For a while, I justified my lack of productivity during these odd times by saying that nearly every writer I know has said that he or she has been having trouble concentrating. I decided that well, things are just too weird right now and it’s interfering with the creative process. Then I read that Zadie Smith wrote a book of essays during the lockdown, which completely blew my theory.

I have only just started feeling productive again, and it’s not necessarily because things are better. I live in a state (Nevada) currently seeing an upward surge in COVID-19 cases, and wearing a face mask everywhere has become the norm, for me and for nearly everyone else I see in the grocery store. But I have been getting some work done, finally. Not as much as Zadie Smith, but then Zadie Smith is awesome and would finish a book of essays while the rest of us stare at the wall.

One thing I have completed is the revisions of my story set in Biblical Jerusalem, Woman of Stones. In some ways, Woman of Stones is the most challenging story I’ve written because it’s set in a time and place that seemed so foreign to me when I began my research. If you read the original version of Woman of Stones I’m not sure you’ll see much of a difference, to be honest, but I can see the changes and I think the book is stronger for them. As the years have passed I’ve become a better writer (I hope) and I felt the prose needed an upgrade. My “no extra words” rule applies more now than it did eight years ago.

If you’ve read Victory Garden, my novel of World War I and the Woman Suffrage Movement, and you think that’s a change of pace from the Loving Husband Series then Woman of Stones may as well have been written in Greek. In fact, if it had been written during the time it takes place—2000 years ago—it might have been written in Greek.

One of the glorious things about writing historical fiction is that inspiration can come from anywhere at any time. My inspiration for Woman of Stones began when I read Anita Diamant’s lyrical historical/Biblical novel The Red Tent. I was blown away by Diamant’s novel, so much so that as soon as I finished it I read it again. I loved Diamant’s poetic prose, her stream-of-consciousness storytelling, and her creative imagining of a Bible story from a woman’s point of view. A Bible story from a woman’s point of view? Cool. I loved the way Diamant made Dinah’s story come to life and I wanted to do something similar in a story of my own.

One of my favorite stories has always been the one about the woman caught in adultery. I love it because of the lesson–whoever of you is without sin, cast the first stone. It’s a lesson I have to relearn nearly every day of my life. I, perhaps like some of you, can be quick to cast stones without looking at my own actions, my own intentions, my own priorities, my own mistakes.

Then I wondered…who was this woman? How did she come to be at that place at that time? Having read The Red Tent, I began to imagine a story for her. That’s all the novella is—my imagining a story for the woman.

Woman of Stones is a study in memory. I’m fascinated by memory, how we remember, what we remember, who we remember, what we forget, whether intentionally or not. I tapped into the stream-of-consciousness narration in Diamant’s novel, and I love that poetic fluidity in Toni Morrison’s novels as well. The novella became a first-person narration from the Woman of Stones herself. We follow her from her humble beginnings in Nazareth, to how she came to live in Jerusalem, to how she struggled on various levels. She tells her story as she remembers it. Sometimes she remembers in linear order, and sometimes she doesn’t. Her memories are fluid, jumping from here to there and back again as she struggles to make sense of her life.

While it is a difficult story at times, it has a positive message about forgiveness and love, traits we could all use a little more of these days.

Woman of Stones is now available as an ebook at Amazon for 99 cents. It will be available through KDP Select through September 17, 2020. The paperback will be available at Amazon and other retailers beginning Wednesday, 6/24/20.