And Yarn Ran Through It…

As I prepare my Sinking Ships‘ first marketing report one week after its release, I feel heartened. Sales are doing well, and the reviews have been lovely. Here’s the first customer review posted:

Wow! What a fascinating set of characters! I was grabbed right away by the Abishag concept and intrigued by the mystery. These people are very real. I feel like I know them. Leslie Greene is an empathetic and determined heroine with a great sense of humor. Her outlook on life is unique. The story keeps you riveted to the very end and I’m delighted to know that I will have more opportunities to follow up with Leslie and her friends.

I recommend this very highly! 

Neat, eh? Check out the Sinking Ship Amazon site for other reviews.

Fellow knitter Jean created a hat for Sinking Ships‘ release. She did a fun post at Knitting Paradise with a different view of the hat. I’m grateful for her generosity and talent.

At the end of Sinking Ships, I’d included the first chapter of the next short novel in the Abishag Mystery series, Indelible Beats, with the promise of a December release date. I’ll miss that by a week or two. At coffeehouses and during rainy days at home, I’m doing the final proof and will then send it to the formatter to be published soon afterwards.

Everything takes longer than you think. Engineers say this throughout any project. As I translate into full-time writing, I’m saying it again.

Fellow writer Debra Young moaned recently: “My brain is on fire, so the writing session is over.” That’s when I knit. As a child with a thought rippling into a story, I’d cover pages of tablets my grandmother bought from the PX with sketches of characters, locations, and plot points. Now I knit to delve deeper into a character’s story, proving that writing sessions never end.

I don’t have Jean’s gift of design and craft, but I can attack my knitting loom with colors, textures and embellishments that reveal something about my main character. In Indelible Beats, after caring for her comatose first husband and facing a killer in Sinking Ships, Leslie has changed. While she still has her blind spots and quirky view of life, she now has a deeper relationship with her college housemates, a more spirited approach to circumstances, and an altered view of fashion. So I used a soft thick vibrant red  yarn, a prickly sashay ribbon yarn for the band, and the biggest (but stylish) washi bead I could find. Knitting Paradise has been a great forum for advice and inspiration–and a home for my pictures of knitted hats and slipper socks.

Countless socks and hats flew off the loom in writing these Abishag tales. When I’m reading the drafts, I see the yarn running through it.

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