Description

It's been lovely to have a week of writing. My deadline to give my new editor a first look at my next novel is April 15th. I know we'll have a lot of work to do together on it, and I'm excited to get that process started.

As I tell kids in my school visits, I like to set my books in real places. I change them a lot after I choose them, but I do always have real places underneath it all. In my new novel, three chapters take place in a funky little mountain gift shop that includes a local museum in the back.  My main character currently describes it as: 

Halfway between a real museum and someone's grandmother’s attic, this museum felt as homemade as the jams and soap that Mrs. Stackpole sold. It was really just a big extra space at the back of the gift shop, cut into aisles by long partitions and huge glassy display cases crammed with plates and teacups, old, lacy dresses and scuff-worn boots. On the partitions were framed photos, old newspaper clippings, documents, and small laminated cards telling the story for those visitors who didn’t pay for the full tour.



Today, I'm remembering the day my daughter and I drove to the real gift shop underneath that little bit of description. I'm looking at the photos and reading the notes I took that day.  Sometimes it's the little things, the things you couldn't have simply imagined that make it real. 

In looking at the photos this morning, I'm noticing the fans--the white box fan in the gift shop in the top photo and this old, black metal one in the museum--and remembering the breeze on my bare legs and on my face and the sound of whirring, stirring up the smells of balsam pillows, old wood and paper, and a hundred candles.