Embarking upon quite a project
Okay, maybe two of them, lol. The English paper pieced block above is from Jodi Godfrey's Ice Cream Soda pattern, the large version of the design. The inner and outer fabrics were Christmas gifts from my eldest, the red kites a perfect scrap from my collection. Forty-some blocks are necessary for this quilt, but it's a long-term project that I hope to cajole my grandkids into sharing with me. Or maybe I'll find myself making these beautiful blocks in snippets of spare time, especially since the five missing basted squares have yet to be found.
(Whatever five squares. You can't have traveled far.)
But hand-sewing isn't the only hobby on my mind. Morning edits are going well with my current series, and I've incorporated evening edits into the routine. For months I've been mulling over The Hawk, a book I started over ten years ago, finishing in the spring of 2018. That novel has quite a place in my heart, written during a great shift within my personal life as well as my authorial path. It began as the humble notion of a short story, turning into a multi-part series that kept me grounded as my father endured chemotherapy, then his premature death while both my daughters enjoyed their first pregnancies. Death and life intermingled during the five years I wrote The Hawk, which I completed just weeks before my mother died in 2018. I remain grateful to have reached that story's conclusion before Mom died, because I don't honestly know how I would have returned to a story so steeped in familial connections.
Maybe you're wondering why I'd return to this novel; it's a good question, and is related to quilting. As I started writing The Hawk, I was just dipping my toes into sewing. Yup, ten years ago I made my first quilt. It's crazy when I consider how old my grandchildren are, poignant that my father never knew them and the few years those youngsters shared with my amazing mum. During those five years of marvelous peaks and desolate valleys, I taught myself to make gorgeous quilts while always coming back to a tale that kept stretching itself, and me along with it, to heights and depths previously not experienced. When time permitted, I dived into the story. When I needed a far simpler joy, machine piecing and quilting filled the bill. Ironically I didn't start EPP until right before Mom died, but more about that in the upcoming weeks and months as I focus on those ten years of sewing.
Yet in all honesty, no matter how much I love fashioning quilts, spinning yards of yarns comes first. In revisiting The Hawk, I am not merely editing or revising, but re-releasing the novel close to how it was first published in novel-length segments. Initially the installments were more like novellas, but I've parsed it out to ten books, which is far more inviting than the three-volume version currently available.
Ten books, wow. In five years I wrote ten novels' worth of a saga that originally wasn't more than a good short story plot. But characters and ideas have a way of muscling their agendas into an author's head and my heart certainly needed that fictional outlet. I don't know when I'll release Book One, hopefully in spring. Until that occurs, The Hawk is available as a three-volume collection, if I've piqued your interest. And maybe by then I'll have found those five pesky basted squares. More on that when they turn up!
