2/28/08–I haven’t started the new book yet. I’m still in the researching stage. I want my hero to have served in the British army, so it was necessary to look at a timeline of British history. Having started my Laurie Grant writing career with medievals, I’m pretty solid on medieval history, but not so much the Victorian period. I was hoping he could be a recent veteran of the Crimean war or the Sepoy Rebellion in India, but I’m finding that they ended in the late 1850’s, a few years too soon, since I want the book to be set in post-Civil War Texas. I suppose he could have endured the Sepoy Rebellion when he was younger and newly arrived in India, and stayed on to serve in the British Raj. Now I have to figure out exactly where in Texas to situate my heroine, and what her and his names should be.

It’s hard to concentrate in the Kingery house today. My husband Tom is getting ready to go on a week-long fishing trip in Florida Friday with a bunch of other guys, so he’s going and coming, packing and planning. Then in late afternoon, the oldies band in which he plays bass guitar will descend and start playing in our basement. So it’s probably not the best day to start a book. It’ll be easier to start while he’s gone and it’s just me and the dogs and cats, and the house is quiet, right? Rationalizing, I know…

2/27/08–Hello world! Laurie Kingery, writer of inspirational historicals here. As recently as this fall I always said I’d never blog, didn’t have time to blog, couldn’t see how any published writer had the time to blog and still put out quality writing, especially if, like me, they still have to work in the “real world” outside writing when one must actually get out of pajamas and leave the house for a period of hours. (In my case, that means 12-hour shifts, 3 nights a week, 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. as an E.R. nurse in a busy trauma center. It seemed like other writers were always posting what they were blogging about, where they were guest-blogging, or who was guest-blogging at their sites. But as with most things when “everyone’s doing it, I began to imagine me doing it, and began to think why not? I don’t have to do it the same way everyone else is doing it, after all. I can make it the way I want, and it might be fun to have a forum to post my views about whatever comes to mind, writing-related or not. I won’t be able to post every day, but some days I might post multiple times. And I’d love to see comments back from you. I hope you will comment, and suggest things to discuss that interest you, and tell your friends about the site. It can be as good as we want to make it. This will be an evolving process. You can read all about me on this website, now let me hear from YOU!

My current situation is that of being between books. I just sent in the second manuscript on my contract with Steeple Hill–we’re still thrashing out a title that my publisher and I both like–so I need to start another one.  Right after I send in a book, writing is the last thing I want to do. I’ve got too many other things that I’ve put off in the final throes of a looming deadline–appointments, errands, lunches with friends that I’ve been neglecting while finishing the book. Now I’ve completed a lot of things on my “to do” list, and the restlessness is creeping in. The need to start another book. But which of the stories that are crowding my mind? I start to feel undisciplined without the daily requirement of sitting down to write. I get irritable. And finally, one idea crowds to the front and those characters demand the loudest that their story must be told. So I’ll end this blog entry here and try to decide what the new book will be.