I’m delighted to announce the birth of a 388-page, 95,606-word, big fat red baby. Mother is knackered but happy. It’s a first draft, still pretty raw in places (especially the 70+ pages I wrote here), so I have more work to do to get it in shape, but I’m proud of having gotten to an end, if not THE END. I have four bottles of Taittinger stuck in the snow bank outside Colony Hall, and I expect that I and my fellow colonists will have no trouble polishing them off tonight. And indeed [writing several days later], we didn’t.

And now, here’s your laugh for the day, or maybe for the month: Last week I drove up to Canada, a 6-hour journey each way, to see the border and figure out how my heroine, Hannah, could possibly cross it illegally 30 years from now. At the checkpoint, the guard was chatting me up, asking why I was coming to Canada and why I chose this very remote point on a tiny little road in NY to cross the border, as opposed to crossing on the Interstate. And of course, being me, I told her all about it (in French, with complete confidence). And she basically said the French version of, “Step out of the car, ma’am.” And she took my passport and disappeared for about 10 minutes, and then reappeared with another guard, who watched me and questioned me while the first woman did a very thorough search of my vehicle, during which time I kept saying, “Ç’est pas moi, ç’est mon heroine!”: It’s not me, it’s my heroin(e)! To cut to the chase, they finally let me go, evidently concluding that I wasn’t a drug smuggler, just a complete idiot. All I can say in my own defense is that I was extremely tired and RED-addled.

That being the low point, one of the high points of last week was being part of my new friend Itty’s art project. Itty Neuhaus is a visual artist working on a very cool film installation about glaciers, which she has been shooting for many months using time lapse. She’s imagining the secret life of glaciers, superimposing other images (e.g., a strawberry, people doing various things) on the part that’s under the water. One of which is going to be me, falling back into the snow and making a snow angel! I had a lot of fun during the shoot, though I couldn’t feel my bottom for about five hours afterward. If you haven’t made a snow angel in a while, I highly recommend it.

And finally, I wanted to tell you about my new favorite game, PIG, which involves lots of people running madly around a pool table, trying to thwack two balls together. You take turns, the object being to keep the stripe always in motion using the solid. But you can only “shoot” (you use your hands, not a stick) from the two ends, otherwise you’re off sides. Needless to say this gives the tall people a totally unfair advantage. I’m not one of the better PIG players — people are always really happy if they’re after me in the lineup — but it’s a lot of fun, and has been my sole form of exercise here apart from a few frigid walks. The unrelentingly scrumptious food has taken its toll; by the tightness of my jeans I’m guessing I’ve gained 5 pounds. Which actually isn’t bad — I gained 20 with MUDBOUND.

Made a chilly (maybe 15?) pilgrimage to Edward and Marian’s graves today with a few of my favorite people. Packing now, dance party at Dan’s studio tonight, home tomorrow. A magnificent five weeks. Thank you, MacDowell!

I’m a bit mad these days but good mad, writing 8-9 hours a day, very, very close to the end of RED. I have to go to the US/Québec border to finish the book and was prevented from driving up there today by a major snowstorm (see pic below — they really know how to make snow here in NH) and another big one expected tomorrow, but will go Thursday. In the meantime I’m rewriting from the beginning, which feels like a tremendous luxury after so many months of creating the raw stuff. Sort of like a night at the Georges Cinq in Paris (not that I’ve ever stayed there, but I imagine it as the ultimate in sumptuousness) after several years of living at the Comfort Inn in Muskogee, OK (which I wouldn’t recommend for a long-term stay, though the staff are really nice).

The previously-mentioned Dutch artist Katja Mater and a young novelist named Caren Beilen had a party where they presented their work, and we were all asked to show up in monochromatic dress — we could choose any color we wanted. The result is below (I’m in the blue part of the spectrum). Katja is working on photographic studies of color wheels in motion, which are very beautiful, and we were a commemorative play on her theme.

The highlight of the last week was  a group reading of “Our Town,” one of my favorite plays of all time, which, I learned, was not only written by Thornton WIlder in my very studio but was also loosely based on Peterborough, where MacDowell is located. It’s a picture-perfect, small New England town, especially now, in winter, when everything’s covered in snow. Walking through it, even a century later, one can see vestiges of Grover’s Corners in the landscape as well as the people, and easily imagine Emily and George and the Stage Manager and all the rest inhabiting this place. We read the whole play (I had only bit parts, which I was very content with) and I ended up bawling as always at the end of Act III. This time, though, I saw it differently, more as an exhortation to live fully than a pronouncement of inevitable doom. I’m trying to take Thornton’s advice and carpe diem, every diem.

Before I get to the food (which faithful readers know I inevitably will), I have to tell you about our group pilgrimage to the MacDowell Oracle, a trek made by every resident in search of eternal truth and a vision of his or her future. The Oracle, it must be said, is located in a very small vertical building that bears a striking resemblance to an outhouse — a clever illusion to discourage the faithless. Seven of us went and knelt before the Oracle (one at a time and privately, so perhaps the others didn’t kneel) and asked our respective questions and received our respective answers. I’m forbidden to reveal the mystery of the Oracle, nor will I share the question I asked, but my answer was: SEMPRE LA VITA NUOVA, which I’m pretty sure is Italian for “ALWAYS THE NEW LIFE.” Perhaps some of you are frowning, as I was, at the inscrutability of this message. Consider, however, the response that my poor friend Soyung got:

“Exactly forty-two years from now they will tear me down. I will have fallen into such a state — wood rot, termites, old, ignorance — that I will be dangerous. People may get hurt, and so they will get rid of me.I don’t know where I’ll go yet, maybe to Buffalo, which I hear is real nice. Hang on as long as you can. You aren’t dangerous, yet.”

All things considered, I think the Oracle was very, very good to me. As the MacDowell staff are, they bring lunches daily to the doorstep of my studio in the lovely basket pictured below. There’s always a hot soup and always a cookie. And what more can one ask for in life? Except maybe a completed manuscript…

Below: How they do snow in NH, our magic circle, the stars of “Our Town,” in front of the oracle (me looking wan and RED-ridden), Soying’s unenviable fortune, my lunch box which magically appears outside my door every day around 12:30

The muse is perched firmly on my shoulder here in the snowy woods of New Hampshire. MacDowell was founded by Marian MacDowell, a pianist and the widow of composer Edward MacDowell, in 1907, making it the oldest artists’ colony in the U.S. It’s an ideal creative haven, over 400 acres of pristine land dotted with 32 artists’ studios and some larger houses that serve as dorms. I have a tiny room in one of those, but almost all my time is spent in my studio, which is called Veltin (I’ll have to find why, but I suspect some generous Veltin or another — Vladmir perhaps, and his lovely wife Natasha — gave the money to have it built) and is about a half-mile away from the dorm and Colony Hall, where we eat and gather. Veltin is a nearly picture-perfect woodcutter’s cottage from a Grimm’s fairy tale, apart from the outdoor electric lights and the Volvo with the “Republicans for Voldemort” sticker parked in front. There are plaques in each studio dating from the colony’s founding, signed by the arists who worked there. This was Thornton Wilder’s favorite studio — apparently he insisted on having it every time he came, and wrote a good part of “Our Town” in this very room, which gives me a lovely frisson every time I think of it — as well as the poet Edward Arlington Robinson’s. Veltin has also frequently been a composer’s studio, hence the piano, which is currently underutilized as an overlarge, oddly shaped shelf for my coat, gloves, and lunch hamper.

I arrived the 364th day of 2009 and celebrated New Year’s Eve with a half-complement of residents (16 initially, but new arrivals this week have nearly doubled our number). New Year’s amongst virtual strangers was strange but fun. We did a studio crawl where each host served one drink and played one song, to which we all danced. In my case, Prosecco and “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough,” in honor of our bonkers but brilliant fallen comrade, Michael Jackson. Afterward we gathered in front of the big common fireplace in Colony Hall, and Katya, who is Dutch and was one of the youthful organizers of the night’s festivities, inducted us into a fascinating fortune-telling ritual from Finland, called “Einan Sulatus” or “Uuden Vuodentina.” She took a roll of 1/8th-inch tin cord she bought at the hardware store, cut it into small twists and gave us each one, which we melted in a spoon over the fire and then plunged into a pail of cold water or snow. Then she helped us interpret the shapes. A random sampling: a heart, a footprint making a big mark, a mitten holding a snowball, an ear, a couple embracing, a shrimp/seahorse/fetus, depending on who you asked, and two linked eighth-notes which were eerily perfect, and which of course belonged to one of the composers. Mine can best be described as a wild twisted tortured amorphous mass, from which protrudes a well-defined fat little tongue. My interpretation: my crazy brain, which somehow manages to produce decent, lucid prose. However I welcome any further insights into this great mystery.

I must take a moment to rhapsodize about the food. In the interest of brevity, I’ll limit this first paean to breakfast: the homemade muffins and coffee cakes and bacon and French toast and frittatas and blueberry pancakes and mushroom crepes and eggs Benedict and popovers we are served in luscious rotation, by a staff cheerfully dedicated to satisfying the myriad culinary restrictions and whims that artists tend to have in disproportionately high numbers compared to regular human beings: no meat, no dark meat, nothing with legs, no shellfish, no dairy, no berries, no gluten, no sugar, no yolks, no goat cheese (mine). The hot portion of breakfast is served between 7:30 and 8:30, and I make it there by 8:29 at least half the time: a true testament to the talents of the chefs.

Last but most important: All this nurture is benefiting RED tremendously, and I’m writing incredibly well here. The book feels inexorable now: a rough beast, slouching toward Bethlehem to be born. Or, for the more cheerful souls amongst you, a beautiful flower daintily unfurling its petals in the midst of winter.

Below: Colony Hall, Veltin, Thornton was here, my fortune for 2010

I had the pleasure of speaking yesterday to 150 or so book-loving ladies and two extremely brave (or extremely clever & wily) gents at the Book Lovers’ Luncheon, a fundraiser hosted by the Hopewell Valley Education Foundation. Many thanks to Carol Jackson and Randee Tengi, the respective chairwomen of the event and of the foundation (pictured with me below), for giving me and my guest, Elizabeth Molsen, such a warm and enthusiastic welcome. And thanks to all those who attended and asked thoughtful questions and decided that what their friends and relatives really need in their stockings this Christmas is a copy of Mudbound. Excellent idea.

It was standing room only at Sparta Books in Sparta, NJ last Thursday. About sixty people showed up for the wine, jumbo shrimp and other tasty fare generously provided by owner Donna Fell (pictured below) and stayed to hear me read and ask me some questions. Most of them were book club people, bless them. Book clubs have been very good to Mudbound, as have independent bookstores.

On that subject, please buy from your local indie bookseller this holiday season. They need our business, and we need their passion for great writing. If you don’t know who or where they are, you can find them here: http://www.indiebound.org/

Home again. Reentry as always is hard. Bills to pay, groceries to buy, the garden to put to bed for the winter, and no more lunches and clean laundry delivered to my door. Amazing how productive one can be when all those mundane tasks are taken away, along with the siren call of the Internet. I left Scotland having finished Part IV of RED and with a good start on Part V. The end is in sight. Thank you, Hawthornden!

Here are a few last photos: the six of us; another amazing sky; our fearless director, Martin; a stone seat on the castle grounds overlooking the Esk; Sarah & Jacqueline; the castle

The final stretch, and as always I can’t believe how quickly the time has flown. I’ve worked harder at this residency than at any of the others, and the days have blended together to the point where I’ve felt like the Bill Murray character in “Groundhog Day.” (Better than the Jack Nicholson character in “The Shining,” which was how I felt after three weeks at Yaddo in January.)

I was starting to go seriously bonkers last weekend so I took an entire day off from RED and went to Edinburgh, a beautiful, hilly, cobblestoned city of many pubs and coffee shops, packed with tourists despite the rainy, gloomy weather. The Royal Mile is the tourist mecca, with Edinburgh Castle at one end, Holyrood Palace at the other, and hundreds of shops and restaurants in between, selling kilts, sporrans, clan keychains, Celtic rings, cashmere sweaters, and the inescapable haggis. The ticket line at the castle was dishearteningly long, so I took the tour of Holyrood instead and was glad I did. It’s a living palace; Queen Elizabeth stays there when she’s in town. It was home to generations of Scottish royalty, including Bonnie Prince Charlie, who led the disastrous Jacobite rising in 1745, and Mary, Queen of Scots during her brief, turbulent reign. It really is a place full of ghosts. Impossible not to get a chill standing in Mary’s bedroom, listening to the story of how her secretary, Rizzio, was dragged from the room by her jealous, enraged (and very handsome, from his portrait) husband, Lord Darnley, and stabbed fifty some-odd times. The room where this happened, the outer chamber, now houses many of her personal effects. Most touching are the samplers she stitched during her 19-year imprisonment by her cousin Elizabeth in the Tower of London. How bored she must have been!

That one adventure aside, I’ve done little but work and, on decent days, tramp around the countryside with the other women in a vain effort to combat the potatoes, custards, and tea cakes, which have recently been supplemented by fettucine carbonara and croissant bread pudding with caramel sauce. Sarah, Jacqueline and I got extremely lost one day and ended up thrashing our way through the woods and gasping our way up a treacherous, nearly vertical bluff that must have been a hundred yards tall. I got badly stung by nettles in the process, and Sarah plucked a leaf from this other plant growing nearby and told me to rub it on the burning areas. And sure enough, it helped. Apparently dock leaves almost always grow next to stinging nettles; they’re said to have been planted by the faeries as an antidote. Who knew the wee folk had such a pragmatic streak?

Torrential rain last night, flooding all over Scotland. Wind howling mournfully all night long in the chimney in my room, and most of the leaves were down today. Winter has arrived.

Photos below: Edinburgh at dusk; “Best Haggis,” a contradiction in terms if there ever was one; the haunting, ruined, 12th-Century abbey at Holyrood; more fall splendor

I took an afternoon off and went to Rosslyn Chapel, which is about an hour’s walk down the River Esk from us. I have no good photos of it, alas; they’re not allowed inside the chapel, and the outside is completely covered in scaffolding. They’re doing a major renovation, thanks largely to Dan Brown, whose use of Rosslyn in The Da Vinci Code increased their annual visitors from 7,000 to 117,000, at seven and a half quid a pop. The chapel was begun in 1446 by the St. Clair family (who still own it) and took thirty years to finish. The inside is completely covered in carvings, and they’re some of the finest and most fascinating I’ve ever seen. There are over a hundred “green men,” pagan nature spirits with ugly little fat faces. There are mysterious carvings of corn — a crop unknown to Europe until after Columbus, indicating that the Knights Templar (who are associated with Rosslyn, as are the Freemasons) may have “discovered” America before he did. The crypt beneath the chapel, which holds the remains of 14 Earls of Rosslyn, is also rumored to be the secret hiding place of King Solomon’s treasure, which includes the Holy Grail. No one knows for sure because the crypt hasn’t been opened in 300+ years — the current Earl St. Clair won’t allow his ancestors’ rest to be disturbed. A few years ago, one of the guides pried a stone up in an attempt to peek in, and the Earl fired the entire staff. I got the distinct feeling that there are many historians and other interested parties impatiently awaiting the poor man’s demise.

The keep of Hawthornden was built during the same era as Rosslyn, the castle in the 1600s. Beneath it are dank, gloomy caves that I couldn’t wait to escape from and that date to the Picts in 1st Century B.C. Rumor has it Robert the Bruce once hid in them — better him than me. This whole area is riddled with caves, sandstone being relatively soft and carvable. There’s also a dungeon, which I haven’t seen. Martin, the director, says that’s where they put the bad writers.

I’m working verra verra hard, and the pages are accumulating slowly but steadily. A typical day: I get up at 9:00 and bathe in “the sarcophagus,” a boxed-in bathtub so enormous that I can lie in it fully supine and never touch either end. Usually I miss breakfast, so I have a piece of fruit at my desk. Lunch — soup, a sandwich, and carrot sticks — is delivered to my door in a wicker basket at 12:30. I write from 10:00 until 5:00 or so, then get out for some much-needed exercise, assuming it’s not pouring rain. (The freakishly mild weather has departed, and we’re now experiencing the usual Scottish autumn: cold, cloudy, rainy & windy. Good writing weather, if nothing else.) At 6:30 the residents meet for a sherry. Supper’s at 7:00, after which we have chamomile tea and conversation in the living room.

One of the Brits told us that Scotland has the highest incidence of obesity in the world, and after two weeks here, I understand why. Breakfast is toast, cereal, or parritch. For supper, we have ______ and potatoes: bangers & mash, beans & roast potatoes, shepherds’ pie (ground beef stew with a layer of mashed potatoes on top). Occasionally the potatoes are supplemented by macaroni & cheese. Then there’s dessert (see week one blog). Oh, and did I mention the homemade shortbread and lemon cake they put out for 4:00 tea? Och!

Pictured below: the view from my window, Rosslyn Village, and my fellow inmates, Jacqueline, Sarah, Sharon & Shaun

I’m on day seven of my much-needed four-week residency at Hawthornden Castle, half an hour outside of Edinburgh. The castle dates from the 1400s, though the part that’s that old (the keep, which was the former fortress) is half-crumbled into ruin. The estate is owned by the Heinz family, of ketchup fame, and Mrs. Heinz, who is a serious patron of the arts, generously turned it into an artists colony in the 1980s. It’s for writers only — no painters, composers, choreographers, etc. need apply — which definitely creates a different dynamic, as I learned last summer at Château de Lavigny. Our passions and our demons are more nearly identical, so there’s a great deal of understanding and shared experience. On the other hand, there tend to be fewer surprises than in a mixed group, meaning ideas or ways of looking at the world that really turn your brain sideways. Also, it must be said, we writers tend to be a rather serious and introspective lot when unleavened by other kinds of artists. Tonight for example we started innocently enough on the subject of food (which I’ll get to shortly) and ended up talking about the age of sexual consent for minors, and whether Roman Polanski is a pedophile who deserves incarceration or a misunderstood man wronged by the American legal system. I’ll leave you to guess which side of that debate I came down on.

We are six: three Americans and three Brits. Three novelists, a playwright, a screenwriter, and a poet who’s also a visual artist (we’re all a bit envious that she can do both). It’s a nice group, with none of the variously nutty types who sometimes crop up at artists colonies. It’s everyone else’s first residency, and they’re all reveling in the unaccustomed quiet and the freedom from cooking, cleaning, laundry, email, demands of children & spouses, and all the other stuff that gobbles up one’s writing time. I’m reveling in it too, greedy thing that I am, for the seventh time! And in the beauty of this place, which both spikes the heart and soothes it. We all feel very fortunate to be here and to be so well cared for.

Which brings me to the food. Och, the food! Chicken pot pies and raspberry crumbles with cream on the side — everything has cream on the side — and custards and tarts and nightly potatoes. And cake, this incredibly moist, scrumptious, irresistible cake, handmade by Angie the cook (who is everyone’s favorite person) and served daily at 4:00 in the parlor. They call it “tea” but really it’s all about the cake. My jeans are already starting to feel a wee bit tight.

The weather has been unseasonably nice, apparently, meaning it’s warmish and not pouring rain every day. The locals are all wagging their heads in wonder, as if we’d had a foot of snow. I haven’t done much exploring yet because I’ve been working hard on RED and making excellent headway, but from my few brief forays into the outside world, I can tell you that I’m already in love, or should I say luv, with the Scots. They’re much warmer than the English, if harder to understand, and I feel very at home amongst them and in this green landscape of rolling hills and river valleys and pastures. My grandfather was a Kirkwood, and I was told today by the housekeeper that there are many Kirkwoods in the nearby village of Bonnyrigg, which was a coal-mining town at one time. Who knows, perhaps we’re distant kin? I’m listening hard to the locals and working on my Scootish accent, which seems to come verra natural. Yesterday, an admiring old man on the bus called me a “wee lassie,” and I nearly swooned. I think the sound of bagpipes, should I chance to hear it, might just fell me. And should I happen upon a handsome lad in a kilt . . . well, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.

I set off five days ago from fair Tivoli to the land of cotton, in search of inspiration for my second novel, Red. My heroine, whom I’ve left stranded in Dallas on page 212, is about to head due east, across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, then up through North Carolina to Washington D.C. And so I’m making the same journey, though under considerably less desperate circumstances, as she’s running for her life and I’m staying with friends and in cozy little B&Bs.

My first stop was New Hope, PA, where I spent a night with my dear friend Lizzy Molsen, pictured below, whom I’ve known since we were 13 (a good 20 years or so). Thursday I had a long, rainy and wearying drive to Fincastle, VA, outside Roanoke, where I stayed at a B&B/winery with picturesque views and mouth-withering wine. Friday I drove another 6 long hours to Glen Falls, NC, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where my mom was vacationing with two teacher friends. The house was perched over a waterfall, and after polishing off a huge steak dinner followed by two slices of her famous peach chess pie, I fell asleep to the lovely sound of rushing water accompanied by the gurgling protests of my distended stomach.

Next, Huntsville, Alabama, 95 degrees in the shade, where I was hosted by the charming, vivacious, and utterly Southern Mrs. Evelyn Spearman, age 84, a 40+-year member of the Huntsville Literary Association and a true lover of literature, especially Southern literature. Evie (which rhymes with levy) pulled together, with a week and a half’s notice, a talk at the Episcopal Church of the Natitivity, publicized beforehand by a radio interview of me on the local gospel station, announcements in the newspaper and the church bulletin, and a plug by Evie herself, who knows everybody in Huntsville and seemingly the entire South, on the local PBS radio station. It was a marvelous event, attended by sixty some-odd people, and preceded by a singalong performance, led by Evie and a guitar-playing gentleman named Microwave Dave, of the song “Mississippi Mud.” Which begins like this:

“When the sun goes down, and the tide goes out,
The people gather ’round, and they all begin to shout,
‘Hey, hey! Uncle Dud!
It’s a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi mud.
It’s a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi mud.’
What a dance they do!
Lordy, how I’m tellin’ you…
They don’t need no band…
They keep time by clappin’ their hand’
Just as happy as a cow chewin’ on a cud,
When the people beat their feet on the Mississippi mud.”

This was without a doubt one of the most enjoyable events I’ve done since Mudbound came out, and Miss Evie one of the most delightful characters I’ve met. At her insistence, I stayed at her house — “All the authors stay my house” — and met her son Alan (one of four children) and her granddaughter Vivian (one of nine grandchildren, all beautiful — “I don’t have any ugly grandchildren”) and quite a few friends. The walls of every room of her house are covered with photos of her multitudinous family, mixed cheek by jowl with pictures and posters of Southern authors like Faulkner, Shelby Foote, and Walker Percy, who are clearly members of her extended family, because she so loves their writing. And now, I suppose, so am I. I feel positively anointed.

Today, I drove to Columbus, Mississippi and collapsed, after an early and very satisfying meal of fried catfish. Clearly I won’t be losing weight on this trip.