Evening Roses

Yesterday was spent completely immersed in the next book -- John was away and, aside from letting the chickens out, filling bird feeders, feeding dogs and cats, scrounging meals of leftovers, and closing the chickens up again (at which time I took these pictures), I didn't get far from my laptop.

It's good to be able to get myself so deep in the story that the characters take over and start telling it. And that's where I was all the day.

As always with a series book, I have the wretched task of getting in all the back story -- who are these people and what do they look like and where did they come from -- so that readers new to the series won't be lost. But I don't want to bore those of you who know Elizabeth and her family as well as if they were next door neighbors.

Enter Gloria. It's a lot of fun to describe Elizabeth through Gloria's eyes. I remember when I first did that sort of thing in Art's Blood -- letting the patrician Lily Gordon describe her visit to Elizabeth's home -- how liberating it felt to see things through different eyes.

Onward and upward -- or rather backward. I'm moving into a chapter from 1887 and am going to delve into the life of Amarantha, a chambermaid at the Mountain Park Hotel . . .and an Appalachian witch!