Adrift has a cover! Ready to see it?

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Ta-da!

Isn’t she lovely…

A little about the cover. The pencil and watercolor piece is by illustrator Xoe White, daughter of David and Roseanna White, owners of Chrism Press and its parent company, WhiteFire Publishing. Back when we were throwing around concepts for In Pieces, I made one request: that the cover artwork be something other than photography. Photography is great in of itself, but I’m not fond of the way 18th century historical costume translates to that medium. Plus, Molly Chase is artistic and an artsier, somewhat atypical cover suits her. After some twists and turns and dead ends, we eventually commissioned Xoe to do the series’s artwork. Many advantages to keeping things literally in the family!

While passing In Pieces drafts back and forth with Xoe, I was struck by the unerased pencil marks beneath an unfinished watercolor of Molly. Beautiful, but roughed-in. Incomplete. Finer details still unarticulated. I thought the “art in progress” idea worked thematically for Molly, so I told Xoe to leave the pencil. Thus we proceeded with In Pieces, and thus we’ve continued with Adrift.

Where to Pre-Order Adrift

For signed paperbacks, purchase directly from my store. Note: I can ship anywhere, but I’m in the US and international postage rates are 😬.

For paperbacks and .epub (e-book), pre-order from my publisher, Chrism Press.

For Amazon Kindle pre-order, click here. You can also upload the .epub file from Chrism, if you know how to do it.

International customers who want paperback copies: Wait until release day and order it from your local bookstore or Amazon. The book will be distributed worldwide through Ingram distribution.

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UPDATE: I finally hit upon a final floor plan:

ORIGINAL POST:

This week’s adventure in writing: playing eighteenth century architect. As I sat down to work on Molly Chase Book Three, I realized I never mapped out the floor plan for the Chases’ house.

The easiest solution would have been to research colonial homes and pick a floor plan, way back when I began this project (2017? 2018?). Alas. I was not so forward-thinking as that.

With two books under my belt, I needed to match the floor plan to what I’ve already written. And I need it to meet the needs of Book Three’s plot. And it needed to be rectangular-ish, like a true colonial. Plus, the house has no HVAC and no artificial light, of course, so rooms need fireplaces and passages need windows. Figuring this out for a large home—not McMansion sized, because colonial homes weren't that big, but certainly big enough—was not the easiest task, y’all.

Thankfully, while googling colonial homes, I saw some with wings built onto the original rectangular floor plan and had an “ah-ha!” moment. Maybe Mr. Chase built onto his house after he and Mrs. Chase married? I could see him doing that. And now I have a floor plan!*†

Ground Floor

Main Floor

Third Floor

*Historical accuracy and structural soundness not guaranteed. Build at your own risk.

†I still need a fireplace for the workroom. Not entirely sure where to put it...

2022 was an insane year.

We had a baby. Our sixth. And while the baby himself is deeply beloved, I could have done without the pregnancy and postpartum challenges. I’m in my forties. My pelvis torques with every pregnancy. The usual postpartum hormones are complicated by preexisting conditions. Et cetera, et cetera. Plus, one of our autistic children had several rough months in a row. Also, I wrote/revised all 138,000 words of Adrift in the span of six weeks, not long before Christmas.

Insane. Like I said.

I’m still dealing with hip pain, but otherwise things have calmed down. Our happy baby is now a happy toddler, my mental health is stable, the special needs situation has been addressed, I finished edits on Adrift, and I’ve begun writing the next Molly Chase installment. I also stepped back from some commitments. The storm has abated; the ship has righted.

And with that, I’ve discovered reading again. Yes, books. I had no idea how little I was reading until I turned in Adrift and all of a sudden had time and attention for other people’s writing. “I’m free to read…whatever I want!” And I am. And it is glorious.

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Post Captain (Aubrey/Maturin, Book Two)
Patrick O’Brian

I began my first “circumnavigation” of the Aubrey/Maturin series last fall with Master and Commander. (Read my cheeky reflections here.) I started Post Captain not long after, but owing to doing my developmental edits on Adrift, I wasn’t able to pick it back up again until March. So glad I persevered. While Master and Commander is an enjoyable romp, and not a middling or unthinking story by any stretch, Post Captain is a literary achievement. Adding the women to the mix does so much to develop Jack and Stephen as characters—I understand both men better, and I’m far more invested in the story now than I was after Master and Commander.

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Code Name Edelweiss
Stephanie Landsem

I’m a huge fan of Stephanie Landsem’s work (and of Stephanie herself). Code Name Edelweiss is based on the fascinating real life story of the Nazis’ attempt to infiltrate Hollywood and the amateur spies who stopped them. The novel’s central characters are fictional, but several historical persons make their way into the novel, including Leon Lewis, the Jewish lawyer and former Army intelligence officer who formed the spy ring. Plus, Code Name Edelweiss has a love story subplot. History + spies + romance = right up Rhonda’s alley.

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Works of Mercy
Sally Thomas

Works of Mercy is my favorite type of literary fiction: philosophic and beautifully written, yet also unpretentious, with recognizable characters and a recognizable world.

(Especially for us American Catholics. I know Janet Malkin. I may be Janet Malkin.)

No mid-century grotesques here: this is Jane Austen’s “bits of ivory,” the drama of ordinary life. Even the church cleaning lady has a story, and Sally Thomas tells it straight.

While I was immediately invested in Kirsty Sain, not much seemed to be happening, story wise…until something was happening. My husband likened the novel’s arc to the slow cracking of an egg. Crack… Crack… Crack, crack… Crack-crack-crack… Crack. BREAK.

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The Ghost Keeper
Natalie Morrill

Not entirely sure how to describe The Ghost Keeper except to say that it’s exceptional. One reviewer described it as “one long lyric poem, but never self-indulgent.” Like any story about WWII, it delves into darkness, but it also dares to hope. I loved the nuance, the love and care with which Natalie Morrill treats each character, including the antagonist. So well done.

The changes in narratorial point of view (first person, close third person, omniscient) interested me from a craft angle. Jozef questions his own reliability as a narrator several times over the course of the novel, and he also questions Friedrick’s, when we finally have Friedrick’s story. The war skews their vision of the whole, and the narratorial instability underscores this important theme.

Content warning for sensitive readers: In addition what’s obvious from the back cover copy, the book includes a few open door bedroom scenes.

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Next up in fiction:

• H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey/Maturin Book 3), Patrick O’Brian

• The Metropolitan Affair, Jocelyn Green

• The Songs That Could Have Been, Amanda Wen

• Counterfeit Hope and Counterfeit Faith, Crystal Caudill (enjoyed Counterfeit Love, the first in the series; looking forward to numbers two and three)

• Dear Henry, Love Edith, Becca Kinzer

• And a ton of other titles from Catholic Writers Guild and Christian Mommy Writers authors. Now that 2022 is behind me, the world is my oyster!

Next up in nonfiction and professional development:

• Reach, Becky Robinson (almost finished!)

• The Genesis of Gender, Abigail Favale

• The Four Cardinal Virtues, Josef Pieper

• The City-State of Boston, Mark Peterson

How about you? What are you reading? Contact me here.

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“It’s my house.” Josiah circled the table and kissed Mrs. Robb on the cheek, then jogged off. A moment later, they were treated to a rousing performance of “The Sailor and His Truelove” from the upstairs passage. 

As a young sailor and his truelove one morning in May,
Where walking together in the field blithe and gay;
Says the sailor to his truelove, my dear life for your sake,
I’ll away unto the Indies whatever does betide,
And when I do return, my love, I’ll make you my bride.

— Adrift, Ch. 2

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At the front of the room was the sitting area, comprised of two leather armchairs and a table holding an oil lamp and a large paper booklet—a musical score. Between the armchairs stood a bookshelf, and several miniatures and a pencil sketch hung nearby. Crammed into the corner was a pianoforte, or maybe a harpsichord? The lid was closed, and more musical scores were piled on top. Some of the music was new; other sheets were moldering. One such ancient selection sat on the instrument’s rack. Josiah stepped forward and read the title. Die Kunst der Fugue. J.S. Bach. Never heard of him.

— Adrift, Ch. 10

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Adrift, the second book in the Molly Chase series, features a musician among its many characters. I created a YouTube playlist of all the songs and pieces mentioned in the book. Give it a listen!

My mom asked me today how edits on Molly Chase Book Two are going.

“I'm at the, ‘car engine is pulled apart and the parts are all over the garage floor, and I'm not sure how to put it back together,’ stage,” I told her. This morning I woke up in a panic, wondering if I spent yesterday's fifteen hour workday doing the exact thing my editor (Karen Ullo) told me not to do. Once caffeinated, I realized that I am doing what Karen wants me to do, but it involves replacing several car parts and making several extra trips to the auto parts store... and...

For context: I have drafts of this book dating back to 2017, several years before Book One (In Pieces) was acquired for publication and substantially revised. Revisions on One necessitated revisions to Two. This story has been through so many drafts, I've lost count. I have old material, I have new material, I have material I have yet to write, and I have material I wrote and subsequently lost. I have the darlings I've kept, the darlings I've killed, and the darlings I have yet to kill.

And I now have Karen's edits to incorporate, which one might liken to souping-up the engine: it's great, so long as I can modify the suspension, brakes, and steering to match.

“Mom,” I said, “if this book was a car, it would be the one in that Johnny Cash song. ‘Well, it's a '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '56, '57, '58, ‘59 automobile...’”

She thought that was pretty funny.