Lifescapes

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 

Work in Progress: Needlepoint

I'm all but done with this project, which I started at the beginning of May, with threads--both perle cotton and embroidery floss--out of my stash. It was finicky work, a lesson in patience, but that's what it's all about, isn't it? Patience and paying attention. Paying careful attention, because when your attention wanders, you lose your place in the pattern, and what you have left is a scramble. A helpful life lesson, perhaps.

Book report. I finished the full draft of The General's Women, sent it out to beta readers, and have gotten helpful responses. I'll go back to it when all the other responses are in--in the meantime, I did some research on Queen Anne's Lace and have started writing. This will be another "split-screen" story, one mystery happening in the distant past, the other in the present. If I get it right, they'll dovetail into a single story in the final chapters. I used this structure for Widow's Tears and Nightshade, two of my favorite China Bayles mysteries. It's a little more work, but there it is again: patience and paying attention, so that it doesn't end in a scramble.

Homestead report. The usual July heatwave is upon us, with a high pressure dome squatting over us like a giant placid toad. The garden is done for the summer; I won't be putting in the fall garden until the soil temps fall back into the non-combustible zone. The Girls are allowed out early in the afternoon, because they will roast if I leave them in their coop--and while we like roast chicken, these hens are here to make eggs. The wild pigs were holding nightly let's-dig-up-the-grass parties in our back yard, until Bill hooked up the varmint repeller, which emits a very loud clacking and some ultrasonic noise. The pigs decided to take their party elsewhere.

Yes, it's hot. Nothing new about that. But August is butterfly month, and the Swallowtails--Giant, Black, Spicebush, and Tiger--are lovely to look at and plentiful this year. This is a Spicebush catching a snooze on a juniper twig. Gorgeous.

Reading note, on patience: Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day. A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh 

Unfinished Business

These days, it seems that my life is filled with works in progress. There's always a loose end somewhere: an incomplete bit that needs filling out, something untied or untidy, a project that's still under construction. Nothing ever quite seems finished. This is probably a good thing, especially because things that need doing seem to invite me into them and move me forward. And that's progress, isn't it? Sometimes, however, it feels like much of a muchness, almost too much, and I'm ready for something to be done. Once and for all.

But even when it's done, it's not, really. When the needlepoint is finished, it still needs to be framed, then hung or gifted. The first planting of potatoes is in, but will need to be hilled and probably covered against early spring frosts and watered and dug, with some served up in future dinners, others saved for seed for the next planting. The story is finished but will have to be edited, copyedited, proofread, formatted, and published. I usually have the feeling that I didn't do the story justice, quite--so I promise myself I'll do better or take it further or dig into it deeper the next time. Which leads me into the next story. And so it goes. As Bill says about our lives here at MeadowKnoll, there are too many moving parts!

Book report. There are three projects on the desk, in varying stages of completion. I've finished a full draft of The Last Chance Olive Ranch (China's 25th mystery!) but it needs another run-through before it goes to the editor at the end of March and then into the year-long publication process at Berkley's Prime Crime imprint.

Loving Eleanor will be launched in another week--if you're in the Austin area on January 31, you're invited to join  me for the grand send-off at Bookwoman. After the launch, the book goes into a year of marketing efforts, my efforts, since this is an author-published book. Booksellers and librarians, you'll find the book at Ingram, in hardcover, paperback, and large print. Librarians, it's also available as a Self-e book; look for it, if your library is in that program. Reviewers and book bloggers, it's still available as a "Read Now" from NetGalley. I'll be announcing a blog tour soon, so keep your ears open for that--and for audio, as well. Hoping to have that announcement in another week or two.

A Wilder Rose (originally author-published, then published in a new edition by Lake Union) is now officially underway as a film project with a highly-successful production company that creates features, unscripted series, documentaries, mini-series, and various movies of the week. Rose looks like she's headed for a television mini-series. I'll keep you posted on her progress, which will no doubt be slow.

On the drafting table: Chapter Six (out of 20+ chapters) in the next biographical/historical novel, The General's Women, a wartime romance about a fascinating love triangle: Kay Summersby, Ike, and Mamie. On the reading/research stack:  possibilities I'm considering for China's 26th adventure and another historical/biograhical novel. 

Garden/homestead report. Yes, I did. Really. I planted the first bed of potatoes in early January, five weeks ahead of schedule. It's been so warm (and even a little wet) that I decided to give it a try. I'll plant another around Valentine's Day, which is the usual time here in the Hill Country. Meanwhile, the spinach is up nicely (harvest about a month away) and there are lots of lovely green perennial onions. All the Girls are laying now, so we have an abundance of eggs. For supper tonight, a quiche. I made this one last week. Tonight, a Tex-Mex quiche, from the luncheon menu at China's and Ruby's tearoom.

Meanwhile, as I write this, friends in the Northeast are being hit by a godzilla of a blizzard, fueled by a godzilla of an El Nino, fueled by (naturally) global warming, fueled by the fossil energy we humans are consuming. If you're in the path of that winter monster, I hope you'll stay home, stay warm, and have a good book to read. Quiche wouldn't be a bad idea, either, if you've got a half-dozen eggs.

Reading note. The fairies, as their custom, clapped their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear to think they had finished it. ― J.M. Barried, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens 

Happy New Year!

Sandhills, heading south for the winter--very, very late. We usually see them in October, sometimes in November, never in December. But it's been warm up north (the North Pole could be as warm as we are here in Texas!), which may have delayed the annual migration of this large flock. We rushed outside and watched, open-mouthed and listening to their wild, warbling calls as they flew overhead. 

Book Report. This New Year's Day is a good day to let you know what's on the writing desk for 2016. I'll be working on another China Bayles mystery (#26--no title yet, still waiting for inspiration), and a historical/biographical novel about Eisenhower, Kay Summersby, and Mamie. The Ike/Kay/Mamie novel is already a work-in-progress, with three chapters fairly complete--aiming to finish by September. I'll work on China's mystery late in the year (it has a due date of March 2017). I'm looking forward to both of these projects with a huge enthusiasm and excitement. (Picture me doing a little happy dance here.)

There will also be two new books in the bookstores and online: Loving Eleanor on February 1 and the new China Bayles mystery, Blood Orange, on April 5.

Homestead Report. We're all buttoned up for the winter here, grateful to have missed the destructive storms that have been battering our friends to the north. In the evenings, we're treated to sights of deer, coyotes, foxes, and wild pigs and to the courting calls of the great horned owl that lives in our woods.

We can't know what's ahead, but I love the serenity of each day--especially because I have good work to do and good friends, like you. Thank you for your friendship, and best wishes for a bright and fruitful new year.

Reading note. I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something. So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever. ― Neil Gaiman 

Let there be . . . squash!

The pumpkins and summer squash are blooming in the garden, and the squash bees (Peponapis sp.) are hard at work. This species of native solitary bees specializes in curcubit blossoms: zucchini and butternut squash, pumpkins, and gourds, among others.

I took this photo just after seven one morning, when the zucchini blossoms were busy with bees. Peponapis are early risers, often getting up before dawn to get to the blossoms as soon as they're open for business in the morning. Unlike honeybees, these are ground-nesting insects: the females dig tiny tunnels and deposit their eggs with balls of pollen to feed the emerging bees. The males hang out, flitting around, looking for an unclaimed, unmated female. The job done, they crawl into an open blossom to sleep it off until the next day. Their territories are smaller than those of honeybees, and the chances are good that if you plant squash, they will come--especially if you plant every year. Important: if you want squash bees--or any species of bee, for that matter, lay off the insecticide.

Homestead report. What with one thing and another, the laying flock is now down to two Buffies, who produce an egg every other day. If I want more fresh eggs (I do!) it's time to expand the flock. A trip to the feed store produced 6 Barred Plymouth Rock pullet chicks (that is, girl babies), who grow up to look like this.

But a snake (a six-foot rat snake) had other ideas. I thought I'd snake-proofed the chick cage in the coop, but snakes are tricky characters and almost impossible to keep out, if they're determined to come in. I caught this one in the act and rescued two survivors, but he'd already devoured four. Boo-hoo. It's silly to put in the effort to raise just two chicks, so it was back to the feed store to get four more. They're now in a small stock tank in our dining room, where they'll stay until they're too big for a snake to eat.

I dug the last of the potatoes this week, and now have enough for meals the rest of the year, plus seed potatoes for the fall garden. The sweet potatoes are now in, and doing well. We've had as much rain in the first six months of the year as we normally get in twelve, so the garden is flourishing.

Book report. Working now on the last editing pass through Loving Eleanor, my biographical/historical novel about the relationship of Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt. I'll be publishing it through my Persevero Press in February 2016, available in print (hardcover, trade paper) and ebook formats. 

Story Circle. I'm serving as president of the Story Circle Network through 2017, so you'll be hearing a lot from me about my work with this wonderful community of women writers. If you're interested in journaling, memoir, fiction, and poetry, you'll want to know about us: we offer classes, workshops, conferences, and much more. This week, I've been helping with the 2016 conference planning. Right now, we're recruiting faculty for the conference (April 15-17, 2016, Austin). If you're a writing teacher, coach, go here to learn why you should send us your proposal.

Reading note. Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. —Mary Oliver

Drought-breaker!

At last, after nearly five years of drought, there's been enough rain to refill our 17-acre lake and recharge the little creek that runs along the western border of our homestead. Sadly, the rains were catastrophic south of us, and the Blanco River flooded Wimberley, one of the villages that occasionally appear in the China Bayles series. As the last update, two families are still missing. There's more rain due today across the Hill Country, due to a persistent dip in the jet stream, a strengthening El Nino in the western Pacific, and a warming Gulf that sends plenty of moisture in our direction. A tornado watch, too--the weekend storm spawned a radar-spotted tornado five miles northeast of us. I'm ready to head for Archie Bunker if the weather gurus say the word. Given the weather, Bill is cutting his New Mexico trip short. He'll be home tomorrow.

Book report. I've been working the past couple of weeks on the Fifties memoir I'm writing with my brother John, which we'll likely publish in 2016. One important outcome of the project has been the closeness it's created between us. John and I were busy with careers and families for most of our adult lives and were in touch only intermittently. We started working on the memoir about 18 months ago, and now it's a rare day when we don't exchange emails. We see our family past in pretty much the same way, so we haven't had to cope with any of the sibling disagreements that plague some families. The research and writing have been interesting and enjoyable, especially since from this distance (fifty-some years) we see the family skeletons a little more clearly and their place in the mysteries that confounded us when we were kids.

Garden report. Anybody want a bushel of yellow crookneck squash? The zucchinis are coming on, too. My favorite way to prepare these tender spring squash: saute in plenty of butter with mushrooms, peas, green onions, garlic, and a little chopped link sausage (Polska Kielbasa is our favorite) or a few fresh shrimp. Serve over gnocchi, tortellini, or pasta. The spring potatoes should have been dug last week, but the ground is so soggy I haven't even tried. 

Book travel. I'm headed next week to Iola KS to talk to a group of librarians about A Wilder Rose. I love groups like this--they're all dedicated Little House readers, but they're interested in understanding more about the way the books were written and the role that Rose Wilder Lane played in the initial marketing of the books and her development of her mother's draft manuscripts. It'll be fun to share the book with these librarians and have a Q&A that digs deep into the issues around the long-running literary deception that presented Laura Ingalls Wilder as an "untaught genius" who was the sole author of the books.

Reading note Sifting through long forgotten stories of my childhood and writing on a daily basis, I became obsessed with following the threads of my memories, one leading to another. I start pulling on a single, seemingly trivial strand, only to discover it is attached to a longer strand; that one in turn is attached to an even bigger one. Sometimes, I find have tugged a whole, hidden tapestry of my past into view, one thread at a time.--Alice Bag

Spring gardening in the Texas Hill Country

Lest you think that I spend all my time writing, here's a glimpse into another part of my life--the garden.

The potatoes look terrific this year, there in the left foreground. I planted them in January, fended off a couple of hard freezes in March, and look at them now! But bushy green tops are only part of the story. I can only hope they're doing their job at producing tubers--we'll know next month, when we dig them. Three kinds here: Yukon Gold, Caribe, and one of the reds, can't remember which.

Behind the potatoes on the left, the perennial onions. They're topsets and blooming now--I'll have to deadhead them or I'll have way more onions than I want. I use the white part in cooking all year and in the spring, when the green tops are tender, I use them like green onions. By fall, I'll be down to just a few clumps, which I'll separate and grow on for next year.

Beyond the onions, kale, chard, and spinach, with garlic at the end of the bed. We eat the tender new leaves, and the girls (my flock of six layers) get a half-bucket of older leaves every day. I love having chickens to eat the garden produce we can't. And their poop goes into the compost, which comes back into the garden. What goes around comes around, in the loveliest possible way.

Beyond the greens bed, a bed of Roma tomatoes and past that, a new bed of Kentucky Wonders and McCaslan beans, both pole-growers. I planted them last Sunday and the McCaslans, eager to see what it's all about, are already up and growing.

On the right, at the back, a trellis of pole peas. I prefer pole beans and peas--easier picking! Beside that bed, two more beds of tomatoes: Better Boys and Porters (the famous TX heritage tomato, a hot-weather survivor). I'll plant the weedy bed, right front, to zucchini and yellow crookneck squash later today.

But I've also been doing writing-related chores. A Wilder Rose--my upcoming self-published novel--now has its own webpage. It has its own Facebook page, too. And its own Pinterest board. I've been making a list of regular book bloggers who might be interested in reviewing the book. If you have a book blog to which you post regularly and think A Wilder Rose might fit your site, email me at susan at susanalbert dot com with a link to your blog.

Happy, busy days here in the Texas Hill Country (although we're still and always wishing for more rain). Hope they're happy and busy at your place, too--and that you have just the right amount of rain on your garden!

Reading note, from Rose Wilder Lane's 1919 novel, Diverging Roads: “I’m sure of one thing,” [Helen] said earnestly [to her friends]. “It hurts to—to let go of anything beautiful. But something will come to take its place, something different, of course, but better. The future’s always better than we can possibly think it will be. We ought to know that—really know it. We ought to be so sure of it that we’d let go of things more easily, strike out toward the next thing. Like swimming, you know. Confidently. We ought to live confidently. Because whatever’s ahead, it’s going to be better than we’ve had. I tell you, girls, I know it is.”

In Bloom This Week: CrossVine

The crossvine (it looks like trumpet because they're cousins) is blooming against the house on this beautiful spring day, and the trees and grasses are celebrating the half-inch of rain we got last night, accompanied by a great deal of lightning and thunder. The volume on our weather radio has gone bonkers and we can't turn the darn thing down, so last night's frequent warnings definitely woke us up. I ordered a new radio this morning.

Lots of garden news. Our TX temps are breaking records again this year (listen up, you climate-change deniers). We've already hit 90, twice, while it was still "winter."The peas are up, the potatoes are flourishing, the tomatoes are in--oh, dear, the tomatoes. I transplanted 24 them on Sunday but forgot to water them on Monday, so I lost two. Lost two more to cutworms last night, which leaves 20. I installed cardboard collars are the tomatoes this afternoon, to foil any other cutworms--and caught and squashed the two murderers. Yuck. We've been eating spinach, chard, kale, and onions from the garden.

And eggs from the girls. Five of our six hens are laying regularly, so we're enjoying fresh eggs, with enough to give to friends. While my son Bob was here, he repaired and dog-proofed the chicken coop, so the girls are living in luxury--and security. I've been letting them out in the evening for an hour, keeping an eye out for marauding dogs.

From the writing desk. Ah yes, the writing. Lots of it. Yesterday, I finished Death Come Quickly, China #22 (the 2014 book) and sent it off to New York. Every time I do this, I remember the old days, printing 300+ pages of a book x 2, packaging it up, shipping via Fed Ex (expensive even then!). I'm more than happy to hit "send" and zip the book into my editor's computer. How's that for magic? You don't catch me being nostalgic about the "good old days."

The other project--A Wilder Rose and the Reader's Companion that goes with it--is almost finished. The book itself is being copyedited, and several beta readers are working on it, as well (many thanks to Nancy, Laura, and Susan!). The Companion turned into a bigger job than I imagined and isn't quite done yet. This is a self-published project, so there's a lot of extra learning and work that's going into it, from the publishing end of things. I've been meaning to write a post about that. Now that China's done, I'll have a little more time. For a few days, anyway. I'm expecting the copyedited manuscript of the next Dahlias mystery, The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star, sometime in the next ten days.

So life at Meadow Knoll is busy, and good, with spring in full bloom. Hope spring is coming to your neighborhood very soon!

Reading note. “Whatever you may have heard, self-publishing is not a short cut to anything. Except maybe insanity. Self-publishing, like every other kind of publishing, is hard work. You don’t wake up one morning good at it. You have to work for that.”--Zoe Winters

 

Pecan Harvest!

It's pecan harvest time here at Meadow Knoll, and Bill has been busy--working hard to keep ahead of the squirrels. The trays in this photo contain nuts gathered from a single tree, and we have 20 bearing trees. They don't all produce as well as this one, but all together, it's a good year for pecans.

Bill grafted these trees, on native stock planted here and there by squirrels, floods, and other random acts of a kind and generous nature. He chose the natives for their sturdiness and location, and grafted them with scions (graftwood cut from the previous season's growth of a productive tree) of different cultivars: Choctaw, Desirable, Kiowa, Dobie. They usually bear in alternate years, but the drought confused them and they're out of sync.

Still, this year is a good year and there are plenty of nuts. Bill gathers them; we settle in front of the TV for a shucking party; and then he takes the nuts to a guy in Bertram who cracks/shells them for us. We store them in the freezer--they keep well until the next crop.

All of which means plenty of pecan pies, naturally, like this one I baked yesterday.



Bill's Absolute All-Time Favorite Pecan Pie

1 cup dark corn syrup (if you use light, use brown sugar)

3 eggs

1 cup sugar (brown sugar, if you have light corn syrup)

4 tablespoons butter, melted

3 tablespoons bourbon (rum, if you'd rather)

1-1/2 cups chopped pecans

1 (9-inch) unbaked pie shell

Mix ingredients in order listed. Pour into pie shell. Bake 10 minutes at 425 degrees, 40 minutes at 325. We like this warm, with ice cream.

Reading note, from Calvin Trillin, American Fried (a collection of his newspaper columns from the 1970s):

When it came to poetry, my father was not an absolutist. Pie was his favorite subject for a couplet, but every three or four weeks he would write about something else—perhaps a couplet like

"'Eat your food,' gently said Mom to little son Roddy.
'If you don't, I will break every bone in your body.'"

The next day he would be back to pies --

"Mrs. Trillin's pecan pie, so nutritious and delicious
Will make a wild man mild and a mild man vicious."

Works-in-progress: October

The broiler chicks (Cornish Rock X) are growing fast, eating like there's no tomorrow. I just opened the second 50# sack of chick starter. The nights here are beginning to cool off, so I turn on the heat lamp about 10 p.m. and turn it off at 7 a.m. Next week, they'll be big enough to keep themselves warm unless the temp drops below 55. I'll let them out of the coop next week, weather permitting, and into their fenced chicken yard.

The layer chicks (Red Stars and Buff Orpingtons--7 of them) are still in the house, in their bathtub brooder (yes, we do have two bathtubs--one for them, one for us). They grow more slowly--will probably go out to the coop in another 10 days or so, and move in with the broilers. I don't think there'll be a problem integrating them: the Cornish are pretty laid back, as long as there's food available.

 

Needlepoint project: This is "Amber Waves," designed by Laura Perin. (Apologies for the photo: I'm still learning this new camera and not liking it very much.) I started this needlepoint sometime late in August. I usually work on it in the evenings for a couple of hours--not making very fast progress, but that's not the point, is it? I do want to finish this one, though: have a new one waiting and am eager to get started on it.

Book report. The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose is out this month (strong reviews!). I visited Dani Greer's blog, The Blood Red Pencil, blogging about some of the historical background in the book.

Also out this month: the final book in the Cottage Tales: The Tale of Castle Cottage. I posted a page of historical recipes from the book, for those of you who have read your library's copy. All the recipes from all the books are up now--just click on the book cover and you'll go to the page. The link to the printable pdf is at the top.

Writing work currently in progress: Wild Rose (that's the working title: it may change). I'll be focussed on this through Christmas, when I need to start the next China Bayles mystery. I'd like to have a full draft by that time--hoping so, anyway. This is a novel about Rose Wilder Lane (1866-1968), for those of you who have tuned in late. RWL was an enormously complicated woman, and the challenge (in addition to the difficult work of fictionalizing a real person) is doing justice to her rich contradictions and complications. As a basic background text of RWL's life, I'm using William Holtz's splendid biography, The Ghost in the Little House, as well as the collection of articles and books I've put together over the 20+ years of my interest in this topic. For the primary source material, I'm using RWL's diaries and journals for the years 1928-1939, the period covered by the central story of the novel. I'm deeply indebted to the archivists at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library for their help in assembling the primary material. I'm also indebted to Nansie Cleveland for her excellent bibliography of the writings of RWL and her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder. I'll have more about this later, after I've finished the draft. I'm pretty obsessive about the writing just now.

Garden report. Tomatoes blooming, Kentucky Wonder beans climbing the trellis, spinach planted for early spring harvest. I'll be digging sweet potatoes later this month.

Reading note. Somebody commented on Confederate Rose that it was "easy reading." I'm complimented, but it made me think of this: Easy reading is damn hard writing.  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne