Books for kids, teens, & those who are young at heart
Gillette Castle has gone missing! Join the fun as twelve Connecticut authors and twelve Connecticut illustrators solve the mystery in THE GREAT CONNECTICUT CAPER, a serialized story for middle grade readers and those who love adventure. Chapter one will be released on January 4, 2015 with a chapter to follow every two weeks.
Come celebrate the launch on Wednesday, January 7, 2015 at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT. I’ll be there! Will you?
We’ve been having a wonderful fall here, playing in the leaves, watching The Prince’s personality emerge more each day, starting pre-school with The Boy, baking, Halloween…all kinds of fun things (except for our disastrous vacation where the house leaked, but I’m so over that now!). Busy, for sure, but a good kind of busy. I haven’t done a picture post in awhile, and you all love seeing pictures of the cuteness of the boys (right?), so I’ve got some great pictures to share with you all today.
Exciting things are happening in my writing as well. I am loving my WIP. I’m deep into drafting it and still have that new book enthusiasm. We’ve got something of a regular schedule at home, too, so that’s helping me to keep up with my word counts and get in regular writing sessions.
Chapter one of The Great CT Caper, a collaborative, serialized MG mystery is set to be released on January 4, 2015. A new chapter with its illustration will be released every two weeks, so look for chapter two (mine!) on January 18. As the chapters release, I’ll be featuring guest posts from some of the writers and illustrators here on the blog, so that should be a lot of fun. It looks like I’ll be making some in person appearances as well to help promote the Caper…I’ll keep you all posted on that.
And more pictures!
Last week I dragged the whole family up to the Connecticut River Valley for a trip to Gillette’s Castle. Okay, there wasn’t really any dragging involved. I mean, who wouldn’t want to visit a medieval-style castle overlooking a gorgeous river valley? And the kiddos are still too little to protest much over what family activities we do. 🙂
I was there to do research for writing my chapter of the Great CT Caper, which starts next week! So far all I know for the story is that the castle is going to go missing…and the rest is up to us writers to create.
There’s nothing quite like physically experiencing the place you are writing about, so off we went. The morning rain scared away all the tourists (plus it was a Tuesday), so we had run of the place almost to ourselves. I had already done
some research on William Gillette who designed and lived in the castle.
Gillette is probably best known for portraying Sherlock Holmes on stage. Seems he had quite the sense of humor and was a natural entertainer because his home was set up to simultaneously awe his guests and tease them. He had strategically placed mirrors so he could spy on his guests from other rooms, one of which he used to observe his guests struggle with a trick liquor cabinet that Gillette designed. He also had a secret shortcut on his main stairway so he could beat his guests up to the great room and surprise them.
All in all I took a million pictures (many a little blurry because The Prince was strapped to me via the Moby wrap and it made it hard for me to keep my phone steady) and learned way more information than I’ll ever be able to cram into a whole story never mind a single chapter. But I also got really inspired and earned a whole new sense of the castle that I never would have gotten from pictures and descriptions of it. I do hope I get to incorporate a little of that into my small part in the story.
Finally the time has come to let you all know about that collaborative project I’ve been teasing you about. (I know, you’ve just been dying of curiosity, haven’t you?) Drum roll, please…
Join me, 11 other Connecticut authors, and 12 Connecticut illustrators as one of our own state’s cultural treasures is about to go missing. The Great CT Caper is on! The plot will develop as each author tackles one chapter at a time, but it all starts with the missing treasure, which was on voted on by the people. And they selected Gillette Castle!
Gillette Castle was designed by William Gillette, who was actually Sherlock Holmes (on stage anyway!), as a private residence and is now part of a state park. High above the gorgeous Connecticut River, I can’t imagine a better place for a mystery to take place. As part of my research, I’ll be visiting it later this month and I’ll be sure to share my experience here on the blog.
With the Great CT Caper, the Connecticut Center for the Humanities will be the first to publish a state-specific version of a serialized story for young readers modeled after a national one done by the Library of Congress. Starting in January 2015, the story will be published online one nail-biting chapter at a time.
I think it’s going to be an amazingly fun project to work on. I’ve never collaborated on a story with so many different writers and I’m really excited to see what kind of story comes out of it. Have any of you ever co-written or done a collaborative book?
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