Heading into Fall Ball playoffs in about a week.  I will be in SF, but coming back on an early early flight, that will land before 8 am so I can be at the field for the 9:30 am game.  Our team is very interesting, to say the least, but the kids are playing hard and seem (most of the time) to care.  14 players, and they almost always all show up.  A little tough on substitutions, but (as we keep reminding ourselves) it’s Fall Ball. 

Hmm.  Something about Saroyan.  Someone seems to have nominated me for that award.  Hmm.

The Bears are who we THOUGHT they were.

(it’s bad, y’know)

I do love the process of writing.  This story has been building up, and it’s all I can do to keep from putting too much in the first ten pages.  That stuff will all get spread out to be discovered as the book takes hold, but writing and rewriting the opening for a week is getting me prepared for pushing into the rest of the story, in order, driving eventually to the finish.  No secrets on that.  Get the voice right, as I said before.  Then the rest will come.  An occasional pit stop for research that wasn’t anticipated, then back on the horse.  Can I trash any more metaphors?  Pit stops and horses.  Bah. 

Writing, then rewriting the first five pages, which are now longer, I am spending days on those pages, happily, with delight, because they are coming into form, and once they are right, or close to being right, meaning the voice is close, then I move on.  From that point it will start to move very quickly, as the piece is strongly outlined in my head. 

I haven’t had the chance to write in anger (so to speak) in something close to 2 years.  I have to tell you, I have missed it, and this is really fun.  I am enjoying the process of writing the new novel, this is what I love to do, tell stories and put together the pieces:  characters, description, style, attitude, all the research… and all I’ve done so far is to rewrite the first five pages — they are now 9 pages and growing — and I will continue to rewrite them for another few days until I feel like I’ve got the voice going, then I will move on.  By the way, nice runon sentence, fellah. 

I have started writing the new novel.  Five pages on Friday. 

SWEETSMOKE

By 1862, a slave named Cassius has worked his entire life for the white plantation owner of Sweetsmoke.  Because of his experience as a carpenter and his unusual relationship with Hoke Howard, his master, he is able to obtain small favors unattainable by the other slaves on the plantation.  When his friend, Emoline, a free black woman, is murdered, he feels compelled to find the murderer, despite resistance from the white community, his master, and even other slaves on the plantation.  Because Emoline was black, no one else seems interested in solving the crime.  

The author has uniquely described the degradation and horror of slavery as it existed in the 19th century.  He has captured its indignity, the sharp contrast between the white and black population, and the humility of slavery as an accepted way of life. 

The novel is well written with excellent descriptions of the slave-versus-master conditions that existed at the outbreak of the American Civil War.  Cassius is a strong, principled black man who feels the wrongs and injustices but is impotent to change his status.  His quest for determining his friend’s killer, while he himself is held in bondage, had me enthusiastically turning the pages to find out how or if he would discover the murderer’s identity.  This is a very convincing novel about the trials and tribulations of plantation life.  I highly recommend it to those who enjoy a good mystery and who want to learn more about the treatment of blacks in the South during this tumultuous time in American history.  

Jeff Westerhoff, Historical Novels review