red river winter

I've spent two hours on Kentucky's Red River this morning only it's autumn in my manuscript and not January. I know the Red River Gorge would be a very cold, inhospitable place about now though still very beautiful. I think I'd like it best in spring when the ground is a garden of hepaticas and trout lilies and trailing arbutus, everything overhung with mist. What would it have looked like in 1777?

I think one of the best things about writing is being there. Writing really is an escape. Writing erases time. If you don't like living in the 21st century you don't have to. All you need is pen and paper and some good research. The little details make it real. Oh, and it helps to have a big imagination. I love this quote by John Bunyan... Who knows better than He how to guide our mind and pen for His design?

Where do these stories come from anyway? Only He knows! I sometimes wonder what it would be like to not be so dreamy all the time, always wondering about that next scene or scrap of dialogue. I sometimes wonder if my boys might like a mom who is more present and not so caught up in the past.

Today I heard that I'll be able to send two advanced copies of TFD to the good folks at the Kentucky Book Fair in hopes I'll be invited to attend in November. If I am I know just where I'll spend the weekend - at that very old, very hospitable inn called The Meeting House in Frankfort. I fell in love with it last August. And I have to return to Louisville for more research on Locust Grove for book 3. But that's far away yet and I have another book deadline before then. Oh joy!