Shannon Yarbrough

I have finally decided upon what writing project to pursue for the Spring season.  In May of last year, I was writing what was then called 32 and Counting but is now called Stealing Wishes. I finished it in four months.  It was rejected from the ABNA competition.  I have yet to query it, and so it sits.  In August of last year, I started writing For the Most Part.  I finished it on New Years Eve.  It has currently been queried to several agents.  It’s been weeks since I’ve received a rejection letter.  So besides some crickets chirping, it sits quietly…untouched.  According to suggested timelines, I should wait at least another month and assume that those who have not responded are not going to.

Upon returning from vacation a few weeks ago, I was lost and almost ready to just give up on writing all together.  And so that’s what I did for about a week.  I know I can’t give up writing.  It’s been in my blood since grade school.  I think that just returning from vacation and going back to the stresses of my job pulled me away from it for too long. My routine was once to sit at the computer first thing in the morning for about an hour before work and pound out some pages.  That routine was pretty much lost when J got a new job giving us the opportunity to sleep in thirty minutes longer each morning.  So, now after getting up, letting the dogs out, feeding the dogs, feeding the cats, feeding the fish, and making coffee, I’m left with about fifteen minutes each morning at the computer before J leaves for work and I have to get in the shower.  This past week I spent that time going back to bed and reading.  I plan very soon to commit to getting up earlier so that I can have that valuable writing time again; I’m much more creative first thing in the morning anyway.  That’s how I was able to write TWO books last year.

And so what project am I committing to now?  It’s the Piano Project.  Right now, it’s called The Piano Maker over there on my writing progress ——–>  But I think I might change that to either The Sultana or I even like A Civil Symphony.  I don’t know why.  It just has a nice ring to it.  But after reading Water for Elephants and watching Atonement, I’m hooked on wanting to complete a historical fiction novel.

I’ve been intrigued with the story of the Sultana for many years now and just a few years ago, I started sculpting a story about a soldier who survived the explosion and ended up in a veterans hospital in Memphis.  He falls in love with his young nurse and changes his name so he can be with her so that her family would not know that he was really a Union soldier.  The nurse’s father owns a piano making company where the soldier seeks work.  The factory is eventually left to him after he marries the nurse and her father passes away.  The soldier loves his bride so dearly that he wants to create a special piano to honor their life together.  What he ends up inventing is the world’s first player piano, which he calls The Sultana, after the steamboat that led him to his new life in Memphis.

This Civil War plot line is balanced with a current day story of a piano playing prodigy who is filthy rich.  Despite being in high demand for his talents and being a regular in the social columns of every city newspaper, the piano player spends his time obsessing over building his prize piano collection.  The collection consists of a certain number of player pianos that were built by a small company back during the Civil War age. The pianos are called…you guessed it…The Sultana.  And the collector is set on owning all 52 of these pianos that were built by the piano making soldier.  However, despite the materialistic value of this collection, the pianos also come with a haunting past!

And so that’s where I am.  Spring is here.  April, also the month of my birthday, is right around the corner.  So it’s a great time to dive back into this project and get it done.  I’m already 44,000 words into it, which will need some polishing, but I’m giving myself 4 months!  That’s April, May, June, and July.  This novel has already been two years in the making, so it’s time to bring it to completion.

On April 27, 1865, the steamship Sultana, while overloaded with mostly Union soldiers, exploded and sank in the dark of the night on the flooded Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee. More than 1,800 soldiers lost their lives in this horrific accident.  Some of the soldiers aboard the Sultana were paroled prisoners who had survived the prisons of Andersonville and Cahaba only to perish in the fiery explosion and the cold and muddy waters of the Mississippi River.  More lives were lost on the Sultana than were lost on the Titanic and the Sultana tragedy still stands as America’s worst maritime disaster.