Susan's Meadow Knoll Journal

October 1. Bill has gone to Houston to visit his mother, and I’m reading the galley proofs of the new Robin Paige book. The pages are pretty clean now, but this book was another of those awful copy-edit adventures. The book is set in 1901 and features Conan Doyle, when he was writing Hound of the Baskervilles at Dartmoor. We included numerous references to his wife Louisa, who was still alive at the time, although suffering from consumption. The copy editor went to the Internet, found a website with the erroneous information that Louisa Doyle died in 1900, and on the authority of that incorrect information, went about changing all our correct references to her! It took literally hours to straighten out the problems he created in the text. And in the galleys I checked today, I found several small errors that didn’t get corrected. I’m reminded of Carolyn Hart, who was once so frustrated by a miserable galley that she sent it back to the editor and demanded that it be re-set. But there’s not that kind of problem here, just the irritating business of fixing things I’ve already fixed once before.

October 2. The autumn rose garden is a special bonus this year. Most of my antique roses are re-bloomers—that is, they bloom in spring and then (if they like the weather) bloom again in the fall. Most of the bushes are covered with blossoms, and the air is filled with their scent. The old Ducher rose, which dates back to the 1850s, is a special favorite. In the spring, the blossoms are usually small and tight, but the autumn blooms can be as large as camellias, and just as fragrant. I love this plant because my grandmother had one in her garden, on the farm in Missouri many years ago. I always think of her when I see it.

October 7. Today and yesterday were busy, with a Writing From Life workshop for Story Circle. We have a strong team of facilitators—Donna Remmert, Susie Flautau, Catherine Cogburn, Paula Yost—each of whom taught one segment of the workshop. I taught two (Writing Home and Writing Your Spiritual Autobiography), to make the sequence come out even. On Saturday night, we watched The Midwife’s Tale, and talked about it afterward, the fascinating, beautifully-done story of a Maine midwife who kept an extensive journal during the years 1785-1812. These workshops are exhausting, but also enormously exciting, and I always feel privileged to be able to work with so many strong women. And the stories! Women sometimes say that they lead "ordinary" lives—but when they start to write, they discover that their lives are quite extraordinary. There’s a very special beauty in dailiness, as I often think when I write about what goes on here at Meadow Knoll.

October 9. The publication date for Bloodroot! The first shipment of books finally arrived about noon, at the Georgetown bookstore, and I’ll drive over there tomorrow and spend the day signing and personalizing them. I very much admire Linda Seale, the bookstore manager—she’s not only fun to work with, but also marvelously efficient! She’s already got all the mailing envelopes addressed and stacked in boxes, so the books will go out by the end of the week, we hope. The initial shipment will be something like 400 books, and by Christmas we’ll ship out another 300. It’s a very big job, and I always swear that this will be the last year I do it, especially because October is always a crazy month, with book signings and interviews and other promotion activities. When I first started out as a free-lance writer, I was doing work for hire and similar projects, and book promotion wasn’t my responsibility. Now it is, and it seems to take up an increasing amount of time.

October 11. The first shipping numbers are in, and looking good. Berkley had to go back to press for a substantial second run of the first edition of Bloodroot, and the reprint edition of Mistletoe Man has made the USA Today best-seller list. Not only that, but the Monarch butterflies are migrating. This morning, just as the sun came up, I found them hanging in large clusters from the oak trees in the woods, looking exactly like Japanese paper lanterns. Tonight I’ll be driving down to San Antonio to have dinner with Lorraine Jennings and Barbara Peters and a few other friends, and give a talk at the Herb Society on herbal folklore—one of my favorite topics. Maybe I’ll go a bit early, and spend some time at the Botanical Gardens.

October 15. Another book signing this weekend, at Murder by the Book in Houston. Under the circumstances, I was afraid that people might not come out. But we had a fine crowd—lots of old friends in the audience, including Celia Morgan, from the old days at Southwest Texas State. It was lovely to see her, but it also reminded me that before I began writing for a living, I did something else, and on the long drive home (Houston is about four hours from Meadow Knoll) I thought about those distant days. I love the writing life, but once upon a time I loved the academic life too, with its hustle and urgency and the sense of being part of a large and important world. Celia was a part of that life, and it was nice to be reminded of it again.

October 17. Today was Sandhill Arrival Day at Meadow Knoll. We saw our first large flight of Sandhill cranes—heard them, rather, as they spiraled overhead, climbing into an amazingly blue sky on an invisible column of rising air. I love their wild, primitive cry, a long, hollow, warbling rattle. They call often as they fly, talking to one another, cheering one another on, perhaps, or passing the time of day, remarking on sights beneath them. "Hey, Ralph, look down there. See that crazy lady waving and yelling? Wonder what she’s trying to tell us." I’m that crazy lady, waving at them, and cheering them on. It’s autumn now, so they’re heading south, toward their winter grounds along the Coastal Bend. If you go there in the winter, you’ll see them in large flocks, feeding on sorghum and corn left in the fields after the harvest. The Sandhills mate for life, and sometimes you can see them dancing with their mates, heads bobbing, bowing and leaping, tossing grass, and running with wide-stretched wings. They’re ecstatic birds, one of our great national treasures. Bill and I always celebrate the day when the first flocks return.

October 23. Bill is harvesting pecans from the trees he’s grafted over the past ten years or so—lovely, large nuts with lots of flavor. Sometimes he has to arm-wrestle the squirrels for them, and the crows are a constant threat. They gang up in the meadow across the creek and wait until the shucks begin to split, then flock to the trees, pull off the nuts, and fly away with the nuts in their beaks. But not if Bill gets there first. And he has a strong incentive to beat those crows, because he loves pecan pie. Here’s our favorite recipe:

October 26. We’re making real progress on Death at Glamis Castle, the Robin Paige book we’re working on right now. The manuscript is up to 50,000 words and feels solid. We had a story conference this morning, to make sure we hadn’t left anything out of the first sections of the book, and to double-check with each other so that we’re clear on what’s ahead. We made up a list of the remaining scenes. From here on out, we have to write economically, to be sure we get all the plots resolved within the word limit (85,000 words).

October 31. Halloween. Since we don’t have small children, we don’t celebrate Halloween with jack-o-lanterns and spider webs. But this year it’s special, because there’s a full moon tonight, a Blue Moon. Most months have just one full moon, but very rarely, there are two—the second is called a Blue Moon. (You know, once in a Blue Moon?) There isn’t usually a full moon on Halloween, either. The last time that happened was 46 years ago. And since the sky was beautifully clear, I went out on the porch and sat in the rocker to soak up some Blue Moon light. After a while, when my eyes had grown accustomed to the silvery light, I noticed an enormous Great Horned Owl sitting on the mesquite snag down by the creek. Just as I saw him, he began to call—whoo-woo-woo. Deliciously spooky. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a witch riding low across the sky, but instead, a doe and her two fawns jumped the fence and went down to the creek for water. Then the fawns began to play and dance on the lawn in the moonlight, as the owl called and I watched and listened, spellbound. Once in a Blue Moon.