[This scene occurs in Mr. Bingo’s sixth grade class at the Princess Blue Leaf School for Girls in Dream City.]

As the girls took their seats, Monique asked, “Did you show Mr. Bingo the scrimshaw?”
Erin had written Monique in Paris about the ivory carving that had stuck to Dr. Griffin when he fell in the meteorite hole.

“Not yet,” Erin said.

“I thought you were going to -”
“Sh-h, Let’s talk about it later,” Erin said looking intently at Mr. Bingo as he stood before his class.

Erin hadn’t hushed Monique out of respect for her teacher.  She didn’t want to talk to him – or anybody else about the carving.  The scrimshaw might be valuable or historical, and they would take it away.

She liked the cool smoothness of the ivory and the picture of the girl who looked a little like her. Dr. Griffin had discovered the object and given it to her. When she took it, she knew it wasn’t really hers, or even his. But the ivory had spoken to her somehow, and it felt like hers now. She kept it in the darkness of her pocket and took it with her wherever she went.

Here are the two books I’m currently reading as I write the second book in The Inventors Daughter series.

”The Neddiad: How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization by Daniel Pinkwater.
This one is for sheer fun and to glean something from the wonderful Pinkwater’s direct and hilarious style.
Two Years Before the Mast by Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana.
I’m reading this for the perspective of a sailor. Though my story is set 120 years earlier, this is a superb book about the life of a hand on a sailing vessel.  Re-read this if you have the time.

Six weeks and forty-two pages into the new novel. Working for five weeks on a ten-thousand word outline certainly helps. I hope to avoid the initial plot pratfalls in the first one, which took much longer than to write. And in this second book, I know the characters and the setup very well.

I hope to be done with the draft next summer. We’ll see how that turns out.