Hmm: Not June, but September, Instead ...

One of the reasons I don't want to be my own publisher is that there are so many complications that require dedicated attention -- and I'd rather put that attention into my writing! Neil Raphel and Janis Reye, the publishing team in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, bringing The Secret Room into pages, took a hard look at the schedule right after announcing the book publication date for June, and said: "Nope, it will have to be September." So that's the new date, and I appreciate their hard work very much! Anyone wanting to review the book before then, though, will have an opportunity to do so through "Voyage" (the imprint); details later on that.

Meanwhile ... here we go! Have I mentioned that September is my favorite month?

On Our Way! Draft Cover ... and June Publication ...

"When I Find My Real Parents, Then I'm Going to ..."

I've heard that lots of people imagine at some point that they've been adopted, or kidnapped, or some other reason that could end up meaning that their "real parents" aren't the ones who are raising them, scolding them, feeding them, loving them. A classic twist is that the vanished parents are rich, or royal, and all that good stuff will arrive as soon as the mystery is solved.

In The Secret Room (that's my 2011 book coming out from Voyage in June), there's no reason to suspect such a situation in Shawna Lee's life. Sure, her dad died when she was little, but her mother married a nice guy and Shawna likes him.  Until the moment her new neighbor, Thea Warwick, works on a math problem with her, Shawna hasn't expected mysteries in her life at all.

Neither did two people that I've known very closely as adults, who accidentally found out that the families they'd been living in weren't who and what they seemed. Truth can be stranger than fiction -- or it can be the inspiration for a novel.

Don't ask me how the Underground Railroad got tied up in all this. I only know that the puzzle pieces in front of me included a "hiding place" in an old house in the town where I used to live.

And that's how a story begins.

The Long Line of Research

Last week I read In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick. Grippingly told and heavily supported by research, the book explores the final trip of a Nantucket whaling ship -- struck in the Pacific Ocean by a belligerent whale, so that the crew had to try to survive literally months on the ocean in small, leaking boats, starving. I could hardly put it down.

And that's a tiny fragment of the research that will go into a novel that I probably won't start writing until 2013 or so! The main character will be a young woman unexpectedly widowed in Provincetown, while pregnant with her second child; her husband was a sailor on a whaleboat. She was my five-greats grandmother, and I have her portrait. I imagine her life, and it becomes part of a story.

Much closer to home, and sooner to be written, is a novel that involves a string of downtown fires in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. I've drafted a chapter in order to have a starting place -- and I know that the person looking at the fires is named Addie. She's scrambling to keep up with what the local newspaper expects from her. "Anyone" can take photos of fires today, but digging into the stories behind them takes courage and persistence. Addie's a good candidate for that! Too bad that one result of her digging is the appearance of ... well, it looks like a ghost to her. The book title is THE FIRE CURSE and I'm hoping to get it rolling in February.

At the same time, I'm outlining two others: BEAR-SHADOW (I am learning a lot about weather, and just got a great book on crystals to help with this one), and OPHELIA OF THE NORTH (don't ask, I can't talk about this one much yet; the characters are talking in my other ear and it confuses the conversation!).

So that's how the research strands continue: I'm still filing materials that fill in the gaps behind The Darkness Under the Water (published by Candlewick in 2008) and polishing the text of The Secret Room, which should be available in late summer this year. But meanwhile, everything else has to stay rolling, with information, images, and more. By the way, the photo here is of a recent downtown fire in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, about five miles from here -- Dave and I were able to see the light of the fire in the sky that night.

Home. Really.

It's a magical day. Neil Raphel and Janis Raye of Brigantine Media agreed today to publish my YA adventure, THE HUNGRY PLACE. The contract is signed.

But way more important than the contract is this: We three sat at Neil and Janis's table and for the first time in the life of this book, I heard someone other than me and my thoughts say, "Shawna is so cool, and here's what I want to know about Thea."

After living for two years with Shawna and Thea and their families and neighbors in my life, only my life,  it's like opening a door into a room where you've never been, and finding that the person on the other side of the door knows -- knows really, really well -- your sister or your brother or your best friend. You're home, in a new place, and the smile in front of you touches your heart.

Photo here: Old North Church in winter, not far from where Shawna and Thea "live" in North Danville, Vermont. With luck and hard work, you'll all get to "meet" these feisty teens in 2011. Watch for news, as Neil and Janis and editor Adrienne and I move "the girls" toward publication. Hurrah!

To Every Thing There Is a Season ...

After completing COLD MIDNIGHT last month, I'm taking a break for poetry, walks in the woods, and of course family and friends during the holidays.  In January, I'll start writing THE FIRE CURSE -- and meanwhile I've pinned lots of related material onto my work walls.

Temperatures are plunging, now that we have snow on the ground. Here's a related poem from my collection Mud Season at the Castle.

Ten-Below-Zero Morning

Even inside the windows, the frost
glares back at me in the early morning --
this is the try-your-souls cold weather
striking the house with stiffness that groans
like a car engine far too depressed
to spark into life.

God's gift to the morning must be coffee.
Clutching a steaming mug, blowing
my breath on the frosted window, I clear
a space -- a hole to look through
and eye the thermometer's short red line
squatting at ten below zero.
My knees ache in sympathy.
Oh coffee, warm me and wake me slowly
spread heat in my belly, let courage
rise to my eyes.

Bitter arctic weather with wind:
long johns and turtleneck, sweater and corduroys
thick fuzzy socks and fleece-lined boots.
I wrap myself in simple comforts
gaze at the bright blue sunstruck sky
and try to hold breath and heat and life
inside my woolly garments.

These days when the sun is low and lukewarm
these days when the wind steals the fire's delight
are days when I call you to hear your voice
for heat in my heart and a sort of leap
like coffee waking the courage
into my eyes.

Streetcars in Boston, 1921

I've finished writing Cold Midnight and the manuscript, which half a dozen generous readers absorbed chapter by chapter over the past year, is now in the hands of my agent -- the first person to read the book from start to finish all at once.

One of my chapter-at-a-time readers e-mailed me earlier today, asking about a moment when Claire Benedict, one of the two teens featured in the novel, is barefoot in winter in 1921. The consequences for Claire's feet are extreme, but ... well, the end of the book gives some idea of how her recovery may be going. If you've ever walked in snow in bare feet, you have an idea of what's at stake! I have a bit of experience in this -- my sons and I had to walk one-third of a mile in our socks in a snow-covered landscape in the middle of the night once, at twenty-three degrees below zero. Later that week, the skin on our feet peeled from the frostbite.

Shown here is a photo that I was glad to find online, as it gave me some confirmation of what the streetcars in Boston in 1921 could have been like. This photo is from another city, but the year is right, and it's a clearer shot than the ones I found that were from "Beantown." Every detail matters ...

And just in case you wonder what it feels like to have finished the book: Actually, it feels very quiet inside. Neither Claire nor Ben is pushing me to tell what happens next in their story. For the moment, at least, I can hear only my own voice in my thoughts.

You know, it's a little bit too quiet. I might have to start the next book later this week.

Prohibition: A Vermont Tradition

Locations listed on this handbill surround my writing territory today.

"Prohibition," short for "prohibition of alcohol," is often thought of as the time period when the U.S. federal government, through a Constitutional amendment, banned booze. Here's the actual text of the 18th Amendment:

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. 

Both crime and social ills flowerd in spite of, or even because of, this well-meant piece of social legislation. The hopes of decades of Americans, especially women who experienced the ills of drunkenness at home, were crushed by the side-effects of this law. It stayed in place from 1920 to 1933, when it was repealed, and this 13-year segment is the time period we call Prohibition.

But there were many places in the United States that got serious about banning "intoxicating liquors" both before and after that time. A collection at the Bailey-Howe Library at the University of Vermont highlights Vermont's experience with such legislation: From 1850 to 1902, the state created its own Green Mountain "prohibition" years. (See details here; the exhibit took place in 2009, but the materials are still available.)

This is a great challenge for both an investigator of history and a novelist. After all, if the federal banning of alcohol use encouraged organized crime and also the Jazz Age, what did the state version encourage?

Autumn Adventure from Texas Librarian Analine Johnson

Remember the video trailer for The Darkness Under the Water, crafted by Texas librarian Analine Johnson? (It's in the righthand column here on the blog.) Analine wrote today with a Big Announcement! I'll let her tell you in her own words:

Hi Beth, I Have great news to share with you. I don't know if you follow the School Library Journal but they are holding their very first 'Book Trailee Awards'. I'm so excited to share with you that my trailer for The Darkness Under the Water has been nominated for the category: adult created for secondary. I need your vote! So please spread the word. Voting started today and will end on October 22nd. Winners will be  announced that evening at School Library Journal Leadership Summit on the Future of Reading in Chicago, IL.

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/slj/home/887006-312/school_library_journal_trailee_awards.html.csp

Analine Johnson
Librarian
Rodolfo Centeno Elementary
Laredo, Texas

I hope you'll vote for the trailer, and spread the word. Who knows? We are one of only 24 trailers selected for the finals!!

American Library Association "Banned Books Week" and Laurie Halse Anderson's SPEAK

Eleven years after publication, Laurie Halse Anderson's YA novel SPEAK is under attack again -- but this time, defenders of the book and the right to read freely are speaking up more clearly than ever, thanks to social media like Twitter and Facebook.

To read the ALA explanation of "Banned Books Week," Sept. 25-Oct. 2, click here.

For School Library Journal's interview with author Anderson, click here.

And here's the synopsis from the back of SPEAK, where the protagonist has been raped -- a far cry from what its critics are labeling "pornography":

Melinda Sordino busted and end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so her old friends won’t talk to her, and people she doesn’t know hate her from a distance. It’s no use explaining to her parents; they’ve never known what her life is really like. The safest place for Melinda to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that’s not safe. Because there’s something she’s trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she admitted it and let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have no choice. Melinda would have to speak the truth.

Perspective: Now Is Not Then

The photograph here of an "elderly Chinese man with queue" (as it is described on a California website that doesn't identify the photographer or source) got me thinking in a different way about the (very real) basement laundry space owned by Sam Wah in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, from 1886 to 1921. Mr. Wah's murder, officially unsolved, is one of the centers for the background history of my book in progress, Cold Midnight. Knowing his shop was in a basement -- and knowing the damp fierce chill of most downtown basement spaces here in Vermont today -- originally gave me the sense that his shop location reflected both bias against strangers, and cheap rent available for unwanted shop space.

But at the start of last summer, I toured Boston's Chinatown, courtesy of the Chinese Historical Society of New England, and saw the many businesses that utilized cellar spaces. In fact, there seemed to be a loose arrangement of industrial-type businesses (like a print shop) in the basements, grocery stores and restaurants in first-floor rooms (slightly higher up than sidewalk level), and meeting spaces and residences above those.

Reflecting on this photo reminds me: Don't assume that a basement space meant the same thing to a Chinese immigrant in 1886 that it means to a downtown merchant today.

That's a crucial attitude to keep fresh during historical research and while writing: Now is not the same as then. And that's why the original material -- in this case especially, the writings in the local paper about Mr. Wah and his business, as well as the narratives that today's Chinatown residents share -- are so important.