I started my novel this morning. I have been anticipating this event for several months now. Usually November ends up being overwhelmed with assorted activities and responsibilities, virtually prohibiting allocating enough time to participate. However, this year I decided that I wasn't as busy as usual and that I would try to keep it that way in order to have more time to write. There will still be a trip to Tehachapi for Thanksgiving, and between now and then there are days of work, including felling trees with the help of Ben Thompson, but with fidelity to some early morning writing and late evening writing [as needed] I think I can do it.
Today I completed 1675 words and may yet devote some time to writing more. The novel is historical fiction, set in pre-Civil War through early post-Civil War times. The heroine is based on a real person of whom I know very little, but believe she was educated, independent and liberal thinking for her time. She was an abolitionist and woman suffragist and a cousin to Harriet [Beecher] Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. She was a Union sympathizer married to a southern man and trapped in the Confederate south, but in the area of Knoxville, TN recognized as a hotbed of Union sentiment because of many human ties to families in New England.
How does she cope when her husband's sentiments turn to support of the Confederacy and how does their relationship change? Does her loyalty to the Union cause(s) trump her love and devotion for her husband? When her husband is tried for war crimes after the war, what, if any, role did she play in the death of his victim and in his capture, and how will their own personal "civil war" resolve itself?
I don't know the answers or how it will end, but I have embarked on the journey.
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