The Notebook Series

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    The Notebook Series: Books Up the Mountain

    ByCaroline

    I keep a notebook for each book I write. Years ago I began sharing pages with readers through a collection of posts called The Notebook Series. Today’s post, the ninth in the series, will focus on my fifth picture book, Books Up the Mountain.

    In 2019, I read The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek and knew I had to write a picture book based on Eastern Kentucky’s Packhorse Librarians. I also figured that every picture book author who read this marvelous novel (really, go check it out) was already planning their own Book Woman book. (The packhorse librarians were affectionately called Book Women by their patrons.) I mean, who writes for children and doesn’t hold the library in the highest regard? Who wouldn’t want to write about library services reaching rural Appalachia for the very first time? Who could resist telling the story of women who served their communities by carrying pillowcases, baskets, or saddlebags filled with books up steep mountain trails and through roaring creeks with ominous names like Cut Shin, Troublesome, and Hell-for-Sartin?

    Not long after I read Jojo Moyes’s The Giver of Stars, another Book Woman novel that coincidentally came out months after The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. By then I’d already started my own manuscript.

    My notebook for this book didn’t follow a traditional pattern. In fact, I ended up writing down most of my research on sticky notes that I organized on the side of a secretary desk!

    Those stickies eventually moved to the ends papers of one of my key research books, Kathi Applegate’s Down Cut Shin Creek: The Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky.

    The first lines came to me quickly, and apart from the addition of the word “the” in the second line, they remain unchanged from first idea to published book: Before the birds begin to sing / or the sun makes plans to rise, / Book Woman checks her saddlebags.

    According to my records, I put in thirty-seven hours of work on the manuscript (researching, writing, sharing with my critique group, and revising with their suggestions in mind several times over) before sending it to my agent that fall. (Then I promptly began research on a new verse novel that became The Burning Season.) 

    Here I am playing with stanzas (outside of the notebook, it looks like) and making note of the key takeaways I wanted included in the book:

    Books Up the Mountain went out on submission. I got eight rejections, such as the story didn’t quite capture me as I hoped, despite the lovely voice and mood. Several editors said a lot of packhorse librarian picture book manuscripts had come across their desks of late. (See! I knew other authors were thinking like I was.) It felt like my chance at this story had passed.

    And then, in December 2023 I got an offer. In March 2024, PW ran an article about four new packhorse librarian picture books that had just released or were releasing soon. In April I signed my contract. In June of that year I flip-flopped between edits for Books Up the Mountain and copy edits for The Burning Season. Then in July we landed on an illustrator and the announcement was made public.

    It’s been a long journey. I can’t wait to share this story with you in just a few weeks.

    I take a blogging sabbatical every July. That means the first day you’ll hear from me again — August fourth — will be the day Books Up the Mountain releases. If you plan on ordering a copy (I hope you will!) and are interested in some wonderful pre-order bonuses my publisher has put together, click through.

    If preorders don’t matter to you but you’d like to support this site, please order here. Of course you can order at your local bookstore or request that your library purchase a copy.

    If you’re in the Albuquerque area, please mark your calendars. I will be at Bookworks Tuesday, August 4 at 6pm and Books on the Bosque on Saturday, August 8 at 3pm. Come for a reading, background on the book, Q and A, and some really fun cookies.

    Thank you, friends. I hope you have a restful July. I’ll see you again soon.

    ***

    Other posts in the Notebook Series
    Read the post about May B. here.
    Read about Over in the Wetlands here.
    Read about Blue Birds here.
    Read about Jasper and the Riddle of Riley’s Mine here.
    Read about Ride On, Will Cody! here.
    Read about A Race Around the World here.
    Read about Miraculous here.
    Read about The Burning Season here.

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    The Notebook Series: The Burning Season

    ByCaroline

    I keep a notebook for each book I write. Years ago I began sharing pages with readers through a collection of posts called The Notebook Series. Today’s post, the eighth in the series, will focus on my fifth novel, The Burning Season.

    Hold onto your hats. There are a whole lotta pictures below.

    This image, glued to the inside cover of my notebook, is the one that led me to The Burning Season. It’s a fire tower that’s been converted into a home. I found it in Sunset magazine.

    In going through my notebook, I see that early on I landed on a central idea that runs throughout the story: fire’s (complicated) place in nature. These notes are from a book I devoured called Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout.

    Any good notebook has scraps of paper added in. Here’s a to do list on the back of the story’s timeline calendar.

    One of the many things I loved about reading Fire Season was the glimpse into the Gila Wilderness it gave me. In 1924 Aldo Leopold (see quote at the top of this page) proposed that a portion of the Gila be set aside as wilderness. It became the first designated wilderness area in the world. (You might remember I’m reading Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac as part of my “Clear Your Shelves Challenge” this year.)

    I started researching this book during my annual writing retreat the fall of 2020. Something pretty amazing happened those days: a rudimentary plot came together for me. I am typically a writer who is woefully weak on plot until later stages in the writing process, so this was a surprise and gave me the drive to keep exploring. The (poor!) poem that opens this early synopsis was a starting point for a poem that I believe is now called “History.”

    While the final book doesn’t follow this storyline exactly, the key elements are definitely there.

    Wildfire articles from The Albuquerque Journal .

    Images from a fire lookout manual the National Park Service put out in the 1960s.

    I exchanged a lot of emails with a forest supervisor, a wildland fire chief (who kindly read an early version of the manuscript), and several lookouts. So many people are willing to share their expertise — a real gift to a writer.

    This is a map showing the ten lookout towers in the Gila National Forest. Opal’s tower, Wolf Peak, is essentially the tower on Mogollon Baldy. Here you can see me figuring out the distance to other towers in relation to Opal’s. I referred to this page a lot while getting a sense of Opal’s world.

    A lookout’s response to my many questions and story strands I wanted to remember.

    Two key elements in the story: fire’s capacity to heal and destroy. Opal’s (eventual) ability to make peace with fire.

    This was fun to rediscover. I got word on my birthday in 2021 that my editor wanted The Burning Season (then called Fire Finder). Here are notes I took as I talked to my agent who was relaying my editor’s comments. What is hilarious is the idea that the book was in “such great shape,” that it had “all the ingredients” and “just need[ed] a little shaping.” We went through MANY months of edits which, of course, resulted in a much stronger book. But “such great shape” was a motivating carrot for this author, at least!

    Another interesting tidbit here is that in 2021 most Gila towers didn’t have cell service. But by the time I hiked to the Signal Peak tower in April 2022, all towers did have service. As The Burning Season takes place in summer 2022, this greatly affected Opal’s world and meant some key alterations to the storyline.

    One thing my editor, Stacey, (rightly) questioned about the manuscript was why I’d set it in the 1990s. She encouraged me to make the story contemporary, to show fire is still our reality today. Here I am adjusting everyone’s age and birthdates and trying to remember family generations. Though I don’t mention it in the book, I have always viewed Mavis Betterly of May B. as Opal’s great-great-great grandmother and had fun weaving in some Easter eggs for astute readers.

    Notes in the midst of first or second-round edits. Always learning. Always refining. Some of this stayed. A lot of it didn’t. “Opal needs to make important things happen!” Yes. A character must be central to her own story.

    Notes taken during and after a conversation with my editor. As I’ve said before, Stacey Barney is my Story Whisperer. She is a marvel when it comes to any aspect of story, and I hold her opinion and suggestions in the highest regard.

    Sometimes ideas come together in the strangest of places, like right before church begins. Here you can see me playing with the idea that people, places, things, and ideas are multilayered, a key story strand. Love this: “We gain control over our fears once we name them.”

    It feels appropriate to end here, with notes from a conversation with my editor and later my critique group. With every novel I write, there’s a scene I can’t figure out that I’m nevertheless writing toward (and need to figure out soon!) I love these words that I think came from critique group member Uma Krishnaswami. It’s good advice for writing and life: “Give yourself permission to make a mistake!”

    Getting a birdseye view of “the work behind the work” is always really helpful for me. I’m again reminded that writing requires a lot of time (to think, create, and learn), a lot of trial and error, a lot of circling closer, questioning and unearthing, all with a healthy dose of mystery.

    The Burning Season releases May 13. It is a Junior Library Guild selection and has received three starred reviews. You can listen to an excerpt from the audiobook here. (Scroll down and click “listen to a sample from The Burning Season.”) If you are in the Albuquerque area, please join me for a launch party at Bookworks Saturday, May 24 at 1:00pm. Or preorder today!

    🔥🔥🔥

    The Notebook Series

    Read the post about May B. here.
    Read about Over in the Wetlands here.
    Read about Blue Birds here.
    Read about Jasper and the Riddle of Riley’s Mine here.
    Read about Ride On, Will Cody! here.
    Read about A Race Around the World here.
    Read about Miraculous here.

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    The Notebook Series: Miraculous

    ByCaroline

    I keep a notebook for each book I write. I thought it might be fun to share some of those pages with readers through a series of posts. Today’s post, the seventh in the series, will focus on my fourth novel, Miraculous.

    My initial idea for Miraculous grew from a couple of things. A talk about charlatans I stumbled upon at a St. Louis museum planted the seed. David McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself helped the idea to blossom. As I read McRaney’s book, I couldn’t help but take notes. It was clear I was circling around an idea that I wanted to explore. The book I’d write would be about deception. It felt so obvious that I had a hard time not believing everyone who read You Are Not So Smart wouldn’t be inspired to do the same!

    Ruined by rum! Decay in the digestive organs! And my favorite: Sweedish Leeches! (why that extra “e”?) Here’s a collection of various ads for cure-alls and patent medicines. It’s interesting to note my character, Dr. Kingsbury, is based on the man who invented Hamlin’s Wizard Oil. I don’t think that was necessarily the plan when I jotted these notes down.

    Here I am trying to make sense of Oakdale, the town where Miraculous takes place. That’s Dr. Kingsbury’s medicine wagon, out near the river by the willow grove. I love how illustrator Craig Phillips placed the Great Oak Tree front and center on Miraculous’s cover.

    Notes I printed and pasted from my Morning Pages (back when I was faithfully writing them). What I find interesting about this is almost nothing I’ve written here has stayed the same. But I also see here the exploration that was necessary for me to discover the true story (many drafts and rewrites later).

    This book changed so much over the course of my work. I started researching in 2015, if I remember correctly. I sold it in 2018. It was supposed to publish in 2020. I’m glad it didn’t! I had two-thirds of the story to dump and and rediscover. All the time I spent poring over drafts on my own paid off when it was time to get to work with my editor. To this day, this book required the least number of editorial rounds (two) of any of my books. (This doesn’t include copy edits or first pass pages, where changes are still being made, or the billions of drafts I worked through on my own.)

    A story told in five voices (six, if you include the one chapter from the dog’s point of view). Proud of this one! Can’t wait to share it with you in July. Pre-order today!

    Read the post about May B. here.
    Read about Over in the Wetlands here.
    Read about Blue Birds here.
    Read about Jasper and the Riddle of Riley’s Mine here.
    Read about Ride On, Will Cody! here.
    Read about A Race Around the World here.