My Writer's Journal

Anybody notice my remarkable resemblance to Jamie Lee Curtis?  The hair?


Keeping a journal is a good habit for a writer. Every day (well, almost) I make a few notes about my writing projects: the book I'm currently working on. This is your invitation to read over my shoulder to see how my work is going.

November 11, 2008:

Everything is on track, and I'm happy.  I did set Marie-Antoinette aside for about a week and began reading up for a long trip that begins on Thanksgiving and ends on New Year's Day. It was a wrench then to go back to THE BAD QUEEN and make another careful revision. The manuscript, which came in at 273 pages, went off yesterday to Julie. Then I immediately began thinking about things I should have done differently. There will be plenty of chances for that later, after Julie has had a go at it. Now I have to start thinking about Cleopatra, who will be much on my mind early in December when I visit Egypt and take a trip down the Nile.  I'm burying myself in travel books, but I also have to take care of a hundred little details. Today I visited my doctor for a Hepatitis A shot and prescriptions for an antibiotic and something to stop diarrhea. Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? I've already made arrangements for Jake the Dog to stay with Ian and Jackie and their two dogs, Napoleon, who is about Jake's size and doesn't seem thrilled about having another male canine on his turf, and little Lola, a beaglish kind of pup who thinks Jake and Napoleon are pretty scary beasts. My fingers are crossed that all will go well on this front. Then I have to arrange for the house to be checked, the plants watered, the mail picked up in case the post office forgets. And lots of bills to pay in advance, and I'm sure to forget some important one and come home to discover the lights have been shut off. I get pretty neurotic about all this. Then there's the packing. What, exactly, should I take? It will be pretty warm in Egypt, but cold at night, and then we'll be spending Christmas in Barcelona, and Spain can get pretty chilly. And which shoes do I pack? Which coat? Aaaargh.

The great thing, though, is that the writing has been going really well. At least it feels that way. And there's always a lot of excitement when I finish one big project and get ready to jump into another. I'm also looking forward to having THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF CHARLEY DARWIN out and about. I wonder what readers will think of it. I'm making big plans to team up with Anne Weaver, author of THE VOYAGE OF THE BEETLE, for younger readers; Anne is a scientist, an evolutionary anthropologist, and her book about Charley's journey on the Beagle fits perfectly with mine. We're hoping to give some presentations together at museums and schools. I've joked with her that we should get a bus and hit the road. What a story that would be!


October 23, 2008:

Still on schedule--actually a week ahead. I blasted through an intense revision of THE BAD QUEEN on hard copy and finished typing a zillion changes onto the computer a couple of hours ago. I read it aloud as I was working on it, which is a good way to see if the language feels right--varying sentence length, avoiding passive voice, remembering to sound like a queen but not a Tudor. Now I'm going to set it aside for 10 days or more, go through it again, and then off it goes to Julie.

Interesting e-mail: Angelina, age 13, wants advice on finding an editor so she can get her novel published. I don't make myself loved by telling her what I tell all beginning writers, age 13 to age 65: You need to do a lot more writing and rewriting and paying attention to criticism and revising and maybe starting all over again before you start talking about getting an editor. Writing is like playing a musical instrument--the piano, say--or doing a sport--tennis, for instance. You don't take lessons for a year and practice for an hour a day and expect to play at Carnegie Hall or the French Open. So why would anyone think that writing is different? I know--I sound hard-hearted, but believe me, I know what I'm talking about here.

Another interesting e-mail: Christine, who's about my decade, has been methodically working away through the YA section of her library, reading my books. This is really nice, because she always writes to tell me her reaction. This is what I got from her recently: "We need to talk about your endings. I just finished Wild Rover. I'm sitting at my computer trying to get myself together. It was sadder than Nannerl and I could hardly take Nannerl." Nannerl is Mozart's sister, who narrates her story in IN MOZART'S SHADOW, and yes, it's not the happiest story, but it's historically accurate. WILD ROVER, which I wrote nearly 20 years ago, is another matter. It's not a historical novel but the story of a man who escapes from prison and goes to find his daughter at a summer music camp; the two of them try to make a getaway together. Now this is not a weird take on Bonnie and Clyde, but a tender and realistic story of a father and daughter who learn a lot about each other and about themselves in the course of their adventure. Do they succeed? What do you think?

October 2, 2008:

How nice to be exactly on schedule! My goal was to have my first draft of THE BAD QUEEN finished by the end of September, so that I could start revisions on October 1. I was only two days off target--I finished the Epilogue this morning, printed out the whole manuscript (25 chapters; 264 pp) during my lunch, and now I'm ready to tear into it. It's a very complicated story, I've changed narrators for the last third of the book (Marie-Antoniette's daughter, Marie-Thérèse takes over), and there are so many characters with long French names that I'll have to make a chart to keep them all straight. I haven't decided how much French to include, or whether to use French or English royal titles. And I still have to write the Historical Notes section. My goal for this: one month. By the first of November I want to start doing research on Cleopatra, my next subject. More about that later.

The "first pass" galleys for THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF CHARLEY DARWIN arrived from the publisher before Labor Day, and I had a huge amount of work to do on these rough pages. At the time I was writing, it made perfect sense to me to use British spellings throughout--parlour for parlor, etc.--to make the first person narrative feel more authentic. But it turns out there were a lot more "Britishisms" than I thought, like practise for practice, and both the copyeditor and I had missed a bunch. Very time-consuming to catch them all and then discuss them over the phone with Editor Julie. (Scroll down to see the splendid jacket, in case you missed it.)

I'm happy to have posted some new photographs. The pictures of me on this page and the home page were taken by Cindy, mother of my granddaughter Sophie, who was here over Labor Day. I'm not very good at manipulating photos, but I did manage to crop a couple and actually get them onto the site. The old ones had been there since this site first went up more than 8 years ago.

Jake the Dog is doing fine, but not good enough to take to the Farmer's Market on Saturday mornings where I love to go to buy fresh tomatoes, corn, garlic, French bread, cheese. Lots of people take their dogs, mellow and well-behaved creatures. Jake is NOT mello, so after one disastrous visit I've decided to leave him at home. The dog park is a different story. He loves it and behaves like a perfect gentleman.

And that's all for now.  



September 11, 2008:

Meet Haley, age 13, a new fan. Haley recently read MARY, BLOODY MARY,  in which the young Princess Mary takes up falconry--teaching her bird, Noisette, to hunt. Falconry was a favorite sport of royalty in Tudor times.  Haley's dad is an apprentice falconer, and Haley herself is a "falconeret," she told me when she sent me her first e-mail. Yesterday she sent me this picture of her (wearing protective glasses) and Luther, a grumpy but beautiful old harris hawk who has the distinction of having thirteen tail feathers instead of the usual twelve. Everything I know about falconry I read in a book (and visited the Peregrine Falcon Center in Boise, ID). And there's Haley, out there actually doing it!






September 7, 2008:

Here is how things sometimes fit together for me perfectly. Every Sunday morning a group of local musicians gets together in an old gas station converted to a kind of theater, not much bigger than a large classroom (about 100+ people squeeze onto tiers of chairs), and they play music, mostly classical, for about an hour. The space is called The Filling Station; the group calls itself "The Church of Beethoven." Nobody is dressed up. Some people come on bicycles. A cellist for the New Mexico Symphony--his name is Felix--decides the program.  A poet is invited to read a few poems. An artist may take a few minutes to talk about one of the paintings that he/she has hung on the wall. And then there's the music! Last week my granddaughter, Sophie, was visiting, and we went to hear a steel drum band. She loved it. This week there was a chamber orchestra with 13 members; the youngest was a flutist, a high school student. The star of the morning was a clarinetist, a recent graduate of Juilliard, named James Shields. The piece he and the orchestra performed was Mozart's clarinet concerto. I was sitting so close to the players that I felt as though I were part of the orchestra. It was pretty hot, and playing a piece so intense is hard work;  the clarinetist began to sweat. Between the allegro and the adagio  he took off his glasses and handed them to me to hold for him. Then he kept on playing. It was  magnificent music, among the last pieces Mozart composed. I sat there thinking about Mozart and the state he must have been in when he wrote it.  The Magic Flute had just had its premier in Prague. He was working night and day, composing hour after hour. The music poured out of him--including this clarinet concerto. No sooner had he finished it than he plunged into the Requiem in D, even though he was very ill. His friends sat by his bedside and helped him. He died before he finished it.

Having written IN MOZART'S SHADOW: HIS SISTER'S STORY, I know Mozart's story fairly well. The piece I heard this morning in a funky former garage while holding the soloist's glasses would have been performed originally in a rich person's drawing room, the audience dressed in silk and velvet and seated on gilded chairs. It felt perfect the way it was today.


September 3, 2008:

Take a look at this, from today's New York Times article about the opening of the Degas exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There's the Little Dancer, the subject of MARIE, DANCING! The painting in the background provided me with a lot of details about Marie's ballet classes.



















September 1, 2008:

How cool is this!  I especially love the boy Charley with his butterfly net, standing on top of that humongous wave!  


August 22:

I've been told that I'm a slow writer, and my work on THE BAD QUEEN is definitely proof of that. In almost four weeks I've managed to add only 3 more chapters, a total of 45 pages. But I'm not discouraged. I've decided the 11 finished chapters are much too long, and I've been going back and dividing each chapter into two. That feels better. I realized that I prefer short chapters when I read, because I do most of my pleasure reading in bed before I go to sleep, my contact lenses removed, the book about three inches from my nose. And I hate to stop in the middle of a chapter (although I've been known to stop in the middle of a paragraph when I get really sleepy).  I'm currently reading OPHELIA, by Lisa Klein, a new take on the girl in Shakespeare's HAMLET. It's a very good book, and I realized that the nice tight chapters are much more effective than my long, loopy ones. So out with loopy, in with tight. And by cutting 11 chapters in two, I now have 22! Hey, moving right along!

In my last entry, July 27, I wrote about THE BAD QUEEN "I'm still unsure just how I'm going to end it." The next day a reader named Madeleine sent me some advice: Have her die. Well, yes, but this is in the first person, and it's pretty hard to have a character write her own death scene. Technical problem here! But I woke up in the middle of the night about a week ago, and I think I've got it, or at least I'm on the right track. I did write back to Madeleine to tell her that historians insist Marie Antoinette never said, "Let them eat cake." That didn't even accurately express her attitude. I'm not trying to make the queen into a saint, certainly, but she was certainly not a monster. My goal is always to present an accurate portrait of my character, flawed but still human. Yesterday I heard from a person named Sean, editor of his school paper, who has read MARY, BLOODY MARY and wonders if I'm absolutely sure Anne Boleyn was a really bad person. Here's what I told him: "If you read DOOMED QUEEN ANNE, you'll get her side of the story. I don't pass judgment; I just try to write a good story from a particular character's point of view." And that, of course, is what I'm attempting with Marie Antoinette.

Enough about character development. Here's a report on THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF CHARLEY DARWIN: I've seen an early version of the jacket, and it's beautiful! Just gorgeous! As soon as I have the finished artwork, I'll put it up here.

Jake the Dog is doing well.

July 27:

The day still begins with Jake the Dog, but once he's had his walk I can settle down with the story of Marie Antoinette. At least I have a working title: THE BAD QUEEN. I'm now on Chapter 8, page 150, about half way through the first draft--not a whole lot of progress since my journal entry of July 2. That's only two chapters in 25 days! How am I going to get it finished on time--by December? I'm still unsure just how I'm going to end it. Antoinette's character becomes clearer to me as I write more about her, but there are so many important people in her life that it's hard to make each character distinct. I rough out a page or two at a time, then go back and rework the new material once or twice and add a little more. I also have to keep referring back to earlier chapters and adding in bits and pieces. The longer the book gets, the harder it is to keep it all straight in my head. Blame it on the dog.

I'm waiting now to see the design for the jacket of THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF CHARLEY DARWIN. I thought it was supposed to be ready a couple of weeks ago. The galleys also seem to be late, and so I dither about that as well. Gotta get the book out in advance of Darwin's 200th birthday on February 12 (same as Abe Lincoln's). Not that I have any control over that. Better just to keep my head down and my focus on THE BAD QUEEN. I do love that title!

July 14:

So Jake, the foster dog, is here. He arrived last Tuesday in the middle of the night, meaning that nobody in this household got much sleep.  I've given up the idea of calling him Jacque and teaching him French. Also I've given up  the "no sleeping on the sofa" rule, because naturally as soon as I go to bed, he sneaks up on the sofa. He is up at 6 and ready for the morning walk, which goes well until he sees something irresistible. In the most recent episode the irresistible something was a calf--yes, a young cow, in the yard of a neighbor in the next block. This family also has a bunch of puppies, which Jake loves, and a couple of roosters, and a bad-tempered bulldog. This is in the middle of the city! I am at least as fascinated as Jake.

Oh, by the way, I still manage to work on MARIE ANTOINETTE. She had dogs, too. And today is Bastille Day, celebrated in France.

July 2:

That trip to Rochester I was talking about last time?  Alan and Amanda, Erin and Joe on their way to Spain for a year? Well, one of the problems they were trying to solve was what to do with their dog, Jake. Seems the people who are renting their house agreed to take the cat but not the dog. So, what to do with Jake? I suggested, kind of off-handedly, that Jake could come and spend a year with us, as a "foster dog," as a last resort if nobody else came along to take him in.

Well, guess what! Nobody else came along! So tomorrow night about midnight Jake will arrive by plane in Albuquerque, all the way from Rochester, NY, which is about 3000 miles and many hours away. Today I went out and bought a bag of dog food and some treats. Jake is a medium-sized dog, sort of tan, mixed-breed to say the least. I've decided that he's secretly a French poodle, standard size (big!) and that I'm going to teach him French. The treats will reinforce that. He will not be Jake, but Jacque. I don't know where he's going to sleep, except it better not be on the living room sofa. He will go on my morning walks with me, not dragging on his leash, and will not stop every three feet to pee on a bush or try to chase other dogs. This is all going to work out beautifully, right? He will inspire me to come home and spend the rest of the day writing, while he lounges by my side or sits in the front yard and watches the passing characters (there are a lot of them in the neighborhood). And he will not tear up my flowers!

I finished a rough draft today of Chapter 6 of THE BAD QUEEN, which is what I've titled the book about Marie Antoinette. Her husband has just been declared King of France, and she's the queen, and she's still only eighteen years old and most of the courtiers at the court of Versailles think she's badl spoiled. I'm a third of the way through, and I have NO IDEA how the book is going to end. Of course I know how Marie Antoinette's story ends, but how do I handle that, since she's the narrator?

Recently I was interviewed on a blog in England. Here's the link: http://britlitfantwin.livejournal.com/84519.html. Pretty interesting questions Tori asked.

June 13:

Friday the Thirteenth, but I don't feel the least bit unlucky. The New York trip was hugely satisfying, but now that I'm home again, after spending 21 of the past 28 days away, I don't want to go anywhere for a long time. New York City was noisy and bustling but exciting. I finally got to meet Newest Editor Julie, who turned out to be very tall with dark hair--and I'd been picturing her as short and blond! We had lunch together and had a lot to talk about. I also met with Agent Jodi, visited old friends in Connecticut where I lived many years ago, saw a great play on Broadway ("August: Osage County," which won a Pulitzer Prize last year), visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and ate some terrific meals--soft-shell crab, a favorite of mine and not often seen in New Mexico.

Then I flew up to Rochester, NY, to spend a few days with my oldest son, Alan, his wife Amanda, my granddaughter Erin, and my grandson Joe. They're very busy getting ready to move to Barcelona, Spain, for a year while Alan does scientific research. They are also madly trying to learn to speak Spanish. The last time I visited there was a terrific snowstorm; this time there was a heat wave. It was my birthday, and at my birthday breakfast I received some splendid presents, including books and handmade cards.

OK, enough having fun. MARIE ANTOINETTE is due January 1, and although I have a few good chapters finished, I still have a very long way to go. 


May 29:

I came back from Paris witih my head absolutely stuffed with exciting Marie Antoinette images, only to be confronted with the copyedited manuscript of THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF CHARLEY DARWIN. This is a tedious but necessary stage in preparing the book for publication. A genius named Dan goes over every word, every comma, every FACT, and makes sure they're all correct. Naturally, Dan found some errors that had somehow snuck in. I've tried to use the British spellings that were (and in many cases, still are) in use in Charley's day: favour, parlour, leapt.  But I'd used words that we spell with a Z, but in Charley's day were spelled with an S: recognise, apologise, and they had to be changed. The 19th century Brits spelled geographical place names differently, too: Teneriffe instead of Tenerife, for instance. And what about all those quotations from letters? Who gives permission to use them? To answer that, I printed out all the letters I'd used, high-lighted the two or three lines I'd plucked from each, and sent the whole batch--more than 40--to Newest Editor Julie.

Now, about Paris. It was beautiful. I spent two days in Versailles, waiting until the hordes of tourists had piled into their buses until I bought my discounted ticket and went touring in a not at all crowded palace. In Paris we discovered that the elevator in our hotel was out of commission, and our room was on the 6th floor--it was like working out on a Stairmaster several times a day. I saw some fascinating exhibits, and we strolled around the Left Bank, checking out the places where Hemingway lived and Picasso painted. French people, who have an undeserved reputation for snobbishness, were wonderfully helpful. Every time I was standing in a Metro station with a dumb look on my face, or on a corner with a map in my hand, somebody came forward to offer help. Food? Terrific. It has taken me a week to lose the pounds I managed to pile on, even with all the walking and stair-climbing. But it will be another couple of weeks before I can start working seriously on MARIE ANTOINETTE, because I leave on Saturday for New York City, where I will finally get to meet Newest Editor Julie, who has worked so hard on CHARLEY.


May 11:

A salute this morning to a man named Jeff Deck, who appears to be second only to the Grammar Dragon, Miss Frankenberry, in his concern about bad spelling and the dread Misplaced Apostrophe. It seems he's as bothered as the G.D., and as I am, by all the mistakes you see in signs everywhere, and he's traveling slowly across the United States CORRECTING THE ERRORS! This will no doubt take him the rest of his natural life. Hats off to you, Jeff! Maybe some readers of this journal can join you in the cause.

Tomorrow I leave for Paris. This is the really tough part of doing the research for a book (ho ho). First I'll spend a couple of days in Versailles, a few miles southwest of Paris, taking another look at the great chateau where Marie Antoinette lived her official life, first as dauphine and later as queen. More importantly, I'll wander around her "domaine," Petit Trianon, the little palace where she spent most of her time, and Le Hameau, the hamlet, a kind of rustic village she had built while she tried to pursue a simple life. I'm also interested in the town of Versailles itself, where the king's stables had thousands of horses and the king's gardens, where food was raised to feed the thousands of people who lived in the chateau. After a couple of days there, I'll go into Paris, where I'll visit the prison where Marie Antoinette spent her final days and a museum that has a great many exhibits from that particular time in history. Should be a great trip. Then it's home again, to work on the book. I'm on Chapter 5; Louis Auguste still hasn't slept with her. In spite of that major glitch, our girl is having a pretty good time.


April 27:

 Pretty interesting, not to be totally obsessed by CHARLEY DARWIN. Now I'm obsessed with MARIE ANTOINETTE, which is quite a change. It would be hard to find a story more unlike Charley's. The most interesting challenge is trying to capture her voice. I'm on Chapter 4, she's living at Versailles, and she's still trying to get her dopey husband, Louis Auguste, to make love to her so she can fulfill her duty of producing Children of France.

A few days ago I was in Las Vegas, New Mexico, a pretty little town about two hours' drive from Albuquerque. On Wednesday evening I met with a mother-daughter book club at the local book store, Tome on the Range, to discuss MARIE, DANCING. Thursday morning I started off with a roomful of 8th graders, who had just gotten a long lecture from the princiipal about bullying. So I decided to tell them the story of when I was a kid and subjected to a lot of teasing because I was such an unathletic nerd, the last one picked for any team except spelling. Couldn't catch, hit, or pitch a ball, even when they let me have six strikes instead of three. One of the girls, a raggedy kid who could do all of these things, plus skin-the-cat on the monkey bars and didn't care if her underpants showed, nicknamed me Professor Pisspot. Does that count as bullying? I certainly hated it. My mother had a hard time making me go to school. So I told the 8th graders that story, and I was their friend for the day.

April 6:

This is about loving Will Shakespeare, particularly the play considered one of his greatest, King Lear.  I saw it last night, performed in a little theater here in Albuquerque--no costumes, no scenery, just some highly talented local actors, and it was magnificent. I had never seen this play performed, although I read it in college in my Shakespeare course, a long time ago. Knowing how tricky the language can be, I read it carefully, along with some explanatory notes, and consider that time well spent; at least I understood what was going on. The role of the aged king who decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters was played by Paul Ford, who teaches acting at the universitiy.

About twenty years ago I decided to try writing plays. I took a course to learn some of the basics and wrote a one-act play called "Buffalo Baby." The professor wasn't particularly impressed; he asked me how I, a pretty good writer with a number of books to my credit, had managed to write such a dull play. Then I thought I'd better take an acting course, to learn more about theater from the inside. Paul Ford was the teacher. I was trying to play an aged prostitute, and Paul got the class doing certain exercises to learn how to move when we were playing the role of a character who was much older than we all were. Last night I watched Paul create the role of Lear, a man in his 80s, and going mad. He was brilliant.

I have not pursued a career in theater--I've tried screenwriting, too, with similar results--but a magical night at the theater is still one of the things I enjoy most in life.

April 2:

So here we are, almost three weeks later. THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF CHARLEY DARWIN did come back, but the revisions weren't as drastic as I'd expected. Therefore, no getting up at 5 AM (6AM is fine), and I returned the ms. to Newest Editor Julie a week ahead of schedule. There may still be some fine-tuning. I sent some great ideas for illustrations to be used on the jacket or maybe on the endpapers--paintings of the Beagle, a map showing the route of the ship around the world, and a drawing of how the ship was laid out.

As soon as that was done, I cleaned up my office, put away a ton of paper and books, and pulled out my maps of Paris. We leave in less than six weeks, and I'm very excited to discover there are a few off-the-beaten-path museums with a lot of material about Marie-Antoinette, my next subject. Naturally, I'm excited.

I need to write an article about historical fiction. IN MOZART'S SHADOW has been criticized for not including sources, "so it's hard to know how much is based on fact." Hey, it's ALL based on fact! I do a huge amount of research, and I have a pile of books about Mozart, including the family letters (in translation from the German, of course); the challenge then is to put it all together in a narrative, creating scenes and dialogue that are imagined but always based on what is known. The "facts" of course might have been somewhat different; historians don't know everything either. The point is to end up with a story that's interesting, maybe even fascinating, moving, and satisfying. Do you really need a list of a dozen books and many more dozens of web sites for that?

I shall now step down from my soapbox and think about going outside to do a little clean-up in the garden. The daffodils are up, the lilacs are about to bloom, the pansies are reviving, and all the trees are in bud--but it's windy, as spring in New Mexico usually is, and I might just put off raking for another day, fix a cup of tea, and read some more about Paris.


March 13:

Read this book: THE WINTER ROAD by Terry Hokenson. It's about a girl's survival of a plane crash in deep winter in northern Ontario; you can read the first couple of chapters at his website: www.thewinterroad.com, and I guarantee you'll be hooked. I met him at the conference in Utah; he brought snowshoes he'd made himself.

I'm feeling good. CHARLEY will be back tomorrow for Round 2. Newest Editor Julie says it's in good shape but needs to have my new rewrite by April 9th, which may mean getting up at 5 AM again. Agent Jodi read the manuscript and likes it. I'm much more optimistic than I was a month or so ago. It will work out fine.

The Salt Lake/Denver trip was fine. The talks to the librarians went well, and I visited two schools where the kids were really interested in my books. One girl even came dressed as Princess Elizabeth and won a prize.  And here we are:

Then I flew on to Denver and hung out with son John and his family. Their new dog, Ruby, is a black lab and totally crazy. Sophie warned me, "She'll bark her head off." Not quite, but close. She regarded me as a stranger, no matter how many treats I gave her to try to win her over.

We went to the Denver Art Museum, which I hadn't seen in several years, and it is awesome--spectacular architecture and wonderful exhibits. The main show was about the Impressionists (a bit of Degas, a bit of Mary Cassatt, both reminding me of MARIE, DANCING). And then I stumbled on an exhibit of Amish quilts, most of them from Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, where I grew up. Years ago I wrote a book about the Amish, and I knew the area very well where those quilts were made.

I came home to an empty house--Husband is in Alaska, visiting his daughter, Vered. Vered is a pilot, so I imagine they're flying around, looking at glaciers. Weather here is sunny and warm; I went out to do a little yard work yesterday while I still have time before CHARLEY's return. But the outdoor water connection burst sometime during the cold weather, and that ended that idea and the plumber must be called. Once the manuscript comes tomorrow, I doubt that I'll have time to consider the fate of my pansies. Marie Antoinette must wait her turn.  

March 4:

Okay, CHARLEY is done--for now. After almost three weeks of getting up at 5 AM every day and working all day, I finished a complete rewrite and sent the thing off yesterday morning. I feel pretty good about it, but you never know. I could be deceiving myself. Maybe it's just junk. Maybe New Editor Julie will hate it. I always feel this way. We'll see.

Then I started work on the luncheon speech I'm giving in a couple of days to a bunch of librarians in Utah. The title of my speech is WHAT THEY ATE, WHAT THEY WORE, AND WHERE THEY WENT TO THE BATHROOM. It's about historical fiction and how I do my research. I'm also to give a presentation at a break-out session; that one's titled CSI: Curious Student Investigators, and it's about how to get kids excited about doing research. So we'll see how it goes. I like doing this stuff, and it's a nice break from CHARLEY.  I'll spend the weekend in Denver with my son John and his wife Cindy and my granddaughter Sophie, and I'll get to meet their dog. Then I'll come home and try to remember what I was doing with Marie Antoinette.


February 16:

Here's a new picture, taken by my iMac, after a long couple of days of working on THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF CHARLEY DARWIN. The manuscript came back Wednesday afternoon, after being held up for a few hours by a snowstorm in Memphis, and I've been buried in it ever since--that's why I look kind of bleary-eyed. So after all my fussing and complaining, I've got something to work on. So far the revisions are going well.

Still can't figure out how to add a podcast to this site. Maybe this Killer App won't handle it.


February 9:

About a month ago I received an e-mail from a woman in Texas who sent this comment:

   I think it is great that you ask the kids to watch their writing when they write to you and tell them to check out the Grammar Dragon, but when I read your web site I keep finding problems in your writing.

For example:
Then in college I had to take physical educationand ruined my beautiful grade-point average. Since then I've tried skiing, ice skating, horseback riding, and yoga
HUMPY THE CATERPILLARAND GLADYS THE SNAIL: A TRUE LIFE ROMANCE.
to highlight just a couple.
 
I do believe in proof reading and if you ask kids to say please and thank you and to spell correct, you ought to be an example. Now I know I am not the best speller/writer myself, I just think your webmaster wanted to get this out as fast as possible. But it will reflect back on you and why should the students be doing a good job if your website is not following its own rules?

So I wrote back and thanked her, took responsibility (not the webmaster's fault, since I'm now my own webmaster, for better or worse), and agreed that my entries should be above reproach. There would be no more missed spaces, misspellings, typos, or unforgivable Grammar Sins. But look! Down there in February 5, is New Editior! (I love that I've learned how to change the color of the font.) I'm surprised Kirsten of Abilene hasn't called this to my attention. But whether she's an Editior or an Editor, Julie is now working away on CHARLEY. My fingers are crossed, and I hope to goodness this entry is errior...uh...error-free.



February 5:

That good feeling didn't last long. First news of the new year was that New Editor Gretchen, who had rather surprisingly succeeded New Editor Kate, is now Ex-Editor Gretchen. For weeks I didn't have an editor at all--which means that CHARLEY DARWIN didn't have an editor, either. But now there's another New Editior, this one named Julie. I spoke to her last week for the first time. She hadn't read CHARLEY yet, and in fact there's some question about whether or not the book can be published in time for Darwin's 200th birthday celebration a year from now. That, of course, was the whole point. The reason for all of these changes is that my long-time publisher, Harcourt, has been sold to another company and is now known as Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and everything is in chaos. I do not enjoy chaos.

I try not to think about it and do something else. So I work on MARIE ANTOINETTE, which I must say is really fun and going well at the moment--I'm on Chapter 3, and she's about to meet Louis Auguste, the 15-year-old boy she's to marry, for the first time.

Yesterday I did a podcast with 6th graders at a school in Atlanta, and when I figure out how to do it, I'll add it to this site. In a month I'll be in Salt Lake City to give a talk and visit some schools, and I'm planning to stop off in Denver on the way home. Maybe I'll get to see Devin, Ye Olde Webmaster.


January 2, 2008:

Beginning a new year is always a good feeling, full of possibilities. The last ten days have been fun--for once I didn't have a book deadline looming at the end of the holidays, so I had time to do the things I enjoy--cooking for family and friends (I made Spanish paella for Christmas dinner, and it was such a hit I made it again for New Year's brunch), going out for dinner on New Year's Eve--I hate New Year's Eve parties--inviting people for coffee and bagels on the Sunday between the 25th and the 1st, scoring lots of nice presents.

I've also settled down to reading about Marie Antoinette, my next project, and spending time dreaming about what the book will be and making notes. The weather has been VERY cold here in the Burque, so it's nice to curl up with a good book. Better enjoy the leisure time while I can, because CHARLEY DARWIN will be back in a couple of weeks for rewrite.


December 21:

Things have settled down after my latest shock: New Editor Kate, with whom I worked so hard--and so well--on IN MOZART'S SHADOW, is now Old Editor Kate--she's leaving Harcourt. Today is her last day. So now there's New Editor Gretchen, with whom I'll be working on CHARLEY DARWIN. I like to think I'm flexible, but such changes are always difficult for me, because the editorial process (accepting the criticism, doing the rewrites and the re-rewrites) is so intense. I probably make Gretchen nervous, too.

Here's the new jacket for IN MOZART'S SHADOW, with the new subtitle: HIS SISTER'S STORY. Pub date is June 2008. You can just barely make out the shadow in the background, behind Nannerl's right shoulder. It has taken me a half hour to figure out how to get this jacket design incorporated into Writer's Journal. The learning curve for me is always unbelievably steep. It would have taken Devon about ten seconds.

I just got a new haircut--very, very short. I need to get rid of the photo on the Home page. I don't look like that any more.

Christmas is in four days. I'm ready. 

December 8:

I was on the road for a week, to Brentwood, TN, outside of Nashville for a school book fair, which was fun, as always--except for getting there. My flight out of Dallas was cancelled, and I was the last stand-by to get on the next flight, which got me into Nashville much later than I'd planned. But I still made it in time for dinner with one of my special fans who was celebrating her birthday, Kennalee, and her sisters and mother. From there I went to Rochester, NY, for a family visit. I managed to arrive with their first major snowstorm of the season. It snowed and snowed, but unlike Albuquerque where life comes to a dead stop at the first sign of snow, everybody in ROC just plows on--literally. I talked to my granddaughter Erin's ninth grade English class about LOVING WILL SHAKESPEARE.

The galley proof of IN MOZART'S SHADOW was waiting when I got home, after more cancelled flights, frustration, and fatigue, and I finished going over that yesterday. It's always exciting to see a new book in printed form for the first time. I still haven't seen the new jacket, if there is one. And I'm not quite sure what project I'm going to work on next. According to my schedule, it's time to get cracking on MARIE ANTOINETTE, but I've had another new idea that has me as excited as I've been about MARIE, and I'm trying to decide which direction I should go. A box of books about Marie Antoinette just arrived, and I'm itching to get started on that one. ...or the other one, the name of which I'll write as soon as I know it myself. Meanwhile, it's kind of restful not to have the pressure of a deadline.




November 23:

Here it is, the day after Thanksgiving, snow is falling, my office is impressively neat--I carted off six bags of old papers for recycling and a bunch of books to Goodwill--and I actually have time to fool around with my web site. Having just learned how to insert a picture, I hereby present a photo of me and a "friend"--no, not Charley Darwin-- at the Dwarfs' Garden in Salzburg, taken a year ago when I was there to do research for MOZART.



November 17:

Adios, adieu, Auf Wiedersehen, and goodbye Charley! At least for the moment, until Mistress Kate gets her teeth into him. There is a new title, THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF CHARLEY DARWIN, but that could change. There was a crisis in the middle of it: I dumped a mug of tea on my computer and drowned it. I was hoping it was just the keyboard, but no--I killed the whole thing. Fortunately I had about three minutes before it expired, and I managed to save the important stuff. So I have this really handsome new iMac and everything seems to be working. Now, just in time for Turkey Day, I can go through the office-cleaning ritual and get rid of a lot of paper and even some books.

A couple of weeks ago Mistress Kate sent me the proposed cover for IN MOZART'S SHADOW. I disliked it intensely--looks like kids dressed up for a school play. Now we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, new covers have been designed for all those Tudor books--MARY, BLOODY MARY and DOOMED QUEEN ANNE and so on--and they're gorgeous. So it can be done. I loved the new covers for WHITE LILACS and JUBILEE JOURNEY a couple of years ago, and last summer RIO GRANDE STORIES appeared with a low-rider on the front, and I like that a lot, too.

It's a beautiful day here in New Mexico, and I should really go out and clean up the yard while the weather is so good, but the truth is, I can't stand this messy office another day.  And--can you believe it? I FedEx'd CHARLEY DARWIN to Kate yesterday, Friday, at 4 pm, and I IMMEDIATELY began thinking of my next project.....

October 18:
Two months ago it was nothing but Mozart, but now it's nothing but Charley Darwin. Early in September I got an e-mail from New Editor Kate; the subject was BRAVISSIMO! Nothing but cheers and praise for the revisions I'd made, and then the manuscript was off to the copy editor. Last week the ms. came back, but only briefly, with a lot of little questions but no huge ones. 
I'm finding Charley a huge challenge. Writing from the male point of view is a new one for me, and Charley was such an English gentleman!  I'm about 3/4 through a good solid first draft, and Dear Kate wants it by mid-November. So the heat is on again. 
And wonder of wonders, I'm about to become my own web master. Sort of. Dear Devin Reams, who set up this web site years ago when he was just thirteen, is now a college graduate with a Real Job, and I've offered to take over at least the journal entries myself. I have absolutely no sense about such things, and it has taken me longer than I care to admit to figure out how to do what I'm doing at this moment. Now if I can just go on to the next step without destroying the whole thing and get back to what I do best, writing books....
August 26: 
Mozart, Mozart, nothing but Mozart! Well, almost, because once in a while there was Charley Darwin. I now have time to breathe again, but only a little.

The first big major revision of PLAYING WITH MOZART went back to New Editor Kate early in May, and I left for England to do research on Charles Darwin. It was a great trip, although it was cold, rainy, and windy the whole time. What a treat to walk through the house where Charley was born and grew up, visit his school (now a library), tramp around parts of North Wales, and spend time in Cambridge and Edinburgh where he studied. I came home at the end of May, organized my notes, and headed east again, this time to New York City for a meeting with New Editor Kate. She was lugging around the Mozart manuscript, which (surprise!) needed more work‹and also a new title. Itıs now IN MOZARTıS SHADOW: NANNERLıS STORY.

So, back home again, I plowed through a second revision. I shipped the new version to Kate toward the end of June and turned my attention back to Charley, thinking Mozart was safely on his way. But no! On August 3rd, I got a long e-mail from New Editor, with a huge list of ³tweaks.² These were not tweaks in the sense I understand them, but things like scenes to be added or expanded. It ended up being another complete revision‹the third one. And it absolutely, positively has to be back on her desk by August 27‹thatıs tomorrow, Monday. I sent it off by FedEx Friday morning (the copying machine at Kinkoıs broke down twice while I was running it; I hope this isnıt a bad omen). Then I came home to my wrecked office.

Mozart wrote literally hundreds of pieces of music in his short life and never revised anything; he had it all worked out perfectly in his head before he wrote down a single note. I am obviously not at ALL like Mozart.

Now my desk is clean, e-mails answered, bills paid, office orderly. And tomorrow I go back to old whatıs-his-name, Darwin. No more Mozart until the copy editor and the fact-checker start asking a lot of difficult questions, unless Kate still isnıt happy. My fingers are crossed.


May 5:
Look at this! Two months since my last entry. But I have excellent excuses. First, I got really wrapped up in DEAR CHARLEY DARWIN, trying to get a bunch of pages ready to sent out to New Editor Kate for an opinion on this very complicated story. Then I had to make plans for my trip to England, to Charleyıs home town of Shrewsbury, as well as Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Llandudno in Wales, which I donıt know how to pronounce. Planning trips is sort of fun and sort of frustrating, because I have to figure out train and bus schedules, make reservations on line, decide the best routes, how long to stay, etc.

All this time I was waiting for PLAYING WITH MOZART to come back for a rewrite. Kate said Iıd have it by late March, which would have been a very tight and rushed turnaround to get it back to her before I leave. But it didnıt come until April 16‹just three weeks. And New Editor Kate is just as tough and demanding as Archeditor Liz, so there was a huge amount of work to do. Iıve been getting up at 5 am, skulking around half asleep with a cup of tea, and putting in 12-hour days, no breaks for weekends except maybe to sleep in until 6. And itıs a very long manuscript‹324 pages.

Then, because I stupidly waited too long to renew my passport (sent it in Feb 21), I began to sweat when it didnıt come and didnıt come. For the past two weeks, Iıve been hanging on the phone, calling every couple of hours in an attempt to reach the passport agency to track it down and ask them to expedite it. I was semi-hysterical by Thursday when nobody could find it or figure out when it was sent out. Then, miraculously, FedEx appeared with it Thursday afternoon. I could have kissed the FedEx driver, but that would have freaked him out.

So‹the passport arrived, I sent off the completely revised manuscript of PLAYING WITH MOZART this afternoon, and now I can go pack for the trip. And hope I donıt forget anything.

One more thing: First copies of DUCHESSINA just arrived. I think sheıs beautiful.


March 9:
I finally got past those first dozen pages of DEAR CHARLEY DARWIN—although I still go back to tinker with them as the story progresses—and am about to begin Chapter 5 today. There are so many characters that I’m having trouble keeping them straight. Darwin had an older brother and four older sisters, and he spent a lot of time with his Wedgwood cousins, a family of four girls and four boys. To make matters more complicated, there were some names that were very popular at that time; I’m trying to keep track of at least three girls named Fanny.

Kate, my new editor, says she’ll be sending MOZART back to me by the end of the month. At that point Charley and three girls named Fanny will all go on the shelf for a few weeks.


February 15:
This is a hard one to write. Two weeks ago I received word that my dear Archeditor Liz is no longer at the publisher and is no longer my editor. This came as quite a shock, because Liz and I have worked together for more than 15 years and have done 13 books together with plans for several more. What on earth is going to happen to MOZART? After a few nerve-wracking day I was matched up with a new editor. Her name is Kate, and I have known her for several years, in fact, she used to be Lizıs assistant. I found one of her memos in my files, and it appears that she has learned her lessons well. So a new chapter begins. We will both try hard to make it work. But I already miss Liz.

It took me only a half day to get my office put to rights after I shipped off MOZART last month, and then I plunged straight into DEAR CHARLEY DARWIN. I spent the first few weeks reading whatever I could find and then began to experiment with how to tell the story. Iıve been rewriting the first dozen pages for the past two weeks. Itıs starting to come along.


January 2, 2007:
It seems Iıve lost my discipline, at least for keeping a journal. A friend from Australia wrote that I hadnıt made an entry for LONG time; had I been overwhelmed by Mozart? The answer is no, but he certainly has kept me occupied. For two and a half months Iıve been putting in very long days with the young genius, with time out for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but today I sent PLAYING WITH MOZART: NANNERLıS STORY off to Archeditor Liz. Itıs always a bit of a let-down when a manuscript finally goes out, although I know from years of experience (as readers of the Journal do, too) that in a few months it will be back with one of the archeditorıs amazing letters, requiring a top-to-bottom rewrite.

But for now, I have a break. Iıll clean my desk, put away my notes, catch up on household stuff, and then start thinking seriously the next project. It will be quite a leap from Shakespeare and Mozart and all my princesses to----Charles Darwin! How's that for a challenge?


October 11:
I came back from the long trip to Europe on Friday night, completely frazzled from long flights, long security lines, and lost luggage. On Saturday DUCHESSINA arrived from the copyeditor, and the struggle began. It was really hard, after weeks of being immersed in Mozartıs story, to get back to Catherine deı Medici and her completely different world!

Now that DUCHESSINA is under control‹at least for now‹Iım back to MOZART. It was great to see the house in Salzburg where he was born and where he and Nannerl lived for years, and to tour the palaces in Vienna where he gave concerts. Iım not much of a souvenir-hunter, but in Papa Mozartıs hometown of Augsburg, Germany, I did buy a gadget for making spaetzle, the tiny dumplings that were a Mozart family favorite. For the next few months Iıll be eating like Mozart as well as listening to his wonderful music as I imagine his life.


August 25:
Done, finished! As of yesterday, DUCHESSINA is ready for the copyeditor. She went back and forth another time or two, but yesterday Archeditor Liz and I finished it up by phone and this morning I sent the electronic version to her office. Still some questions about the title; it will definitely be DUCHESSINA, but there will be a subtitle, and thatıs still not quite settled

Now Iım concentrating totally on Mozart and Nannerl. I have quite a few pages of rough draft, but at this point Iım still groping my way along, throwing out most of what I write. The plot is tricky‹Mozart and his sister were often separated, and Iım trying to tell both stories. In just under three weeks weıll be leaving for Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. All the plans are in place, reservations made, guide books and maps stacked all around my office; packing begins soon.


July 21:
For three weeks, until Monday the 10th, I did practically nothing but work on DUCHESSINA‹all day, every day. We went to a wedding in Seattle, and I took the ms. along to work on the plane and during down time (I didnıt work during the ceremony on the boat, however.) I shipped the finished rewrite off to Archeditor Liz by FedEx for delivery the morning of the 11th, as required. Imagine the panic then when an e-mail arrived in the afternoon as I was cleaning my office to say the manuscript hadnıt arrived. I didnıt take the news calmly, but just as I was preparing to have it recopied and reshipped, word came that it had just arrived. That was the last Iıve heard of it. Liz said sheıd be working on it on the commuter train.

Now itıs back to Mozart and Nannerl. Iıd stopped in the middle of a chapter when I left for NYC in June, and my notes made no sense to me at all. What was I thinking? I couldnıt remember. Nothing to do but begin at the beginning. As of yesterday Iıve caught up to where Iıd left off, and now Iım beginning a new chapter and finishing plans for a long trip to Mozartıs home in Austria.


June 18:
Archeditor Liz had a lot to say about DUCHESSINA. I had lunch with her in New York City, and then she handed me the manuscript, which has been much abused. At first I had a hard time getting back into Catherine deı Mediciıs story, because my head was wrapped around Mozart and Nannerl. Iım still unsure about the deadline, but I think itıs soon, and thereıs a huge amount of work. And Liz doesnıt much like the title, although I do. Titles can be a challenge; either I nail it at the very beginning, as I did with LOVING WILL SHAKESPEARE, or it goes through changes and debates and arguments, as happened with MARIE, DANCING.

I had a great time in New York, even though the weather was awful (rain, wind, cold). I got together with friends, had lots of terrific meals, saw a fine Broadway play (THE HISTORY BOYS), went to three museums, talked about future writing projects‹all in just three days, plus family visits in Philadelphia and Rochester. When I got home after ten days, the garden was a disaster, the stack of mail was mostly bills, and of course the DUCHESSINA manuscript is in need of a complete rewrite.


May 10:
LOVING WILL SHAKESPEARE is now listed on Amazon, although it won’t be published until October; you can click on “My Books” to see what it looks like. I discovered that PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, a magazine about the book business, has listed LOVING WILL SHAKESPEARE as a “hot” book for bookstores to consider selling. “Way cool” says Archeditor Liz.

Archeditor Liz hasn’t said “way cool,” or anything else, about DUCHESSINA. But I’m going to see her in New York City in about three weeks, and maybe we’ll talk about it then.

Mozart and his sister, Nannerl, are proving to be very challenging for storytelling. Nobody knows much of anything about what Will Shakespeare was really like as a kid, and so I was free to invent whatever I wanted to make it a good story. But there are dozens of books about the Mozart family, including the really mean father, and that makes it hard to change things to make a good story better.



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