Better Times

 I'm happy to report that all the computer stuff got straightened out.  The website I was having trouble with, got their security certificate updated and I can use it once again.  I worked out the Adobe Reader issue and after a few bumps am able to use it to read the pages of BUT KNOT FOR ME.

This is it, my last time to make any changes or find typos.  The turn around on this book will be quick and it will be out in November.  We are working on the cover right now. It's always a challenge to have something new, but that goes along with the other books.

It was the last book on my contract and I thought it might be the end of the series. It was making me feel even more bittersweet than usual about this last go through.  Particularly since my editor said he thought it was the best book in the series so far.  And then I got got an offer for three more Yarn Retreat books.  If I could have manage it, I would have clicked my heels with joy.

I am going back and forth between that final look at BUT KNOT FOR ME and writing the next Writer for Hire mystery MAKING IT WRITE.  It means I have to change the location in my imagination and go for the Monterey Peninsula to the south side of Chicago.

I have been doing assorted research as I go.  I really wanted to see the inside of some houses in my old neighborhood.  You can't very well just knock on the door and ask to look around.  But there is another option.  If you type the address and do a search and the house has been for sales in the last few years, a listing with Zillow, Redfin or other real estate people will show up.

It was so amazing to be able to look inside a house that some friends had owned.  I spent lots of hours there and when I looked at photos of the interior, I could pinpoint things that happened in different locations.  It was also the spot where someone gets murdered in MAKING IT RIGHT.

I was able  to check out another house that I have one of the characters living in.  It's also a house I spent a lot of time in as a kid.  So weird to see different locations in the house I had memories connected to.  One spot that didn't show was the back stairway.  It seems that a lot of the houses had two staircases.  One in the front with a wood banister and a grand look and one that went between the second floor and the kitchen and was steep and dark.  I fell down that particular back stairway.  I remember they called my mother to come and get me and deal with whatever.  I remember that we went to this tiny grocery store nearby and my mother bought me a box of Droste's chocolate shoes.  They looked like wooden shoes and were 29 cents which was a fortune at the time.  I had always wanted them, but the answer had always been no.  When my mother offered the chocolate shoes, I thought my fall must have really been serious, but I loved those chocolate shoes.

Seeing the inside of those houses made me wonder if all those moments are somehow still swirling around those interiors. Do houses have memories?