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How could Leah’s dad dump his only daughter with an aunt she doesn’t even know—who lives in rural Indiana, of all places? Ugh! Aunt Becky has spent her life running all over Africa and Asia on some kind of a secretive mission. But what?

Things look up when Leah discovers a hidden ladder leading from a window seat in auntie’s old house to a second cellar. At the bottom it’s 1860. The people living in the house, the Newcombs, operate a station on the Underground Railroad. AWESOME! She thinks.

Leah finds a friend in Johannah Newcomb, but then stumbles on a story that will shatter Johannah’s world. Should Leah tell her friend and perhaps save the girl’s father from being killed by a gang of slave hunters? Would that alter history? Could history be altered? Should it be?

And what about God? Can He help? He sure didn’t do anything to save Leah’s mom when a drunken teenage driver killed her in a car crash.

After a neighbor boy, Trevor, reveals that he knows about the ladder and the Newcombs, he and Leah make a pact of secrecy and join in the risky business of helping runaway slaves.

Speaking of secrets, what is Aunt Becky hiding that could change Leah’s life forever? How does auntie’s mission connect with the Newcombs’ good work a century and a half ago?

 

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The idea for The Second Cellar sprang from one of my historical first-person interpretive storytelling program, Abigail Gray: Living Under the Drinking Gourd, in which I tell the true accounts of the Underground Railroad in the Hoosier state and beyond. The stories of the freedom seekers and those who assisted them fascinate me. Both the program and the book are set in southeastern Indiana, specifically the Jefferson County area. The book is a tween (8-13 years of age) historical fantasy involving time travel.

 

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Like many authors, I use Pinterest to collect images related to my works in progress (WIPs). Naturally, I have a board dedicated to The Second Cellar. When I began thinking about a cover for the book, I initially planned to use the house that is the model for Aunt Becky's home, a c. 1840s Federal-style brick house where some friends live. But as I perused TSC's Pinterest board, I came across this wonderful photo of the primitive ladder. Perfect! Problem: I had no idea as to the source of the shot. The picture wasn't connected to a link. I couldn't use it with the photographer's permission, so I went searching. For days I combed through photo sites in a fruitless quest. It began to look like I wouldn't be able to use the picture that so captured my image of the ladder in the book. Then I thought to do what I should have done three days before: I prayed. Within three minutes, the Lord answered that plea! When I saw it among so many others, I stared at it for a moment to take it in. And it was connected to a link to the photographer's site--where he had a contact email posted! I wrote asking permission to use the image. Two days later, he responded favorably. Greg Nyquist, thank you so much for your gracious permission. Gaze in amazement at more of his work HERE.

Something New for Me

As autumn dons her golden garb and temperatures begin their decline toward winter, I'm transitioning, also. 
       After publishing my first middle-grade novel, Up a Rutted Road, as an e-book, I spent the summer revising my second novel, The Second Cellar, an MG historical fantasy. Now, even as I seek a home for Cellar, I'm embarking on two new projects at once. One is another MG novel entitled The Daddy Letters, and the other is an historical romance, The Sun Catcher.
       Never before have I tried working on two manuscripts at the same time, but I couldn't decide which one to write first, since both are plotted. Other writers have multiple projects going at once, so I decided to give it a try. If one begins to take over the spotlight, then so be it. In God's timing, they'll both be completed. 
       What beckons me today? Yesterday, I got a strong start on Daddy, but on this first day of October 2013, I'm drawn to The Sun Catcher. The main character in that story, Irene Delacroix, keeps tapping me on the shoulder.

Your turn! If you're a writer, please share your experience with tackling multiple book-length WIPs (works in progress) at once. How do you juggle them? Is it something you commonly do? I look forward to your comments.

Listening to Leah

I'm within about 15,000 words--three or four short chapters--of being finished with the first draft of The Second Cellar, my transitional novel about the adventures of Leah Bright Maxwell (pictured above) in two centuries. Her crises build in intensity. She already stepped squarely in harm's way--and was harmed as a result. I can see the climax in my mind. Hear the frenzied voices, the stomping of heavy boots on the frozen forest floor, the whimpering of a baby and its mama's coos. I smell the woodsmoke hanging like a blanket in the crisp early winter air. It's there.

But for right, I'm waiting. She's recuperating. So I need to talk with her again. We had a long talk before her adventures began. That got us started. But now, before we embark on this last leg, I need to be still and listen to her talk, so I'll know what she's feeling and thinking.

Dear fellow writer, do you do that? Do you carry on periodic dialogues with your characters? Do they influence the direction of your story--their story? To what degree do you allow them to dictate the course?

Please respond by leaving a comment. Thank you.

Oh, the Places I Will Go

Read Teresa's story at Make Way Partners

When I begin a writing project, I seldom know where the research will lead me. I'm a hybrid plotter/pantser. In other words, I know the general path I will take, but I try to be open to the leading of the Lord to alter my course. He did that as I wrote my first novel manuscript, and He's doing it with this work-in-progress.

I write middle-grade novels primarily. Even in the case of fiction, for it to ring true, it must spring from truth. This work, The Second Cellar, does that. At its beginning, however, I did not imagine that my journey would take me to Darfur and beyond, albeit vicariously.

A friend involved with foreign and domestic missions, upon learning about my wip, is serving as a liaison between me and the founder of another ministry--this one involved in rescuing children and women from modern-day slavery in Islamic countries.  I look forward to talking with such a courageous woman. As any interviewer worth her ink knows to do, I will first thoroughly study her website and blog, so that I won't waste time asking questions she already has answered on those sites. Such perusal usually gives rise to other deeper, more probing questions.

Another likely stop on my research odyssey will be a visit to the immigration office in Indianapolis. Only the Lord knows where else I will travel in my quest.

Dear writing colleagues, what strange and unexpected turns has your research taken you? Please click "Comments" and tell of your experience.

Write on!

Because of Christ,
Sharon

All in the Name of Research

Wednesday was an ordinary day down on the banks of the Ohio in southeastern Indiana. The sky over Madison was a brilliant cyan punctuated with puffs of cloud. A gentle breeze carried the fragrance of southern magnolias down the historic streets, through secluded courtyards, and around early nineteenth-century homes.

It would have been a perfect day to stay home and clean the bathroom, catch up on the laundry, brush up on my transformational grammar, and dust doodads, indeed, but I felt compelled to leave all that behind. After all, I'm a hard-working writer with research begging to be done. So I collected a couple companions and we headed off for the river town to visit the library, locate a good site for a second-hand bookstore for the aunt of my protagonist, get a feel for the neighborhood, and take some reference photos.

Enjoy some of the photos that will hopefully enrich the sense of "place" in The Second Cellar, my middle-grade historical fantasy in progress. (If you've followed this blog for long, you've already seen several reference photos for both of my manuscripts.)

I selected this cream brick home across from the library to be the site of the used-book store.

Kristi Rice, Photographer

Meet Leah Bright Maxwell

Leah is the nearly thirteen-year-old protagonist of my second middle-grade novel, The Second Cellar. She's precocious, theatrical, and angry at her father for abandoning her for the summer to the care of an aunt whom she doesn't even know. Just when she resigns herself to three months of pure boredom--with nothing better to do than to poke around in the attic and cellar of her aunt's antebellum Federal-style house, she discovers a hidden room, a second cellar that conceals many secrets. She also learns that her aunt has some secrets of her own.

The Second Cellar is a work in progress. I am resolved to have the rough draft finished by my birthday in June, as a little gift to myself. If I can push through and complete it before that, all the better.

Part of my prewriting work is to search for images that convey my characters to my satisfaction, and this girl does that. I had another picture selected until I saw this redhead. I've always known that Leah Bright had auburn hair. The hard part was finding the perfect face to go with the hair, a face that showed Leah's spunk, intelligence, and courage. Today that search ended.

Bringing the Dead to Life

Pictured above: The working images I've chosen for Trevor, Johannah, and Leah.
Fellow writer and good friend Ramona K. Cecil suggests that fiction writers "interview" their protagonists and principal characters before beginning a new manuscript. I wish that I had done that with Camie in Up the Rutted Road, but instead I got to know her the hard way: word by page by chapter by triumph by danger.

The Second Cellar will be different. Though I've written 104 pages, I've learned so much during the revision of Rutted Road that I know I must begin again. But first, I'm taking Ramona's advice; I've interviewing Leah, my protagonist, as well as Trevor (Leah's neighbor for the summer) and Johannah (Leah's nineteenth-century friend). I may also interview Leah's father, Byron, the English professor.

It's amazing what a writer can learn from character interviews. All right. I can hear you asking, "Since you invented the characters, don't you already know them?" No. There is much to be discovered in an interview. For example, I had no idea that Leah's middle name was Bright. Nor did I know that she went for two weeks after birth without a middle name. Until Trevor's interview, I didn't know that he and his mother lived with his paternal grandmother, Fern. Further, his father died a hero while serving in Iraq; he threw himself on a grenade to save his buddies. Who knew?

I join Ramona in advising writers to talk to your characters. Get to really know them before you write their stories. Know their back-stories, as well. Don't be shy about prying into private matters. If they blush, let them blush. If they fidget, make note of that. Once you know them, you can write about them authentically.