Thanksgiving Day, and I am reading proofs of my next book, NEW BOY, a modern retelling of Othello. The proofreading stage is my last chance to make any changes, and is always a little nerve-wracking. Plus I'm tired of the book as I've read it so many times.

This novel is different from my others: nostalgic rather than historical, with a plot given to me by Shakespeare. Why did I choose Othello, and set it on an American school playground in the 1970s? Maybe because of this:

Yep, that's me in the middle row, the anxious girl with the pigtails and glasses, wearing - what? - plaid and stripes together. Yikes!

I had a bit of the minority experience growing up in Washington DC, and I wanted to explore that in a novel. NEW BOY flips my experience to the more common black-boy-in-an-all-white-school. Plus it's Othello we're talking about, so it's tragic, whereas my time at Takoma Elementary was...occasionally tense, but mostly peaceful. Certainly the playground was not strewn with bodies the way the end of a Shakespeare tragedy is!

Soon the proofs will leave my desk and I can relax and go back to research for my next historical novel, set at Winchester Cathedral. For now I leave you with a taste of things to come - a map of old Winchester, embroidered onto a cushion you can find on one of the Cathedral choir seats: