An Author is Asked: Another Book?

I told someone I had a new book coming out this June and she remarked, "Do you put out a book every year?"

Actually, it's been four years since my last book was published. And, though I have another coming out next year, I don't think people realize how much time and energy it can take to publish a book. It starts with an idea. For me inspiration comes from current and past events. I build my stories and characters around something that sparks my imagination. And The Painting was inspired by a kerfuffle that happened more than a decade ago. 

I was intrigued when the board of the Seward House Museum in Auburn, NY was embattled in a lawsuit brought by one of Seward's descendants because of the removal of a Thomas Cole painting that had hung in the house for over 150 years and was given to William Seward as a gift. At the time (2013) they estimated the painting to be worth around $20 million, and the managers of the estate, the Emerson Foundation, wanted to auction it off. They won the lawsuit and the Portage Falls on The Genesee ended up in California. I thought to myself, did a community just lose a valuable piece of their cultural history?

Portage Falls on the Genesee, Seward House Museum

​I visited the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in the Catskill Mountains to gain an understanding of the cultural context of his paintings and the Hudson River School. While there, I became enamored by the quiet legacy of his sister Sarah, and the women of the Hudson River School. The fact that little is known about Sarah’s artistic work pivoted the focus of my fiction. What if her paintings were worth just as much, if not more than her brothers due to their rarity? And what if, because she enjoyed travel just as much as her brother, she found places to paint and bequeathed her paintings to her hosts? Perhaps in a small town in the Catskills?
 
Using the case of what happened at the William Seward Museum as inspiration, my novel centers on a family left to take care of a house their father registered as a Cultural Heritage site with all contents intact. When a graduate student finds evidence of the provenance of a painting hanging over the mantel in the library as one of Sarah Cole’s, they are faced with a dilemma.  The foundation running the house insists it should be auctioned off because the cost to insure it and keep it safe are too high.
 
I started my novel The Painting in the summer of ’20. It's coming out June 2026, six years later. That's how long it takes me to work the concept of a story to the finish line. That includes waiting around for development suggestion from my editor(s), rewriting entire chapters, deleting others, and research. I do most of this work on the weekends or during the long breaks I get from working at a small college.

And all the while I'm working, I keep a journal for when new ideas pop up. So it isn't a big surprise to me when I look at the multitude of journals accumulating on my shelf, that I have two other books I'm working out in my head. And when I get a break from one book because I'm waiting for my editor to get back to me, or pitching it to an agent, or publisher, I keep on writing the next one. 

I suppose one day I won't be able to keep up the pace. I've already noticed that where I used to be able to sit for two hours and crank out 2k words, I sit for the same amount of time and labor over a sentence. I think that means I'm getting better at it, if not a little slower. 

I don't think the pace of publishing matters, it's whether my work connects with a reader. I know my novels won't please everyone, but I hope the painstaking work pays off for some. 

You can order The Painting here.