The Stories We Read and Write

I have completed reading two good books the last couple of weeks, and I want to talk about them in a bit. But first, I want to discuss a couple of the writing projects I’m excited about.

I just completed writing Classroom Guides for my two middle-grade fiction books, Ranch Girl and the Orphan Lamb Adventure and Ranch Girl and a Boy Named Toby. The guides are filled with classroom study and teaching suggestions. They will soon be published on the Arcadia Publishing website where those interested in my books for classroom instruction may download the guides for free. My books are also available on the Arcadia site. The imprint is Pelican Publishing. In the meantime, you may want to download my guides from here:

Scroll down on the right side of the guides to see all the pages.

School administrators, Teachers, homeschool parents, etc., may contact Arcadia for special pricing on class sets of books (843-853-2070). And I am often available for appearances at schools and events. My e-books can be found at Apple Books and Google Books. Click on “Books” on this Story Mill Press website to see other information and purchasing information.

I am also excited about a novel I’ve been working on for some time–actually I’ve been working on two very different novels, but I think I may be ready to start a round of querying on the historical novel. I say “may be ready” because I am never really ready to do that. Querying is long, hard work and often is a soul-crushing exercise. I’m insecure about my work, and rejection sets me on a never-ending spiral of writing and re-writing.

For those of you who have queried agents and publishers, you likely know what I’m saying. Rejection is the name of the game. If you cannot take rejection, you do not want to query publishers or agents. And to further your demoralization, it often takes weeks, months, or never to hear from them. Even though I cannot understand why they do not fall in love with my “babies,” I simply tell myself that no one asked me to write. I did this to myself. Agents and publishers are extremely busy people, and the route of traditional publication with all its gatekeepers is the one I chose. So, there I am. One must love the process in order to keep going.

Okay. Enough about writing. Let’s talk reading. I have read two books during the last few weeks. The first was a middle-grade, 200-page biography of Louisa May Alcott called Invincible Louisa. This book by Cornelia Meigs was published in 1933 and won the Newbery Medal (often considered the most prestigious award in U.S. children’s literature) in 1934. I approached the book with a bit of apprehension. I’ve read other biographies of Louisa and her family, and I was afraid that this biography for children might sugar-coat some of Louisa’s homelife and circumstances. While there might have been a bit of this, it seemed to me, for the most part, a clear-eyed assessment of the author of Little Women and her life.

Louisa came from a loving family of two parents and four daughters, but her father was a visionary. And as a visionary, he was seldom practical. Practicality had to fall to his wife and often to his children. Though Bronson Alcott was a brilliant man and teacher, his ideas of communal living and Transcendental philosophy often left Louisa and the rest of the family in near poverty, despite the illustrious connections of the Alcott and May (Louisa’s mother was a May) families. John Hancock was Mrs. Alcott’s uncle, and there were many other Revolutionary-period connections. The whole family were great friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathanial Hawthorn, Elizabeth Peabody (credited with the creation of U.S. kindergartens), and numerous other intellectuals, writers, and thinkers. But the truth of the matter was that the Alcott family often suffered. Mr. Alcott was not a good provider. So, Louisa decided early on that she would somehow provide for the family. This biography traces Louisa’s love of stories and dramas and her early writing of short, sensational fiction for magazines and journals. It was not, however, until she wrote a book for girls and later other books for children that her writing career took flight. In the end, she provided for her whole family.

The other book I read was The Dutch House, a splendid novel by Ann Patchett. I have been slow to notice Patchett, but I plan not to make that mistake again. She is a master storyteller whose book had so many layers and such depth it was hard for me to put down. I love a book that I start dissecting while doing the dishes. For me, it was a study of what shapes a person’s life and values. But I realize that the similar circumstances can affect people differently. This is a story largely about Maeve and Danny whose mother left them while they were children. She was a mother whose dedication to helping others precluded her own children. Danny tells the story that wraps its way around a house everyone refers to as the Dutch House, not because of its style but because a Dutch couple had built the beautiful and elaborate home that Danny and Maeve’s father bought for their mother before she left. Their father, once poor, had become rich, and their mother who had studied to become a nun hated the house. The two emotionally close siblings try to understand their lives that come to include a “wicked” stepmother and her two sweet daughters, that is, until it doesn’t. It is the story of loss, coping, choices, and need–those things and so much more. At least, that is how I see it. Ann Patchett carries the reader along with constant, incomplete glimpses of what is to come and draws her characters with near perfection.

What I’m reading now:

The Which Way Tree by Elizabeth Crook (Texas author, Historical Fiction)

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech (1995 Newbery Medal winner)

What are you reading? Let me know in the comments.