Where have they gone, these creatures of my imagination who told me their stories, punished me for long absences by going silent and kept me guessing right up until the end of our journey together? Because I’ve been lucky enough to live a sustained creative life, this feeling at the end of what is a first draft is a familiar one. I know there is more work to do on this book, but I also know that first, I must put it aside so that when I come back, I will have the distance and objectivity to recognize its flaws and be ready to revise.

This journey which is about to come to an end started over forty years ago. I wrote The Castle in the Attic in response to the sadness I felt when my son started kindergarten and a beloved nanny left us to go back to taking care of babies.

As all good books do, it started with my own feeling, in this case one of abandonment which I expect was much stronger than how my son felt. For five years, Mrs. Miller had calmly walked me through the tough and often tumultuous days with two toddlers. She was a gifted and experienced teacher who thought nothing of building the solar system for Andrew with a number of balls, string and toothpicks or of telling me when my kids needed discipline.

Here she is walking Andrew to school on the last day she was with us.

This is the first novel I didn’t outline ahead of time. Instead, I scribbled some notes and let the characters emerge and find their form and motives in their own time. I listened to them rather than ordering them around. I started a practice I call the “Journal of the book” and have kept it up ever since.

I ask myself questions. What’s Eve doing in that cave and how are you going to get her out? Is Gudrin jealous of the growing friendship between Sonia and William? Without the magic token, how can William defeat this wily villain? And I cheer myself on. You’ve broken the back of the book! Great idea to switch the banquet to a bonfire. Every writer needs encouragement no matter where it comes from.

So this is the fourth book in the series. I have reclaimed the rights to The Castle in the Attic, which means it is only available in paperback here, but still available in audio here. (Also on Audible but I prefer to support independent bookstores through Libro.fm.) The second, The Battle for the Castle, is still in print.

The prequel, The Cradle in the Castle, which I finished in 2023 is not yet published. And the fourth, still untitled, should be ready by the end of the year.

But William will not be time traveling again. He and I both know that for sure. He defeated the wizard in the first book with his body, the rats in Battle with his mind and in this one, the arch villain who sent them all, with his spirit. William is ready to return to his 20^th Century life and stay there.

I admit that I’ve left many an open door for the series to continue with other characters carrying the story. Perhaps my grandchildren will write those sequels. But for me, this is the end of the series that started with my first time-traveling fantasy novel more than 40 years ago.

No wonder I’m feeling a bit blue.

But I’ve always shrugged off the suggestion that I tell his story. People would be interested in his influence on the political life of Washington, D.C. from 1946 until his death in 1974. Many writers have covered that territory in books like Taking on the World by Robert Merry and The Georgetown Set by Gregg Herken and my father’s own memoir, Stay of Execution, A Sort of Memoir. I’ve always been more interested in the emotional life of our family during the Cold War years which I wrote about that in my memoir, Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies.

So, my father’s journalistic career as well his thoughts about a terminal cancer diagnosis need no further discussion or illumination from me.

However, in researching my memoir, I learned more about his war years, first his service in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps, a British regiment which he joined in early 1942 when the U.S. military turned him down because of high blood pressure and asthma, his war in Italy in 1943, and finally his assignment to lead a Jedburgh commando team with the OSS.

In the summer of 1944, he left behind his 18-year-old bride of a few weeks to jump behind enemy lines in order to liase with the French Resistance. But Tish, that young British war bride who became my mother, was the subject of Daughter of Spies, so I kept the focus on her, acknowledging to myself that much more could be written about Daddy’s time in the war. Perhaps one day I would write that story.

I admit to mixed feelings when I first heard from Timothy Gay, a prominent World War II historian, that he’d like to write a piece about my father and Team Alexander, the gang of three that Daddy commanded in the months they careened around France dodging enemy tanks and carrying out guerilla missions to harass the retreating Germans.

This was a story I’d hoped to write myself, but after some consideration and other pressing deadlines, I decided this well-published, experienced WWII historian was the better person to take it on. We first connected in 2021, but Gay took the time to do deep research, the kind I might have neglected and as a result, I learned much more about my father’s war years than I knew before. The two part piece, Blue Blooded Guerilla, was just published in a UK magazine, HISTORY IS NOW and I recommend it. And here is the link to Part II of the story. As a daughter, I especially appreciated this description, one I could never have written myself.

"His facial features mirrored Hollywood matinee idol Robert Taylor’s: roguish blue eyes, an elongated patrician nose, mischievous eyebrows, and a mouth that always seemed to be suppressing a smile or a smirk. Even with a mop of brown hair hacked by military barbers, Alsop still radiated a Fitzgeraldian air of old money."

Every writer be they published or just starting out would answer these questions in a different way. My writing day and schedule has changed over time, but I’ve discovered that committing to writing every day is the most important “trick.” So, for now, here’s my schedule. I wake up and play a number of word games to prime my brain. Then breakfast and a ten minute drawing practice with Wendy McNaughton to push me in different directions. Drawing helps me to see more clearly what is right in front of me and that can only help my descriptive powers.

Although I don’t live in a large apartment, I am lucky enough to have two separate spaces for my work life. The first, a desk 10 inches from my bed, is where I do the administrative work that a published writer must not neglect. It is here that I check royalty statements, answer appearance requests, develop marketing and publicity materials, read through contracts, answer emails from fans, my entertainment lawyer, my editors, etc. My second space is a 6 X 10 foot nook where I keep all my research books, art that inspires me, my journals and an extra card table to spread out file cards on characters, plot twists, settings. I try to keep that as my pure writing space.

The painting above my desk is of an island and I’ve written more than one book about islands. Part of the novel I’m working on is set on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, a mystical place on the northeast coast of England that I’ve visited to do research. Beneath that, a picture of two characters who showed up in one of my books and who keep coming back. Upper right you’ll see a charcoal drawing of my father, a journalist and memoir writer, who was my first inspiration.

Upper left is a cartoon by James Stevenson, the celebrated New Yorker artist who was inspired by my father and uncle . The bookshelf holds my daily handwritten journals and books that inspire and instruct me. And yes, knitting supplies. I’ve found that when my fingers work the needles, my brain works on plot.

Lately I’ve been hearing the term, third space. First your home, then your work and one other. Since both my home and my office are under the same roof, I often go out to my favorite coffee shop which I call my third space. I put on noise deadening headphones, hook into my Gregorian Chant playlist (my current novel is set in the 14th century), write first in my journal and then turn to the half finished sentence, the last thing I wrote the day before. In that crowded, noisy place, my characters meet me and carry me away to their world.

This is the schedule and rhythm that works for me. What is yours?

When I first saw Hine’s photographs of textile workers in a Vermont factory, my eye was drawn over and over again to one child.

The image of this young girl’s bare oil-smeared feet, her filthy smock and her hair bound up like an old woman’s, haunted me. I decided to write an historical novel inspired by her, but not about her.

The manuscript of Counting on Grace was accepted by my editor after one revision but as soon as it was headed to copyediting, I decided I needed to find out more about the actual child whose face had prompted me to write the book. In this case, I discovered, to paraphrase the author of Men At Work, that “her use as a symbol had precluded attention to her as an actual person.” Hine’s original caption for the photograph reads, “Anemic Little Spinner in North Pownal Cotton Mill.” An informational poster erected at the site of the original mill (later a Superfund site) listed her as Annie Laird. I imagine that when the child tried to tell the photographer her name, her voice was drowned out by the noise of the spinning frames. Her real name was Addie Card, she was 12 years old in 1910 and she was a doffer which meant she “did off” the full bobbins and replaced them with empty ones. The entire time that she worked the length of the frame, the machine was put on what was called “the loose pulley” and her mother, the spinner, was not paid. Imagine the pressure on a child to complete that task as fast as possible.

With the help of Joe Manning a dogged researcher, who went on to locate many of the children in Hine’s photographs, I was able to find this girl’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Until we told them about their ancestor’s time in the mill and the ways in which her photo had been used on a 1998 postage stamp

and in a Reebok ad, they had no idea that Addie had become an icon, a symbol of the horrors of child labor. They just knew her as Grandma Pat.

Although Addie’s life was much more difficult than my character Grace’s, I was happy in the end to have dug this one child out of the dustbin of history so that readers could come to know her as an actual person.

Lewis Hine once said he was more interested in “persons than in people.” So are novelists who bring a character’s story to life for the reader by revealing it through the lens of a person.

Pablo Picasso once commented that “Art is the lie that reveals truth.” When I talk about writing historical fiction, I often put it this way.

I’m not saying it happened, I’m saying it could have happened.

I fell for one of these as I wrote in an earlier post. Now I simply collect them under the label PUBLISHING SCAMS.

But hey, every writer appreciates a little praise even if it does come from an AI bot. So I put together a few of the many comments I’ve received with links to the books they mention in case my human readers might like to order one of my books.

One of their favorite phrases starts with “I recently... revisited..... came across...was struck by....” your book, your website, your Facebook page, memoir, your incredible body of work, etc.

I recently revisited your beloved book The Castle in the Attic, and I was struck once again by the timeless magic you’ve created. Your storytelling continues to inspire wonder, courage, and imagination in readers of all ages, and it’s clear why this story has held such an enduring place in children’s literature. Grace Evans Book Club

The bots are often “struck by” how powerfully I tell my story.

I recently came across your memoir Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies, and I was struck by how powerfully you’ve told a story of history, family, and hidden truths. Adding this to your remarkable catalogue of over sixty books, from Counting on Grace to The Castle in the Attic, is an extraordinary achievement that shows the depth of your craft and resilience as an author. Professional Book Marketer & Publisher

Or in this case, the bot is impersonating a best-selling author, Steve Martini. I’ve also had an email from George Saunders. How amazing that they’re reaching out to connect with me of all people..

I hope you’re having a great day. I recently came across your Facebook page and noticed your email there. As a fellow author, I felt a genuine connection and thought it would be wonderful to reach out.

I’m always interested in connecting with other writers to share experiences, insights, and inspiration. I’d love the opportunity to exchange thoughts on our work and creative journeys.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Warm regards, Steve Martini (author of legal novels)

I and my books have been called inspiring, extraordinary, heartfelt, versatile, remarkable, rare, whimsical, deeply moving, touching, deeply important, outstanding, engaging, graceful...

Your body of work is truly inspiring. To have written more than sixty works of fiction for both children and adults, including The Castle in the Attic, Counting on Grace, Dumpy La Rue, and Shoes, is an extraordinary achievement. The acclaim for your children’s novels, nominated for over thirty state book awards, alongside your heartfelt memoirs Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies and Don’t Knock Unless You’re Bleeding, reflects both your versatility and your ability to touch readers across generations.

What stands out most is your rare range, from whimsical picture books to deeply moving novels and memoir, and the way you balance imagination, truth, and heart in everything you write. Your teaching at writers’ conferences further shows your commitment to nurturing storytelling in others, adding another dimension to your already remarkable contributions. Book Marketer | Publisher | Literary Promoter

I recently came across Island Justice and your author bio, and I must say your work left a lasting impression on me. The emotional depth, vivid sense of place, and moral complexity within your story are remarkable. It’s rare to find a novel that so gracefully intertwines human vulnerability with a larger reflection on community and conscience. Island Justice truly evokes the quiet power of literary fiction at its best introspective, suspenseful, and deeply humane.

It’s no wonder your work has been compared to Anne Tyler and Alice Hoffman your prose carries that same honesty and heart. Anjola Book Exposure, Book Club Placement Specialist

I recently revisited In My Mother’s House and was deeply moved by its emotional resonance and historical depth. The multi-generational narrative spanning turn of the century New York and Connecticut captures not just the sweep of family legacy, but the quiet, haunting persistence of secrets and shame through time. Your delicate psychological insights into Lydia, Charlotte, and Molly create a timeless portrait of women navigating the boundaries of love, silence, and self-definition Faye Austin, organizer of the History Buffs Book Discussion and Activity Group,

And on it goes… I got one the other day from the Boozy Book Club… that was tempting but still I resisted.

If only these accolades came from real readers and not AI generated robots. But the most distressing part of this is how it is corrupting the space where readers and writers meet.

In my room, I can see “the body of my work” lined up on my corner bookshelf. I feel blessed that I was able to support myself with my writing in an age where social media didn’t exist and I had to hammer out my early manuscripts on a typewriter. In the end, this gives me more satisfaction than all the reviews generated by AI.

But as a fiction writer, I always believe that “the devil is in the details” and so let me tell you the story of one writer’s experience with a hybrid publisher.

Geoffrey Douglas is an accomplished journalist and memoirist. You can sign up for his Substack newsletter, 5000 Bylines Later here. He modestly describes himself as “author and journalist, with six books and 100 or so magazine pieces behind me--about politics, people, gambling, migrants, murder, a town on fire, etc.” The five books he wrote before his current novel Love in a Dark Place, were all traditionally published, well-reviewed and one was turned into a movie. This novel certainly deserves to be. Kirkus Reviews calls it "...a moving, unflinching novel about human depravity, and the way love can coexist in its menacing presence... emotionally hard-hitting, with impressive psychological depth."

However, when Geoffrey tried to interest an agent in this novel based on his real-life experiences in Atlantic City during the 1980’s, the heyday of corruption and criminality, he couldn’t get anybody to sign him on. Those who did take a look at the manuscript were unnerved by a white male author “daring” (irony all mine) to include a prostitute and a black boxer as two of the main characters, both seen through the eyes of the protagonist. (I could go off on a tangent about the politically correct atmosphere in publishing these days when writers are pushed to stay within their very narrow lanes and only write what they know personally. What happened to imagination? But I digress.) With the big 5 (as the traditional publishing companies are known) only reading manuscripts from agented writers, the doors to publishing the old-fashioned way are slamming shut. This has pushed writers like Geoffrey to seek other ways to get his work out to a wider audience and there are a multitude of companies eager to help writers frustrated with the current system. Some of these are reputable, others not so much. (Once again see the ALLI guide above.)

So, when I asked Geoffrey about his experience with a hybrid publisher, he gave me this overall view of Greenleaf, the company he worked with.

For me, there were two sides to the coin. On the one hand, Greenleaf is a solid, very professional publisher. The editing, design and production of my book were all fabulous: professional, collaborative and endlessly helpful--more so than anything I ever experienced with the mainstream guys who published me before. And the final product is as fine as anything I could've hoped for.

The flip side: Although everyone I dealt with was very straightforward, and there was no dissembling as such, the system itself seems almost designed to obfuscate. The numbers you see on the front end are nothing like the final reality. You're given a set of prices and a menu of options, most of which seem reasonable enough--but no mention is made initially of printing, warehouse storage, delivery to bookstores or a number of smaller services--so, probably like many other authors, I was blindsided by a lot of it. Some of their promotional options don't seem worth the cost; and the print-run they recommended was far greater than what's been sold so far or what I now anticipate. But because the number was more or less in line with my past experience with traditional publishers, and because it was their "professional recommendation," I took the advice, and am now stuck with a monthly storage bill for more than 2,000 books---not to mention the original printing costs.

So my verdict is mixed. Great service, not so great communication. The system, as designed, is almost certain to include some pretty big potholes, even for the most cautious of us. It's a textbook case of Buyer Beware. I didn't beware nearly well enough, so that's on me.

And here’s an assessment of Greenleaf by ALLI (Alliance of Independent Authors) which seems in line with Geoffrey’s experience.

High pressure sales and staggeringly high fees for add-on services tarnish an otherwise excellent service.

These days with the proliferation of pitfalls for writers and the come-ons from AI generated “publicists and editors” as I wrote about recently, it’s sadly become a game of “gotcha!”

I now feel compelled to add a note at the end of this post letting my readers know that this newsletter is and always will be “human authored.”

Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop stands as a paragon of literary brilliance, whose body of work spans generations, genres, and hearts alike. Her career, marked by over sixty titles, embodies a unique blend of creativity, emotional depth, and timeless ingenuity.

Then they ask you to participate in their program in some way. I bit and spent three hours answering the AI generated questions for my interview. But as we’ve learned, the devil is in the details. Once they’ve hooked you, you learn it will cost this much to promote you on social media or that much to include you in the print magazine, etc. etc. In the end, I chose not to pay the hefty fee required to buy copies of the print magazine which is the only way a writer can be included in that form.

At the same time, I decided to publish the answers I wrote to their questions here as I’m proud of what I said and conscious of the time it took from my fiction writing to participate. (I added the photos and links.)

How did writing your memoir Daughter of Spies differ emotionally and technically from crafting historical fiction like Counting on Grace and Dear Mr. President?

Character drives my work, be it fiction, historical fiction or memoir. In the case of historical fiction like Counting on Grace and Dear Mr. President, the character comes to me through the research. In the case of my memoir, Daughter of Spies, my mother and I were the two main characters. Her memories and mine led me to the research which allowed me to tell our stories, both separately and intermingled, in greater depth.

What made you decide to focus your memoir on your mother?

My father, Stewart Alsop, was a famous journalist. Books and plays have been written about him, and he wrote his own memoir, Stay of Execution, about facing death after a dire leukemia diagnosis.

When my five brothers and I were growing up in the secretive world of Cold War Washington, my mother, a young British war bride, lived in the shadow cast by my father’s outsized reputation. None of us ever really knew her, least of all her only daughter. As she began to slip into dementia, I was determined to tell the story of her life as an MI5 decoding agent in London during World War II, the frustrations of her post-war role in America as the wife of a famous man and the mother of six children, and the ways her loneliness and addiction affected me. In the end, as often happens with memoir, I learned as much about myself as I did about my mother.

Having never outlined The Castle in the Attic, how did you navigate plot twists and character arcs without a predetermined structure?

In writing The Castle in the Attic, l learned to let the characters take the lead.

Nowadays, I keep what I call a journal of the book and that’s where I talk myself through the upcoming scenes and ask myself questions. Can I trap this character in a watery cave with the tide rising? I like the idea, but who will rescue her and how? Outlining books traps me in my earliest scenarios and I begin to serve the outline more than the needs, wants and actions of my characters. When I free them (and myself) from the outline, they speak to me and make moves that surprise me in all the best ways. They come alive for me, and hopefully, for the reader.

What inspired the return to your medieval fantasy world in the The Castle in the Attic prequel centered on Richard?

I finished The Battle for the Castle, the sequel to The Castle in the Attic,seven years after Castle. In re-reading the two books, I realized that there should be an overarching villain, one who sent both the evil wizard Alastor, and the monster rats. What better way to introduce that villain but in a prequel? Mrs. Phillips’ brother, Richard, was the reason she had to leave William and return to England, so as the reader had already heard of him, he was the natural focus of the prequel. Daughter of Spies is partially set in England during World War II, so I relished the idea of a character who time travels from 1943 Northumberland where, in the shadow of a ruined castle, the beaches are mined to repel a German invasion to the exact same spot in 1366 where that same castle has just been erected.

Your picture books, such as The First Christmas Stocking and The Biggest Parade, explore family themes—how do you balance whimsy with deeper emotional resonance?

The picture book form, like a poem, gives the writer lots of room to explore within a tight structure. In most cases you have 28 pages (32 pages minus 4 pages of front matter) to tell your story. You give away half the story to the illustrator so in Shoes, when I wrote, “Shoes for sliding, shoes for hiding, high topped shoes for horseback riding,” the illustrator is the one who put my characters on metal horses riding a carousel.

The words can inspire a sense of whimsy in the illustrator. Another way to bring in whimsy is to make an animal the central character as I did in The Biggest Parade and its prequel, Dog Show.

In those books Harvey the dog owner, is the foolish one and his basset hound Fred, the wise sidekick. Kids connect with the character they most admire be it a person or a dog so it’s possible to introduce tougher emotional subjects in many ways such as using rhymes, puns and unlikely characters, to name a few.

Counting on Grace shines in school curricula—how did you approach writing a historical novel with educational value and compelling narrative?

Counting on Grace was inspired by a photograph that the great child labor photographer Lewis Hine, took of a small girl working in a Vermont textile factory.

When I studied her worried expression, her filthy smock, her bare feet covered in oil, I knew I wanted to tell her story. At that point, I wasn’t interested in the actual child, so I created Grace, a 10-year-old girl of French-Canadian descent, forced to work in the mill six days a week. Once again, because I did such deep research on what life was like for those children in the town of North Pownal, Vermont in 1910, the reader and I were both grounded in that place and time which makes for a compelling narrative. Readers Grace’s age can easily imagine what life might have been like for them if they had been born in a mill town over 100 years ago.

With over sixty books published, how do you keep your storytelling fresh while revisiting recurring themes like courage, family and magic?

Stories come to me from all directions, both inside from something I’ve experienced or from outside when for example, I overhear an interesting conversation. As long as I bring an honest emotional perspective to the work, the storytelling stays fresh.

What single piece of advice would you give aspiring authors striving to write across genres and age‑ranges as you’ve done?

Stay open to whatever or whomever crosses your path and write it all down, even the bits and pieces that seem inconsequential. They could end up as the core of your next story.

I was wrong.

This time the request for an interview came from an outfit describing itself as “a literary magazine based in London.” The first third of my memoir Daughter of Spies is set in England so this seemed like a perfect fit and one that would help increase British sales. I spent three precious writing hours fashioning thoughtful answers to their interview questions which were impressively detailed, another reason I thought this was a legitimate outfit. Someone had really researched the depth and breadth of my published work. And they included my favorite photo with the credit line.

Once I submitted the answers, I received a letter from someone calling herself the Editorial Director of this “magazine.” She should have used AI to write the letter if, as I suspect, English is not her first language. All typos are hers, not mine.

This is A, Editor In Chief of the magazine. I'd like to thank you for participating the inteview. We found insightfull to your inteview and decided to include print editotion.

And the punch line. Authors are expected to order copies of the print magazine at $35 each although Readers House can offer a 60% discount. And although they talk about distribution in 190 countries and you can buy one online from Barnes and Noble for $32.99 (!), it’s not clear, as I should have read first in an article on this excellent website, Writers Beware, that this print magazine is widely available in retail outlets in the UK or anywhere else. Two independent bookstores they list on their site had never heard of the magazine.

As Victoria Strauss of Writers Beware points out, “Reader’s House basically admits, in one of its followup emails, that acquiring readers is not its main goal: ‘Unlike other magazines, our print edition is designed for authors rather than readers.’ In other words, author, you are our customer.”

So this is not exactly a scam but it’s what we’ve come to call a pay to play scheme. As I wrote in an earlier post, “the one thing that has stopped me in my tracks is the number of “come-ons”, scams, and false promises that land in my inbox daily. Every one of these involve me spending money and, in the end, they will cost me far more than I ever expect to make in royalties. And all of them prey on a writer’s desperate desire to be lifted above others in the great cacophony of modern life where people more and more choose visuals on devices over reading the printed word.”

I’ve informed Readers House that I won’t be buying any print copies although I appreciate the online exposure.

However, I hope to include excerpts from the interview in a future Substack newsletter because, as a writer always pressed for time, I can’t stand the thought that one minute of mine was wasted.

As uncle Joe wrote in his letter, “The real aim of these committees is not to bring persons guilty of crime before courts of law. It is to make political capital by incriminating their victims before the court of public opinion — to use the headlines to damage reputations beyond subsequent repair.”

It’s hard to accept that what freedom of speech means is the freedom to hold controversial views, to tell lies, to smear opponents with false accusations and innuendoes. But my uncle, a devout and vocal anti-Communist, concludes that “In these cases the individuals are nothing and the principles are everything.” In speaking about a university’s temptation to fire controversial professors or ones who may have briefly joined the Communist Party, he says: “I dislike the individuals, I deplore their views, and I wish they held no Harvard appointments. But this is irrelevant to the central issue. That issue is simple. Harvard has been asked to be the judas goat, leading the whole American academic community to the slaughterhouse. Harvard cannot be untrue to her past, cast shame upon her present, and jeopardize her future, by accepting this plausible but sinister invitation.”

My uncle, who served in China during the war under Claire Chennault, volunteered to testify before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee on the subject of Vice President Henry Wallace’s mission to China in June, 1944. After his testimony in October of 1951, Uncle Joe encountered McCarthy in the elevator and like my father, refused to shake his proffered hand to the Senator’s amazement and to the shock of the other newspapermen in that elevator. In his memoir I’ve Seen the Best of It, my uncle writes that “It was my introduction to the weakness of the press in the face of McCarthyism. I do not deny that the charges made by McCarthy with such total irresponsibility were news and that printing them was part of the job of the newspaper business. But with very little hard work, it was entirely possible to prove that the man was a practiced and habitual liar. Although he told so many lies and varied the tune so much from lie to lie that it was difficult to pin down and counter his claims, the job could have been done. …If the newspaper business had had the guts to follow back over the trail of McCarthy’s rise and to show him up as a liar over and over again, I doubt very much whether he would have inspired such terror.”

Forgive me for quoting that oft repeated saying that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. In our country, the problem is that history is no longer being widely taught in the schools. So I was glad to see that Harvard has decided to offer a free online course in civic education to any person who wishes to sign up. Maybe if we start there, an interest in learning our history and a renewed civic engagement in our voting population will follow.

We can only hope.

When on February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy, (R-Wisc.) first charged in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia that the State Department was riddled with Communists, my uncle Joe was reporting from abroad, so it fell to my father to respond. Less than a month later on March 5, 1950, he started off by describing McCarthy as “the big, raw-boned pride and joy of the real estate lobby” in “Matter of Fact,” the Alsop brothers’ weekly column for the Herald Tribune. He went on to suggest that “Responsible officials in the State Department are confident…McCarthy will get his head so thoroughly washed that neither he nor any of his like-minded colleagues will soon again use this particular vote-catching technique.” They were right in the end, but the process took far longer than they thought it would and destroyed far more lives than anybody could have imagined.

Born in 1948, I was too young to remember the televised hearings or to read any of my father’s columns until decades later. I learned much of what I know of my father’s career from two biographies, The Georgetown Set by Gregg Herken and Taking on the World by Robert Merry. These two historians interviewed me and other family members about what life was like inside our family while they focused on the circles the Alsop brothers moved in and the ways their writing affected policy in the United States and abroad.

On July 29, 1950, my father and uncle published a piece in the Saturday Evening Post, titled “Why Has Washington Gone Crazy?” A sentence in the second paragraph sounds as if it could have been written today. “A miasma of neurotic fear and internal suspicion is seeping over the nation’s capital like some noxious effluvium from the marshy Potomac.” They go on to write that “no man is safe anymore from the lies of vote-grubbing politicians…” Although they devote only one paragraph to a description of McCarthy in his “lair” on Capitol Hill, it is an unflattering portrait that continued to enrage the Wisconsin senator long after its publication. One line gives the reader a flavor of the piece. “McCarthy himself, despite a creeping baldness and a continual tremor which makes his head shake in a disconcerting fashion, is reasonably well cast as the Hollywood version of a strong-jawed private eye.”

In The Center: The Anatomy of Power in Washington (1968), my father tells a chilling story of an encounter he and my mother witnessed from the Senate Gallery. Standing behind a lectern piled with documents, Senator McCarthy was giving one of his long, now familiar, speeches about the number of Communists operating in the State Department. He announced that any senator who wished to examine the evidence was free to do so. However, when Senator Herbert Lehman (D-NY) rose from his seat and approached the podium with his hand outstretched, the two men stared at one another for a long moment until McCarthy burst into one of “his strange, rather terrifying giggle(s)” my father wrote. And when Lehman looked around the Senate floor for support, nobody met his eye and not a man rose to back him up. Not one. “Go back to your seat, old man,” McCarthy muttered. At that point in the gallery, my father leaned over to my mother and said, “There goes the end of the Republic.”

I remember only one story my father told at the dinner table about his own interactions with the senator from Wisconsin. Once again, Daddy had been sitting in the Senate gallery making notes on a speech McCarthy was giving on the floor in which he railed on about a number of people, including the Alsop brothers, who he considered to be traitors as they were soft on Communism. The Senator left the floor and Daddy continued to scribble in his notebook. With no warning, somebody clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Hi, Stew.” My father turned around with his hand outstretched to find Joe McCarthy grinning in his face. Daddy told us that he snatched his hand back as if it were about to be bitten by a snake.

My father died in May of 1974, the month the impeachment hearings against Richard Nixon were convened in the House of Representatives. When people ask me these days what my father would say about the current political situation in Washington, I am reminded of something he wrote at the very end of his memoir Stay of Execution. “For weeks now, I have been haunted and depressed by a sense that the American system… is falling apart; by a sense that we are a failed nation, a failed people. And Watergate is surely a peculiarly depressing way to say farewell to all our greatness. It is a whimper - a sleazy little whimper, a grubby little whimper - rather than a bang.”

I am glad he didn’t live long enough to see what we’ve come to now.

“No,” I reply.

“Why not?”

I have more than one answer to that question.

The first is that my father, Stewart Alsop, wrote his own memoir, Stay of Execution, about being told he was going to die of leukemia in a pretty short time.

(The doctors originally told him six weeks, but he lasted almost three years beyond that first dire prognosis.) In the book, he looks back over his life while describing the ups and downs of blood scans, bone marrow tests and early forms of immunotherapy. His braided narrative inspired my own when it came to writing about losing my mother to dementia while trying to get down the stories of her childhood in Gibraltar, her life in the war as a decoding agent, and her marriage to an American soldier who’d enlisted in the British Army.

I always remind the questioner that in addition to his own memoir, many books have been written about the Alsops, my journalist father, Stewart, and his older brother, Joseph, not to mention a play based loosely on their lives that opened on Broadway with John Lithgow playing my uncle. But the final, real answer is that I believe readers want most of all to understand my father’s political history as a Washington based reporter from 1946 until his death in 1974 at the age of 60. And that’s a history that’s been analyzed and described and dissected by the writers who wrote the books mentioned above… and simply put, it’s one that, as a fiction and memoir writer, not a political historian, I don’t need to try to re-examine.

However, there are stories about my father that I learned while doing the research for Daughter of Spies that I chose not to include because I had been cautioned by the astute editor, William Zinsser, that you can only write about one parent at a time and I chose my mother.

One story from the war was told to me by a fellow named Dick Franklin, the radio operator who parachuted with my father behind enemy lines into France in the summer of 1944. Dick was 18 that year and my father, the captain of Team Alexander, was 30. The third member of the team was a Frenchman who used an alias as he’d already escaped from a prisoner of war camp.

As children, we heard the funny stories about their time in France from the raucous parties in chateaux abandoned by the fleeing Germans or the time Daddy jumped out of the plane too early and floated down through moonlit skies with every dog in France barking at his imminent arrival.

One story my father didn’t tell us was a small one, but I treasure it as it says a lot about the kind of captain he was. Team Alexander landed in France August 13, 1944 and were hidden by members of the Maquis (French Resistance) in a farmhouse. The next morning, a lady brought them two flags, one American, one French, fashioned during the night from the men’s parachutes, and more importantly, three bicycles. The team pedaled miles away from the farmhouse so that Dick could set up the radio equipment and make their first contact with London. To his horror, Dick discovered that he’d left behind the crystals, a crucial component for the transmission. Years later he wrote about the incident in his memoir.

“Without a word, Alsop jumped on his bike and rode back to the farm. Fortunately, he was able to find the crystals and return in time for the sked. I should have expected a good chewing out. He never mentioned the incident, at least not to me.”

Or to us children.

My father would have been 111 years old in May. In these times, when we are searching for true patriots and resistance fighters, I decided to focus on him because he was both.

In the corner, they had posted a temporary listing of all the generous folks who donated to the Library’s renovation by supporting the naming of my reading nook.

Donations are still coming in so the plaque will not be set in brass until the campaign is over.

Friends and family members from near and far gathered to view the “unveiling” which consisted of me pulling down a strip of crepe paper that Randi and Susan, the always prepared children’s librarians, had suggested we use to “hide” the stenciled banner as people gathered.

Carolyn the library director, and Roger who spearheaded the initiative, both spoke about the history of the library and my connection to the place through my books and my family. And then it was my turn.

The whole event was both thrilling and a bit embarrassing as I’m a writer who likes to work in solitude and who prefers to have the audience focus on one of my books, not necessarily on me.

However, I smile when I think of a child walking under the entrance to that cosy, private corner of the children’s room so that she or he can sink into the world of a book just like the boy behind me in the first photo. He is curled up on a cosy bench completely oblivious to the comings and goings around him because the book he is reading has captured his undivided attention.

Is that not every writer’s dream?

WOW!

This library has been my writing haven since I first moved to New York City in the 1970s. Long before search engines existed, the well-informed and patient staff at the library have fielded all sorts of my questions from, what did an English peasant girl wear in the 1300s to can you help me find where my great great great aunt is buried? They have invited me to speak about writing and publishing on a number of occasions and the Library has hosted launch parties for many of my books, most recently for my memoir, Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies in a conversation with Tim Gunn, a friend also raised in Washington, D.C. during the Cold War.

The New York Society Library has a long and storied history. As their motto reads, they have been “connecting books and people since 1754.” You can read about this special place in detail here, but a few highlights.

In 1789 and 1790, when New York was the nation's capital and Congress occupied the building—then renamed Federal Hall—it served effectively as the first Library of Congress; it was used by George Washington and John Jay. It was at this point that two books were charged out to George Washington but were never returned. In 2010, representatives from Mount Vernon formally presented the Library with another volume of one of the missing books, The Law of Nations by Emer de Vattel.

It has attracted such luminaries as George Washington, Herman Melville, Willa Cather, and Truman Capote… not to mention my uncle, Joe Alsop, who willed me his share in the library when he died in 1989.

In Spring, 2015, the library staff contacted me about tracing the history of that original share back to the first donor. You can find that newsletter at this link. It turns out that the share comes down to me not through my Alsop ancestors which is what I had assumed, but through my great-grandfather, Douglas Robinson, who was married to Corinne Roosevelt, my great-grandmother and TR’s younger sister. To cut to the chase, Douglas inherited his share from his mother, Fanny Monroe Robinson whose father was President James Monroe’s nephew. As the newsletter writers concluded, “With three possible origins involving three presidents of the United States, the quest to find the true beginning of the Winthrop share reveals the rich and varied stories waiting to be uncovered in the Library’s archives.”

If you live in New York City or nearby, I urge you to visit the library at 53 E. 79th Street. You can take a tour and become a member which allows you to wander the stacks or join any of their writing programs or book a special private writing room on the top floor. Even if you’re not a member, you can come to their weekly programs that are open to the public or request books brought to you in the first floor reading room where you will find the old card catalogue, a comforting backdrop for any reader or writer. (Currently closed because of construction but it will reopen in July.)

Remarkably enough, this is not the first time I’ve had a library honor me in the same way. Many years ago, I learned that a children’s room in an Arizona library had created a reading corner designed as a castle.

They wrote to let me know that they named the tower of that castle after me in honor of my middle grade fantasy novel, The Castle in the Attic.

Writers spend their creative time alone even when they are sitting in a coffee shop or a reading room or driving to the grocery store.

So I find it a bit daunting to be honored in such a public way as the New York Society Library has chosen to do. However, in this case, I was thrilled to learn that organizers had reached out secretly to my friends and family for donations for the Winthrop Nook plaque because the monies raised supported the very necessary and inventive renovation to their lovely 1917 building.

What writer wouldn’t be happy with a little glory in a good cause?

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I first went to work in publishing five decades ago. It was a move I made consciously in order to understand the inner workings of what was then called Harper and Row (now HarperCollins) because I wanted them to publish my work. I started out as an editorial assistant in the department headed by the legendary Ursula Nordstrom who was a brilliant editor and an author herself. UN, as she was known in the office, took chances on unknown authors such as Maurice Sendak and risky ones like Shel Silverstein. A collection of her letters entitled Dear Genius, edited and annotated by the children’s book historian Leonard Marcus, is a book worth reading for a look back at the way an editor can honor a writer’s work while making suggestions that will improve it. UN knew better than anyone how to get the best work out of a writer.

I’ve just finished reading The Editor by Sara B. Franklin which details the remarkable life of Judith Jones who worked with writers as varied as Julia Childs, John Updike and Anne Tyler. Although her boss at the time did not acknowledge Jones’ discovery, she is finally credited with rescuing The Diary of Anne Frank from the rejection pile. Jones was what has now become a rare bird in book publishing… an editor, like UN, who read carefully, made suggestions for improvements to a manuscript while always acknowledging that the writer was the one who had the final say.

Publishing has changed dramatically since those days. Publishers have consolidated and many of the largest in the US are owned by companies in France, Germany and the UK. Amazon dominates the book selling market and introduced the concept of self-publishing so the number of books published every year has exploded. Authors are often called “content providers,” a chilling term to someone who has lived through the glory days of the industry.

Some examples. I used to get letters acknowledging receipt of my manuscript and written rejection letters when it was turned down.I always received copies of my reviews, both good and bad, from outlets large and small. Reviews were not written by ordinary readers logging on to a website (when I started back in the 1970s, the internet didn’t exist yet, at least for everyday citizens) but by critics in mainstream media outlets. If my book was picked up for a foreign edition or a book club, I got a phone call or at the very least, a letter and later, an email informing me of the rights sale and the terms of the license. When I published a novel, I often received one leather bound edition from the publisher as a present.

One of my publishers gave me the original jacket art from my best-selling children’s book

and another, with the blessing of the illustrator, two pieces of inside art from a picture book.

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But the best present of all I found recently in a bureau drawer.

Everybody at Harper Junior Books knew of my affection for Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. (You can read about the influence that book had on my own writing in this essay I wrote for the 50th Anniversary edition of the novel.) So they gave me a small silver notebook of my own, a place to keep my secrets, the ones that would feed my stories.

They inscribed the back with the date of my departure and HJB for Harper Junior Books.

Afterwards, when I got home, I added the one line I will always remember from Harriet the Spy.

As Harriet’s nanny Ole Golly, tells her young charge: “Gone is gone. Don’t try to hold on to people or lie down in your memories. Make stories from them.”

Sadly, I tell myself the same about the good old days of publishing. Gone is gone.

But I am still making stories.

Housekeeping: I love to hear from my readers. To leave a comment that will show up for others to see, you have to log on to the Substack app which is free. But even if you don’t, your comment will reach me by email and lift my spirits.

This is the first of a two part newsletter about publishing in the days before the Internet.

HARRIET THE SPY by Louise Fitzhugh

Every reader can look back and remember the special books they read as children. I’m the same. For me, it was the books my British mother introduced into our home library. They ranged from Enid Blyton’s Castle of Adventure (and the other seven in that series) down to Dr. Doolittle, The Borrowers in all their settings, Winnie the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland.   But as a fiction writer, the books I looked for in my later years were the ones that not only inspired me but also warned me about the loneliness and the pitfalls of the creative path. First among these was Harriet the Spy so I was grateful to be invited to write an essay for the 50th Anniversary edition of this seminal novel.  Here’s what I said.

           I didn’t read Harriet the Spy until I was trying to land a job as an editorial assistant in the children’s book department at Harper and Row (now HarperCollins.) I read my way through every novel they’d published in the previous twenty years. Harriet was at the top of the list.
            I recognized my kinship to Harriet the moment she told Sport in the first chapter that she has to take notes on the people in the subway because she’s seen them and she wants to remember them. How did Louise Fitzhugh know me so well? The answer, of course, is simple: she was a writer. All writers are spies, going about the very important task of gathering their material, and when they’re on the job, they’re unsentimental, focused, indefatigable. “Spies don’t go with friends,” Harriet tells Sport. The life of a spy is a lonely one. I was the only girl in a family of six. I knew about being different, being on the outside looking in. Writing things down in my journal was my way of making sense of the world, from the confusing behavior of my parents to the cruelty of certain people who called themselves my friends to the irritating torments of my brothers. My journal was the one place where I could be completely honest about my feelings.
            I was more careful than Harriet. I never took my spy books out of their secret, locked place in my bedroom, so fortunately, I didn’t lose any friends over what I wrote there. However, as my notes grew into published stories, a few family members began to have their misgivings. Soon after my second novel came out, one uncle warned that “every time Elizabeth writes a book, it’s like dodging a bullet.”
            But I connected with Harriet in other ways. I realize now that when I came to write my fantasy novel, The Castle in the Attic, fourteen years after I’d read Harriet the Spy, I was channeling a version of Harriet’s nanny, Ole Golly. Harriet is devastated by Ole Golly’s departure. My character, William, feels equally desperate when he learns that his nanny, Mrs. Phillips, is moving back to England. Harriet works through her feelings in her notebook. William resorts to magic, but their motivation is the same: Hang on to the one person who loves you despite all your faults. Do anything to keep her, and if she leaves you, do anything to bring her back, no matter the consequences.
            Although I never had a nanny like Ole Golly or Mrs. Phillips, I grew up in a house with a cook named Jessie Mae Jefferson Tucker. Early on, Jessie and I made a secret deal. She owned the only television in the house, and she let me watch women’s wrestling in her third-floor bedroom, as long as I didn’t tell anybody that she often went out herself after my parents had left for dinner parties. I was eleven, Harriet’s age. My older brothers had been sent to boarding school, and even though it was scary to be left in charge of the younger ones, I was committed to our secret pact. Jessie got to go out on her dates, and I got to watch powerful, muscled women wrestle each other to the mat. Jessie and I inhabited our own closed world the way Ole Golly and Harriet do. Children and staff members can feel equally powerless over the people who rule their lives, whether they be parents or employers, so it’s no surprise that they form clandestine liaisons. Children do a lot of their growing up in the kitchen and in top-floor bedrooms, the places in a house that parents like Harriet’s and mine rarely invade and know little about.
            Not unlike Harriet’s friend Janie Gibbs, who cheerfully mixes potions in her bedroom and makes dire threats against all adults, my oldest brother Joe, loved blowing things up in a lab he’d set up in our basement. One time, he got too close to his own explosive mixture and had to be taken to the hospital. When Joe decided it wasn’t feasible to blow up his hated boarding school, he wired the headmaster’s office instead, so he could tape the faculty meetings. He was eventually discovered and expelled, but we younger siblings, sworn to secrecy, never betrayed him.
            Joe always gave us hope that in the battle between children and adults, we might actually triumph. We six were all spies, but I was the Harriet in my family, the one who took the notes and turned them into stories.
            Readers don’t have to live the exact life that Harriet does in order to understand what her story is telling us. Writers will recognize themselves just as easily when they read Harriet’s story today as they did fifty years ago when the book was first published. Even though readers today may be recording their findings on an electronic tablet or publishing their observations on social media sites, the hard truths that Harriet learns as she goes from a spy taking notes to a writer writing stories remain the same.
            If you want to be a writer, write down everything. Find out all you can, because life is hard enough even if you know a lot. Put down the truth in your notebooks, but don’t use it against your friends.
            And as Ole Golly tells Harriet, gone is gone. Don’t try to hold on to people or lie down in your memories. Make stories from them.
 
You can find the 50th Anniversary edition of Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh at your independent bookstore through Bookshop.org. You might also be interested in a new biography of Louise Fitzhugh: Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy by Leslie Brody.

My mother managed to get to the school early in the afternoon. We slipped and slid all the way home, arriving just in time so that she could dress for the inaugural ball.

Growing up in Washington as the daughter and niece of the Alsop brothers was a unique experience which I’ve written about in a short Kindle piece called Don’t Knock Unless You’re Bleeding. Since I published Daughter of Spies, Wartime Secrets, Family Lies, a full-length memoir focused on my mother, people have suggested I consider a book about my father. It’s easy for me to say no to that idea. First of all, my father, prompted by his cancer diagnosis at the age of 57, wrote his own memor, Stay of Execution, Books and plays have been written about his career, his political connections, his membership in the Georgetown Set, a group of influential Washingtonians who met informally to argue policy over dinner and many bottles of wine.

I couldn’t add anything of interest to those books because my childhood memories of Washington have little to do with my father’s knowledge of policy decisions or the famous people he and my mother entertained or the articles he wrote, and that’s what readers would be looking for. I was simply a girl squashed in the middle of five brothers trying to survive a complicated family with more than enough personal drama to keep me focused, not on the machinations of government or politics, but simply on getting through every day.

A number of people have sent me an article from today’s news about billionaires buying up Washington houses. “Scott Bessent, the nominee for Treasury secretary (his financial disclosure statement shows he is worth in excess of $700 million) has looked at a $7 million Federal-style house on N Street in Georgetown, once the home of the syndicated columnist Joseph Alsop.”

New administrations always bring new buyers to the D.C. real estate market, but this is the first time we’ve seen such a plethora of billionaires nominated for cabinet positions.

I expect Uncle Joe is turning over in his grave.

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Once it begins to form and hold together, you start to push that frozen ball up a snowy hill where every turn of the packed base makes it larger, heavier and more unwieldy, but it’s growing. At some point, you reach the top of the hill. Stop there and take a breath because, if all is going as it should, that’s where the story takes on a life of its own and soon you’ll be chasing it down the other side, writing as fast as you can to keep up with your fully developed characters and all they have to tell you.

One day, you realize you’re done. You’ve written, you’ve revised and if you’re like me, nobody’s read it but yourself.

Here I take another pause. I’ve spent lots of time in this world I’ve created. These characters have kept me company over weeks, months, years so this is my first stage of mourning. I miss my characters and the daily structure they’ve given me. I wander about aimlessly, pretending that the sweater I’m knitting or the photos I’m taking are fulfilling my creative urges. And then when what I call my “creative anxiety” builds to an unsustainable pitch, I send the manuscript out to my editors/readers.

No matter how many books I’ve written, I always imagine and hope that the one I’ve just finished is finally the perfect one, the book that doesn’t need one word changed. Despite having published dozens of novels that hasn’t happened yet, and in my saner moments, I know it never will. My smart readers let me know that there is still work to be done, so I plunge back in, dropping a scene here, adding another one there, changing the direction a character takes and the ensuing consequences. In one book, I had to change the entire manuscript from present to past tense which is the way it should have been written in the first place. I needed a smart editorial assistant to point that out to me and I’m grateful for her honesty.

When the revisions are done and the book has been copyedited, printed and put between two covers, I have another moment of sadness. This stage reminds me of leaving my child wailing at the door on his first day in preschool as I hurry off, trying not to look back.

Now there’s no way to protect this creation from the reviewers. She must make her own way. I’ve done all I can. However, I’ve proven to be a fickle creative parent. By the time that book is out in the world, I usually find I’m getting distracted by another idea, an island setting, an overheard tale or a wily trickster whispering in my creative ear.

If I’m lucky and the publisher has done its job, the book finds its readers and fans, it lands on bookstore shelves and in library nooks, and sometimes all the way into classrooms.

Often my book is translated, published in other countries, excerpted in anthologies. The sales are robust in the first years but usually dwindle slowly over time and one day in two years or ten or even twenty, I get the inevitable letter from the publisher informing me they are putting the book out of print.

Another moment of mourning. The little one I sent out has returned to me somewhat tattered and torn, but having lived a full life in the hands of readers who for a while entered the world I created. I order some last copies, revert the rights so that I hold them should another publisher show interest in reissuing the book, and I move on.

This is an especially poignant week for me because for the first time, I am the one reclaiming the rights of a book still in print. For now, The Castle in the Attic, my fantasy novel for middle grade readers will only be available in an audio version or in used bookstores, and libraries.

I wrote more about the reasons for my decision in my last post, A Big Announcement. Even though it is the right decision for the future of the franchise (a prequel is finished, the first sequel, The Battle for the Castle, is still in print, I’m working on the final sequel and a movie deal is in the works), I am sad at this pause in the 40 year publishing track record of my novel.

But a writer is never not writing. So I’m back on the roller coaster, one third of the way into the final sequel to The Castle in the Attic. The snowball is packed, heavy, unwieldy and I’m teetering on the crest of the hill. Wish me luck on the way down.

P.S. I’m always happy to hear from my readers in any form, but I’m especially grateful if you can write your comments in the Substack app, so that others can read them and respond.

In January, I will be reverting all US rights for The Castle in the Attic, my bestselling children’s fantasy novel.

Original hardcover jacket art by Trina Schart Hyman

This is a very big step as it means the book will only be available in audio with Penguin Random House, in Chinese and Romanian editions, in libraries, used bookstores and on pirated sites run by shady operators in far flung countries. (More on piracy in another newsletter.)

So why am I making this drastic move?

I’ll start at the beginning. When I first published The Castle in the Attic in 1985 (note that date) with Holiday House, it was a time when many publishers did not have paperback lines. So, Holiday House sold the paperback license to Random House where the book is currently in its 70th printing. These days, most publishers have developed a paperback line which means that the author receives an 8% royalty based on the list price as I have on my other books. But with Castle, I have had to split the paperback royalty with the hardcover publisher, so for 35 years, I’ve received only 4% of the list price.

The current US copyright law allows an author to terminate the US publishing rights in a window between 35 and 40 years after its initial contract date. If I did not terminate the rights, this deal would have continued for my life plus 70 years. In 2023, my lawyer sent out a notice to Holiday House and Penguin Random House informing them that I would be terminating the rights as of January 2025. From that date in 2023, they had two years to sell off stock. In the meantime, I’ve written a prequel called The Cradle in the Castle and I’m currently working on a final sequel to follow The Battle for the Castle which was published in 1993.

I admit I’ve become disgruntled with the small percentage creative makers receive for our work compared to what publishers, music labels, and art galleries among others, get for moving our work out into the world. Having self-published three of my out-of-print books, I’m aware of the heavy lift it takes to print, market, ship and sell books, but I’ve decided to pull the rights and sit on the sidelines for the moment as I’m beginning to see cracks in the old ways of producing and marketing art in all forms.

A couple of examples include artists selling their work directly on the internet and through social media sites like Instagram or the new hybrid publishing models where the writer puts up money to produce the book and keeps 90% of the royalties.

And then there are the musicians.

Here’s a paragraph from the March 2021 issue of Time Magazine on Taylor Swift choosing to re-record her old albums.

But behind it all is an artist who’s been fighting for years now to manage the means, method of production, and distribution of her work. Art makes us feel things, a craft at which Swift is a master. Art also makes money, and Swift is equally adept at that. Her goal now: make sure it stays within her control. It’s a pipe dream for artists of any kind. But Swift has power that most don’t, and her very personal fight to reshape the way wealth is distributed from creative work is a potential model for wrestling compensation back from industry forces.

Trust me, I know that I’m no Taylor Swift, but her desire to make sure the money stays within her control strikes a chord with me. I wasn’t willing to let this window of opportunity close as since 1985, I’ve left about $260,000 on the table. There’s no one to blame. That was the state of publishing when I started and once you sign a contract, you are bound by its terms. I’m thrilled with the millions of book buyers, teachers, librarians, reviewers and readers who have taken my book and its characters to heart. The Castle in the Attic has been turned into a play, reissued in a 35^th Anniversary edition, taught in hundreds of schools, optioned for the movies and the book has sold millions of copies in hardcover, paperback, audiobook and eBook editions. With the prequel and the sequels, it is considered in modern parlance, a “franchise,” and one I hope is destined to find a new life and new readers.

For the next month, you can order physical copies of The Castle in the Attic at at your local independent bookstore or at any of the links above.

A writing friend sent me this wonderful video of Ursula Le Guin speaking about freedom and writing and it restored my sense of balance.

“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

Ursula K. Le Guin

You can watch her speaking here

about how we will need writers who can remember freedom, writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. She has inspired me to go back to the practice of my art no matter what the days and the weeks ahead hold for all of us.

So go vote, early if you can, work in whatever way you choose to get out the vote, to affect the change you want to see….but take time for your art.

Go back to those characters in the forest or that line in the poem or that color on the canvas or the next dancing step or the tune on your instrument, be it a saxophone, a fiddle or your voice.

The art you practice might not feel like it will change the world but it will comfort you and inspire you in the days and weeks to come… and who knows? It might also prove one day to be an act of resistance.

Goodbye for now. I’m headed back to the 14th Century.

`The Conquest of Naples by Charles of Durazzo