If you saw my last post, you know that Time of Death is coming soon. The list of things to do is shorter. I've seen the first version of a cover design and that's an exciting thing to me. Makes it realer, somehow, and I'm so glad I have the talented Kelly Lojk to do the design for me.
And I kept my only New Year's Resolution: I sat down on 1-1-13 and began reworking, rewriting and reimagining the mansucript for a novel, STONE SOUP. It is set in a fictional mill town in North Carolina, Black Haw. Black Haw is mostly my mother's hometown, Lindale, Georgia, if it were set on the just a few miles from my house.
If you've read my book, UNTIL PROVEN: A MYSTERY IN 2 PARTS, you may remember that Eden lives in Black Haw in its 21st Century artsy Newer South incarnation. The action of that book is almost all in Piedmont and Piedmont is also a setting for parts of STONE SOUP.
It is fun to create a landscape, complete with towns, rivers, railroads, a university . . . whatever you need! It helps with characters, too, to have a clear vision of where they live and what they see when they look out their windows. It makes me realize how much what I see out of mine shape me. Is it a southern writer thing to be a bit obsessed with landscape? I'm in good company, that's for sure.
By the way, if you haven't read UNTIL PROVEN, can you explain yourself?
