Awaiting edits

and eager to get back to work

I have been without my Young Adult WIP — Princess of Hearts — for over two months. Of course my first response was celebratory. It’s always a huge deal to get a manuscript to the point where it is ready to step out into the world: tah dah!

I was on holiday! I went to the beach — but of course — where I frolicked with the two youngest of my five grandgirls.

I read an extraordinary book — Time of the Child by Niall Williams. (Swoon.)

I dove into art.

(From a photo I took of my beloved late husband sitting in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. In acrylic, new to me.)

I also poked at various publishing projects: a memoir, a possible chapbook series.

Yet, at heart, I was bereft of Princess of Hearts, so I turned to AI: Give me a cut-line. Let’s explore a possible cover. And this is what “we” came up with:

I love the concept, the challenge of the maze, the mysteries of the heart. The castle in the distance should perhaps be the menacing Tower of London — or even the scaffold? (My teen-aged grandgirl said she would only read such a book if there’s a dagger on the cover.)

I know my publishers — Penguin Random House in Canada and Viking Children’s Books in the US — will no doubt have even better ideas, but this might be a start. (Readers: what do you think?) For me it’s been a comforting image until the edited MS comes back to me — this week! — and I happily dive back into the world of young Princess Elizabeth Tudor.

I’ve missed her.