requires quite a lot of it. Biographical fiction, which toes a delicate line between acknowledged fact and imagined truth, creates its own special research demands. For Loving Eleanor, I started in the usual place: by reading everything I could find to read. When I began the project, there wasn’t much published material about Lorena Hickok, except for brief introductions to her Depression-era investigative reports to Harry Hopkins and an inadequate biography. The Roosevelts, of course, are the subject of dozens of books, so I ended up with a full bookcase and plenty of film and online resources.

But since I’m interested in the hidden stories, what I’m chiefly after are unpublished documents. It is our great good fortune that Lorena Hickok, who clearly wanted somebody to tell the story of her friendship with the First Lady, donated her collection of letters and other documents to the FDR Presidential Library. Reading them is very much like listening to hundreds of hours of private, intimate conversation. I found myself pulled deeply into the worlds that Hick and Eleanor shared. That’s when the real questions began to arise. Who are these women, behind the personas history has created? What do they want, what do they need? What are they afraid of? What is it they have to learn? Where is the real story, the hidden story? These are the questions that take us deep into the imaginative heart of fiction, but keep us within the boundaries established by the biographical and historical facts—the truths—that careful and persistent research can discover.

I once heard filmmaker Errol Morris speak about making documentary films. “We don’t judge a documentary film on whether it tells the truth,” he said, “but whether it attempts to seek the truth and asks you to think about the relationship between the film and what the truth might be—if it could be found.”

That’s what I’m trying to do with these biographical fictions about women’s hidden lives. I want to take us toward the emotional truth of their lives. I believe that we can find it.

 

Reading note. I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about; read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history, and not to actually get back to the original sources.--Thomas Mallon