Thrilled to announce...Diana Gabaldon

When I signed up to host presenters from the upcoming Historical Novels Society conference on my blog, I had no idea I’d be lucky enough to host big hitters like Diana Gabaldon (and see my last post: Anne Perry). It’s so exciting to have her here today!

I was first introduced to her work by author friend Jordan Rosenfeld, who pulled Outlander off her shelf where it lay in a long line of the series, saying, “Here you go; you’ll love this.” And of course I did. I relished every one of those six hundred pages! And was thrilled to see that, coming late to the game, there were a half-dozen books still to devour. I’ll never look at kilts the same way again.

 

Gabaldon’s bio from the HNS website reports that she: “is the author of the award-winning, best-selling Outlander novels, described by Salon as “the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting ‘Scrooge McDuck comics.” Outlander began in 1991 and has continued through several more bestselling novels, with twenty million copies in print worldwide. Diana has also written a sub-series featuring Lord John Grey. Diana emcee’d the fabulous “Late Night Sex Scene Readings” at the San Diego conference in 2011, and will be reprising this scandalous event again in St. Petersburg this year.”

(I saw those Sex Scene Readings in 2011 and they were very fun!)

Without any further ado, here are Gabaldon’s fantastic, funny answers to questions created by megamind author Vanitha Sankaran, head board member of the HNS conference. Wait, no, a little more ado: I was told I could pick and choose out of the answers, but I think they’re all wonderful and thus I include them en masse.

What got you first interested in historical fiction? 
I wasn’t any more interested in historical fiction than in any other kind; I just thought a historical novel might be the easiest thing for me to write for practice, since I was a research professor, and did know my way around a library. It seemed slightly easier to look things up than to make them up…and, I figured, if I turned out to have no imagination, I could steal things from the historical record.



How do you find the people and topics of your books?
They just sort of show up. I think it’s probably better if I don’t try to figure out where they’re coming from.

Do you follow a specific writing and/or research process? 
What, like the Palmer Method? (g) I imagine everyone’s got some routines that are specific to them, but on the whole, both writing and research are pretty organic. Personally, I do the writing and the research concurrently, because I find they feed off and reinforce each other. I have a rough sort of work schedule, but it’s flexible. I mostly write late at night, between midnight and 4 a.m.—much less intrusion and psychic noise.

For you, what is the line between fiction and fact? 
Er…are you implying that there are people who don’t know the difference? (g) Fiction is stuff I make up, and facts are…you know…facts. (Though I notice with interest that one source gives two definitions of “fact”: 1. A thing that is indisputably the case. 
1. 2. Information used as evidence or as part of a report or news article. 
I think that’s an interesting distinction, don’t you?)

  

Do you have an anecdote about a reading or fan interaction you'd like to share? 
Well, I have had no fewer than three young ladies come up to me at book-signings, turn around and lower their pants enough for me to see that they had “Da mi basia mille” (“Give me a thousand kisses.” It’s a quote from Catullus, used in one of my books) tattooed on their rumpuses. As my husband remarked, “It’s not everybody who can say, “Kiss my ass” in classical Latin.” 

Where do you feel historical fiction is headed as a genre? 
Frankly, I don’t worry about such things. 

Is there an era/area that is your favorite to write about? How about to read? 
The eighteenth century is one of my favorites, because it’s sufficiently near to our time that there’s a great deal of primary source material still available, and it’s reasonably accessible (in terms both of language and printing)—and at the same time, it was a huge period of intellectual, scientific and political upheaval and ferment. As for reading, I’ll read anything, as long as it’s well written. 

What are your favorite reads? Favorite movies? Dominating influences? 
I read so much of everything, it’s hard for any one influence to be truly dominant. Still, there are five writers whom I’d acknowledge as what you might call literary role models: Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, John D. MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, and P.G. Wodehouse. 

Is there a writer, living or deceased, you would like to meet? 
I do meet them, in the pages of their books. Writers really can’t hide, you know; everything they are is right there on the page.

  

What book was the most fun for you to write? 
 It’s always the one I’m presently working on, because that’s the one I don’t yet know everything about. (g)

Can you tell us about your latest publication? 
Well, the eighth Big OUTLANDER novel is coming right up, later this year. That’s WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART’S BLOOD, set in 1778 (and in the 1980’s), in Colonial America (and Scotland…maybe a little bit in the Caribbean, I haven’t decided yet), and featuring All Kinds of Things, some of which are guaranteed to make the readership scream and hop up and down like peas on a hot shovel, and others that will make them melt into little puddles of goo. The most important thing is probably that THIS IS NOT THE LAST BOOK. (I’m pretty sure the ninth one is the final one.) 

Do you have a most interesting question or crazy anecdote related to your writing you would like to share?
Fortunately, my books seem to attract fairly benign nuts. I think this is probably because anyone who’s truly crazy doesn’t have a long enough attention span to read one. 

* 

Benign nuts, indeed. I think I qualify! Thanks so much, Diana, for taking the time to share your insights into your writing and thinking process



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Delighted to announce...Anne Perry!

Anne Perry is an internationally-known and bestselling
writer (since 1970! Thirty years of book publishing. We all could want a career like that). She’s also Guest of Honor at the Historical Novels Society conference coming up next month in St. Petersburg, Florida. Perry’s website says, “None of her books has ever been out of print, and they have received critical acclaim and huge popular success: over 26 million books are in print world-wide.”


She has been writing the well-known Victorian crime/mystery series about detective Thomas Pitt and his aristocratic wife Charlotte since 1979, and in 1990 started a new series set about 35 years earlier, with private detective William Monk and sidekick nurse Hester Latterly. She’s still publishing more new creations focused on WWI as well as her most recent novel, a stand-alone, titled The Sheen on the Silk,

set in the exotic and dangerous world of the Byzantine Empire. She lives in Scotland.

As part of building up buzz for the conference, each day in May a different panelist will be featured on a different blog, a wonderful engineering feat organized by author Vanitha Sankaran. I’ll be featuring four authors on each of the upcoming Fridays in May, and I’m delighted that today’s author is such a behemoth of mystery writing. Vanitha wrote the questions, solicited the answers, and gave each of us bloggers free range to cull what to use, and how to illustrate it. Since Perry has literally dozens of books out—I counted 78 but may be incorrect—I have decided to festoon this post with as many book jackets as I can manage.

Now without further ado, here’s a brief Q&A;

How do you find the people and topics of your books?
In present-day news.*

Do you follow a specific writing and/or research process?
Yes, when I've got the topic, I think of the main character (i.e. Pitt or Monk) and what story will carry that theme. Then, I research what is necessary to make sure that story would work. Then I outline the story chapter by chapter then do the final research for the details.

For you, what is the line between fiction and fact?
Fact is what did happen, fiction is what could happen.

Do you have an anecdote about a reading or fan interaction you'd like to share?
Not a specific anecdote, but the thing that's most important to me is when someone says reading something I have written has helped them through a hard, tough patch.

Is there an era/area that is your favorite to write about? How about to read?
One I'd love to write about is the French revolution.

What are your favorite reads? Favorite movies? Dominating influences?
Favourite reads are present-day American mysteries, just for pleasure. Movies: A Good Woman (Oscar Wilde) with Helen Hunt. Intouchables (a superb French film). I think poetry and GK Chesterton in particular.

Is there a writer, living or deceased, you would like to meet?
GK Chesterton! I think sometimes it is better not to meet your idols for fear of they don't like you.

What book was the most fun for you to write? The Sheen on the Silk, because I loved letting rip with Zoe.

A few comments from me:
1. She’s an outliner! I guess for mystery writers it’s absolutely necessary, but I’m still excited to read this since I’m such an outlining advocate.
2. I noticed that without a hitch she changed the Americanized “favorite” to “favourite!” Good thing the questions didn’t involve any lorries, lifts, chips or flats.
3. How awesome would a French Revolution novel from her be?!

 * I found her answer that she found her book topics in present-day news fascinating, because Perry’s life itself has been splashed across headlines. Born as Juliet Hulme, she and her best friend murdered the friend’s mother when they were teens, in 1954. Kate Winslet plays Hulme in the film Heavenly Creatures. After serving a prison sentence, Hulme changed her name and began writing fiction. Her appearance at the conference falls on the anniversary of the crime, June 22, 59 years later.

Perry will be speaking at the dinner on June 21 as guest of honor, and then at 9:30 a.m. on the 22nd she’ll be a panelist speaking about “Writing the historical fiction mystery” along with my bestie Susan Spann, Annamaria Alfieri (who I’ll be hosting here on the blog May 31), Frederick Ramsay and Judith Rock. I can’t wait for this session!

Many thanks to Anne Perry for participating in the Historical Novels Society blogathon!

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Very illustrious guest bloggers coming: watch this space!

I'm delighted to be hosting four historical novelists over four Fridays in May. We're building up excitement over the upcoming Historical Novels Society conference next month in St. Petersburg, Florida. Giving you a little taste of what discussions and panels could be like at the conference, my four guest bloggers will be answering questions about writing historical fiction, their favorite of their own novels, and more.

Here are some hints as to who my guests will be:

1. Three words: Thomas and Charlotte
2. Jamie in a kilt
3. A young girl who kills herself in a Spanish convent
4. Blogger and novelist focused on 16th-century France

(answers below)

I attended the Historical Novels Society conference in 2011 (every other year it takes place in the U.S., alternating yearly with England). I reveled in the company of all the other people who prefer to read--and in many cases write--books set in the past. It was a chance to geek out with other history nerds!

When I went, I didn't know a soul, but girded my loins to be friendly and meet people. Many of the events can be solitary, like watching panels and readings, but at the mealtimes I enjoyed getting to meet new people and hear which eras are their favorite. I heard someone say at the last conference, "I'm used to introducing myself by saying I write historical fiction; here I have to specify which era!"

So the answers to the hints are:

1. ANNE PERRY
2. DIANA GABALDON
3. ANNAMARIA ALFIERI
4. JULIANNE DOUGLAS

I am hosting these amazing writers and I couldn't be more excited! Check back here on May 10 when Anne Perry will be my guest. Anne Perry, people! This international best-selling author is guest of honor at the conference.


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Alluring daguerreotypes

A few months ago I blogged here about the experience of finding men in daguerreotypes who got the heart racing--"Having Crushes on Victorians," I called it.

I just learned I'm not the only one who enjoys the hot gaze leveling out from sepia. Here's a link to My Daguerreotype Boyfriend.

Enjoy! And don't forget to step into that time machine when its doors open and roses are thrust out at you.


Pictured here is Charles Keeler, an early Berkeley poet.



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Finding gold: diorama style

Earlier in the year, I had the opportunity to visit Sutter's Mill, the place where gold was first discovered in California, setting off the Gold Rush and forever changing this once relatively-untouched area.

And forever changing the way of life for the native peoples.

In the wonderful museum near the mill site (it has been lost to the river, but a replica now stands close to the original siting), you can see two human figures in a lifesized diorama: James Marshall bending to pick up the glint in the mill race, and the Native American standing nearby watching. I hope it isn't irreverent to say it, because I do truly deplore the fate of the people who were here first, but the look on the Native American statue's face honestly did look like, "Oh, crap."

The water in the exhibit really did run!

The museum is well worth a visit with some great artifacts and good explanations--and yes, in an exhibit case some (fake, but based on reality) chunks of gold the size of bread boxes. There are buildings scattered among the incredibly beautiful, green grounds: a Chinese apothecary business, a working blacksmith's forge (more on that in another post), a still-in-use Grange Hall, and others.

The most impressive feature is probably the American River itself, a blue so bright it seems fabricated. And oh so bitter cold. Not the thing you'd at all want to stand in all day, panning for gold.



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Penis theft: not again

Yes, penis theft is in the news again, with this article on Yahoo commenting in turn on an article in Pacific Standard magazine.

Penis snatching (or shrinking) makes its way into our news every year or so. It would be hysterically funny, this Freudian fear that someone has snatched your penis, made it invisible, or made it smaller, were it not for the fact that the people accused of doing this nonsensical act are often killed.

Yes, killed.

For the crime of penis theft.

It's considered an act of witchcraft...and it dates all the way back to medieval Europe. The Malleus Maleficarum, the famous witchhunting Bible, has several passages about witches stealing men's penises, including one in which a multitude of snatched penises are stored in a bird's nest. Whenever I hear about these modern-day reports, I blog about them, so here are some archival posts if you are interested:

 http://erikamailman.blogspot.com/2009/10/ive-blogged-before-about-passage-in.html
 http://erikamailman.blogspot.com/2008/05/more-things-change-more-they-stay-same.html
http://erikamailman.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html

These posts date, in order, from October 2009, May 2008, and April 2009.




The image is from the 1489 edition of De Lamiis, a book about witchcraft. It shows witches calling down the rain.

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National Keep Your Chin Up Day for Writers: second annual!

A year ago, I established (in my own mind, and on this blog) March 19 as National Keep Your Chin Up Day for Writers. I was responding to a friend who was exhibiting despair on Facebook about his writing career after decades of trying. The original post is here.

A year later, that guy has spent serious amounts of time with a Hollywood actor who is working on producing a film based on his novel. He doesn't need the pep talk anymore!

But many people do. Writing is the most serious "spec work" there is. We can spend years on a single novel, with not a bit of encouragement other than our own sincere belief that it can find an audience. Our work is often lonesome, unless if we have the focus and poor hearing to work in cafes and other public spaces. We're driven to write, and we hope that when we reach "The End," a literary agent will be eager to represent the work, an editor will fall in love with it, and it will see its way into print.

It's difficult to get published these days, as countless mournful forums on the internet testify. It used to be hard, and the gatekeeping was stringent. But these days the hatches have been battened down and fewer books find publishers. It's the economy. It's the book industry.

But we have to keep our chins up. We never know when good news is coming. And if it makes anyone reading this feel better, out of all my published acquaintances--from undergrad to grad school to writing workshops and retreats--only one has had an effortless path. (Hint: his book was about kites and jogging just a little bit faster.) I know dozens of people who hit the bottom of despair's tank...but their feet found purchase at the bottom and let them drift back up to the surface. We can't give up when our feet are itching to shove against that dank interior and rocket us to air, to gusty inhales.

Chins up. Believe in yourself, in your craft. If you are genuine in your search to improve your writing and tell a compelling tale, then publication will come. It may not be for this novel. It may not be for #2 or even #3. But devoted workmanship and a steady diet of reading others' quality work will yield results. For everyone who is craving publication today, acknowledge the desire and reassure yourself that you are doing everything possible to make that happen, by:
A. Sitting in the chair, eking out sentences until the book is done
B. Spending serious time and thought in revising--not just rearranging sentences and fixing commas, but truly re-evaluating scenes and how characters behave
C. Encapsulating the story in an elegant paragraph you embed in the query letter
D. Researching the correct literary agents to send it to

"Yes" is a word we delight in hearing. We can't hear it with our chins buried in our chests.



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SummerWords...a writers' feast in May/June

I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be a presenter at the SummerWords Writing Colloqium, where T.C. Boyle (pictured) will be the keynote speaker. There is an impressive roster of writers presenting and teaching at this event, held at the American River College May 30-June 2 in Sacramento, and I hope to see as many of the sessions as I can.

I’ll be teaching a workshop on historical fiction 11:30-12:45 on June 1 

called “Delving into the Past” (come prepared to wrestle an idea into 

submission and build a loose outline for a novel) and later that day 

from 1 to 2 I’ll be giving a Shop Talk where I’ll read a bit of my work 

and discuss it.

A few highlights at SummerWords to look out for:

* “An Evening with T.C. Boyle” on May 31

* The release of Michael Spurgeon’s novel Let the Water Hold Me 

Down (each attendee will be given a copy!) Michael and I both 

attended the same small college in Maine—Colby—and the same 

graduate program at UA Tucson. Now we both live in the greater 

Sacramento area. Uncanny coincidences, and it was wonderful to 

meet with him a few months ago and share anecdotes from these 

shared academic experiences, although we hadn’t known each other 

at the time. I’m a little…cough…older than him.

* An incredible, diverse array of poets and novelists and even a 

literary agent! Names that may ring a bell are Anthony Swofford, 

whose book Jarhead I used as a text when teaching Critical Thinking 

at Bay Area community colleges, his wife Christa Parravani whose 

memoir Her was just released this month and is receiving a lot of 

buzz, and Christian Kiefer, whose novel The Infinite Tides has also 

received a lot of attention. I’m excited to meet the other incredible 

sounding writers I see listed on the colloquium’s website.

It sounds like the attention will be on workshops for this sessions, 

so writers should definitely check it out. And for readers, there will 

be shop talks and plenty of opportunities to hear wonderful work.

Tickets are only $95 for four days of “panels, workshops, readings 

and talks with writers and poets of regional and national prestige.”

To learn more and purchase tickets, please visit http://www.arc.

losrios.edu/Programs_of_Study/English/SummerWords_

ARC_Writing_Colloquium.htm

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