In the second book of the trilogy, Molly explores the source and nature of her ever-changing magical gift. Sent by king Alaric on a crucial mission, she is drawn to Harrowsgode, the mysterious walled city where her grandfather was born and from which he later escaped. What she discovers there will alter the direction of her life and challenge her considerable ingenuity and courage. With the help of Tobias, a rat-catcher named Richard, and a clever and devoted raven, Molly gains her own freedom in a most unexpected way, and changes the city of Harrowsgode forever.

I’m stealing a line from Sharon Creech because it’s so good and so apt: Love may not last, but tinkering goes on forever.

There’s a point when a manuscript is done—or at least when the story is all there, and the characters are worked out, and there are no more sleepless nights ahead where you’re wondering how you’re going to resolve a certain tricky plot point—but you know in your heart that it isn’t done at all, not in the least; the real fun is about to begin.  There many words to describe what follows: revising, editing, polishing, tightening.  And it’s by far my favorite part of writing.

You start over from the beginning and read, and make little changes, and take out huge swaths of text you once thought were brilliant, only now you see they aren’t.  You find you didn’t really understand a scene here or a character there—and now that you think about it, you know exactly what needs to be done.  You stop and sneer at a sloppy metaphor, a rough transition.  Sometimes you spend hours, even a whole day, wrestling with a problematic chapter.  And bit by bit, day by day, you move through the book to the end.  Then you start over again.

This time, you find fewer problems.  And you start coming across paragraphs, pages, whole chapters where the work really shows: it’s tight, clean, well-thought out.  Bravo, you say to yourself—until you come upon some dreadful cliché (how had you missed that one?), followed by a repeated word, then a loosey-goosey paragraph.  You keep working, feeling warm and fuzzy about this thing you wrote, wanting it to look its best, like your child going off to a party—all scrubbed and shiny.

At some point you wonder if you might just keep on doing this for the rest of your life: reading the same book over and over, making it a little bit better each time.  Like Dorothy in the field of poppies, you are helplessly drawn into it—until at some point your editor says, enough already! And you know you have to let it go.

Even then you know in the back of your mind that, like our grown children, manuscripts come back to visit—bearing editor’s notes, copy editor’s queries, and one final time as galley proofs.  Each of these visits brings an opportunity.  While you’re addressing your editor’s concerns, you can always get in there and change a few other things.

Having just sent The Raven of Harrowsgode off to Wonderful Editor, I am feeling a sort of empty nest, a sense of incompletion, and a deep longing to get that baby back into my hands, to begin again that wonderful dance of words and ideas, to tinker to my heart’s content—or until Wonderful Editor says, enough!

Lately I’ve been noticing a disturbing tendency, not among mainstream reviewers but in bloggers reviewing books online, to conflate the author with the characters. Let me cite a couple of examples.

My book BELLA AT MIDNIGHT is set in the high Middle Ages. Though it’s a fantasy with invented kings and countries, it’s as historically accurate as I could make it in terms of customs, lifestyle, and beliefs. That means, among other things, that my characters see the world through a veil of superstition and magical thinking. Thus, in the scene where Bella is born, I have the midwife urging the family to open all the drawers and cabinets, and unbind their hair, in order to speed the birth. I feel sure my readers understand that I don’t think this is a practical obstetric practice, that I’m just reflecting the period and having a little fun.  But when it comes to matters of religion, some readers seem to have trouble separating the writer from the characters.   Since most common people in medieval Europe were religious in a simplistic and literal way, interpreting anything they didn’t understand as a curse or a miracle wrought by God, I gave my characters these views.   Yet several reviewers seemed to feel that I was “pushing” my personal religious beliefs.  This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

In SAVING SKY I created a family of old hippies, living off the grid in rural New Mexico. The parents reflect my personal values in many ways: they’ll move heaven and earth to protect their children, they read to them, they teach them to be generous, kind, self-sufficient, and responsible. But because this is set in Santa Fe, woo-woo capital of America, and because these are old hippies, they’ve created their own new-age religion. They celebrate Solstice by lighting farolitos, they hold blessings for the dead and believe their spirits go up into the sky and become stars—metaphorically speaking. These ceremonies comfort the children, and the scenes are sweet and tender.  But it’s not me; it’s something I made up.   Yet again, a reviewer implied that I had some pretty weird beliefs.

Perhaps the most troubling review came from a child. She loved, loved, loved my books, only she “had a feeling” that I wasn’t a Christian, and that really upset her because she only wanted to read books written by Christians. It left me speechless and sad, thinking of the long list of great books she was turning her back on.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter who the author is. One of the titles I included in a short and quirky list of recommended books for kids (on this website, under About/Questions I am Frequently Asked) is by an author whose political and religious views are diametrically opposed to mine. I don’t care. His book isn’t a tract on his view of the world; it’s a marvelous, imaginative, riveting, thoughtful story. And that’s what it’s all about.

To prepare, we did long hikes, then longer hikes, then even longer hikes, all at high altitude.  Finally, on September 15—a date carefully chosen to avoid the heat and monsoon rains of summer and the potential snows of autumn—we met at 6 am for the ascent.  Some of us were a little nervous, myself included.

Three non-members joined us: a super-hiker who’d done Baldy before, plus Lauren’s husband and one of his hiking buddies.  They were all stronger and more experienced than we, but were patient with our slow pace.  (It felt reasonably brisk to me, but then running up a steep, rocky trail seems kind of over the top.)

What had seemed so daunting when we began turned out to be quite doable.  We reached the top with comparative ease and were rewarded by an incredible view, as far as the Colorado border.  The skies were clear and blue, there was a soft breeze, and we were elated.  We ate our peanut-butter sandwiches then headed back down.

The long return hike was the hardest part.  Marj handed out Alieve to grateful fellow hikers.  We stopped to rest a little more often.  And that last couple of miles going straight down was tough on aging knees.  In total, it took us ten hours and we were ready to drop by the end.  Yet the next morning I rose like the phoenix out of the flames: spry, rested, free of tension, positively euphoric (yes, it was those famous endorphins).

When Lauren first proposed the Baldy hike, I was a little reluctant to push myself that hard.  But I discovered that setting a tough goal and working toward it, then finally achieving it, was extremely satisfying, better even than the “runner’s high” that came with it.  Looking back, I realized that it was really nothing new; the goal-setting just took a different form.  For the last thirty-plus years, with every book I’ve written or illustrated, I’ve set out on an arduous voyage, wondering if I could meet the standards I set for myself.  It’s always been a little scary, and always a thrill when I managed to jump over that bar.  And each time, with the next book, I always set it a little bit higher.

HarperCollins Publishers

Unwanted at home, Molly goes to work for the king of Westria as a humble scullery maid. She arrives at the castle with no education, no manners, and a very disturbing secret: she sees visions, and those visions always come true.  One day, while she’s working in the king’s great hall, young Prince Alaric passes by. Molly finds him unbearably handsome—but also unbearably rude. But what does it really matter? She’ll probably never see him again.

In time Molly is promoted to polishing silver and is given a priceless royal treasure to work on: the king’s great ceremonial hand basin. But there’s something odd about it. The silver warms to her touch, a voice commands her to watch and listen, and then the visions appear. They tell the story of a dreaded curse that has stalked the royal family for years. There have already been deaths; soon there will be more.

As tragedy after tragedy strikes the royal family, Molly can’t help but wonder: will the beautiful Alaric be next? Together with her friends Tobias and Winifred, Molly must protect the prince and destroy the curse. Could a less likely champion be found to save the kingdom of Westria?

More about The Silver Bowl…

About six years ago I traveled to China and Japan to speak at international schools. While in Tokyo, I was taken to a shrine sale—sort of like a church bazaar—where all sorts of antiques were to be found, everything from fine old kimonos to cracked pots. I noticed a beautiful bowl, the kind with decorations done in blue. Being ever on the lookout for story ideas, it popped into my head that those scenes that were painted on it—villages, mountains, clouds, rivers, bridges, little people walking and fishing and driving wagons—might come alive in some way.  I decided there would be a boy who received such a bowl as a gift, a gesture of thanks for some kindness he had done a famous master potter. The boy would be one of the figures in the bowl. As the days passed, the family would notice that the boy’s figure changed—it was moving through a map of his life. At some point, the boy’s older brother would become jealous of all the attention he was getting and would destroy the bowl. The boy would be trapped in time, never growing older. It offered so many possibilities.

I intended to set the book in China in the 1200′s, but after buying stacks of books, and spending months reading them , I realized that I could never learn enough to do this book properly. I needed to take my magical bowl someplace else, someplace I knew much better.Since I’d previously researched and written five biographies of figures who lived in the late Middle Ages/Renaissance in Europe (BARD OF AVON, GOOD QUEEN BESS, JOAN OF ARC, LEAONARDO DA VINCI, and MICHELANGELO), then followed them with a medieval novel (BELLA AT MIDNIGHT), I knew the period well. So the magical porcelain bowl became a silver one, the central character became a girl, and the nature of the magic changed entirely. I was off and running.

I had loved writing BELLA; ideas flowed effortlessly out of my head in a happy and wonderful way. With THE SILVER BOWL, I hoped to recapture that writing experience, and I did.  It was almost too easy to write. When that happens, of course, it means a lot more work lies ahead, because what I’d written was basically an outline.  Now came the multiple rewrites, whipping the story into shape, deepening the characters, tying up the many random story threads that my subconscious had thrown out—and coming to really understand the story. That part was fun, too.

In the end, I became so fond of my characters, and there was so much yet to learn about their pasts and their futures, I didn’t want to let them go. So I discussed it with my editor and we agreed that THE SILVER BOWL should be book one of a trilogy.

I have recently finished book two, THE CUP AND THE CROWN, in which Molly explores the source and nature of her ever-changing magical gift.   Sent by King Alaric on a crucial mission, Molly is drawn to Harrowsgode, the mysterious walled city where her grandfather was born and from which he later escaped.   What she discovers there will alter the direction of her life and challenge her considerable ingenuity and courage.  With the help of Tobias, a rat-catcher named Richard, and a clever and devoted raven, Molly gains her own freedom in a most unexpected way,  and changes the city of Harrowsgode forever.

The final book in the series will be THE PRINCESS OF CORTOVA.

Change is good.  It gives you the chance to discover new things and new people.  I think it keeps you young.  And so, after twenty-five years of living in Texas, my husband and I decamped, said a tearful goodbye to wonderful friends, and moved next door to New Mexico.

I soon found that living here was changing me.  I am more in touch with nature than I’ve ever been before.  I always know what phase the moon is in.  I notice as the sun’s arc changes from summer to winter.  I know to expect the summer monsoon rains to start when the first rufous hummingbirds arrive.  I recognize bear tracks when I see them.  I know that after a summer rain the air smells like tarragon. With four distinct seasons, a glorious climate, bright blue skies and clear nights, you just want to be outside.

Things I now do that I rarely did before moving to New Mexico (or didn’t do at all): downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, gardening, whitewater rafting, and hiking.

This blog, though I’ve taken my time in getting to the point, is about the hiking—particularly about my women’s hiking group, tentatively (and quite appropriately) named the Walkie-Talkies.  We started with a small group of friends who wanted to hike on a regular basis.  Friends of friends were added, some left, new people joined, and in time we built a core group of about eight women, enough to have a few in town and eager to hike every week.

We go out every Wednesday morning, summer and winter, sometimes for a couple of hours, sometimes all day.  We climb up into the piñon-clad mountains, go out in the desert where there are petroglyphs, walk along rivers and through meadows.  We have gear—have we got gear!—from ice cleats, snowshoes, and gaiters to poles (collapsible, good for travel), backpacks, camelbacks, and first-aid packs.  We, the Walkie-Talkies, are prepared!

Somehow, in the process of enjoying nature and getting fit, we’ve turned into a group of friends who support, inform, and inspire each other.  Let me say this unequivocally: these women are fabulous. They are bright, interesting, caring, accomplished, beautiful, and generous. It’s not overstating to say that they’ve changed my life.

We’ve always had bear tracks and scat around our house, but they always visited at night.  They demolished our bird feeders, trampled our garden—one even left a nose-print on the glass of our entry area window.  But we never actually saw one till this year.  Apparently the long, snowy winter followed by a short spring affected the growth of certain berries they eat.  This year,  hungry bears were everywhere.  This year, they came in the daytime.

This is Goldie, standing on our wall.  He/she is a black bear, but 50% of black bears in the Rocky Mountains are colors other than black—brown, cinnamon, or blonde like this one.  You have to admit it’s a beautiful animal.  This picture made the front page of the local paper.

We’ve only had one more daytime visit (gone too fast to get the camera out).  But we’re careful to bring our feeders in at night.

For my first post, I’d like to share a piece that I wrote for The Horn Book several years ago.  It’s always been one of my favorites.

I usually request an aisle seat when I fly, but this particular time I was seated by the window.  About five minutes after take-off, the tiny houses and streets below were obscured by a fog of white; a few minutes later we were soaring above the perfect, pillowy forms of cumulus clouds below.  Gazing down at the spectacular sight I had seen so often and had come to take for granted, I suddenly thought, “My God! How Leonardo would have loved this!”

Of the many historical figures whose lives I have studied and written about, Leonardo da Vinci is the one I most truly felt I knew—perhaps because I, too, once combined science and art in my life’s work.  (I began as a medical illustrator and, like Leonardo, dissected a cadaver as part of my training.  My professor at Johns Hopkins showed us Leonardo’s anatomical drawings and said, “This is what your work should look like.”  Yeah, right!)

As I was researching Leonardo, I sometimes found myself disagreeing with the conclusions reached by the authors of the books about Leonardo’s choices and actions.  A scholar who had never picked up a paintbrush could not be expected to understand things that seemed obvious to me.  One does not have to be one of the world’s greatest artists to know the tedium of painting layer upon layer of color and texture over a grassy hillside or patch of ground.   One need not be the Renaissance Man (or Woman) to experience those distracting flights of ideas from the thing you ought to be concentrating on to something else entirely—and it really is related, though don’t ask me to explain how.

And so I’ve carried Leonardo in my heart over the years, looking at the world through his eyes and wondering what might have become of him, had he been born into different circumstances.  It goes without saying that he was blessed with enormous artistic gifts and must have loved drawing as a child.  How else would his father have thought to apprentice him to an artist when the boy came of age?  (In one of those ironic twists of fate, Leonardo only entered such a “low occupation” because he was born illegitimate and was therefore barred from the “noble professions.”  Had his parents been married, Leonardo da Vinci would have been obliged to follow his father in the family business and become a notary!)

But let’s imagine that no such barriers or expectations existed and that Leonardo was completely free to follow his heart in the matter of his education —where would it have led him?  To science and engineering, I think.  I picture him at the University of Florence eagerly reading Greek manuscripts and thinking and wondering.  Having access to the writings of an earlier great age, what would Leonardo have discovered?  And what if his inventions and speculations on nature and science had been disseminated among other learned men, not buried in his notebooks?  How changed would the history of science have been by that young scholar from Vinci!

I often wonder what Leonardo would be like if he had been born in modern times.  Would young Leo have frustrated his elementary school teachers and been sent off to be evaluated for ADD?  Though clearly brilliant, would he have the grades or the SAT scores to get into MIT?  Would biology, now studied at the molecular level, still interest him as anatomy did in the 15^th century?  And what would he make of computers? Would Leonardo be a “geek?”

But let’s not forget that for all his fascination with science, our modern Leonardo would still draw spectacularly well and be the darling of the art teacher.  No problem getting this kid into RISD!  But what would he do there?  And what would he make of the works of Robert Rauschenberg or Mark Rothko or Jackson Pollock or Dan Flavin?  Whereas I suspect his classmate Mike (Michelangelo, that is) would find nothing there to give him joy, Leo might well surprise us.  It could be right down his alley to imagine the unimaginable, sketch it out beautifully, then get someone else to build it for him.

And so I will continue asking myself these questions that have no answers.  Only one thing I know for sure—Leonardo would always ask for a window seat.

Unwanted at home, Molly goes to work for the king of Westria as a humble scullery maid.  She arrives at the castle with no education, no manners, and a very disturbing secret: She sees visions, and those visions always come true.

One day, while she’s working in the king’s great hall, young Prince Alaric passes by.  Molly finds him unbearably handsome—also unbearably rude.  But what does it really matter?  She’ll probably never see him again.

In time Molly is promoted to polishing silver and is given a priceless royal treasure to work on: the king’s great ceremonial hand basin.  But there’s something odd about it.  The silver warms to her touch, a voice commands her to watch and listen, and then the visions appear.  They tell the story of a dreaded curse that has stalked the royal family for years.  There have already been deaths; soon there will be more.

As tragedy after tragedy strikes the royal family, Molly can’t help but wonder: Will the beautiful Alaric be next?  Together with her friends Tobias and Winifred, Molly must protect the prince and destroy the curse.  Could a less likely champion be found to save the kingdom of Westria?

Book club discussion questions.

“Combining carefully chosen details of setting with a richly realized fantasy premise, Stanley succeeds in creating a believable world large enough to accommodate not only menace and evil but also loyalty, enduring friendship, and love.   The central characters–Molly and her friend, the stable boy Tobias–come wonderfully alive as their story unfolds and their mettle and character are tested . . . Stanley has done a particularly good job of investing her story with plausibility and creating dialogue and a narrative voice that are spot-on in both tone and suitability.”

–Michael Cart,  starred review, Booklist

“Veteran Stanley concocts a delicious blend of familiar fairy-tale motifs and intriguing, well-rounded characters to create an engaging fantasy. . . Stanley’s writing is smooth and compelling, making her characters come to life and ensuring that readers can easily follow the twists and turns of the inventive plot.  While there is indeed a villain as well as some not-so-nice characters, Stanley’s nuanced portraits encourage readers to consider motivation as well as actions.  Touches of humor lighten the tone at times, while suspenseful sequences heighten the tension.  A most worthy and enjoyable entry into the ‘feisty female’ fantasy genre.”

–starred review, Kirkus

“Stanley blends historical fiction and fantasy seamlessly, and her clear, rich language envelops and transports readers.  Molly’s relationships with handsome Prince Alaric and the kind-hearted stable boy are textured and layered with emotion and dutiful devotion.  The protagonist’s no-nonsense attitude is balanced by her big heart and a sweet, sharp sense of humor, making her a heroine readers will relate to and cheer for to the satisfying end.”

–starred review, School Library Journal

Recognition & Awards

Kirkus, Best of Children’s Books, a Best Book of the Year; Booklist, Editor’s Choice; Booklist, Top Ten SF/Fantasy for Youth; Book Links, Lasting Connections of 2011; starred review, Booklist; starred review, School Library Journal; starred review, Kirkus.