A Tangled Blog

I think my favorite part of this story was seeing Meggie grow into Meg. She did it so naturally--still retained that girlish sweetness while gaining wisdom and maturity. Nothing horrible had to happen to her to make her do it--it just came. I also love seeing her interactions with Shirley and Matt. They are such a loving family. And I like that Polly's marriage happened the way it did. It kept things from being too practically perfect in every way, and was a real sign of the changing times.

We've seen the end of the war in Europe--I'd like to see Meg's thoughts on the end of the war in Japan. I bet it's going to be very bittersweet for someone as gentle as she is. I'd love to see a love story for Matt, and I'm looking forward to getting to know Will Ashton better...what kind of a man he is. We saw him as a boy...has the war changed him at all?

Thank you, Connie/Cathy! I was so nervous writing Polly's marriage; in fact, my original outline just called for her to marry Elliot because of the loneliness of losing Pierre, but by the time I got there in the actual story, I KNEW I needed another reason--and I guess I wanted to show that even "good" girls can make mistakes when they're hurting and all alone.

I've been afraid through all the Meggie stories of making her too sugary sweet. She doesn't have the temper or pride that Anne does to balance her temperament out, so it was a struggle to show her as a real person without giving her artificial character flaws. This has gotten off-topic slightly, but I guess it was originally in response to your comment about her journey toward maturity!

I'm still undecided about how I'm going to handle Meg's reaction to the war's end in Japan. It will obviously affect Matt personally a lot more than Meg herself, but ... well, I'm still working that all out. As for Matt's future, I have what I (quite un-humbly) think is a wonderful storyline planned for him!

One thing I do know I'm going to strive for in the sequel is making Will a very real presence. Unlike Gilbert, who is almost peripheral in the later Anne stories, I want the relationship between Meg and Will to be the main focus, and everything else that happens be the extras.

Meggie is very sweet, but there's still a great deal of substance to her, which makes her a great character. Her flaw, I think, was that she wanted to make everyone happy all the time, like Hawk, to her own detriment.

I can't wait to read about Matt's life. He's a very grounded character, and I appreciate that a great deal.

I like that Will is going to be a visible mate to Meg.

As to Polly, well, that's how life really is. People have gotten married because they had to since the inception of marriage. No one is immune to making mistakes, though in the end she still has her baby.

What will be interesting will be seeing how her marriage pans out.

The thing about Meggie is that her sweetness is sincere, and that makes ALL the difference. It comes from the heart, and so it's real. She responds to unpleasant situations with sweetness, yes--but it's OPTIMISM, and we know why she responds to things that way because we see it in her all through the story.

I, too, really like that Will is going to be more present in their marriage. Since I started writing Brook & River I learned just how hard that is. I look forward to seeing it.

And I wonder if Polly's marriage won't serve as a foil to Meggie's happy one. I'm not sure how I'd like to see that pan out. Polly is so much like Meggie, but with a layer of doubt and confusion over top, and she did rush into that decision with Elliott for the wrong reasons--how will it turn out?

Do you have a title planned for the sequel?

I'm not certain about a title--I'd thought about "The Minister's Wife," but that sounds almost a little too much like a Grace Livingston Hill title, and that's certainly not the idea I want to convey! Titles are the worst part about stories for me; I have a terrible time thinking of ones that don't induce too much eye-rolling.

Adrienne, you picked up EXACTLY what I see as Meg's greatest flaw: her desire to see everyone around her happy. Which sounds like a terribly boring flaw for a literary heroine, but as I know from seeing it in many of my friends, can be a major problem in real life!