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I am neck deep in 18th century lists of military stores; things like powder horns, bayonet belts, grapeshot, and bear skins. It is heavenly!

I spent the weekend on the road. On Saturday I went to the Fort Plain Museum in Fort Plain, NY for a small (but wonderful) Revolutionary War encampment/reenactment.

Sunday was a long, fantastic day at the RevWar encampment/reenactment at Old Sturbridge Village. Nearly one thousand reenactors were there: soldiers, artisans, women, and lots of their children. All of these people are passionate about understanding the Revolutionary War and have made it their hobby. They go to these encampments to live as people did in the period. They dress, cook, work crafts, relax, have military drills and mock battles all as close to the original thing as possible.


This is a Patriot militia unit.


The British had fancy-pants uniforms and they still lost.


There were plenty of women with General Washington's army. They were not ladies of the night. They were hired to cook, clean, sew, and help the sick soldiers. Many of them were married to soldiers. Some had their children with them.

The reenactors could not have been more generous with the time. I asked a bazillion pesky questions about the tiny stuff - how does one fire a flintlock musket in the air (answer: one usually doesn't), the finer points of cooking in a dutch oven, and the art of rolling paper gunpowder cartridges.

Back to work on my story now. Remind to tell you about the guy who let me taste gunpowder... Read the rest of this post

My head hurts. I overstuffed it with facts and dead bodies and ghosts yesterday.



BH and I drove out to a couple of Revolutionary War sites and met with a man who has been studied the events that happened there his entire life. I took a million photos and asked half a million questions.

I've already done the background research for this novel and I have a pretty good sense of how the events in the character's life unfold in conjunction with the historical events he's caught up in. Now I'm doing the "boots on the ground" research: visiting sites and bugging the experts for the small details; the real-life stuff that many academic historians don't put in their books, but that make scenes come to life for readers.

As always, going on location helped me see my story with new focus. We stood on the site of a ferocious battle. Cattails and grape vines are growing out of the dirt that was soaked with blood 231 years ago. Despite the heat, I shivered and had to fight back the tears.

The sense of time evaporates in places like that. It feels like the battle happened yesterday, or it's about to happen in the next hour, or in the next five minutes. The enemy is ready to explode out of the woods without warning, tearing across the cattails and marsh grass. Musket balls will rain across the field, dropping horse and ox, biting into the trunks of the beech and ash trees that line the road. We and They will fight hand-to hand with bayonet blades and hunting knives and axes. Our muskets are used as clubs because there isn't enough time to load and shoot. Fathers and sons and husbands and brothers will die in this forgotten bit of woods. The survivors will weep and dig shallow graves for the dead before hurrying away, knowing that the enemy is hiding in the shadows.

Then the cattails will start to grow again.

Right now it feels so close to me, I can feel the weight of this coat on my shoulders.

I'll spend today putting my notes from the trip into the proper scenes. But if you're looking for a WFMAD prompt, here it comes.


Today's goal: Write for 15 minutes.

Today's mindset: daring.

Today's prompt: I'm calling this one Fork in the Road. List three significant choices you've made in your life, then list the alternative to that choice. Choose one of the paths you didn't take, and write abut what might have happened if you had chosen that instead.

OR! List some of the life choices your character makes and change one of them. Write out how it affects the rest of the story; what are the unfolding series of consequences from that decision?


Scribblescribble...

Winnie the Witch by Valerie Thomas, illus. by Korky Paul
Minerva Louise on Christmas Eve by Janet Morgan Stoeke
Space Boy by Leo Landry
Dog and Cat Make a Splash by Kate Spohn

A trend, if that's the correct word, that my daughter developed in the early days of bedtime stories, was to put herself into the stories. It started with Ian Falconer's Olivia. Clearly there was something about that "porcine wonder (apologies to Mercy Watson!) that she identified with. She asked that her name be used instead, and Olivia was never 'Olivia' in this house again. When I was a child I used to play act out my favorite books, and then scenes from chapter books, as I got older. Eventually I was no longer happy being part of someone else's story and began writing my own. But that initial incursion into beloved books was the first step in unlocking my own creativity.

'Daughter-as-character' made an appearance not once but twice this evening. Perhaps it was the unexpected appearance of a Christmas story (and she so loves Christmas,) but first she was that daft hen Minerva Louise. Even more impressive was the character swap involved in 'Dog and Cat', because she was reading that one to me. And she not only placed herself in that story, but she also found room for my husband and I, our next door neightbor, her favorite teddy bear, and her American Girl doll. So not only did she have to concentrate on reading the words correctly, but she had to keep all the charcters straight. And by golly, she did it! An impressive display, if I do say so myself. And a wonderful example of the maxim that "books can take you anywhere".