So Excited!!!!

Just as the pandemic is winding down, we're finishing our last edits of the third book- Magic Mercury and the Earth Connections. It's beginning to feel like we're exhaling after a long mask-wearing, screen sharing year. Jan and I have been busy walking in all kinds of weather with friends, both human and otherwise, noticing sounds and smells we didn't pay enough attention to before the pandemic. These Covid months helped us write more deeply about the trees we've come to know, the sunny side of the paths in our forests and the wind that takes on a life of its own in the unpredictable northeast. The first book, Savannah's Leap of Faith was written several years earlier when Yonkers, NY and the world looked a lot different. We fell in love with the character who Savannah’s grandmother nicknamed Savvy, and knew that once Savvy was given a strange stone and found the first of its magical properties, the story needed to continue.

The Power of Sticks in a Bundle was published last summer in July, 2020, while we were struggling in New York after the worst of the pandemic. This story takes place on a nature preserve. When we were researching the history of Angle Fly Preserve, a newspaper article from 1919 said that the former owners of the large abandoned mansion on the property donated money to a hospital for tuberculosis patients in New York City. In those days, patients with TB lived outdoors as much as 20 hours a day. It seemed like such a strange coincidence that Violet, the main character of this book came to the preserve to flee our modern-day respiratory illness. We knew we needed to weave this into the story. The Nadia Stone helps eleven-year-old Violet time travel almost a century earlier to a meet a teenage girl who lived outdoors on the very same nature preserve where Violet is now staying.

There was a weird benefit to our research into the strange "cure" for tuberculosis in the early 1900's. Over a century ago, folks sacrificed their lives with their families in order to try a treatment that had little research to back it up. They traveled to sanitariums and stayed there for months, even years. Somehow, learning about this helped the authors appreciate just how little we knew about what was happening with Covid and gave us more patience and a better understanding of our own lives as we learned how to overcome the pandemic.

And the third book is now complete. In some ways Magic Mercury and the Earth Connections is the most exciting because it brings all three characters- Grada, Savvy and Violet together to discover the next secret of Nadia's stone- teleportation! Again, we've been writing during the pandemic, when we've spent more time outdoors in all seasons than at any other time in our lives. I think our writing reflects the deeper understandings we gained about our connection to the natural world.

We suggest you begin with the first novel and read all three. And then, we hope you'll feel inspired to find your happy place outdoors- somewhere that touches your heart and makes you care about it. When you find your personal connection to Nature, maybe you’ll create your own solutions to save the planet. We all need your help. Happy reading!