Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

One-Year Anniversary: Left-Hand Kelly

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I’ve never observed any of my books’ publication anniversaries before, for the simple reason that they always slipped past me while I was busy writing the next one. But I happened to notice recently when checking one of my Amazon pages that June 25th would mark one year since the release of Left-Hand Kelly, and that seemed like an occasion worth observing with a post.

 

As I wrote about in some detail before, Left-Hand Kelly took almost four years of off-and-on work to write and publish. I have a general idea, from journal entries, of when I starting actually writing it, but the single sheet of lined paper bearing the original idea is undated. I still have it in my catch-all binder, and I dug it out this morning to share it with you. The front side bears a brief synopsis of the plot, amazingly close to the finished product:

 

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On the other side, a list of character names, which also fell into place with remarkably little effort, and a few scraps of sentences that made it into the book in slightly altered form:

 

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I also pulled my old journals out of my hope chest today and paged through the entries relating to Left-Hand Kelly. Most of them are not very illuminating to anyone but the author—brief, slightly addled remarks that reflect the chaotic nature of the book’s creation: the difficulties of ending chapters properly, or picking up in the middle of a conversation left off several months before; worries over whether certain characters talk too much or not enough, even speculations on exactly who the protagonist might be. Endless recaps of exactly how much editing I guessed certain chapters would need. Frequent references to working in a creative haze (Jo March would call it a vortex), and fruitlessly wishing that mundane things like eating and sleeping didn’t have to get in the way.

February 21st, 2013: …I’m torn between thinking this story is really good and thinking it’s a mess. In other words, business as usual.

Last spring into early summer, if you recall, was occupied by pulling our whole house apart and painting every room—and at the same time, I was doing final edits on Left-Hand Kelly and formatting it for publication.

Wednesday, May 7th, 2014: I learned how to right-justify a table of contents last night! By setting tabs! With running leaders! The little things that can excite me.

Finally, I found the journal entry for June 25th of last year. This, my friends, is the life of an indie author.

June 25th: Exhaustion. Total exhaustion. Kitchen torn apart for painting—dog in heat—pouring rain—new book released.

Was it all worth it? Oh, yes. Not just for the thrill of good reviews or award nominations, but the fulfillment of seeing a story that spent so much time wrapped around my heart and mind turn into a real book. Even after a year, it’s a little hard to believe.

So if you’re curious enough to see where all this led…well, you could buy the book. And for a visual glimpse into the story, check out my Left-Hand Kelly Pinterest board.

Left-Hand Kelly is an awards nominee!

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Today I have some exciting news.

 

Left-Hand Kelly is a nominee for Best Independently-Published Western Novel in the Western Fictioneers‘ Peacemaker Awards!

This was my first time submitting anything to an awards competition, and I really didn’t know what my chances would be, so I was determined to keep my expectations down. I woke up yesterday morning, remembered that it was the day for the announcement of nominees, and couldn’t keep down a little thrill of excitement in spite of low expectations. I took myself firmly in hand. “You were not nominated,” I told myself. “Remember that. You were not nominated, so you will not be disappointed.”

But when I arrived at the website, there was Left-Hand Kelly on the list of nominees. At least, I think it was. I’m still getting used to the idea that this actually happened. All yesterday I had moments of unreality where I thought, “Did I really see that this morning, or am I the victim of an exceptionally vivid imagination?”

But yes, it did actually happen. You can read the official announcement and lists of all the nominees at the official site or here at the Western Fictioneers blog. The winners will be announced on June 1st.

Left-Hand Kelly: A Long, Long Trail

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The release of my next book, Left-Hand Kelly, is fast approaching. A cover is in the works, and most of the other prep work is already complete—basically just final proofreads remain.

This has been one slow-cooked little novella. Though shy of 40,000 words, it has taken several years from initial idea to completion. But I had no idea just how long it had been in the works until the other day, when I got out my old journals and began flipping back through them, looking for the earliest entries relating to Left-Hand Kelly. The more pages I turned back, amazement began to dawn on me. Wait, when was this? Mentions of Left-Hand Kelly as an incomplete project were sandwiched in among notes about working on the earliest stories for The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories. Way back before I’d decided to collect them, in fact, and was still unsuccessfully trying to find professional short story markets. A reference to “the first three chapters” of Left-Hand Kelly having been written some time ago predates my first published story “Disturbing the Peace” placing in a contest in December of 2010. Shortly before that is a big gap in my journal entries—I was not a good diarist back then—so I couldn’t find a mention of beginning the book, but I did have my dated first-draft manuscript in a notebook. I pulled it out and looked at it.

June 19th, 2010.

Four years ago! Almost exactly four years from first draft to publication.

It goes without saying that I was not working on it continuously all that time. I’d write a few chapters, get stuck, put it away for months, and then come back to it later. It held enough interest and promise for me that I did keep coming back. “It appeals to me because there’s a tremendous amount of emotion packed into a pretty brief plot,” I wrote in that earliest journal entry. As near as I can figure, from margin dates and journal entries, I wrote the first three chapters in the summer of 2010, chapter four and part of chapter five that December, the rest of five through seven in April and May 2012, and then finally picked it up again in late January 2013 and finished the eight remaining chapters in February. Various rounds of edits have taken place since then.

What amazes me is that around the same time I was writing those first three chapters, I was also turning out some horribly amateurish stuff that will probably never see the light of day. Yet the beginning of Left-Hand Kelly, with only reasonable editing, was good enough to keep me coming back to it and blends well with the later parts of the book. Don’t ask me how that came about. All I know is, it makes me feel a lot better about the sheaf of unfinished projects that I still believe hold promise. It may take years, but one day they’ll get there.