The Sequel is Coming Along

So in my last post here, I mentioned that my firstborn son's four oldest daughters have been clamoring for a sequel to Erin's Ring.  I am thrilled to say that I'm already eight chapters in, and probably getting close to half-way finished.

These "finished" chapters may need future work if the story goes in a direction I'm not aware of at this point (that definitely happens, in my experience); but I feel like they are close to the final edit phase. I rewrite and polish up constantly as I go along; I'm just not wired to write up a whole first rough draft of a book and then go back and edit it later.

I wrote the first chapter years ago, and then abandoned the project.  But I've tweaked that chapter a bit (and made it two chapters, actually), and I've added six more.  I think I'm going to be able to have the rest done, with perhaps 10 or 11 more chapters, by this spring or summer.  In my dreams, this book was going to be a Christmas present for the girls a few weeks from now; but I don't seem to have the free hours to devote to writing that you would think I would have as a 64-year-old empty-nester. #imabusybusygrammy  #verybusy

I am planning to self-publish this sequel through Bookemon, the site where I published My Little ABC Book.  I have no ambitious plans for marketing it far and wide, no delusions of bestselling author grandeur.  That, I am quite sure, is not part of the path I was meant to take on this earth.  But I will be able to order print-on-demand copies for family members.

As long as I was writing a sequel, I decided to make a slightly edited second edition of Erin's Ring to go with it.  It's always bothered me that in Chapter 16, I called a character "Erin" when I meant to call her "Cara."  (A bright 4th-grader--whose teacher was a beloved niece of mine--pointed this out to me when I visited her school in 2015; this was a mistake that the publisher and several beta-readers, myself included, missed!) Also, I found a few other problems: I'd had a character named Seamus Finnegan dying in 1855, which was way off; 1833 was more like it.  I'd had characters calling out, "Here, here!" after a toast, when the correct spelling would have been, "Hear, hear!" And I'd called the Catholic feast day that falls on New Year's the "Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God," when at that time in history it would have been called the "Octave of the Nativity."  So making this new edition has enabled me to fix some errors that were in the original book.  

Also, I got the opportunity to design a new cover!

That cover artwork inside the frame is Winslow Homer's "Bobbin Girl," which I think is absolutely perfect for a story about some 19th-century Irish immigrant girls who came to Dover, NH to work at the cotton mill called the Cocheco Manufacturing Co. When I look at this vintage ink drawing, I think of the main character, Ann O'Brien!

I actually had one paperback copy of this new edition printed by Bookemon already; but unfortunately, I made poor choices as far as the font and the font size and it was practically unreadable.  So I'm in the process of fixing those issues now.  I plan to order copies of both books as a sort of matching set for my granddaughters--that is, if (when!) I can ever get the sequel completed!

I'm not ready to share the cover (or the subject matter) of the sequel, Marguerite's Diary, yet; in fact, I probably won't until it's finished.  But please pray for me that I can do the story I'm working on justice, because it tells about a miraculous event involving Our Blessed Mother.  And I don't want to disappoint Her.

Hoo Boy...I Think I'm Writing Another Book!

Now there’s something I never really thought I’d say!

But I have some granddaughters (son #1’s four oldest, aged 7 to 11) who have requested a sequel to Erin’s Ring, which they’ve all read more than once.  Every author dreams of having enthusiastic readers of their books like these girls, I’ll tell you!

So I’m going to give it a shot—more as a gift from Grammy than anything else.   I’ll self-publish and have copies printed off for my book-loving girls.  If I can get this project done by Christmas 2022, it will be practically miraculous.  

I've actually had the idea for this book floating around in my head for about seven years now, but I never got beyond doing a little research and writing a rough draft of Chapter One (however, that was before I had granddaughters encouraging me to write a sequel!).  It's been years since I worked on it.

All I’ll say for now is that it's going to be another foray into historical fiction, and that the working title is Marguerite’s Diary.  Wish me luck!

Real Life IS Better Than Fiction!

When I started working on Finding Grace in August of 2007, I seriously didn't expect it to ever become a book.  I mean, my goal was to write a full-length novel, sure; but I never really believed it would get into print and become an honest-to-goodness BOOK--as in the published variety, with a front and back cover and professionally printed pages and everything.

My girlhood dreams involved imagining that I might someday produce one "great American novel" (just one!  That's not too much to hope for, is it?), inspired by my early favorite authors, Harper Lee and Margaret Mitchell. Lee had stopped at To Kill a Mockingbird and Mitchell at Gone with the Wind--two of my all-time favorite books; I figured I could stop when I'd written my one novel, too.  (I also loved the romantically brooding works of those talented Bronte sisters, but I was looking for inspiration on this side of the pond, in modern times.)

I tucked away this dream while I was busy raising my boys.  By the time I felt ready to try my hand at novel-writing, when my youngest boy (whom we'd been homeschooling from 4th through 8th grade) was about to start high school, a new dream had emerged for me: to write a novel that would never make me rich or famous, but that would be an antidote to the dangerous secular humanist values and messages with which most modern popular fiction was replete (and this situation seemed to be getting exponentially worse as the years had gone by).

When I set out to tackle that book, with absolutely zero writing experience to my name--unless you count the papers I did as a college English major decades earlier--I did hope that I would have the patience and drive to see the project through and tell the story I wanted to tell (even though over the course of the four and a half years I spent writing it, the original story I'd imagined went in directions that I hadn't planned at the outset; it's funny how that happens).  Because you see, Finding Grace was more than anything a labor of love for my family, something that I thought I could leave behind, something that would be around long after I was gone.  Even if all it turned out to be was a manuscript printed off at home, with hole-punched pages in a binder, I wanted to get this done to pass down to any book-loving grandchildren I might one day have.  I wanted to create a novel that espoused the beautiful teachings and traditions of our Catholic Faith, one that was filled with endearing characters whose lives were enriched in countless ways by living according to that Faith.  As the years were going by, I was becoming more and more worried that by the time my future grandchildren were reading, there would be nothing of Truth or beauty left in print--at least in popular mainstream fiction; so I wanted to take matters into my own hands.

What she said.

When I started out my later-in-life "career" as a writer, none of my boys were even married yet.  By the time Finding Grace was published in 2012, our oldest son was married and he had given us identical twin granddaughters.  (I had written identical twin girls into Finding Grace several years before they were born.  I had also given my title character, Grace Kelly, a father who was a dentist--and that was our first daughter-in-law's dad's profession.  Totally by accident, art had imitated life!)

Fast forward to 2020, and I've now got 16-going-on-17 grandchildren.  And to prove that dreams do come true, one of those twins I mentioned earlier, who is now 9, recently read her Grammy's second YA novel, Erin's Ring (she's still a bit too young for the more mature-themed Finding Grace).  Her mom sent me this text when she was reading it.

Umm...I believe that is the only endorsement I need.  Better than a 5-star Amazon review, in my opinion.  This is exactly the audience I hoped to affect with my writing: future generations of Pearls!

My middle son also recently texted me a few cute pictures of the oldest of his three girls, who's 4, holding a copy of Finding Grace.  She and her older brother (5) think it's a story about her. ;)

In about 9 or 10 years, I hope she'll read it.  And I hope I'm alive to hear what she thinks!

Life is SO BEAUTIFUL, even in the age of Covid-19.  It is better than any story I could ever think up.  Better than any fiction, for sure.  I am enjoying all the undeserved blessings I've been given, because I know that life can change on a dime, when we least expect it.

Thank you, God, for helping me to see my dreams come true: not one, but TWO published novels; and better yet by far, so many beloved grandchildren to read them.  I am humbled and grateful!