Twelfth Night, a Regency historical novel
a 30,000-word preview
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a 30,000-word preview
Sign up for my newsletter in order to receive this and more of my current projects!
As an author, my job is to keep writing forward. This is sometimes hard, sometimes almost impossible. All authors have half-finished manuscripts lying around. These are ideas that seemed so good at the time, and then petered out somewhere before the end.
But you can't be an author without the sure conviction that the next chapter will come, if you sit down and start putting words on the page. Those old manuscripts? We left them behind because we had better ideas. I'm always ready for the next chapter. If there's anything I love about being an author, it's the knowledge that I am the boss of this story. I not only have the words, but I have the chisel that I use to carve the story out of all those words.
At a time when we can't be sure of what might happen in the next chapter, all we can do is to know that we're in charge of what we do with it. Don't stop putting words on the page. Don't stop carving your story out of those words.
#ThankfulThursday
I am well aware that we are all bearing the current burden in different ways. Those of us who are at home are experiencing this social distancing in our own unique ways. For some, life at home is fine. For others, life at home is isolating and difficult. Others of us are on the front lines. We are the healthcare workers, delivery people, grocery store workers, utility workers, computer techs, transportation workers, police, and many others, who have to be outside and interacting with the community, regardless of the danger.
Every day, I think about the people who are right now, at this very moment, experiencing something that I am not. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Know that I am thinking about you and sending loving kindness your way.
Sometimes jokes are just to lighten the mood. And sometimes jokes get us to do what's good for us.
I'm not much of a backwoods person. Okay, what I meant to say is--I'm not a backwoods person. At all. I'm from the big city, and I'm comfortable in the world of bus schedules and take-out. My husband, however, grew up in the fine tradition of serious hiking, camping, and navigating with a compass. My definition of hike is a one-mile leisurely walk through a manicured park, stopping to smell the roses along the way. My husband's definition of a hike involves specific boots purchased in England decades ago when he was a grad student. So I should have known that something was up when he badgered me into joining him for "a little hike." It was just a short walk! It would be fun! So I reluctantly agreed. It was a fine summer day, so there I was in my shorts, ready for a "little hike."
It turned out to be a climb up a mountain. Yes, vertical. Yes, muddy. Yes, above the tree line. Swirling mist. Clouds. 5,249 feet. Alpine zone. And the climb down was about ten times as scary and difficult as the climb up. Was I happy? Ha. However, I ended up doing something pretty awesome, something that I was fully capable of doing--and I lived to tell the tale.
This has been a favorite story in our family because it demonstrates something essential about my husband (he has a gutsy sense of fun) and myself (sometimes the only way to get me to do what's good for me is to prank me!). How about you? Have you been tricked into something that you would never have done otherwise--but lived to tell the tale? Wherever you are, whatever you are doing--I hope there is some laughter in your day!
I'm hard at work on my novella! I'm about 75% of the way in! Charlie, a boy from 1895, has appeared in Elisabeth's 1995 woodshed. She's had to take him to work with her at the local library while she figures out what to do with him, because he doesn't want to go back to his own time. But what incredibly bad timing...the guy she's crushing on asks her out, and she's had to turn him down because, well, CHARLIE appears! What do you think will happen next?
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