A number of you have asked about Down Salem Way, so here’s an update.

I’m pleased to report that Down Salem Way is coming along quite well. In fact, it’s (slightly) ahead of schedule. The preorder date is still set for James’ birthday, April 19, 2019–his 357th birthday, to be exact. I’ll let you know when a final publication date is set.

I’m still in the whittling down phase of writing. While I’m chipping away at the manuscript, working to bring James and Elizabeth’s story front and center, I’ve thought of Michelangelo. He believed his statues were inherent in the marble and it was up to him to reveal the form. That’s how I feel about this part of writing. The story is inherent in the draft and I have to whittle away until I find it. Sometimes I have to go back and add a bit since connections are made that I hadn’t seen before. For me, it’s always about the last line of the book. Once I hit the last line I have my Aha! moment and say, “So that’s what this book is about!” Then I can direct everything toward that ending. Yes, I’ve hit the last line. No, I’m not telling–yet.

I thought I’d repost the first sneak peek from Down Salem Way I shared a while back. The manuscript is still not through final edits, but this version is different enough if you’d like to compare it with the original version here. Enjoy!

* * * * *

The winters are colder here, I am certain of it. Father and I arrived here, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but a year ago during what we were assured was one of the harshest winters in memory. I can feel it so in my bones, which feel brittle, as though they shall shatter like icicles against a hammer. While England grows cold enough in the sunless months, in New England tis as though the sky disappears beneath a woolen blanket. I cannot step one foot outside my home without feeling liquid ice in my veins, but that is life in Massachusetts in January. The sky looks nearly as it does in England, gradations of gray from near-black to tinder-slate that shed wind, sleet, or snow depending on its mood. 

This morn I met Father on the docks. He wished to inspect the shipbuilders as they banged out the hull of his latest vessel. Lizzie laughed as I piled on layers of clothing in an attempt to stay warm: my woolen flannel underdrawers, my linen shirt, my thickest worsted woolen leggings, perhaps not the most fashionable, but they are my warmest; my woolen suit of doublet, jerkin, and breeches, and my heavy, fulled woolen coat, the deep blue one that Lizzie says matches my eyes, though what matters my eyes when I cannot see for the blizzard. Lizzie pulled my coat close to my ears and knotted my scarf near my throat in an effort to keep whatever warmth I might take with me. I would cover myself in ten coats if I could do so without looking ridiculous. Even as I was, my wife could not stifle her giggles. 

“Good heavens, James. You look like a blue onion ready for the peeling.” 

“And shall you peel my layers away?” 

She blushed in that way I love, red-hot along her jaw. She pushed me toward the door as though she could not be rid of me soon enough. 

“Perhaps when you return home. If you’re lucky.”

I pulled my dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty closer and basked in her warmth. I ran my lips along the red that stained her cheeks. “I have been lucky thus far,” I said. “I cannot see that my luck shall not continue.”

Lizzie pulled my great coat closer around my neck. She opened the door and pushed me toward it. She shivered in the cold, kissed my lips, then pressed me outside.

“Go. Father is waiting for you.”

“Will you wait for me?”  

“Where else shall I be? What other man might I wait for who is tall and strong with hair the color of spun gold and eyes like the bluest, brightest jewels?”

I stepped further into the unfriendly gloom and the door closed behind me. I had lost the battle to my Lizzie, which is as it usually goes. 

I quivered in my boots as I walked toward the shore, warming my mind with thoughts of Lizzie, her wondering dark eyes, her dark hair, her luscious, berry-like lips. I needed something else to occupy my mind, but there was nothing. I am still struck by how sparse it is in Massachusetts. Unfriendly. Uninhabitable. 

“They call this a town?” I said aloud, to no one. I struggle to think of this place as a town. The Town grows a little livelier toward the harbor since tis the hub for shipbuilding and the merchant trade. Salem becomes more provincial at the Farms. There’s so little of everything here, and tis still a shock to walk amongst nothing but seashore to one side of me, farmland on the other, and wilderness further back. 

“Is this all there is?” I said, again, to no one. I heard the caw of a seagull, then doubted myself since even seabirds know to stay away from the shore in winter. 

I must have shaken myself as far as the sea, for finally I stood at the edge of the gray-black bay, the tips of my boots licked by the lapping waves, the ocean spray splattering my exposed face with bitter water like pinpricks along my cheeks. Again, I thought the cold in England wasn’t ever this cold. I squinted into the expanse of water, slapping my forehead when I realized I left my spectacles at home. What a confounded fool I can be. Twas an excuse to return home, I knew, to Lizzie. But my father waited for me. If I concentrated enough, so that my temples squeezed, I could see well enough. If I pinched my brain that much tighter, I could see past the ocean to England, and home.

A spray of salt water brought me back to myself. The air was even colder at land’s end. With my hat pulled over my eyes and my face turned away from the wind, I bumped into a man, a shipbuilder, I think. The man’s Monmouth cap fell to the ground, his leather pouch flung from his shoulder, and he grimaced with severity.

“My apologies,” I said. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Blind, are you?” The man spat in my direction. “A Pox on you!” With a hmph! he skittered away, his gray doublet and breeches blending into the slate of sea and sky. I laughed. Indeed, I am blind. I cannot see my own hand without my spectacles, which are at home with my Lizzie, where it is warm, where she is warm, her embrace warm, and I was there along an unforgiving shore whipped by the angry weather like a thief in the stocks. I stared into the distance, struggling to make out Father’s short, slight shape. Then I had a fright from one word: “Pox.”

I didn’t need that ill-tempered man to remind me of the fear of the Pox running along the shore. There has been another outbreak, and those living closest to the port suffer most. I wanted to be sitting in my cushioned chair before my hearth reading Samuel Pepys’ Memoirs of the Navy while Lizzie sat beside me knitting, mending, or chatting to me about her day. I pulled my scarf closer to my mouth, as though the meager movement would keep the Pox where it belonged, over there, away from me and mine. 

I arrived near the shipbuilders, hammering nails into wood until I thought my head would burst into a star-like pattern. With some struggle, I made out a vague outline of men and guessed Father was among them.