After LIKE A RIVER and EMPTY PLACES, both published by Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills Press, I am thrilled to have signed another contract with them.
Tentatively scheduled for a Fall, 2017 release, NOT ON FIFTH STREET is loosely based on family events and my father’s experiences in the Flood of 1937. In his home town of Ironton, Ohio, that event is known simply as The Flood.
My father has been gone for more than two decades, but I remember clearly his stories of The Flood. His sister, Margaret Ann, was able to verify his memories and fill in details for me. She has been an enormous help in making this novel come together.
NOT ON FIFTH STREET is the story of two brothers, who experience The Flood in different ways. The younger brother, Pete, most closely resembles my dad, though older brother, Gus, also has elements of him. Creating fictional characters who resemble a real person makes those characters alive for me from the start, and it is my task to make them live for readers.
The book still needs to go through revisions, and I know editor Carolyn Yoder will help me see what I have to do. While I await her revision suggestions, I sift through my idea file, trying to decide which project to focus my attentions on next.
I have been jotting down ideas for stories for four decades, so I have much to choose from. Some have already been substantially researched and some will require extensive additional research. How do I choose? My choice will not be affected by the amount of research and work I still need to do. It will come from which story wraps fingers around my heart and begs to be told. It will be the story that refuses to wait patiently while I revise NOT ON FIFTH STREET and while I continue promoting LIKE A RIVER and EMPTY PLACES.
At one time, all three of those novels were stories that lodged in my brain and cried, “Tell me, tell me.” And that is how I will decide what I work on next.
