Lifescapes

Loving Eleanor on Sale

Loving Eleanor ebook edition is on sale this weekend and Monday for just 99 cents. If you haven't read it or if you'd like to give it as a gift, now is exactly the right time! Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor's celebrated biographer, says this about the book: "Skillfully told...profoundly moving."

A giveaway and more...

We're having a Goodreads giveaway this week. It's one of those you-can't-win-if-you-don't-enter things, so click on over and do it before you forget. Good luck!

Homestead report 

Lovely, lovely cypress trees--now nearly 30 feet tall. They were about 5 feet tall when we planted them along the creek 30-some years ago. They're beautiful all year long, but especially in November, when they show off their breathtaking bronze foliage. Yesterday: a tree full of robins, southbound for the winter, and a skein of sandhill cranes, warbling high in the sky, their long flight boosted by a brisk north wind.  

Book report. More progress on Ruby's 40,000-word novella, under the working title, "Ruby & the No Body Incident." Does that pique your curiosity? Working in this short length (after dozens of projects more than twice as long) is an exercise in writing with economy--not my strongest suit!

Reading note. Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known. ― Garrison Keillor

 

 

Works-in-Progress

My current cross-stitch work-in progress, not quite a third completed. This will be a looong one--I may still be working on it this time next year! But I look forward to the couple of hours I spend with it in the evening. This one came as a kit (fabric, floss, chart), so the work of getting the fabric and choosing the colors was already done. So I have the pleasure of doing the work itself. For me, there's something about cross stitch that soothes the soul, something like a mantra. It's precise, yet creative; technically demanding, yet freeing. I can ignore the chart wherever I choose and create my own version. This is 14-count Aida--not as small as 18-count, but impossible for me without the help of a magnifying lamp. I love the detail work, and I'm always astonished at the almost magical way the flowers emerge on the fabric.

On the writing desk, the current WIP is something new to me, and experimental. I'm working on a novella, aiming for something about half the length of the usual mystery, about 140-150 pages. I've never worked in this length before, and figuring out how to tell the story in that length is something of a challenge.

This one is a spin-off featuring Ruby, from the Pecan Springs mysteries. In those books (typically around 85,000 words), I usually have the central mystery involving China Bayles, plus 3-4 subplots around the other characters, whose character arcs are continued and developed from one novel to the next (one reason why this series is best read in order). This project has the same setting (Pecan Springs) but a different main character (Ruby) and a different voice (first person, but present tense). It's shorter, about 40-45,000 words. And since it features Ruby, her psychic experiences are at the heart of the mystery. A lot of new material to work with, different and fun.

It's also an ebook-only project, which gives me the freedom to do things differently. Putting a print book out there is a large, costly, months-long project involving printers, a distributor, wholesalers, booksellers (chains and indies), reviewers, and advertisers. The ebook involves the usual copy editor and cover artist, but then it's on to the reader, to you, directly.

Homestead report. Autumn is here, finally, with a welcome cool-down into the 50s and 60s. (I'm sure I don't have to tell you that global warming is with us, no matter what the Trump administration claims.) No big fall garden this year, just potatoes and onions. Bill has been stacking firewood, though, in hopes of enough cool nights to have a fire in the fireplace. No pecan harvest this year: the squirrels cleaned out the trees before we did. But there are the usual pleasures of the changing seasons: leaves falling, darker days, more time for reading, for turning inward.

Reading note.

Instructions for living a life. 
Pay attention. 
Be astonished. 
Tell about it.

―Mary Oliver

Autumn Pleasures, and a New Project

I love the maples in the Midwest and the aspen in the West. I miss them, here in Texas, where we don't have a lot of bright fall foliage. But this 30-year-old crepe myrtle is a colorful stand-in--plus, it shows off pretty pink blooms all summer, so it's a winner all around.

Crepe (or crape) myrtle is a world traveler, brought from Korea to Charleston SC in the 1790s by the French botanis Andre Michaux. It is happily at home here in our Zone 8 Texas Hill Country winters and can probably survive as far north as Zone 6. Because it's deciduous, it sheds all this pretty foliage in the winter, making its beautiful peeling bark more noticeable.

Homestead report. Sadly, another chicken catastrophe. Last week, we lost our senior hen Buffie, a Buff Orpington. She didn't come back to the coop with the rest of the Girls after an afternoon's free ranging. Old age, I thought. C'est la vie.

But this week, we lost two Barred Rocks, so I've revised that thought: C'est la guerre. Coyotes, I now believe, and probably plural. At first, it appeared that we had lost three Girls. But a survivor made her way home the next morning and seems to be recovering.

Judging from the evidence (feathers), this latest raid took place in the yard, just ten yards from the house. The raiders are bold, coming so close.  haven't seen the wild turkeys lately either, so maybe they're among the battlefield losses. Nature, red in tooth and claw. And while I mourn the lost Girls, coyotes have to eat to live, just like the rest of us. But the Girls will have to stay in their pen for a while--no more afternoons out.

Book report. In my last post, I told you about the new writing project: a series of novellas (short novels) featuring Ruby Wilcox, a spin-off from the Pecan Springs/China Bayles series, to be published in ebook format. Chris left a comment that has me thinking. She writes: "Although I prefer print books for larger works, I love that my favorite authors are doing short stories and novellas on e-book. I get to see work I would never have seen otherwise."

That seems to me a really smart observation. From a writer's point of view, shorter work gives us the opportunity to experiment with new ideas, different voices, new ways of seeing our fictional worlds. In this project, the character (Ruby) and setting (Pecan Springs) are familiar. But I'm playing with first-person, present-tense narration. And since Ruby is psychic (as you may remember), this mystery is a paranormal. I'm seeing a 3-novella character/plot arc here--not sure where it will go after that.

In addition to the possibilities for experimentation, the ebook format allows us to publish our work quickly. Publishing in print is a 12-month calendar (finished manuscript to finished book) if you're working with a traditional publisher. Ebook publication is simpler and faster, so I can plan a Ruby trilogy on a 12- to 18-month calendar. As you can tell, I'm excited about this new project, which is an add-on to my ongoing print projects: China Bayles and the Darling Dahlias.

As a reader, I still love print books. But there's no room for another bookshelf in our small house, and every shelf is already double-stacked. This is a new world, with new opportunities. I'm adapting. And I love it.

Reading note. Ask anyone with a big book collection, and they'll tell you moving them was the hardest part of the move. Take down a bookshelf and there's often no less than four, possibly up to eight, good Lord if it's over ten, boxes of dense material. This is the single greatest argument for welcoming ebooks. Abandoning print and having your Kindle on display instead doesn't sound like such a bad idea while carrying book box number seven to the car.--Lauren Leto, Judging a Book by Its Lover: A Field to the Hearts and Minds of Readers Everywhere