The Notebook Series: The Burning Season

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.