The Publishing Journey This week I received my manuscript back from the publisher after Round 1 of edits. I have until February 1, 2023 to return a clean manuscript. I'll finish next week. Yes, I'm that excited for Brighter Than Her Fears to move closer to publication! I've also been attending Creative James Media's bi-weekly author webinars, learning as much as I can from the publisher and their other authors in bringing their books to market. A recent one covered websites, which prompted me to update mine. Another, newsletters, and voila! You get the idea. The Novel Let's talk research. It's required to create an accurate historical fiction novel. Most of the research I do doesn't end up in the book, but reading and documenting is a must to depict the novel's time and location in a realistic way. And it's a really interesting part of writing in this genre. To write the scene where Alice and her brother-in-law, John Carter, make music together, I needed an instrument typical of 1880s western North Carolina. I discovered the songbow. In this scene, Alice is the outsider, but in joining the sounds of their instruments, she and John find a mutual understanding. John Carter stepped forward with a songbow in his hand and motioned to the seat beside me. I nodded and John sat, licked the string, and placed the end of the curved sourwood branch in his mouth. He plucked along to my next tune, opening and closing his lips to resonate the sound. The twang of the bow added a regular beat to my banjo’s melody. We swayed a bit, finding our rhythm. Have a listen to the music of a song bow (or mouth bow) courtesy of Sesame Street and YouTube.
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