The first draft of my novel, Xylotheque, is complete!!

It started 2 1/2 years ago as a short story about xylotheques and unintentionally buying a mansion in Ireland. Today, it's a 400+ page coming of age story.

Mattie dropped out of graduate school after marrying a professor and has been trying to figure out what she wants to do ever since. Her husband, John is an Irish Great Famine expert. On a walking tour of Ireland that is both sabbatical and delayed honeymoon, they fall in love with Galway and decide to buy a pied-à-terre so they can come back every summer. At a property auction, they purchase a derelict lunatic asylum with three wings, one of which they decide to convert into a B-and-B, another into a "scholar's dorm," and the third into a museum to house John's famine pot collection. When they take possession of the asylum, they discover a xylotheque in the basement. The process of remodeling and running the various aspects of the asylum and making new friends turns Mattie's life around.

A xylotheque is a wood library: https://www.bookmobile.com/art-book-printing/xylotheque-library-full-books-leaves-no-pages/

You can read the first couple of chapters on my Creative Writer page.

I'd love to know what you think!