It was raining this morning. A storm front blew in to South Texas in the wee hours, a cool breeze and the patter of rain in the dark. Spring has been warm this year; sometimes up into the high eighties, where it begins to verge on being hot, rather than just pleasantly temperate. When everyone starts to think seriously about using the AC – that’s when we know in South Texas that it’s summer. I refuse – it’s only April, for pete’s sake!

We need the rain, though; it would be pleasant to have a repeat of last year, where it rained, drizzled, showered, spat, poured, misted or came down in buckets more or less constantly all through spring, summer and fall with the pleasing result that most of Texas was as green as Ireland is legendarily supposed to be and the wildflowers lasted all through summer… but I have a book-signing this afternoon at the Twig Bookstore on Alamo Heights. If it’s still coming down in buckets this afternoon, Blondie and I will be sitting there with a stack of books on a little table, embarrassingly doing nothing much for two hours but look at each other.

For all that they call it “Alamo Heights” certain streets in it are notoriously flood-prone; a better excuse for many residents to drive 4WD sport-utes than most people living in top-crust old-money suburbs have. I’m not yet in the Phillippa Gregory class of historical novel-scribblers, for whom the usual fans would turn out for a signing in anything up to and including a hurricane. I’m afraid that a mild drizzle by this afternoon will be enough excuse to keep readers away!

Sales of “Truckee” trickle along in a steady little stream, by the way. With luck that will increase, as a couple more reviews come meandering in. The Historical Novel Society has a copy for review… with a six-month window, so around about any time now…I also entered it in two independent book contests; the IPPY and the Writers Digest Independent Book contest. Entry fees for those two contests are there mainly to winnow the field slightly. Placing among the honorable mentions or higher means a nice bit of exposure and hopefully some more sales, all of which will go to fund the next book.

I have about decided to go ahead and shoot for December, 2008 as a date with Volume 1 of the Adelsverein Trilogy will be available. It’s pretty much edited and polished to a fine glossy gleam. I am coming down the home stretch of the first draft of the final volume, about six chapters or so from completing something that I began scribbling notes and outlining in October of 2006. I think of the initial research and chapter outline as sort of the skeleton of the book. The first draft is creating and applying the innards and flesh. That’s the slow and exciting part, because that’s when the characters come to life, some of them even developing a stubborn will of their own. Revising and editing – that’s like a little bit of nip and tuck there, a nice bit of couture styling there, a touch of makeup and a flattering hairstyle… and there you are.

This one will be a much easier sell in Texas – and I’ve already been told that most of Gillespie County will want to buy copies, just to see if I have worked in their ancestors. (I probably have, even if only in a brief mention.) I’ll be a bit down, when I finally finish the last revisions to “Barsetshire with cypress trees and a lot of sidearms”. I’ve been living with the characters for a year and a half, they’re real to me and I am nearly done with them now, and ready to set them loose on other people.

Blondie is already asking me, what the next book project will be, and I keep saying that I don’t know. She says I should stretch myself, and do a kid’s adventure set in ancient Britain, about three children who escape the massacre of the Druids by the Romans.
I just don’t know… but I’ll know it when I see it. Another relatively unknown story, for sure, something that reclaims an honorable past. Any suggestions?