I got the first niggles of inspiration for the story that would become Mountain Laurel, my upcoming September release, sometime toward the end of the 1990s. Though I’d opened a file and jotted some notes (first thing I always do when when I suspect the kernel of a new novel has sprouted) I didn’t start writing the novel until April 2004, after a bought with cancer and chemo fog temporarily interrupted my writing.
Mountain Laurel was the first book set in the 18th century I ever wrote. It’s also the book that my literary agent first read and on its strength she signed me as a client. We were never able to find a publishing home for it. But I was hooked on 18th century history, so I wrote more such stories. Burning Sky, The Pursuit of Tamsen Littlejohn, and The Wood’s Edge, all of which were published fairly quickly. I kept writing historical novels (A Flight of Arrows, Many Sparrows, The King’s Mercy). But neither I nor my agent forgot about Mountain Laurel, or the sequel I had begun but set aside.
So last summer we decided to give the novel and its sequel one more try to find a publishing home, and to my everlasting joy Tyndale House opened their doors and their hearts wide to it.
That’s why I’m finding every step of the process seeing this story through the editing and production pipeline utterly surreal, though I’ve done it six times before with other books. I really had thought it was likely never to happen. Yet here we are, with the cover art about to be revealed. A few things have to happen still behind the scenes before Mountain Laurel‘s cover goes live on bookseller sites, but I’ve been given permission to share it with my newsletter subscribers a little sooner than that.
That letter will hit your inboxes early next week. If you want to see Mountain Laurel‘s cover then, sign up now!
