Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Favorite Children

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Yes, it’s true: authors can have favorites among their own books. (Which I suppose is better than having favorites among your children, since a story’s feelings can’t be hurt.) Even though a little piece of me has gone into everything I’ve written, good, bad, or indifferent, there are certain books and stories that I’m especially fond of for one reason or another…or maybe for no definable reason at all. These are my personal favorites among my published stories right now:

• A Sidekick’s Tale. To this day, I can still pick up this book and open it, and start laughing. It makes me wonder sometimes, should I be writing humor more often? Or was this just an accidental one-hit wonder? Either way, I regard the adventures of Marty, Chance, Lem, Aunt Bertha, the Justice of the Peace and the rest of them as one of the best things I’ve ever done.

• Lost Lake House. It was an impulsively-concocted plot, set in a decade of history I’d never given much thought, and with a semi-imaginary setting of lake and villa that I could play around with and dress up in all kinds of delicious detail as I liked. Maybe all of that subconsciously told my brain to switch off the “work” setting and regard the writing process as play! The characters also seemed to spring straight to life, not really based upon or inspired by anything else as some characters are; and I’ve been immensely fond of them ever since.

• The Mountain of the Wolf. Somewhat like Lost Lake House, this was an idea that came quickly and clicked quickly and delighted me with the way the execution fitted the concept (Red Riding Hood retelling in the West). It’s more dramatic and intense than anything I’d written up till that point, and I think I kind of wanted to prove to myself that I could do that if I wanted to.

• The Silver Shawl. It was the first mystery I ever successfully completed and published; and I still think it has one of the trickiest plots in the series, to the point that it’s still somewhat of a mystery to me how I came up with it! My writing has probably gotten a little more polished since then, but I’ll always have a soft spot for my first adventure with Mrs. Meade & Co.

Short stories:

• “The Bird of Dawning.” I love Christmas stories; I always wanted to write a good Western Christmas story. The characters and themes of this story are close to my heart, and I absolutely loved writing the descriptions of winter weather.

• “The Rush at Mattie Arnold’s.” I think I wrote this in about two sittings. I figured out most of it while in the shower, and I think I pretty much had a grin on my face throughout the whole creative process. You need to write stories like that every once in a while.

These also are, probably not coincidentally, all among what I regard as my best stories in a technical sense. Although that could just be parental partiality.

The Life of Stories

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My upcoming Western short story collection, Wanderlust Creek and Other Stories, now has a Goodreads page (in case you’d like to mark it to-read), with a book description (in case you want to know what it’s about), and a semi-official release goal: I’m aiming for March. There’ll be pre-orders at some point, of course; I’ll let you know when that happens.

There’ll be six stories in this collection:

  • “Single-Handed”

  • “The Rush at Mattie Arnold’s”

  • “A Search For Truth”

  • “The Mustanger’s Bride”

  • “Room Service”

  • “Wanderlust Creek”

Like Left-Hand Kelly, this book has been a long time brewing. The origins of half these stories go all the way back to before I published my very first book in the autumn of 2011. Yet it’s funny, looking back over my notes and first drafts, how different the life of the project was for each one. “Single-Handed” and “Room Service,” for instance, were both begun in 2011, and worked on periodically with gaps of months and even years in between, until I finally finished both in a feverish week-long burst of writing last July.

“The Rush at Mattie Arnold’s,” on the other hand, was an idea that came to me unexpectedly and got dashed off in just two or three days. It was some of the most fun I’ve had writing and one of the easiest stories to write. “The Mustanger’s Bride” was also great fun and was written in a spurt of a few days…except there was a gap of five months in the middle of the spurt.

I don’t have many outstanding memories of the composition process for “A Search For Truth,” but I do remember editing: it’s the story where I just kept on cutting out words. No plot changes, just heaps  and heaps of excess words that puzzled me with how in the world they got there in the first place. I have a feeling a few more will end up getting the boot in the final edit-and-proofread stage, too.

“Wanderlust Creek,” which is one of my favorites among my own stories, was a long time in development before it actually made it to the page. For several years I slowly accumulated pages of notes in one of my favorite note-taking notebooks, gradually putting scenes in order and straightening out a tangle of ideas for the climax. I think I had the subconscious feeling all along that I was waiting until I felt ready to do the idea justice—and I am glad I waited. I finally sat down to write it last summer and finished it over the course of a couple months.

But by hook or crook, by the long route or the short one, all six eventually made their way to the triumphant finish line of THE END, and by the end of this month, should have undergone their final edits and been fitted between the covers of a proof copy. And you know, I’m getting a bit excited.