Susan's Meadow Knoll Journal

November 2. Too many interruptions. Reading Circle on Wednesday (fun and interesting) and my annual mammogram yesterday—not a pleasant chore, but a necessary one. All those jokes about how to prep for a mammo are dead-on. Just like shutting your boob into a refrigerator door. However, it’s done, and I ought to be grateful for the technology. I’m knitting for Christmas, so I made a side-trip to purchase yarn. I don’t have enough time, these days, to spin my own, and anyway, these hats and socks are for the kids, who need to be able to toss them into the washer. Tomorrow a signing at Borders in Dallas—hope there’s a large enough turn-out to justify the trip.

November 6. I got an email today from a friend, a former student from my UT days, lamenting the fact that his new book (his second novel, and a good one) has fallen into a deep hole and disappeared. No reviews, no sales. He blames 9/11, and he’s probably right. The terrorist attacks have certainly impacted the book business. I was disappointed in the Dallas turnout last weekend—if I had it to do over, I’d stay home—but I don’t take it personally. People just aren’t going out as much as they have in the past. My friend wishes he’d had the foresight to write a novel about Middle East terrorism. He’d probably have a best-seller on his hands.

November 9. A marsh hawk (his name, I think, has recently been changed to "Northern harrier," for reasons I fail to understand) has staked out his territory in the south meadow, and we can watch him from the living room window as he sails along, low and slow, showing us his characteristic white rump, striped wings, and long, narrow tail. He’s looking for mice, snakes, frogs, and birds on the ground, such as bob-whites and sparrows. I’ve never found a nest, although I’ve read that it’s built on the ground, and that both the female and the male sit on the eggs. A nice arrangement.

November 14. A light, silvery fog this morning, making the woods particularly beautiful and mysterious. Bill and I were laughing and talking on our walk up to the lake, and the geese, on the other side of the dam, heard us and began to call—a lovely, raucous, wild shrieking. I’ve laid the book aside for a few days to work on the Story Circle Journal. This happens once a quarter and is a writing project I always enjoy. This one is special, though, because it brings together so many first-rate contributors, and because I got to interview (via email) Christina Baldwin, whose book on journaling, Life’s Companion, has always been a favorite of mine. The Journal also has information about the Story Circle national conference, which is coming up in February in Austin—a unique conference, with a strong program and excellent presenters from as far away as Maine and California, and points in between. We’ve worked hard on putting it together, but we’re nervous about attendance, of course. Austin in February is wonderful, but people seem to be afraid of flying.

November 17.

Rain, rain, rain. We’ve had what our local forecaster loves to call a "rain event." We got just over nine inches here in about 36 hours, with the heaviest flooding we’ve seen in the nearly 15 years we’ve lived here. Water flowed over the top of the dam (it’s not supposed to do that!), the creek flowed into the yard, four of our five footbridges were carried downstream and the road washed out. Quite an interesting experience. I took the first photo here from our back deck and the second from the front porch. There was nothing to be afraid of, since our house is high and dry, but we have a great deal of cleanup to do.

November 19. We held a boat recovery party yesterday afternoon. Most of the people who live on this lake (about 20 acres, at its maximum stage) leave their boats at water’s edge—not a problem, unless there’s a "rain event." In which case, since the lake’s outlet is on our property, all the boats end up on our beach, four, in this case, plus one of our own. I happened to be there when the neighbor from the other side of the lake came to fetch his bass boat. He told me that we now have a pair of beavers, who have built a lodge into the dam! I was delighted, for there are no other reported sightings of beavers in Burnet County. What a joy, to think of them living their beaver lives so close. There’s a down-side to this, of course. We have some young cypress trees growing along the creek, and I don’t want the bark stripped. Guess I’ll wrap them in chicken-wire.

November 24. We went to Houston on Wednesday and Thursday for Thanksgiving with Bill’s mother—a pleasant day. On Wednesday night, we went to see Spy Games (I’m a Robert Redford groupie). I loved Redford, of course, even if he’s pushing 70, but the movie soundtrack volume was waaay too loud for me, and the action scenes were torqued up and over-extended to the point where they overpowered almost everything else. Interesting use of flashbacks and narrative framing, though, very sophisticated from that angle. And of course, Redford is so skilled, such a pro. And Brad Pitt looks enough like him to be his son.

November 26. Up to 77,000 words on the book (Death at Glamis) today, which means that we really have to start winding up the plot. This is a particularly complex plot situation, with a couple of major back stories and tie-ins to two previous books, and Bill has a better grasp of it than I do. But then, I’ve never felt as interested in plot as in character—we’re a good team, where that’s concerned. It’s been difficult to do two Robin Paige novels this year, though. Bill remarked this morning that this new schedule means that we are two books ahead of our readers, instead of just the usual one book. Dartmoor won’t be out until February, and heaven knows when they’ll publish Glamis. November, maybe?