The dreaded bridge chapter I have been working on forever it seems for the second AK flying book is finally - except for a few research facts - done. I ended up pulling together several bits from previous sections to make this work and then had to go to Map of My Dead Pilots to make sure that I didn't repeat myself when writing about historical pilots (and I did a bit so that had to be removed). This is extremely tedious writing - in fact I hesitate to even call it writing. It's more like performing literary surgery, if that makes any sense. A lot of pulling out, putting in and moving stuff around. I've printed out a fresh copy so I can get the historical facts I need (airspeed of certain aircraft, newspaper quote on certain crash, etc.) but none of that will be hard. I do need to read it through again though to make sure it makes as much sense as I think it does. (And flows with what comes before and after.)

From there the next several chapters are done except for a read through and tightening up. There is nothing serious or scary at this point except for the ending which is not done at all. I actually used the bulk of the final chapter of this book for Map (where it worked much much better) and now I need to return to it. I don't want it to be overly heroic (please) or too dramatic or too sad. I have ideas about it and I'm hoping it will all come together by the time I get properly to it this weekend. I had hoped to be done with all of this by the end of February but the company and taxes and the day job were all nearly overwhelming last month. I think I spent a week doing laundry after everyone left! Anyway, it is on track just a bit behind.

Beyond the novel, I'm working on a short story (only sketching it up now) tentatively called "What We Left Behind in Jacksonville". It's a haunted house story about the house my family lived in when I was four years old. It's framed as fiction for the sake of conversation but mostly it is not. It's just a story that I have known very well all my life so I want to set this one down.

And after....You know I emailed my agent just yesterday about what comes next and that is still a bit daunting to consider. I have been writing about one subject, either academically or with commercial goals, for a long long time. For more than ten years. It's pretty amazing. I do have my YA novel, Winter Called Him Far Away but I think that perhaps I am a better nonfiction writer than fiction. All the fiction I write is incredibly based in truth or fact - it is, with the exception of dialog and character descriptions, all true. Every accident I write about really happened, every crash is real, every fatality is true. And I lived in a haunted house. Those facts make it easy for me to write about - it's easier for me to disguise my writing then to conjure it up from thin air, I think. So for Winter I am conflicted. It is about the mystery of Joan of Arc and something that was seen in WWI, and what I know about both of those things is true. Maybe because of Laurel Snyder's essay on books for Jewish children and teens (and lack thereof) I've been thinking about the same dearth of literature/essays for Catholic children which I was once, a long time ago as well.

Mostly another lifetime ago but you get the idea.

Joan of Arc is not the only saint to have an impact on my life. When I was young my mother bought me a beautiful copy of The Song of Bernadette about the miracle at Lourdes. I loved that book. I also read about Fatima and wondered about the deep mysteries from that whole deal which were not revealed and my father wore St. Christopher ever day (even in the water which meant he replaced that medal a lot). (I'm still annoyed about what the Vatican has done to St. Christopher - "based mostly on legend" my ass.) But I digress...

After he got sick my father switched to St Peregrine, the patron saint of cancer victims. When he was dying, he asked me to take the medal from around his neck. Downstairs right now on a shelf in my office, with the rosary my Irish grandfather made from string and carried in WWII and the rosary my Irish grandmother had with her when she died, is my father's St. Peregrine medal. We gave his rosary to his mother - my Memere. When she died it went to my Pepere and he has it still. One day, it will come back to me.

So perhaps Winter, which still would be about what I thought it would be about, should be nonfiction. I don't know - I'm mostly playing with the idea now, playing with a lot of ideas actually. I want to start putting words down on paper for the myths that I've been thinking about - our evolving ideas about wolves and dogs, ravens and the north - place to get lost in (while attempting to find yourself of course) or a barren place to drill the living hell out of. (Here's a recent good one: "I don't hate wolves. Wolves are just land sharks -- they kill anything.")

I need to think about writing. Hopefully, as the dust settles on the flying stuff my agent (or my gut) will help me refocus on all the what's nexts.

[Post pic of Bernadette.]