Books

Since we are all WIPs, you can relate to the importance of a developing project, yes?

Currently I’m creating a mini-series of novels called The Footnotes Collection. Four very different women writers living in contemporary Concord, Massachusetts, are brought together by their common editor to support each other as authors.

“Support” seems unlikely, given their disparate origins and personalities, but the sheer messiness of life finds them mucking through those messes as a unit – talking each other out of crazy trees, rescuing one another from disaster and even investigating crimes they find themselves enmeshed in.

Each woman gets her own book, told in the first person and involving the other three and, over the course of the collection, building a bond that is literary, personal and spiritual – almost in spite of themselves. Concord, home of four of the most influential early American writers – Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott – forms the backdrop as do the works of those authors in some rather bizarre ways.

Book One, More Than a Footnote, Meredith’s story, is complete and is being shopped around by my agent extraordinaire. Think good thoughts!

Book Two, A Mob of Scribbling Women, is also complete and will soon join Book One on its visits to potential publishers.

Book Three, Once Upon a Ransom, is in its fetal stage, and this is where you can help — if such a thing sounds like your idea of fun.

Visit my Facebook Page where the community creates ideas for characters, provides odd bits and pieces of information (they’re better than Google) and discusses the deeper issues that go into a novel. Come and be part of the process. Your input will, of course, be acknowledged on that page in the book no one reads except those whose names are on there!

Nancy’s current writing is represented by Don Pape at Pape Commons: don@papecommons.com