Posts Tagged ‘BLUEPRINTS’
Little Loveys
In honor of Mother’s Day earlier this month, I posted a Facebook tribute to my mother along with her picture, and I invited readers to do the same. The response was amazing. The number of people reading the post and sending corresponding tributes to their own moms was heartrending. Their words touched me deeply. Whether…
Read MoreBD and the Big Apple
I used to go to New York a lot. The first time was when I was eleven, when my dad introduced my sisters and me to the place. We stayed at the Commodore Hotel over Grand Central Station, and he took us to the Empire State Building, the Broadway production of “Peter Pan,” Rockefeller Center,…
Read MoreWhen books mirror life
I have a childhood friend, living far away now, who swears she knows what’s going on in my life from my newest book. She is certainly right where Blueprints is concerned. During the early months of the writing, in real life I was gutting and redoing the bathroom off my bedroom – totally fitting when…
Read MoreWhere’s your comfort zone?
I had a heart-to-heart once with the guy who does my hair. He’d been doing it for a long time, but we were increasingly at odds about style, cut, and color, with him urging me in one direction and my urging him in another. Finally, seeming exasperated, he said, “Barbara, you need to get out…
Read MoreHow we got a cover for BLUEPRINTS
If you’re reading this blog, you’re currently looking at the cover of my new book, BLUEPRINTS, which debuts this coming June. What do you think? Does the cover draw you in? This isn’t an idle question. It’s one that my publisher and I have been asking ourselves since this cover became “the one.” We…
Read MoreI have a title!
Book titles arrive different ways. Some crop up at the get-go, even before I start writing a book. Others come when my publisher reads the opening of the book and a word or phrase pops up that is perfect. Others take longer to find. My preference? I like having a title early on. It helps…
Read MoreMockingbirds
Just finished my next book! I’ve been working on this baby for more than a year, and that doesn’t count the months before I started the actual writing, when I focused on research. This book – no title yet – demanded a lot of research. I had to learn about the tools a carpenter would…
Read MoreWhen I write about home construction
Does life imitate art? Not for me. For me, it’s the other way around. When life happens, I write about it. For instance, after my husband and I built our house, I wrote about home construction in the Crosslyn Rise Trilogy. When we began spending time in small New Hampshire towns, I wrote Lake News. …
Read MoreWhat’s coming for Barbara in 2014
Young chick, old boots. That’s my theme here. As 2013 fades to 2014, it’s only natural to think about ending the old and beginning the new. But is that what really happens? Not in my book. And I mean that both literally and figuratively. I don’t see that we end and begin. Life is a…
Read MorePage Change
Whoa. I just looked at my last blog, and realized how long I’ve been gone! Well, not really gone. I’ve been here at my desk the whole time, plugging away at my new book. But now we’re into October, and sweet corn is passé in New England. What’s in? Apples and cranberries (the picture below…
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