Moving Day

Patrick, Bill, Elise, the judge, four-nine-year olds and their families are moving out of my French home. They are characters in my novella Sugar and Spice. I serialized them on this blog and on Substack. 

I was thrilled with all the positive comments I received. 

Lexington: Anatomy of a Novel, was published in 2022, but I will start to serialize it soon as well as part of the 250 anniversary of the birth of the United States. It is three stories. 

1. James Holloway, British baker and widower, frustrated with his life in Ely, England, joins the British Army. He did not expect himself to be in the middle of the start of the American Revolution.
2. Scottish historian and wife of the British Consul to Boston, Daphne Andrews, who in trying to fill the void in her marriage, lines up with her counterpart from the French consulate to investigate the Battle at Lexington from a modern point of view.
3. I love when writers tell me how and why they wrote something the way they did. The third part of this book tells the story of the writing of Lexington. 

When I'm working on fiction, the characters live with me. They stand next to me as I cut up veggies. They interrupt books I'm trying to read. Sometimes in the middle of the night, they follow me to the bathroom and back to bed, where they tell me what they should do and say the next day.

Today, I waved good bye to my sugar and spice friends. Then I looked around the corner where I saw Margo, Heather and Bethany. They were waiting for me to start my new novella, The Ring. Although I started it a couple of decades ago, I could never get it right. I realized the novel became lost in a memoir. Now with new characters, the base story is flowing.

Tomorrow we do our normal trek to our main home in Geneva. Margo, Heather, and Bethany have agreed to sit in the backseat along with Sherlock our dog. It's a six to eight hour drive with pee and lunch breaks. 

They'll tell me their ideas. 

I'll introduce them to my husband, also a writer and I'm sure he'll have questions for them.

The first thing I'll do in Geneva is to set up my laptop and get to work. The small flat will be crowded with three new friends, but we'll make it work.