Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Take a break

Last week was a little insane. 

I had a community craft show on Sunday, plus my writing friend Marian Thorpe arrived from Canada that evening and we went to dinner with her. 

On Monday, she and I met up after breakfast and drove out to the Brandywine Museum, which houses a lovely collection of art by the Wyeth family - N.C., Andrew, and Jamie. 

Personally, I'm a sucker for the old N.C. Wyeth paintings, because I remember them as book illustrations and I've always been a fan of that era.

But the pig sculpture below is based on a painting of Jamie's, and he's rather lovely. We wandered through the museum, had lunch there, and then drove over to Ridley Creek State Park to have a proper walk-and-talk. When Marian and I get together, we spend most of our time discussing our current projects, our characters (and since we talk frequently, we know each other's characters almost as well as our own), and our next projects. Hours passed. Stories were plotted.


On Tuesday - book launch day - we met at my favorite local eatery, an Irish diner run by a Mexican family, which serves a stellar menu of both cuisines. Once full of breakfast, we went to the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge for more of the same walking-and-talking, and wore ourselves OUT. That was an early day. She went back to her hotel and I went home to watch my Amazon dashboard (all the pre-orders don't come in at once, but all throughout the day, and so I kept checking to see if/when they arrived).

Wednesday was a later start. We had coffee, then drove into Philadelphia because Marian was doing a presentation on world-building in fantasy and I wanted to ride along and listen. My first college class! It was a great time, with engaged students asking good questions. Afterward, we drove around the city a bit and I gave her a tour of some sites that appear in Coming Apart.

We got back to the house in time to swap cars, pick up my husband, and go to dinner in West Philadelphia at another favorite place. By the time we got back home, she and I felt absolutely drunk, and there had been no alcohol involved. Just so much good conversation, plotting, brain work, and fresh air over several days. 


It took through this weekend to fully recover and to type up all the weird and random notes I made into my phone about Ava and Claire's books 2 and 3. We did this same thing last November, with the same results for both of us. Having another writer brain to bounce ideas off is invaluable.


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