During this pandemic shutdown, with daily life slowed down and simplified, my inner creative life has not followed suit. I spend my morning hours in my writing loft. Just before the world altered, my fourth historical novel, Daughter of Anne-Hoeck, was released. I am ready to write a new novel. Ideas came and I played around with a few, only to lose my enthusiasm and put them aside for another time. Early one morning I woke with the thought to resurrect a project I began ten years ago after I graduated with my MFA. A bit of a departure from my chosen genre of biographical novels. I’d set it aside and returned to it several times over the past decade, finally abandoning it in 2017. I love the story and really want to make it work. That morning I determined that no matter what, I had to try.

The manuscript is a historical fantasy set during the English Civil war in the 1640’s. Part of the story concerns the recurring outbreaks of the plague that brought terror and death, decimating communities. What would it be like to live always under the threat that it would return, I wondered, and when it did happen, knowing how to endure it? My decision to return to the story proved timely, for now we are experiencing a plague in our own time.

Recently I read a news article about an ancient flour mill in North Dorset, England, that ground flour for the locals since 1016 A.D. In the 1970’s, it closed, becoming a museum. The ancient machinery continued to grind flour a couple of days a week for the tours. During the world shutdown of the COVID-19 pandemic, flour has become more difficult to purchase in the stores. The mill owners decided to return to full-time flour milling to help supply the need for flour, grinding over a ton of grain just in the last several weeks.

We share so much with the people and circumstances of the past. What goes around, really does come round again.