We're spending a couple of weeks at our cabin in New Mexico, near the village of Rociada, between Taos and Las Vegas (NM). It's a long drive from Texas--11+ hours, including breaks for Molly (our heeler) and other necessary stops. But a good book (listening to Charles Mann's 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created) and good conversation fill the road hours pleasurably.
We had a little snow yesterday, with more coming down today. I love it here when the snow clouds spill down from the mountain and into the valley below us--love settling in with a book in front of our little electric faux fire. Its great advantage: no logs to lug upstairs or ashes to carry down.
Or settling down with my computer in a corner of the loft, to work on the current project:
Book report. I'm back at work on the Ruby novella trilogy, which has been a fill-in project between longer works (The Darling Dahlias and the Poinsettia Puzzle, A Plain Vanilla Murder). Because it's fill-in, it's taking more time. I forget what I've done, change my mind, recast some of the characters, and so forth. These novellas are about 35k words, and they're linked, so there's an overall arc that connects all three. They're intended for ebook publication, sometime next year, under my Persevero Press imprint. I'm almost finished with the third--one more edit of the whole thing and I'm done. Whew.
Next on the writing to-do list: a China Bayles mystery I'm tentatively calling Hemlock. It involves the theft of a very famous (real) herbal: Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal, published in 1737. It will be a dual mystery, like Widow's Tears, with part of the book set in the 1730s, as Elizabeth is creating the book.
Here's a question for you readers of the China Bayles series. Does Hemlock work as a title, all by itself, without the word "poison"? If you have an opinion, please let me know in the comments. I'll randomly choose one and send that person a copy of Vanilla (June 2019).
It's been a busy year for my little single-author imprint, Persevero Press. Persevero published two of the Darling Dahlias (Unlucky Clover in March and Poinsettia Puzzle in April). Also in the works at Persevero: A Plain Vanilla Murder (China's 27th adventure). The manuscript has been copyedited and typeset and is now in production. The cover is also finished--you'll get first peek in early January. I've enjoyed working with the team at Greenleaf Book Group, which will handle the printing and distribution of Vanilla, as they did with the two Dahlias titles.The pub date: June 4, 2019.
After the holidays, too, I may have some interesting news for you about the film/TV version of A Wilder Rose. So stay tuned!
If our paths don't cross again before Christmas, I hope you'll have a wonderful holiday, with family and friends and time for doing the things that bring you the greatest contentment, pleasure, and peace.
Reading note. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. ― Lao Tzu