But here are three kids walking home from school, knowing that this will soon end forever.  Amish children don’t attend any school after the age of sixteen.  Their birthday arrives, and they walk home for good.  School was only something they did while they were still young.  I think there is a profound sense of anchored-in-harbor tranquility in this photograph.  It is foreign to everything I personally have known.  We have careers, life-long goals, and ambitions in the modern world.  Do you catch yourself wondering what it must be like for these children?

Can you make out what the young fellow is doing as he drives his team?  Right, he’s checking his cell phone.  Isn’t that posture a classic one, in a peculiarly modern way?  That’s what makes Holmes County so interesting to me – the cultural mix is astonishing.  It’s why I will never run out of material for my novels. 

You can read the latest news and reviews on my website: www.plgaus.com.  There is also a schedule of upcoming events.  The seventh Amish-Country Mystery will be published in July this year, and the website has a preview of this novel.  Perhaps I’ll see you at one of my signings or lectures, but in the meantime, I’ll be out in Holmes County, looking for photos like this one.

The barb of an unkind critic sinks deep into an author’s skin, especially when there is evidence that the critic really hasn’t given your work a fair and honest reading.  New writers, get ready, because this sort of thing does happen.  Less traumatic are the critics who clearly have read your work carefully.  Often comments from such reviews serve useful purposes.  Ouch, you say, “I’ll never do that again.”  Or you might say, “OK, that’s fair criticism, so I’ll work to improve that the next time.”

With good luck, as a writer, you keep at it, and you begin to read comments that make your whole day.  It’s one of the most gratifying things in a writer’s life.  But, you soon realize that praise for your work is not as useful as criticism.  It’s fun to get a good review, but really, you tell yourself, you knew that already.  You suspect your editors knew it too.  Praise is wonderful, but it gives you no new levers to push against or insights to guide improvement while you write your next book.

But once in awhile, even if there is some criticism involved, a literary critic will pay you the high compliment of taking your body of work seriously, treating it as literature, and demonstrating that he or she does “get it.”  They have really understood what you were trying to do.  They find and give respect to the deeper things you have written.  They provide a detailed and knowledgeable assessment of what your novels have accomplished.  They get inside the writer’s work and search out the hidden insights. 

Such a review of my novels was written recently by Professor Kyle Schlabach (Goshen College) in the online journal of the Center for Mennonite Writing.  I have linked to this critical review under News and Articles on my website (www.plgaus.com).  Schlabach’s is the type of review and literary critique that writers want to see.  I think it is much better than standard literary criticism, because it aspires to the higher goals of that craft.  Critical or complimentary, such literary critics give high respect to authors.

 Such a field plainly marks this farm as Amish, and this one is typical of those in Holmes County, Ohio.  There is a windmill to pump water, and several outbuildings for hay and livestock.  There is also a Daadihaus for the grandparents.  Then, the roofline sports two chimneys, one at the back for the wood stove in the kitchen, and one in the center, for wood stoves, probably on each floor of the house.  But other things mark this as an Amish farm, too.  First, there are no cars and no wires.  There is no TV antenna and no cable service.  It’s hard to see in this photo, but there are several clotheslines near the house, and on the back side of the house, there is the typical shade porch running the full length of the dwelling.  It is all very plain, old-fashioned, and simple, like an Amish farm should be, but to my way of thinking, wheat fields like this one give Holmes County an exotic flavor, in a curiously old-world sort of way.  I never grow tired of seeing it, but I guess you could have predicted that by the fact that I’ve blogged about it before.  It just seems to me that some scenes are worthy of repetition.

Just inside the main door to the right is where I placed Ellie Troyer-Niell’s front counter, and that window on the first floor at the right corner of the building is where I put Sheriff Bruce Robertson’s large office. Many of my characters (Professor Michael Branden, the sheriff, and Pastor Caleb Troyer) have stood looking out from that window, to think or talk about a case.

The rest of courthouse square is taken up by the sandstone courthouse (off-camera to the left) and the tall civil war monument (off-camera to the right), and I’ll soon post photographs of those, too, so you can see the locations where many of my Millersburg scenes are set. In months to come, I’ll try to post photos of other scenes from my novels.