Susan’s Comments (group member since Jul 20, 2010)

Susan’s comments from the Q&A with Susan Albert group.

Fred wrote: "... Back then you had to stop at the butcher, the grocer..."

But now we're at the mercy of the supply chain and just-in-time stocking! What happens when there's a sudden stoppage, for any reason? Will we go hungry? In a small community in the 30s, each merchant had his/her own suppliers, usually fairly local. There might have been shortages, but there was greater flexibility, especially in rural areas.

That's why I chose to write about a small town: I wanted to show people relying on the local community for what they needed. There will be more about this in future books in the series, and it looks like an emerging theme in the China series, too. (I do have an agenda, yes!)

Everybody, if you're feeling swamped by this discussion, just uncheck the Update Feed box in your Goodreads profile and groups. Then you can drop in when you want.

Fred wrote: "
So wish I had the room to be able to make the wonderful things that Bill does."

He has a hard time here in the summer because his workshop isn't air-conditioned. Hard to do serious wood-turning when you're dripping sweat! Our Texas climate limits what we choose to do.

Melodie wrote: "Another China Bayles fan here! I sometimes wish I could be as practical as China, but think I'm a little too old to change that now! The books have all been 4 & 5 star reads for me and I guess my..."

Love Lies Bleeding represented a new place in the series for me. I was trying to figure out whether McQuaid should stay or go. And when China decided he should stay, I had to figure out how to make that happen. :)

Bloodroot was another new place, because it was the first book that had a background mystery that took place in a previous time, and had to be solved before the contemporary mystery could be solved. It's a "dense" book, with several plot threads.

Bleeding Hearts was also "dense," in the sense that I wrote it by tracing out the metaphors involved with the idea of "bleeding hearts."

1500 books! That's a big TBR pile, Fred. But knowing you, you'll never be bored, anyway. You'll always find something to do. Bill asks me when I'll retire. I say: Never! I feel so fortunate to be able to do what I love to do--I won't give it up until I can't do it anymore.

I think the Depression did that to people--but thrift and frugality were much more common then (and in the decades before the 30s) than now. Now, we're deluged with stuff, so there's not much point in saving. That wasn't true when your grandmother was growing up.

I'll be very pleased if the books in this series make people think about issues like this one!

Re: chocolate. It's medicinal,has been used as money, is an aphrodisiac--that's enough to qualify it as an herb. Which should mean it doesn't have any calories, right?

I do like to read in my chair, do enjoy my Kindle, but I'm with you: I also like to see (visually) where I am in the book. What I like best about the Kindle is the ability to buy a book I want at 2 in the morning, which is cool, since I live about 120 mi (round trip) from a bookstore. Reading is my passion. I could live without writing, I suppose, but take reading away from me, and I'll be ready to check out.

I really don't think so, Fred. I'm able to satisfy that urge by putting together the weekly herbal eletter (http://www.abouthyme.com/dayletters/l...), which is really a labor of love. That is, I love the material and love sharing it with people. So as long as that itch is getting scratched online, I'm not so anxious to assemble another book. I'm really interested in the ways that online material supplements and (in some cases) even substitutes for print. We're moving away from print, seems to me. Is that a scary prospect, do you think?

I started writing in YA mass-market series, so I had to outline in order to get editorial approval. I stayed with that approach, pretty much, through the first 3-4 books in the China series. After that, I began winging it.

I usually start with a situation and a problem/conflict, and let the characters take over from there. And yes, China helps out. Ruby's a problem, because when she tries to help, she likes to get out her Ouija board and then wacky things happen. But that's fun, and that's Ruby. The same thing happens with the animals in the Cottage Tales. I really never know where they're going until they take me there.

When Bill and I began the Robin Paige series, we outlined maybe half the book (just so we'd know what we were doing), and wing the second half.

Readers are often curious about how writers work. If you have questions about the process, jump in. If you're wondering about something, chances are somebody else is wondering about it, too.

I grew up with Potter's Little Books (I learned to read with Peter Rabbit!) and she's always held a special place in my heart. Bill and I used her as a character in the second book of our Robin Paige series, Death at Gallows Green. That book involved quite a bit of research--and that was when I began to think of the possibilities of using her as a central character in a mystery series.

To answer your other question, I'm an American and live in Texas--I've spent some time in the Lake District, but not nearly enough. We like to stay in the Sawrey Hotel when we visit there. It's a pleasant walk to Hill Top Farm. So sorry that you couldn't visit the farm: the house is still just the way she left it, down to her pattens beside the fire and her pretty blue rug on the floor!

Actually, I think China is a version of myself, Carol--the self I would really like to be. She has plenty of faults (most of them mirror my own) but she's smarter than I am, and far more logical as a left-brain thinker. Ruby, on the other hand, is China's complement: she's a right-brain thinker who speaks from the heart and knows intuitively what China has to *think* about. When China leaps to conclusions, she's usually wrong. When Ruby leaps, she's right. Usually.

Keeping characters "real" is a big challenge, especially in a long-running series. When I first started writing the Chinas back in the early 90s, most characters in mystery series were like Nancy Drew or Miss Marple: they didn't grow. I realized from Book One that if China were to be "real," she would have to grow and change. Some readers didn't like that--but now, her character's growth and change has become a hallmark of the series.

I know--I'll miss Beatrix too! But her life changed so dramatically in 1913 (with her marriage) that it seems a good time to end the series. After 1913, for instance, she drew almost nothing. If you check your book, you'll likely see that all the drawings were done before 1913. After that, all her energies went into her farm, her sheep and cows and pigs, and the farms she began to buy. An amazing lady...

When I was a kid, my mother's frugality annoyed me. For instance, she reused paper towels, which I thought was silly. (Now, of course, I know better and have adopted many of her "use it up" practices.) She learned to be frugal in the Depression, when there was no money to buy things. And I'm glad now that I was able to learn some of those Depression lessons, even when I didn't understand where they came from.

I decided on eight because that was the period in Beatrix's life that was most interesting to me: the years between 1905 (when she bought Hill Top Farm) and 1913 (when she married Will Heelis and moved to the Lakes for good. Eight years, eight books. Seemed right...

Shelly--Yes, we had a big problem with Holly Blues, didn't we? Took a while for Penguin and Amazon to see eye-to-eye on the pricing, which meant that some books were more than a month late getting into eformat. I like Wormwood, as well--and (yes, Fred) Bloodroot: both books are "thicker" because they have historical plots, as well as contemporary plots. I like playing with that--makes it more fun to pull the pieces together

Bill Albert and I wrote this series together from 1994 to 2006. We loved it, but the research was hugely demanding. We aimed to write 10 books, wrote 12, gave it up, and often consider picking it up again. But then we shake our heads and say "no," regretfully.

I started this eight-book series in 2004. Book 7 will be out in just a few weeks (early September). Somebody called it an "ultra-cozy" and I think that's about right!

This is my new-new series, first book just out this month. Anybody read it yet?

If you have comments, questions, etc about the China Bayles series, let's work with them here.

Hi, Fred--nice to hear from you again! We still have (and still love) that Honda Element, and our Civic too. Yep, same one, 150,000 mi and still purring along. Glad your Westies enjoy the Potter series: our heelers think it's pretty cool, too.