Just like the nesting that comes before birthing a baby, I hunkered in this past fall and into winter, and got ready for the big push. I worked steadily on book two of the sixties trilogy until I flew off to Singapore, mid-January, to work with 7th-graders and their teachers at Singapore American School, and to speak at a children's lit conference there. The novel flew with me. I did a final

Also went on retreat in October. This is our seventeenth year meeting in October to write and read and cook and eat and gossip and share our work in the evenings with one another. We've grown from a few books between us to many. Our books have won a Caldecott, been National Book Award finalists, New York Times bestsellers, unsold gems, and little loves we have

It has been a beautiful, lingering fall in Atlanta, but I have taken not one photo of the glorious color outside my door. Instead, I have focused on the people who fill our home, create our history, and make me feel grounded here, in this place, in this year at home that's coming to a close faster than I dreamed it

Here are some stills I'm considering for book two, as I finish planning the scrapbook sections. In 1964, 45% of Mississippi's population was black, but less than 5% of blacks were registered to vote state-wide. Below: Registering voters in Batesville, Mississippi during Freedom Summer, 1964. CORE workers began to wear straw hats at some point that summer, to distinguish them from other COFO

September 12, 1962. John F. Kennedy's speech at Rice University: "I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency. " You can hear these famous words (immortalized in Countdown's first scrapbook, too!): "We choose to go to the moon!" You can hear the

{And that's a wrap: Again on Sullivan's Island, which marks the end of our summer and the beginning of fall each year. One word titles, accompanied by photos, mark the week. You can find beach 2009, beach 2010, beach 2011 at their respective links. As a storyteller, I'm working on ways of seeing, going back to the same place over and over and seeing it in a

{Again on Sullivan's Island, which marks the end of our summer and the beginning of fall each year. One word titles, accompanied by photos, mark the week. You can find beach 2009, beach 2010, beach 2011 at their respective links. As a storyteller, I'm working on ways of seeing, going back to the same place over and over and seeing it in a different way. We are different people each year, a

 Hard to let go of this summer:

Happy Birthday, darlin'. Thank you, good friends. Love.

I am at the point where I have voluminous piles of links, photos, songs, and orders of operation slopping everywhere, as I work with book two of the sixties trilogy. How to organize my research so it is at-hand when I want it, and of-a-piece? I'm going to experiment with using the blog as a holding tool, a repository of links. I keep it mostly for myself (the blog), as a kind of scrapbook to

From the Travelers Insurance Pavilion at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York. What does this have to do with book two of the sixties trilogy? Everything. The Triumph of Man.

It has become a tradition on this blog: every year a song. This is year five. Five. Such a special age. Our marriage is five years old today. I'm fervently splashing around in 1964 these days, so here is a song Sunny loves. I love it, too. And you, my sweet. Happy Anniversary. Love the dancing that begins at 1:06. Let's do that today, too. (details in the comments)

Grandgirl Summer. Sounds like the name of a book, doesn't it? Maybe there will be a book with that title one day. (Maybe there already is.) Right now, in the midst of our grandgirl summer, I am collecting stories. Each picture below is a story in and of itself. Each picture is also a chapter in a larger story as well... the story of our family. Some chapters reveal character. Some hold secrets;

I looked up from work this morning and decided to grab my camera. This is what it's like to be deeply-dug-in with book two of the sixties trilogy this week. 1964. Freedom Summer. Back to it.

The culminating event of last month's travels -- and the reason we planned a Mississippi trip in the first place -- was a family gathering to mark the occasion of my cousin Carol's retirement from teaching.  Carol taught second grade for 29 years, and then became a librarian for another dozen. Any way you slice it, that's a lot of years in the classroom, and a lot of lives touched by an

What have I done with the first three months of this year off? So much. And now it is April and book two is once again under my fingertips. So is a little girl named Cambria Bold. She is seven. She loves to cook. She makes me laugh. She has a little sister named Miss Moss and a dog named Old Dreadful No. 7.  Her best friend is Queen Esther Washington who does not love squash. April is shaping up

A girl steps away from the world and into her story for a few minutes and what happens? Blogger updates. gaaaaaaaa. Let's see if I can figure it out. May was a pushing-forward month for writing and traveling. And for reading, which you'll see in the sidebar. I want to talk about what I'm reading, but first I want to say thank you. Thanks to everyone, especially librarian Cathy Farrell and the

I managed to post using the updated blogger, and I also found umpteen comments "awaiting moderation." Who knew there was such a thing? So I moderated. Thanks for the kind words, all. I've published most of them with their appropriate posts now. It's good to hear your voices. It was good to return to Mississippi last month to do research for book two of the sixties trilogy. I've been to the Delta

"Where's the rest of the blog entry? Where are the photos?" Click on the title of the post (in this case "sunday dinner" ) and you'll be taken to the full blog entry on the web. It's a better reading experience, easier on the eyes, and all-around more gentle, that's what I'm hoping. I've received mail from a slew of folks asking about this, so wanted to mention. It also won't clog up your feed

Pictures today from our research trip in May. Jim reading at Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi; napping at Rowan Oak, William Faulkner's home in Oxford; traveling the back roads into the Delta, the roads Sunny would know in book two; Bryant's Store in Money (just outside of Greenwood); and Shellmound Plantation, the setting for Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding.

I have learned, in writing my novels, that I need an actual, physical house in which to put my characters, so I can think of them there, and bring them to life.  The right house makes all the difference. I inhabit it while I'm writing, right along with my characters. In the Aurora County novels, I used my grandmother's house in Mississippi. In Countdown, Franny's house was the one I'd grown up

Maybe I got over-enthusiastic about the kale at the farmer's market last week. I've had my head so far down in 1964, I haven't cooked much the past couple of weeks except for Sunday dinners. Now it's time to cook (or massage, or juice, or etc) the kale. I've still got a ways to go. But I'm making a dent. Kinda how I feel about the novel right now. Happy Weekend! Eat your kale.