A Book a Year

" A book a year for the next twenty years" was a statement I made at my first book launch. Caleb asked me later if that was really my plan. " I thought you were just writing this one." Oh my heavens no. While The Year Mrs. Montague Cried was a book I needed to write and was the book that got me published first it was from the start only one of the many I dreamed of writing. And funny enough, dreams have played a part.My soon to be released book When the Hill Came Down came about because of a dream. I recall telling the dream at a Sunday night supper. Don't you just love it when people tell you their dreams in detail. Not! After telling the dream I said I was going to write a book about the scene in my dream. Caleb said" Well that's the end of Mom's writing career." Hopefully not. This morning I finished writing book number twelve.This story came to me in a dream when I was staying with friends Odette and YoAnne in their beautiful home on the Northumberland Strait. I have felt so connected to Odette throughout the writing and have often reached out to her with questions. She has sent me photographs to help me embrace the setting. I hate finishing books. I become so attached that I am always filled with emotion when the end comes. Yesterday I wrote the last chapter and cried. The emotion in the last chapter may have justified my tears but some of the tears were simply because I was done. I will of course spend more time with the book as I fine tune, revise and gather an overall sense of it before I let it go. But oh how I will miss the characters and the beautiful shores of the Northumberland Strait.Now I wait for the summer to offer up where my writing will take me when I return to my desk at the end of August. I have two novels started and I may wander back to them but I have another idea percolating and it may take over. Or something totally new may show up. A dream might even push its way into the creating of the next book. I do not know and that is what makes this goal so much fun.