PhyllistheAuthor

November is National Novel Writing Month. I have signed up for the challenge. For adults it is to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. There is a special program for young writers :http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/

A reader, Jack Wooldridge, sent me this website: http://www.storiesfromtheweb.org/sfwolderarea/index.asp If you want to publish your stories on line, look into this great resource for kids from Birmingham, UK. It's called Stories from the Web.

An e-mail I received today:

Hi! My name is Jack. Perhaps you remember me from Williamsburg, where I bought Divided Loyalties, or maybe you don't. I bet you meet a lot of people, being an author and all. I just wanted to say, I LOVED Divided Loyalties. In fact, I loved it so much that I reviewed it!

Here is my reveiw: *Divided Loyalties **By Phyllis Hall Haislip**

Review by Jack D. Wooldridge

**** When Teddy tries to play a trick on his private tutor, Grum, and accidentally locks his father in the shed, his father is so angry that he fires Grum and sends Teddy off to fight against the British in the Revolutionary War. With his mother a loyalist and his father a revolutionist, Teddy must decide: whose side is he on? And with the threat of the British troops moving ever closer, he must decide... fast!
**** I found this book so exciting that I couldn't put it down, and I was very sad when it ended. I totally recommend it!*

Mom and Dad have put it on the website along with a link to your website!http://home.comcast.net/~freeunionhomeschoolers/

Thank you, Jack! It is great to hear from readers.

If you are looking for a really fun book to read, consider Kathleen Karr's The Great Turkey Walk. Set in 1860, this book is part historical novel and part tall tale. Simon, a fifteen-year-old boy, sets out from Missouri to herd 1000 turkeys to market in Denver. I read somewhere that the book is recommended for third to sixth grades. However, it will appeal to any age reader. A good book is a good book is a good book.

Red peppers, tiny tomatoes, squash, green beans, and flowers. My garden is still producing. Our first frost date in Williamsburg is usually November 15. So we should be enjoying the garden for another month.

Readers often inquire if I do the research first or begin writing first. Once I get an idea for a book, I do preliminary research. When I have a general command of the time and the events in the story, then I begin to write.

While writing, I do a bit of a dance between writing and research. I write until I need to know a detail, then I return to the sources. I find out what I need to know and then go back to the writing. So it is back and forth between the research and the writing.

In my forthcoming book, Lili's War, I had to find out when the residents of Philadelphia read about the battle of the Wilderness in the newspapers and if a train went from Philadelphia to York, Pennsylvania. In both cases the writing could not continue until I found out these details.

After I am done, I check to make sure I have all the details correct. For example, in colonial times men wore "cocked hats." Today we call them "tricorn hats." If I find that the word "tricorn" has slipped in anywhere, I have to replace with "cocked."