I’m deep into a new long project this time, a personal history for adult readers. Although I’ve published two novels for adults (ISLAND JUSTICE, IN MY MOTHER’S HOUSE), this is the first time I’ve attempted a non-fiction memoir form. It tells the story of my parents’ love affair during WWII which includes sailing through the evacuation at Dunkirk, the death of my mother’s only brother at the battle of El Alamein, a romantic meeting in a Yorkshire castle and my father parachuting behind enemy lines in France while my mother worked as a decoding agent in MI5 in London during the bombing.
As you can imagine, this project demands an enormous amount of research and I’ve found out the wackiest things.
For example, it turns out that for about twenty minutes in the 1890’s, my great-grandfather, Joseph Wright Alsop the 3rd, was the lieutenant governor of Connecticut. In 1890, he won on the Democratic ticket as the running mate of one Luzon B. Morris, but the election was contested and the Republicans triumphed after a legal skirmish. My great grandfather died of a heart attack on June 24, 1891, probably from the stress of the political battle.
So if you’re interested in “watching” a writer battle her way through a project, feel free to drop in here where I’ll be posting my triumphs, my struggles, the ups and downs of wrestling a book like this to the ground.
