Summertime is filled with the tasks I enjoy most. I live in Lake Ontario fruit country, where there are so many berries, cherries, peaches, and plums to do things with, bake into cakes, pies, and crisps, preserve or freeze. By August, I’m pickling cucumbers and canning tomatoes. Inevitably, at some point, a neighbor will leave a bag of zucchinis on the porch, and it’s a shame to let nice zucchinis go to waste. In the meantime, I have a writing project languishing, neglected. But the warmer months are also my pottery months. My studio isn’t heated, so I have to wait until the summer to throw and fire pots. [Read more…] about Paired, Turned, Fired
Archives for June 2020
When the Present Makes a Writer Want to Curl Up in the Past
My first novel The Beloved Wild, a historical YA, came out in 2018, but once in a great while, a reader will still contact me about it. It’s gratifying when this person shares what they liked about the book, but usually they just have questions. Okay, one question: “Are you going to write a sequel?”
I don’t know. That’s usually what I say. But the truth is, when that novel was finally off my plate and out in the world, I was relieved and ready to move on. A sequel was the last thing on my mind. Not that I didn’t love my girl-masquerading-as-a-boy protagonist Harriet Winter or the early nineteenth century Genesee Valley where her pioneer adventure unfolds; just that crafting an excellent historical novel is, well, hard. [Read more…] about When the Present Makes a Writer Want to Curl Up in the Past
