After over four weeks of travel research with only a carry-on suitcase, we’ve landed in our winter home in lovely San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. (I’m leaving my suitcase out: in exactly two weeks we’ll be going to California for U.S. Thanksgiving with my soon-to-be 95-year-old dad and the rest of my family there.)

Today I’ll tackle getting my office set up so that I can Get To Work. It’s urgent! I’ve “the last revision” to make on The Next Novel for my wonderful editor Melissa Danaczko at Doubleday before it goes into copy and line editing. Deadline: early January, but best before if I can manage it, well knowing how little gets done over the holidays.

And also knowing that I have two Young Adult novels about Josephine’s daughter Hortense to get to work on!

We had a wonderful trip to England, France and Switzerland. One of the highlights was going to Arenenberg, Switzerland, to see Hortense’s last home and the Napoleonic museum there.

{Arenenberg, Hortense’s last home overlooking beautiful Lake Constance in Switzerland, now a wonderful museum.}

I got an enthusiastic welcome! Everyone had read the Trilogy and loved it. They sell quite a few of the German edition in their gift shop and I signed many, many copies for them.

The museum was astonishing. I got a wonderful tour from Christina Egli, Deputy to Dominik Gügel, the Director. I will have details to report on my research blog, but for now I’ll just leave you with a photo of the lovely statue of Hortense that’s in the chapel there:

 

 

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