It is long overdue for me to say a few words about the Archives at Truro’s Colchester Historeum.

Located on the second floor of the building the archives is a true treasure-house on the history of Colchester County, and wonderfully run by archivist Nan Harvey. The vast majority of the images that will be presented to the public in the new exhibit installation being prepared by Camus Productions come from that archives.

I’ll be posting another image from the Historeum’s blinds tomorrow, an image that like so many others comes from the Colchester Historical Society’s rich archives.

The image I am posting below forms the bottom half of the cover art on my forthcoming third novel, entitled Crossings (and coming from Cape Breton University Press in the fall of 2015). The top half of the cover is a terrific rendering of Thomas Pichon by Cathy MacLean. The basic information on the image is there to read, but it was obtained for use on the cover of the book through the Granger Historical Picture Archive, New York. All rights reserved. La Rochelle figures in the story as the port from which Thomas sets sail for Louisbourg.

FRANCE: LA ROCHELLE, 1762.
View of the harbor of La Rochelle, France. Copper engraving, 1767, after a painting, 1762, by Joseph Vernet.

For anyone interested in reading Crossings, the third Thomas Pichon Novel, to be released in September 2015, it will be available in four formats. Here are the respective ISBNs.

CROSSINGS, A THOMAS PICHON NOVEL. SYDNEY, NS: CAPE BRETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015.

ISBN Print: 978-1-77206-020-1
ISBN Web pdf: 978-1-77206-021-8
ISBN Epub: 978-1-77206-022-5
ISBN Kindle: 978-1-77206-023-2

A while back I posted a few words of appreciation for Whitney Moran of Nimbus Publishing, the editor of two recent books of history, Louisbourg: Past, Present, Future and Grand Pré, Landscape for the World.

With the upcoming release of my third novel, Crossings (coming from Cape Breton University Press in Fall 2015), it is high time I said something about the woman who has been my fiction editor for the entire Thomas Pichon series. That is Kate Kennedy, whose screen shot is above. Kate is a poet of renown, and also works as an editor for various authors and presses. Her list of clients is impressive. Please check it out at her web site: http://katekennedyeditor.com. It includes Giller winner Joanna Skibsrud, for The Sentimentalists.

I count myself very lucky to have had Kate in my corner for the entirety of Thomas Pichon’s fictional journey. Her observations and suggestions have been invaluable. Along the way I have learned that just because I might initially see and hear scenes play out a certain way, those imaginings may not be the best or most effective ways to bring the story alive. Kate has been so very important to the process of raising the scaffolding for the stories and for making the best use of words in the paragraphs on each floor. When she wonders if there should be more of this and less of that, I take it very seriously. Thanks Kate.

And thanks to Mike Hunter of Cape Breton University Press for engaging Kate Kennedy to work on this series.

Et voilà, c’est la couverture de mon nouveau roman, le troisième dans la série Thomas Pichon. (Or T3 as Mike Hunter of CBU Press and I sometimes call it. T1 and T2 being the first two books in the series.)

Crossings will not be printed and released for another bit, not until September, but the cover — once again wonderful art by Cape Breton’s Cathy MacLean — is set.

I’m delighted that there is a scene of La Rochelle on the cover this time. I love that charming, historical and picturesque seaport.Late in the book there is a scene in La Rochelle, because it’s the embarkation port for Thomas and the comte de Raymond as they set off for Louisbourg.

Here below is an advance peek — available nowhere else in the world at this point — of the copy that will be going into catalogs and web sites to describe my third novel, Crossings. That book is to come into the world in September 2015.

“Thomas Pichon seems forever at a crossroads, often choosing the path of least resistance, or the one most tempting. In this, the third Thomas Pichon novel, his life remains more complicated than he wishes. He encounters highwaymen on a country road, succumbs to a tempting tryst in the spa town of Bath, squanders a new love back in London and begins to long for the higher social station he once enjoyed.

Returning to Paris, Thomas’s work life initially stalls, but a new lover offers help. He is given the best position he has ever had, one that requires him to go overseas. The crossing is a voyage neither he nor anyone aboard will soon forget.”

That copy came from the Cape Breton University Press, but I have to say it sums up the 80,000 words of action pretty well.