Welcome to Thursday Doors! This is a weekly challenge for people who love doors and architecture to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos, drawings, or other images or stories from around the world. If you’d like to join us, simply create your own Thursday Doors post each (or any) week and then share a link to your post in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time). If you like, you can add our badge to your post.
The badge contest ended in a tie, so I will be altering the badge I use here, but you are welcome to use either of the winning badges.
I know I’ve been talking about my writing a lot lately. I’m sorry, but I get excited when a new book is released. Today’s post is also kinda-sorta about writing, but it’s not about Poetic Justice. This is about my work-in-progress (at least I think so).
If you’ve followed me for a while, you know my books are all set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and you know that I like to have photos I can use for a cover and in a trailer and other promotional material. When Faith (our daughter) and I were in Pittsburgh in April, she asked if there were any places I wanted to go for photos. I told her that since I will be going back later this summer that I’d let her decide what places we would visit. I still got plenty of pictures, as you know if you’ve been around here recently.
The book I’m trying to get a handle on is a change for me. It’s a mix of science fiction and thriller—maybe with a bit of mystery thrown in. The main character is a woman many of you have met before, Bessie O’Hara. Bessie was a PhD student at West Virginia University in a short story I wrote last year for the Thursday Doors Writing Challenge. Well, Bessie goes on to complete a Post Doctoral program at nearby (75 miles north) Carnegie Mellon University. That is where the story will be set.
As many you know, research plays a big role in writing, even in writing fiction. One of the first things I had to check out was when Carnegie Tech (as I knew the college when I was a child) became Carnegie Mellon University. This highly regarded university is the direct result of the generosity of two significant Pittsburgh families, the Mellon family and that of Andrew Carnegie. In researching how these two families combined to create one of today’s preeminent educational institutions, I turned to the History page on the Carnegie Mellon University website. In addition to the answer to my question, I stumbled onto this quote:
At one point the richest man in the world, Andrew Carnegie once said, “To die rich is to die disgraced.” He turned his attention to writing, social activism and philanthropy, determined to establish educational opportunities for the general public where few existed.
Andrew Carnegie
I’ll let that stand without adding any social commentary—we’re here for the doors.
Fortunately, Carnegie Tech merged with the Mellon Institute (a science research center) in 1967, so my book (set in the early 1980s) doesn’t have to deal with that transition.
Back to April—Faith wanted to stop in Oakland, the area of Pittsburgh where both the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University are located (the featured photo shows Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning in the background of CMU’s campus), and she wanted to visit a bookstore in the area of the city known as Shadyside which is not far from Oakland. Since we were parked adjacent to CMU’s campus, I asked if we might get some pictures. I am featuring some of those today. I’ll wrap this up by sharing a little more about the process of writing and promotion. Since the portion of my book that will be set at CMU takes place in the early 1980s, it was important for me to get photos that could represent that era. I hate thinking that I can refer to part of my life as an era, but I digress. I tried to focus on the older buildings. Unfortunately, there was a carnival on the main portion of the campus, so I may have to return later to get some photos.
I hope you enjoy the photos, and I hope you have a chance to visit some of the other contributions to the Thursday Doors challenge. We always have a very nice variety of photos from around the world.
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Just a little marketing. Willow and I were guests of Miriam Hurdle yesterday answering a few questions about our new book.
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