I highly recommend it, because, now that September is here, we knitters are thinking of warm wools. In my case, it’s hats. I’ve gotten away from knitting full sweaters for my grandkids – they outgrow them too quickly! Hats are the perfect solution. I pick a different pattern each winter and make hats out of the same pattern but in each child’s favorite colors. The fall before last, I knit sweet little berets. Last year, I knit hats with ear flaps that came down in a long strip to form a built-in scarf.
What to do this year? I was just starting to wonder when, coincidentally, I picked up a new book called Great Garter Stitch – and there it was, the perfect hat for my grands. It is worked in two colors, in a clever pattern that involves stitches of either straight knitting or knitting in the row below the current row. The end result gives a herringbone or polka-dot effect, depending on your vision. In either case, it’s really cool. What’s also cool is the favorite colors that came (humbly, of course) in response to my request. Ariel’s will be orange and pink, Sasha’s purple and green, Hannah’s brown and pink, and Ruby’s – what else? – ruby and white. I’ll have a ball working with all these different colors.
Of course, the pattern in the book is for an adult head, and the four children mentioned above range from 11 months to 6 years, so some adjustments have to be made. No sweat. I bought the yarn I wanted to use (actually, the one that gave me the best choice of colors), knitted up swatches, and used my trusty calculator to figure out how many stitches to cast on for each child. I’m only on the first hat, but the pattern is great fun to do. It’s also relatively easy, which is going to be important as I get into fall and back to writing again. Once I’m concentrating on work, knitting must be relaxing.
By the way, I do have that new book idea now and am just starting to flesh it out. I’ll tell you about it soon. First, though, I want to share the promised author photo thoughts. That’s for my next blog.
Ted Kennedy is a survivor. He has lost family members under tragic circumstances, has seen one son battle bone cancer, a daughter battle lung cancer, another son battle drug addiction. He has broken his back in a plane crash, and lives with the guilt of driving the car in which a young woman died, an accident that derailed his greatest political dreams. But he keeps coming back. He has spent the last forty years fighting for those less fortunate than him, has learned the art of compromise, has taken stands that, while not always the most popular, are ones in which he deeply believes.
Now he battles brain cancer. Yet there he was last night, clearly thrilled to be speaking about the causes of his heart at his party’s convention. He didn’t tug on JFK heartstrings or evoke RFK images, though he might have done both. When the audience roared their approval of his words, he laughed in delight.
Here is a man making the most of life, even in the midst of chemotherapy and radiation. For all we know, this was his last prime time appearance. For all we know, this may have been his last public appearance, period. The prognosis for the cancer he suffers is not good.
But last night, he was upbeat and strong. We could all take a lesson from him.
But I’ve put it off, put it off. To me, there is nothing more stressful than getting a new computer. My stomach churns. I break out in a cold sweat. I’m convinced that I’ll LOSE IMPORTANT INFORMATION – lose it FOREVER, and that I won’t be able to pay bills, much less write.
To some extent, I’ve postponed the inevitable because the timing has to be right – meaning, I have to be between books. I have to have finished all the work on one and still be weeks away from starting another, so that I have time to work out bugs, get my screen looking “right,” feel comfortable enough so that I can focus on what I write not the instrument I write on.
This past spring, I knew the time had come. Lucy and I were simply spending too long waiting for our computers to perform simple tasks. Oh, we did the clean-up bit that techies suggested, but it didn’t help. What is it about aging computers that makes them slow? Computers are supposed to be the ultimate multitasking devices. Why is it that as they get older, they can only do one thing at a time?
Sounds like people, y’know? So I’m walking on thin ice here. But there’s no help for it. I can’t wait five minutes for my email to appear.
Okay. So it’s only three minutes. Well, maybe only two. But it used to be faster!
What to buy? The problem is that I’ve heard only bad things about Vista, so I don’t want to go that route. Yes, I can get a new machine with XP on it, but my gut tells me that XP will be permanently replaced in a year or two with whatever operating system Microsoft designs to replace Vista. Do I want my new computers to be obsolete so quickly?
I’ve asked lots of people, and one thread keeps emerging. IMac. I was told that Apple stores are wondrous places filled with people who know their computers inside and out, so I went to see for myself. Once there, I was paired up with Katherine, a woman of my generation who asked all the right questions and quickly came to understand my needs. Two hours later, after she told me that I was glazing over and perhaps needed a break, I purchased a MacBook to try out at the lake. I gotta tell you -- I love it. It’s fun and it’s fast. Yes, it’s different from my PC, so there will definitely be a learning curve, but hey, I can still learn.
I haven’t made the final commitment on buying desktops for Lucy and me, but I’m ninety percent there. I have a guru coming this morning to evaluate our needs. Should we decide on iMacs, he’ll do the set-up. Oh yeah. I know. "Take it out of the box and plug it in." But then there’s assuring compatability with existing printers, installing Word and Excel, and connecting to the Web, and I’m not good with glitches. It gets back to the stomach churning, cold sweat thing I mentioned above. If this guru can make the transition smoother, he’s well worth his (nominal) fee.
I have lists of questions for him, but here’s one for you. If I bite the bullet and spring for new machines, what do I do with the old ones? Any suggestions?
Actually, you do, if you’re reading this, so let me explain.
The copy-editor is the person who reads my manuscript after my editor and I are completely done with it. She (perhaps he, but this time around it’s a she, so I’ll use the feminine) reads through every word with an eagle eye for inconsistencies. She doesn’t smooth out wording; my editor and I have done that at an earlier stage. Rather, the copy-editor makes sure that if John Doe has brown hair in Chapter One, it remains brown throughout the manuscript. Same with eye color and the spelling of a name.
A copy-edited manuscript can be an author’s nightmare. At a time when you’re moving on to the next book, you get this … thing … that is all marked up with red pencil questions. Often the questions are simple, but not always. I had one instance where the copy-editor caught a major error in my chronology. This took a lot of rewriting to repair – at a time when I didn’t want to be doing any rewriting at all. My creative juices were directed elsewhere. Emotionally, it was tough coming back.
So, what does a copy-edited manuscript look like? It’s a printout of the manuscript, with either markings or flags on the pages where the copy-editor has questions. Usually, I’m asked to approve a small change that the copy-editor wants to make. Sometimes, I’m asked to clarify a point, which entails my adding a phrase or a sentence. Occasionally, the copy-editor’s question is one I can answer with no change at all to the manuscript. For example, way back, a copy-editor asked me why I created a town called Dover in Massachusetts, rather than using a real town. I had to explain that Dover is a real town.
And the copy-edited manuscript for While My Sister Sleeps? It was actually pretty clean; I was able to go through it in four hours. There were a few sticky points. For example, at the start of the book, I described the tires of a car “crunching” over a dirt road. The copy-editor questioned whether a car would actually crunch on dirt, and suggested that I might want the road to be gravel. No, I did not. I wanted a dirt road. And our tires do crunch over the dirt road that leads to our house at the lake. There are always little stones in dirt, hence the crunch. I suggested either adding the word stones, or leaving the original wording. Would you readers balk at the idea of tires crunching over a dirt road? I’m betting not.
A more serious issue had to do with the initials Q.E.D. I used them several times in a way that the copy-editor said was not conventional usage. It was fine, I felt. But I changed it anyway. Again, I’m not sure that any but the most picky of readers would be bothered by my usage. But it wasn’t worth the risk. I substituted, “Enough said,” for “Q.E.D.” It did mean making the change in every spot where Q.E.D. appeared, then adding the replacement phrase in a separate scene to make it all work.
I sent the manuscript back to New York yesterday. Next I see it, it’ll be in book form. These are called “galleys” or “author’s pages.” Truth be told, I let my sister do the reading then. If the point is to catch typos, I simply don’t see them. I know the manuscript too well.
]]>This may answer a question many of you ask. Do I design my own covers and, if not, how much input do I have? No, I don’t design my covers. My forte is writing, not art. The one attempt I ever made at telling my publisher what kind of cover to use was with the original edition of Uplift. The art department gave me exactly what I asked for, and the result was awful! I apologized; they went back to the drawing board and came up with something far better; I haven’t dictated a cover since.
That said, I do get cover approval. If my agent and I feel strongly that a cover doesn’t work, the publisher will change it. Sometimes the change is minor, like adding flowers and a hat to the cover of The Woman Next Door. Sometimes minor changes won’t work. Such was the case with the original cover that was sent me for While My Sister Sleeps. We had serious concerns, which apparently were shared by some at Doubleday. The art department did a whole new cover shoot – and the result is spectacular! A different model for one of the characters, different clothes, an outstretched arm – bingo! Click here to take a look.
So this piece of the puzzle is in place. The next piece? The copyedited manuscript. More about that in my next blog.
And after that, a new photo shoot. Now there’s a blog topic. I HATE having my picture taken. Stay tuned.
Piece of cake? Normally, yes. I love talking about my work, and I’m online all the time. At least, I’m online all the time at home, where I have high-speed access via cable.
Unfortunately, I was at the lake last week, and I truly thought it wouldn’t be a problem. We have no cable there (yet), and my internet access has been through a wireless card, which has performed so much better than the dial-up I used to have that I wasn’t worried.
Then the weather turned bad, which apparently meant that people were inside logging on through their own wireless cards. As traffic rose, online navigation slowed, and – worse – my connection was regularly cut off. What that meant was that I would write a really thoughtful reply to a reader, click on “Submit,” and get an error message. Somewhere in the process, my thoughtful reply would be lost, so I’d have to go through the log-on process and start again. Add to that the fact that I was using a laptop, which is nowhere near as comfortable for me as my desktop computer, and you can imagine my frustration.
The funny thing is that not so long ago I wouldn’t even have dreamed I could communicate with readers through a chat room online. Now I’m upset about having to type a reply twice? How easily we get spoiled.
I did muddle through the week and was able to answer all the questions posed to me. And the good news is that the cable company is in the process of bringing cable down our dirt road. It’s been a long haul, literally and figuratively, requiring the work of the phone company and the electric company as well, but we’re almost there. Within another month or so, I’ll be zipping through cyberspace as fast at the lake as I do at home, and what that means is that I’ll get computer work done faster and have more time to spend on the lake.
Of course, my week on Center Stage is done now. But there’s always next year.
Not so easy is focusing on Suddenly, which is the book being headlined for this chat and the one that readers may (or may not, if they’ve read my newer work) focus on. Suddenly was originally published in 1994, which means I wrote it in 1993. It was recently issued in hardcover for the first time, hence its focus during the chat. But, all these years later, what do I remember of the book?
Well, I remember that my main characters are pediatricians in practice together, and that my original title was Mara’s Story, since the book opens with one of those doctors, Mara, dying under circumstances that suggest suicide. I remember that some of the book is set at a gorgeous New England prep school, that it involves the adoption of a precious baby, and that there is a kitten. Oh, and I remember Paige and Noah.
Too many of the details, though, I just can’t recall, and you can bet that visitors to the chat room will ask about those. So guess what I’ll be doing this weekend? Rereading Suddenly. Why not do the same yourself, then log on here and join me? I’d love to answer your questions, about Suddenly or any other of my books!
Knitting has changed right along with the women who do it. Those of you who’ve read Family Tree will already know this. Yarns today are exquisitely hand-dyed, needles are hi-tech, and patterns include stitch variations that would have shocked my grandmother right along with the Excel program generating them.
So why do people look down their noses at knitters? Is it zenophobia? Misogyny? Needle envy?
I do what I can to change the image. When I travel, I knit. I sit in airports wearing classy business attire – and I look pretty good, if I don’t say so myself – and I knit. Men occasionally ask how I got my needles through security. Flight attendants occasionally ask about the yarn I’m using (more intelligent questions, here). I am definitely noticed.
What kinds of things do I knit? At any given time, I have four of five working projects. I am currently (a) finishing a sweater for my youngest granddaughter, (b) working on a (sleeveless) sweater for me, (c) knitting a pair of gloves, (d) doing blocks for an afghan, and (e) making a wrap. The sweater for me is pure silk and includes ribbing with a twisted stitch that gives a beaded effect. The gloves are of fine-guage merino, hand-dyed, and knit with a picot edging around the long cuffs. The afghan blocks are done with a technique called mosaic knitting, a different pattern each month. And the wrap is from a pattern inspired by one of DKNY’s signature sweaters.
Very different stuff. I may not live long enough to see the image change, but some of you will. One thing’s for sure. If the cost of gas keeps climbing, self-starting hobbies like knitting will look better and better.
Our lake isn’t always quiet. Fireworks are legal in New Hampshire and well-used, particularly in July – and the light shows are fabulous. The occasional noise at 1 AM isn’t as welcome. But we do love hearing the sounds of summer guests visiting families around our cove. They’re joyful, excited sounds. And we never complain, because when our own clan gathers, it’s our turn to make noise.
They’re coming in batches through much of this summer. That means lots of prep work on my part. Some of the groceries have to be bought at the last minute – 2% milk for this one, light chocolate milk for that one, whole milk for the other, formula for the baby. Items with a longer shelf life I buy in the city and take north with me – favorite granola bars, favorite breakfast cereals, favorite Yo-Baby flavors. Frozen yogurt is something else. With precious little to be found at the lake, I buy quarts of our favorite soft-serve, freeze them solid, and drive them up in insulated bags. Forty seconds in the microwave and the quart is soft-serve again. Over or under fresh, plump, sweet blueberries? It’s the best dessert.
We always hope for good weather, which means having plenty of beach toys. I’ve just bought a supply of new ones to replace broken ones, and we’ve cleaned up the water tubes, inflatable floats, and water skis. New Hampshire weather is not always good, though, so I’ve also bought a fresh supply of crayons, construction paper, and Play-Doh. I bought Zingo, which is the kids’ favorite game right now (a version of Bingo, but with pictures of a foot, a house, a cat, etc., in place of numbers). I’ve stocked up on paper goods for our nightly cookouts and have transferred sippy cups, straw cups, and plastic dishes from city to lake. Same with bed rails. Same with tricycles. Same with the bin of rubber balls.
Are we exhausted yet? Better not be, because the fun starts soon. And I say that in all seriousness. There is nothing better than having family with us at the lake.
The loons may even cooperate this year. A pair is currently nesting in our cove. If all goes well, we’ll have a loon chick or two soon. And watching those tiny furballs riding on their parents’ backs? Given that loon health is thought to be a harbinger of human health, I’d call that priceless.
Actually, I don’t type THE END on the page, since the powers-that-be would only have to delete it. When was the last time you read a book with THE END printed on the last page?
But it’s there in my mind. Filled with joy, relief, and no small amount of apprehension, I email the whole manuscript to my editor in New York. Then I settle in for a few days of mind-rest. I mean, for the first time in nine months, I can’t work on the book. It’s out of my hands. I wait for comments from my editor. In the course of my career, this has taken anywhere from three days to three weeks. My current editor is the three-day person. Literally, I emailed the manuscript to her on Friday and on Monday she called me with a few suggestions for revisions. The operative work here is “few.” She loves the book (as does my agent, who read it at the same time)! But there were several things she wanted me to rework.
A writer’s dream is for her editor to say, “It’s perfect – there’s absolutely nothing I’d change.” But I am not a prideful person. When my editor says, “I love this book but think it would be even stronger if you brought David in sooner and made Nick simply Molly’s friend, rather than her lover,” I listen. And doing revisions is nowhere near as difficult as the initial writing of the book. It’s modifying what already exists. Easy.
I made the revisions, emailed the new manuscript to my editor, got one or two additional small requests. Then it was done. The whole revision process took a month. And While My Sister Sleeps is now in the production pipeline in New York.
That’s it? Not quite. Now the business side starts. To begin with, I flew down to New York for meetings about the publicity and marketing of this book. These were fabulous meetings – really brainstorming sessions – and we came up with some great ideas. Doubleday has set the pub date at February 21. Mark your calendars, please.
Back home, I’ve set to work doing web stuff for While My Sister Sleeps. You can already read a summary of it on the book page. BTW, no final cover yet. We had a preliminary one, but the art department wanted to reshoot one of the characters. While they’re doing that, I’ll be writing the script for a trailer, to be taped in August. I’m also researching locales for new author photos for the HOME page of this site. Think lush plants and gauzy greenhouses … Boy, do I hate having my picture taken. Always a challenge.
More challenging, I now have to come up with a plot for my next book. Any ideas?
OK. Maybe I’m arguing semantics here. But I truly don’t see An Accidental Woman as a sequel. Both books stand on their own.
I first conceived of the Lake Henry books as a foursome, each celebrating a different New England season. There would be apple cider making in the fall, maple sugaring in the winter, leafing out in late spring, and tourism in summer. Truthfully, it was a marketing move; readers love revisiting the same places. And hey, I’ve designed and built more towns than you’d ever believe. The idea of not having to create a town from scratch was appealing.
I wrote Lake News in 1998, wrote The Vineyard in 1999, The Woman Next Door in 2000, then, in 2001, wrote An Accidental Woman. I thought it would be easy. Wrong. Although An Accidental Woman focused on Poppy Blake, the handicapped sister of Lake News’s Lily Blake, many of the other characters carried over – and I had to get them right. By “right” I mean keep them consistent with the first book. Their appearance, their interests, even the streets of the town had to be consistent – because if there’s one thing I’ve learned as a writer, it’s that if I make a mistake, you readers pick it up.
Way back, in Coast Road, I referred to a Volkswagen having radiator trouble; an astute reader pointed out that Volkswagens don’t have radiators. More recently, in The Secret Between Us, I referred to Dylan Monroe playing in the ninth inning of his Little League game; a savvy reader reminded me (how could I have forgotten, after sitting through so many of my sons’ games?) that Little League games only have six innings!
By the time I was done writing An Accidental Woman, my copy of Lake News was riddled with so many Post-Its that I didn't know which ones marked what. More importantly, by that time, I was tired of Lake Henry. Creating a town from scratch, with the freedom from accountability that allowed, suddenly didn’t seem so bad!
Many readers have asked if there will be a third or fourth Lake Henry book. Right now, none is on the drawing board. Perhaps you can understand why?
Those of you who have read about Family Tree on my site know that knitting is part of the protagonist’s past, something she loves doing, something that soothes her. The same goes for me. I have always been an avid knitter, which is why our partnering with the Berroco Yarn Company for the Family Tree tour was so exciting. Prior to the book’s original publication, I had the joy of visiting Berroco and working with master designers Margery Winter and Norah Gaughan to create the “Family Tree Knitting Collection,” which consists of patterns that are either knitted by or worn by various characters in the book.
Each of the kits I’m giving way in this contest contains 20 (yes, 20!) balls of Berroco Pure Merino, a pair of gauge-appropriate needles, and the “Family Tree Knitting Collection” pattern book.
What do you have to do to enter the contest? Simply visit CONTACT and send a note asking to be entered in the drawing. The deadline is Labor Day – that’s Monday September 1, so that the winners will receive their kits just as they’re starting to plan their knitting for fall and winter. Not a knitter yourself, but know someone who is? Why not enter to win a kit for them? They’ll love you forever.
What’s so great about tiny lake towns like Lake Henry? Well, for starters, they’re on lakes, which immediately makes them special. They’re picturesque and they’re clean. For another thing, they’re small, caring places where people know each other and notice when something’s wrong. For a third, they’re seasonal, which means that summer brings an influx of visitors, which means income for locals, while the arrival of Labor Day brings a sigh of relief. For a fourth, they have charm.
Charm is one of the first things I think about when I think about Lake News, which recently made its debut in trade paperback. Lake Henry, where this book (and its companion, An Accidental Woman) is set, has that charm. Lake News takes place in the fall and talks about the making of apple cider; An Accidental Woman takes place in late winter and deals with the making of maple syrup. Both are quintessential New Hampshire and have a charm even beyond the characters.
Is there a real-life Lake Henry? Not formally. In my mind, it’s a combination of Squam Lake and Lake Winnipesaukee, right up there in the lakes region of New Hampshire. If you’re one of those readers who are planning a “Barbara Delinsky Tour” of New England, definitely make central New Hampshire one of your stops.
If not New Hampshire, where? Tell me if you’ll be traveling this summer and, if so, where you’re headed.
And that, dear friends, is why I haven’t blogged in a while. Blogging takes effort, concentration, and creative energy, all of which I’m putting into While My Sister Sleeps. I’m working on the final quarter of the book – the last 90 pages – and, in fairness, lest you start feeling sorry for me, this is the easy part. I know my characters intimimately, and I know what they have to do before the book ends. Their emotions are running high, which means that mine are as well. Self-discipline isn’t a problem at this stage, as it was at the start of the book. Back then, knowing that the whole book was ahead of me was slightly daunting. Good reason to knock off, have lunch with a friend, go shopping, or knit.
Now I have no such temptations. I’m running the final leg of this race (one of the characters in While My Sister Sleeps is a runner -- good analogies here). No way am I stopping until the last words of this book are done.
That said, I’m still talking with book groups on the phone, though I try to group them together so that my actual writing time is unbroken. I’m also delivering the occasional speech, as those of you in New England who received my recent eblast know. This is the business side of my work, and it isn’t very sympathetic to the creative side. I discipline it, but only to a point. It's part of my career.
Which, by the way, is something I’ll be saying to my Boston College audience of writers-to-be Wednesday night (click here for details). Writing a good book alone isn’t enough to make an author successful. She has to be able to handle the business of writing as well, which means managing a website, giving speeches, making appearances, doing interviews, and, yes, blogging.
I’m aiming to finish While My Sister Sleeps by Memorial Day. I’m actually hoping to finish a week earlier, so that I’ll be able to read through the whole thing one last time and make final edits before sending it on to my editor in New York. Then I’ll hold my breath, waiting to see whether she likes it. If she doesn’t, there will be revisions to do on my end. If she does, we’ll be into the afterwork work of novel writing. But that’s easier. No blank screen each morning. Just refining. It’s very satisfying work.
I’ll write more then. Thanks for understanding! Remember, I’m doing this for YOU!
Oh, and my publisher is working on a cover for While My Sister Sleeps. As soon as it's done, I'll post it with a summary of the book. Sound fair?
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First, to clarify, "New Old Books" are old books of mine that are being published in new formats. Suddenly will go on sale in hardcover for the first time on April 1; For My Daughters and A Woman Betrayed are on sale in trade paperback now. BTW, these trade paperback releases are based on the success of Family Tree in trade paperback. This format -- hardcover size with a soft cover and much lower price -- has become a reader favorite. I’m no exception. I love this format.
But getting back to the topic at hand, let me tell you more about each of these books.
First, because it’s an all-time favorite of mine, For My Daughters. Like so many women in the '90s, I read and loved The Bridges of Madison County. I was bothered, though, by the fact that Francesca had her wonderful affair, then returned to her family without missing a beat. The psychologist in me felt that a small something in her would have changed and given her away. For My Daughters addresses this issue. Ginny St. Clair has always been cool and distant to her three daughters, and they to each other. The summer of her 70th birthday, she abruptly invites them to help her settle into a newly-purchased, flower-strewn mansion on the rocky Maine coast. Annette, the good mother of five, hard-edged Caroline, a Chicago lawyer, and Leah, the twice-divorced youngest sibling, arrive at the estate, each aghast to find the others -- but no Mom. Though the three grimly assume battle positions, enforced proximity fosters grudging respect and the opening of minds. For Leah, there’s also a scalding affair with the groundskeeper, echoing the forbidden love between a gardener and the mistress of the house half a century before.
I cry every time I read For My Daughters. I have no daughters, no seventy-something mother. But I do have sisters, as do many of my readers, for whom this book has resonated as well.
Second, A Woman Betrayed. Owning a restaurant, two wonderful children, and a twenty-year marriage, Laura Frye has it all. When her husband mysteriously vanishes, she fears he’s been victimized and is lying dead in a ditch. As time passes without the recovery of a body, it becomes apparent that he harbored secrets Laura never imagined. As her world crashes around her and she works to rebuild her life, she discovers new strength, new independence, new love.
A Woman Betrayed reminds us of the old maxim that the wife is the last to know. But why is that? Weakness? Absolutely not. Laura is a strong woman who is optimistic and trustful. Her husband takes advantage of that. But he, interestingly, is the sleeper in A Woman Betrayed. I wrote him in a way that suggests life isn’t black and white. Jeff isn’t all bad. Enough said …
Finally, Suddenly. This book tells of four friends who are partners in a pediatric practice. When one dies suddenly under conditions that suggest suicide, the others are devastated. Told largely through the eyes of Paige Pfeiffer, this is a story of self-examination as each of the characters look long and hard at their own lives. There is growth here -- and much on a happy note, not the least being the arrival of the baby their friend had been in the process of adopting. We never do know whether Mara’s death was an accident or not, but the lives of her friends have been forever changed. Mara’s legacy is sealed.
My original title for this book was “Mara’s Story.” Gotta tell you, I still like it best!
BTW, I love the new cover of For My Daughters. What do you think?
Let me know think about these new old books, and, in the meantime, enjoy! Me, my nose is back to the grindstone.
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