August has been a month filled with events and completions. At last, An Awful Providence, Epidemic Typhus and Family History Told Through the Collected Letters of Harriet Rice. has been published and is available at the Union Historical Society for $15 per copy. Contact UHS for purchase information @ www.unionhistorucalsociety.org or call (207) 785-5444 to leave message. UHS is currently open Saturdays and some Wednesdays.

Things have changed! After my previous posting, I realized my manuscript was far from finished. I revised it with professional formatting and endnotes and submitted a complete manuscript, An Awful Providence: Epidemic Typhus and Family History told through the Collected Letters of Harriet Rice to Islandport Press in Yarmouth, Maine. This publisher specializes in publishing books that reflect "a New England sensibility...as well as characterize the culture and people."  Sent January 6, 2021.

The author's great grandmother Ann Rice French with her sister Harriet Rice Barrett at Shrubbery House, the Barrett's homestead in Union, Maine Circa 1870. Harriet collected family letters on which An Awful Providence is based..

                                                         

Today I am writing my synopsis for An Awful Providence, a 64,000 work family history now completed and ready to submit for publication. My editor, Katie O'Sullivan has worked diligently to support the project to completion.  I am the only one who could write this family story since the source is unique to me - 150 letters I inherited, read and reread. I discovered gems on the rereads that I had missed the first time! And here is the protagonist, Harriet Rice Barrett, circa 1837. The Rice homestead riddled with typhus fever, two brothers dead, newly married to Amos Barrett and sporting a new wig.

                                                                                       

Painting has been overshadowing serious writing on the novel for several months. I have had two exhibitions of my artwork here in Wellfleet. However, I had an article published in Discover Maine Magazine late May, using the novel's working title"The Ardent Spirit of Miss Harriet Rice." I spent a day in Friendship, imagining where Harriet may have stayed as she recovered from typhus in 1834. The library was not open. Sea air was believed to cure most illness and in the 1830's there were a number of boarding houses and cottages right on the rocky beach.

While I was in Union, I discovered that my family's gravestones at Lake View Cemetery had been cleaned, now gleaming pure white as they were originally. I miss the grey-green-orange patina, the way I first saw it, but lichens eat away at the granite.

Writing Again

Today - Writing Again

After a two-year hiatus, I am writing again, feeling like a teabag left to steep in order to gain its full flavor and strength. The vision of the book and even the title has evolved and is now history, not fictionalized. Working title - An Awful Providence, the true story of Miss Harriet Rice. .

I had a non-ordinary experience, in broad daylight at Lake View Cemetery, North Union. There for the first time, visiting the burial site of my great, great grandparents, Nathan and Deborah Rice (their gravestone is posted below). The Historical Society had given me directions and a map of their plot. Admittedly, I was in an altered state, high with emotion and excitement. I had brought a simple geranium, not knowing I would be putting it at the base of an elaborate marker inscribed with quotes from the Book of Proverbs! I dug into the tough sod and planted. As I stood up, I witnessed a dark slanted shaft out of the corner of my left eye. Shaped like a flat bronze crystal, it slid quickly at a 45 degree angle into the ground into, as it turned out, the grave of James Bannister Rice, their son, who died of typhus 1835. That was the first apparition. Then,on the same day as I was driving out, and  under these two ancient sugar maples, I saw a youngish man in a brown suit coming toward me with a child, a barefoot girl who was holding flowers. I stopped and rolled the window to say hello. Neither answered. No reaction. They seemed to stare right through me and we had no interactions. Puzzled. I drove on... and looked back to see them in my rear view mirror. Not there. I turned completely around, to be sure...but they had completely vanished. Had I imagined the whole thing?

I have since found out that my apparition was most likely a residual haunting, benign and harmless, an imprint or disturbance on the atmosphere, a kind of playback of past events and triggered by increased energy levels at a certain location. Possibly related to the fact I had stopped to embrace the trees when I first arrived at Lake View Cemetery and I was already in an non-ordinary state of receptive energy.

Check out my web store  nancynicolart.com launched four years ago. I also exhibit at Burdick Art Gallery, Bank Street, in Wellfleet and am an affiliate member at Viridian Contemporary Art Gallery, West 28th St, NYNY

Now back to work...

While in Maine this June, I spent time in Friendship, a beautiful coastal town with a rocky beach and many old homes and fixer-uppers. Harriet Rice, the hero of my novel, was sent to Friendship to recover from typhus in 1834, after her brother Albert died. It was believed that swamp air mixed with effluvia caused typhus and sea air would cleanse the lungs. Harriet was eventually called back home to assist in the care of her sick siblings, several of whom would also die from typhus.

The novel as it is going on is very much about farming, death and survival in rural Maine. This bandstand was here in Harriet's day; this green is where local men mustered during and after the American Revolutionand later at the beginning of the War Between the States, called by some the Civil War. This is also and where hogs on the loose were rounded up and kept in pens

Examples of hand-painted signs and furniture to order

Here's a collection of hand-painted furniture and business signs I have done as commission work. Check it out on my Facebook page, Nancy Nicol Art 

Reflections

My ultra-short story called Abattoir is included in this collection of personal narratives published by Telling Our Stories Press.  Available for purchase at Amazon.com 

http://www.amazon.com/Reflections-Ultra-Short-Personal-Narratives/dp/0990008134

my writer's retreat Summer 2015

My apartment is to the left.

View of Round Pond where I will set up my desk.

Gravestone, Harriet Rice protagonist

I've rented a studio apartment in Union, Maine where I will be from May - October. I will be immersed in the area, and living on the very farmland where the Rice family settled and where I can research and write my historical novel. Harriet Rice is the main character in  Ardent Spirits. The sequel will likely be called Vault Lights, following the life and marriage of her youngest sister, Ann. Themes include farming, lumbering, abolition, temperance, inventions, plague.

Embracing the Art of Downsizing

Be sure check-out Cape Women On-Line Magazine, Fall 2014 and read my article on downsizing! In the past year I made many changes - keeping a smaller footprint in my community (Wellfleet) and at the same time getting out from under mortgage payments. This lifestyle isn't for everyone, but since I sold my house I have traveled to New York, Colorado twice, Missouri and St. Paul, I'm heading to Italy in two weeks and will be in Ireland next April. That's Life! By the way, this is an original oil painting done by me - transformation is part of life well lived.

Ultra Short Memoir

Just heard from Coco Harris, Publisher at Telling Our Stories Press that my ultra short memoir (under 100 words) "Abattoir" is included in the anthology called Reflections coming November, 2014.

Valentine and Blanchette, my pet lambs under the elms at Atwood Farm circa: 1950.

Ardent Spirits

New Project: Historical Fiction which centers on Union, Maine and the Rice family. Pictured here: my grandmother, aunt and mother circa 1907.

Novel Finished!

Completed final draft of The Disengagement of Ms. Annecy Abbott. Beta Readers giving positive feedback. Hats off to my editor Katie O'Sullivan.

B-12

Downsizing, a True Story. Started working on an article for Cape Women On-line Magazine for the Fall issue. I have made drastic lifestyle changes this past year. There have been gains, and losses ,too. I put my house on the market and closed my gallery. Sold with only four showings. I got out from under monthly obligation - no more mortgage payments or second mortgage payments, no charge card debt. What a thrill to pay-off Bank of America! Free and clear, with Time to paint, write and Money to travel.What I did was buy (for cash) a mobile unit at Massasoit Hills on West Road, Wellfleet. I completely remodeled, inside and out, built an 8x10 shed. It's still evolving from a sow's ear into, well if not a silk purse, perhaps a least a carry on bag, my base camp. And, it backs up on Audubon Sanctuary woods.

The original sow's ear.

Studio in the making, Fall 2013

Started my next book project - continuing to decipher family letters going back to the early 1800's, the Rice's of Union, Maine. I'll be making a connection with folks at the historical society over Founders' Day weekend in Union, mid July. Ann Rice m. James French

(my Great-grandparents) and one of their sons, George, was my Grandfather. Here they are! Maybe it's a condition of "getting older" to find genealogy so fascinating. Strictly by chance, I discovered I'm a May Flower descendant - Hopkins/Allerton - along with millions of others. But still, it's interesting.

Endings!

Finished third draft today! Yeah. In hand of Katie...Just learned what the insert button could do. Page breaks! Learning curve. Busy month. Grandson graduated from Nova and is heading to Reed in Oregon.

 Here we are! Grandma, Griffin, Dad, Grandpa!

When novel characters turn up in the flesh...

Ran into one of my love interest characters this weekend at his sister's memorial service, 20 years later. Interesting...a horny proposition, but friendly, too.

The Works Gallery 2014

What I do when I'm not working on that last chapter of my novel! Hang paintings...