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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
If you’re someone who loves historical fiction, you should
consider giving yourself the gift (or asking someone to give it to you! Spring
birthday, anyone?) of attending the Historical Novels Society conference this
June in St. Petersburg, Florida.
What is the conference? A gathering of people who love
historical fiction.
Some of us will be writers, some of us will be readers, some
are literary agents, some are editors with publishing houses. There are
opportunities, if you’re a writer, to learn more about the craft of writing. If
you have a manuscript you’re interested in pitching, you can have a free
meet-up with several well-known agents and editors. If you’re a reader, there
are opportunities galore to hear authors talking about their books, their research,
the golden allure of the past.
I attended my first HNS conference in 2011 in San Diego.
Besides listening in on panels that had so much great information I scribbled
notes all over my conference brochure, I got to meet several people who are
very important to me now.
And that’s the other part of conferences that’s so
attractive: meeting like-minded people who form a community of people who love
the past.
One was Susan Spann, then an unpublished author pitching a
novel: this year, she’ll be coming as an author (and panelist) whose book will be published by
Minotaur the month after the conference. Within two years, she has gotten a
three-book deal and ushered the first of the series through to publication. I
just met with her yesterday and saw the gorgeous galley (prepublication
paperback version) of her novel Claws of the Cat.
I met Susan when we started chatting in the conference
bookstore (that’s another benefit of the conference; you can get your books
autographed by the authors) and then agreed to meet up for dinner. We had a
great time getting to know each other and I was psyched to learn she lived in
the city I was about to move to. She’s now my closest friend here, and we have
loved sharing manuscripts with each other, advice, cheering on, and fellowship.
I’m not claiming you’ll meet a bestie at the conference, but you will for sure
be surrounded by people who love what you love, and if you can strike up a
conversation you might just make a wonderful connection.
I was also excited to have the chance to meet for the first
time with my former Crown editor Heather Lazare. That’s one of the oddball
things about publishing; you often never meet the people who have such an
effect on your life. I had lunch with her and the ever-fabulous Michelle Moran.
I had many great conversations with people throughout the
conference--too many to mention, but I’m excited to see you all again in a few
months!-- and was happy to be in the same ballroom with people who love to
read… and love to read historical fiction in particular.
I’ll be on a panel at HNS this year, “The Witchcraft Window:
Scrying the Past.” If you loved The Heretic’s Daughter, or Daughters
of the Witching Hill, or The Afflicted Girls, or my novel The
Witch’s Trinity, come and hear us authors talk about what drew all of us to this
topic. There are many, many other fantastic panels to choose from. See the
conference website where the schedule is already posted.
Registration is open now and the conference is actually
quite reasonable in price. It’s $350 for the weekend which includes all meals
(and there’s also a few events on Friday too).If you’re a member of HNS, it’s only $325. The guests of honor are
well-known bestselling authors Anne Perry, Steve Berry and C.W. Gortner.
A friend from my former writers' group, Ann Marie Meyers, hosted me and seven other writers at her blog today to talk about striking a balance between writing and social networking. You can read it here.
To supplement what I wrote there, I'd add that in general I always try to do the hard work first, and the easy last. This always backfires when tasks are canceled and procrastinators exult, but in general I like coasting once the hard stuff is done. And for me, writing = hard, and social networking = timeconsuming but easy.
Well, "hard" isn't really the right word. Writing isn't hard for me. I love it. I get carried away with it. What I mean is, it's hard to get into the mental space required to write, whereas social networking requires no such mental preparation.
When it came time for my eldest to go to school, we were
coincidentally also trying to purchase a home, so we spent a lot of time
researching school scores and rejecting houses based on the schools they fed
into.
Both my husband and I grew up in communities so small there
was only one school, so at first we were taken aback to realize there were
choices, and you had to figure out school boundaries, because it would be awful
for your child to be doomed to attend a school that ranked only a four, when
they should be attending a 10.
All that was set on its head for me on Sunday when I went to
a screening of Girl Rising, sponsored by Intel. My dear cousin Karl
Mailman and his wife Lynette, Intel employees, invited me. This film follows
nine girls around the world as they struggle to attend school, a right we take
completely for granted here in the U.S. (and often squander). I’m not talking
about college. I’m talking about elementary school. I’m talking about the
chance to learn one’s numbers and letters.
Did you know in some countries you must pay to attend
school? And it’s not mandatory? A particularly chilling scene in the movie
shows a 7-year-old girl in Haiti’s earthquake aftermath, trying to attend a
tent school in the rubble, and being told by her former teacher that she had to
leave because her parents had not paid.
In between the vignettes showing girls in Peru, Egypt,
Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and other countries, viewers are given statistics about
how much good arises when girls are educated. The facts are compelling. We need
to educate our girls. Here are a few of their facts:
1. There are 33 million fewer girls than boys in primary
school worldwide.” - The UN’s Education First initiative
2. “Girls with eight years of education are four times less
likely to marry as a child.”-UN’s Education First Initiative
3. “Educated mothers are twice as likely to send their
children to school.” -Unicef
The movie isn’t easy to watch. But change can never happen
unless people face unpleasant facts.
Is it fair that a three-year-old must carry heavy buckets of
water every day, most likely destroying her own developing skeletal system, to
cleanse the hands of her healthy, grown male relatives? Should an 11-year-old
(11!) be sold into marriage, and the proceeds used to buy her older brother a
used car? Should a six-year-old be sent to live with strangers to serve as
their slave, called a “bonded laborer” (kamlari)?
Of course, as you watch it is impossible not to think of
children you know at these same ages, picturing them made to do the same
things.
I’m outraged at the fate of lost little girls (and boys)
around the world, and glad to puncture the little bubble I live in. One of the
best things I took away from the movie was the idea that helping just ONE
person means the world. It’s overwhelming to think of changing entire villages
a world away…but we can change lives one at a time and still do good. My eyes
are tearing up as I compose this blog post here at my comfortable local
Starbucks, my belly full of a warm scone and a decaf mocha, with sunshine
flooding the windows, knowing that my child is now safe at school, learning:
learning happily, safely, carelessly.
Please visit www.girlrising.com to find a screening near you
or to donate ($50 can send a girl to school for a year). You are also invited
to host a screening of the film; information to do so is on the site.
Final note: the girl pictured above, "The Phoenix," is Sokha of Cambodia. She was orphaned and lived literally in the dump, each day picking through the trash to find food and goods to trade for food. She's now a star student at a top school, and as you can see a beautiful traditional dancer. No child should ever have to pick through other people's trash while other kids attend school. As the film says, she was literally thrown away herself.
It’s time for my quasi-seasonalrecommended books list. Luckily, I’ve had a spate of happy
reading lately so there are some great books to mention.
1. Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill. I’m
impressed beyond belief with this book and its deep, lengthy, complex look at
one woman’s life. Aminata Diallo is only 11 years old when she’s snatched from
her village in Africa and taken to Sierra Leone to undergo the Middle Passage
to South Carolina. Moving from owner to owner and living through traumatic events,
Aminata’s spirit and luminous grace carry her through. The author’s research
was thorough to the point of Ph.D.hood, I’d think; the list of referenced
nonfiction books in the Author’s Note was years’ worth of reading.
I enjoyed the fruits of that research: learning how indigo
dye is made, what it was like to be a slave at the time of the American
Revolution and all its rhetoric referring to Americans as “slaves” of Britain,
learning about the different languages of Africa and having a Muslim woman as the
protagonist, on and on. Every page is rich with information and a loving look
at this intelligent woman (did I mention the author Lawrence Hill is male and
writes this in the first person? What an accomplishment.)
With such a topic, you’d imagine the book might be too
painful to read. It’s not. Hill has a deft touch so that while you agonize for
the fates that befall Aminata, you continue hoping a good end will come. And
you will cheer when one slender yet unforgettable piece of happiness comes
(back) to her.
I honestly think this book should have received a Pulitzer
or Nobel prize. Maybe both. I’ve never read such a thorough and heartfelt book
about a slave. Hill truly did this fictional woman honor.
2. Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz.
I LOVED this book. Pretty much perfect in every way, just like Mary Poppins.
There are always books you read and enjoy, and then there are books that hit on
topics that already fascinate you and seem tailor-made to you. For me,
Splendors and Glooms was the latter kind of book. With Victorian orphans,a mansion shrouded in snow, a locked tower,
a character named Clara, dark magic, a smart and honest main character,
inklings of romance and more….it was a sheer pleasure from page one to the end.
I first learned of the book in the freebie magazine Book Page that my library
carries; I dogeared the page it appeared on to remind myself, and then hunted
down the book.It’s considered a young
adult book, but I relished it as an adult.
3. Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine
Delors.
The tale of a country noblewoman’s life in the years leading
up to the French Revolution, this book follows her path through an arranged
marriage to a brute, her necessary turn to courtesanship to support herself,
and her imprisonment during the bloodthirsty days of revolution. I won’t give
any plot spoilers, so will silence myself there. One thing I appreciated about
this book is that it didn’t, as many books depicting the Revolution do, gloss
over the fate of the Princesse de Lamballe. The viciousness of the Revolution
almost seems apocryphal; did people really dip their bread in the freeflowing
blood from the guillotine and exultedly eat it? Was the Princess of Lamballe’s
story exaggerated and blown up out of proportion? If not, Paris was a
desperately violent place, and how could you continue to trust your neighbor
even after events calmed? The term “The Terror” best illustrates the era. This
novel is unflinching.
Friends’ Books: I’m lucky to be part of a writing community
and to announce the release of books written by friends.
Quest of the Warrior Maiden by Linda C. McCabe: Based
on the legends of Charlemagne and featuring a strong woman warrior protagonist.
I met Linda years ago at the East of Eden writing conference; we were assigned
to share a room at Asilomar, and a year later we voluntarily shared a room at
the next gathering. We’ve kept in touch over the years and had a strange
friendship involving the repeated loss of keys! Once her husband had to fly
down in a Cessna to bring spare car keys to her. To his credit, he greeted her
with a big kiss. Linda’s book is available through Destrier Books.
A Time to Cast Away Stones by Elise Miller: Elise’s novel is about the
1968 May Revolution in Paris, an event few talk about or know about. I heard
snippets of it years ago in a writers group we both belonged to in San
Francisco. Believe it or not, this group required writers to read their work aloud
for critique; I’ll never forget how much my hands trembled in the beginning
holding up my pages. Elise was confident and continued honing her novel, now
available through Sand Hill Review Press.
Forged in Grace by Jordan Rosenfeld: Jordan’s novel is
about a burn victim who learns she can heal people--but not herself--through
supernatural powers. She also voyages to learn more about the events
surrounding the fire, and the best friend who was there at the time. I met
Jordan and was good friends with her during the time I lived in Gilroy and she
was in nearby Morgan Hill. It was a bummer not to make her recent March 2
launch party, which I blogged about a few weeks ago. I read an early version of
her novel, then called Little Alien, and thought it was great; I know the
version she launched was much different and can’t wait to read it. Her novel is
available through Indie-Visible Ink, a collective she formed with a wonderful
roster of fellow women writers. (What a great name, a play on indivisible!
Surprised it wasn’t already taken.)
Up in the Air by Ann
Marie Meyers. Anne Marie’s book is a children’s picture book. I know Ann
Marie from the same group that Elise Miller belonged to as well. Such a fun
community of writers! Ann Marie is from Trinidad and now lives in Toronto. What
a climate change. Ann Marie invited me to guest blog at her site in a few days;
I’ll provide a link soon. Her book is available from Jolly Fish Press. P.S. I was in error; her book doesn't launch until July. I'll show the jacket jpeg then.
Claws of the Cat by Susan Spann: This is
cheating, because Susan’s book isn’t out yet! But you can preorder it and then
enjoy the best-ever summer beach read. Available through Minotaur, Susan’s
novel is the first installment of a fantastic mystery series featuring a Watson
and Holmesian combination: a samurai warrior (a shinobi, as Ilearned, part of millions of fascinating
facts Susan has hipped me to) and a Portuguese priest, set in medieval Japan.
They’re great partners, because Hiro the shinobi is taciturn and very Japanese,
hiding many secrets, while Father Mateo is a man of the cloth and concerned to
do the right thing, even while violating cultural expectations. I’ve read two
of her books in the series and am waiting expectantly for #3 (clearing
throat)…they are wonderful books and I can’t wait for them to hit the world.
Watch this space for lots of Hiro content as the launch date approaches. I met
Susan at the Historical Novels Society conference in San Diego in 2011. We had
a great time getting to know each other, and I was delighted to learn she lived
near Folsom, a city my family was about to move to (and did). We’ve had many an
impassioned breakfast talking about writing and publishing, many a hushed
evening talking about the same, and a few great walks talking about…you got
it…the same. Susan’s a dear friend and thanks to HNS for getting us together!
(I’ll be blogging soon about the upcoming conference in St. Petersburg, Florida
this June, which both of us will again be attending.)
Before I close, I want to say I saw an amazing documentary
this afternoon, courtesy of my cousin who works at Intel, which sponsored the
film: Girl Rising. It was emotional, stirring, and well worth its own blog
post, which I’ll post in a few days once I get a chance to mull it over and
think how to approach it. (This post on my book picks has been underway for
weeks, a sad commentary on how slowly I create these posts.)
There is a connection between Girl Rising and this post: the
idea that literacy, that reading, can change lives and improve lives. I’m so
grateful that I live a life of words and joyous reading and happy writing. I
wish this was a liberty people worldwide enjoyed.
Good friend Jordan Rosenfeld’s book Forged in Grace launches
tomorrow at Booksmart in Morgan Hill. This novel is about Grace, irreparably
scarred by a burn accident when a teen. Now an adult, she reconnects with the
friend who was with her when it happened, and finally gets closure on their
friendship and the circumstances of that afternoon. It’s psychologically
complex: a great look at female friendships at the age when competition taints
even the closest of relationship, and later at the age when one starts to
assess one’s life and what’s been accomplished.
There are some amazing lyrical passages, and a nice
reflective tone to the whole book. I had the fortune of reading this book in
its early stages, and am so excited it’s out in the world now, much like
tremulous Grace. The cover is a dream come true, eyecatching and aesthetically
compelling! I was reflecting as I wrote this, that the cover must depict
Grace…but then I wondered if maybe it was Marly, Grace’s friend. Or maybe we’re
meant to wonder. Maybe Jordan can come do a guest post and talk about the book
cover decisions.
Booksmart is a fantastic indie bookstore in charming Morgan
Hill, just a short jump south of San Jose. Jordan used to work there so it’s
the perfect place to launch her novel, embraced by the wonderful husband and
wife owner team of Brad and Cinda Jones.
I got to know Jordan when I lived in Gilroy nearby. Many’s
the long, complex talk we’ve had about the writing life and the craft of
writing (she’s also the author of Make a Scene, a fantastic Writer’s
Digest book on how to craft scenes. I always recommend it to my mediabistro
students.) She’s been a fun and thoughtful friend, and I wish her all the best
in her book’s success. If you live in the Bay Area, please attend her launch.
If you don’t, please order her book to come to you.
I originally posted this May 18, 2009. After my last post about the woman burned to death in Papua New Guinea, a commenter asked if there was anything we could do. I remembered this post contained a link to an organization helping children accused of witchcraft, so wanted to bring it up to the landing page again.
From today's CNN wire, the article "Abuse of Child 'Witches' on the Rise, Aid Groups Say"
addresses the horrible plight of children stigmatized by the name
witch. It follows in particular the story of 14-year-old Christian
Eshiett of Nigeria, whose "rambunctious" ways led him to be repeatedly
beaten, and to run away from home as a 12 year old, spending the next
two years on the streets.
The article states:
“Children
accused of witchcraft are often incarcerated in churches for weeks on
end and beaten, starved and tortured in order to extract a confession,”
said Gary Foxcroft, program director of Stepping Stones Nigeria, a
nonprofit that helps alleged witch children in the region.... The states
of Akwa Ibom and Cross River have about 15,000 children branded as
witches, and most of them end up abandoned and abused on the streets, he
said.
Interestingly,
Foxcroft feels the belief in witchcraft should be permitted to remain. I
strongly disagree. As long as anyone believes another person wields
supernatural powers, especially demonically-endowed powers, there is
danger.
This is a very sticky issue for Africa and other parts of
the world: Westerners don't wish to insist that such beliefs are
superstititious or primitive. Medieval Europe found a way to extricate
itself from such egregious beliefs (without the interference of
colonializing forces). I honestly think the key is for economic
conditions to improve. Crime rises when people are desperate--and
accusing someone of witchcraft is a crime.
I don't support the
belief in witchcraft. However, perhaps Foxcroft feels his best bet is to
improve the system from within, allowing the belief to remain while
removing children from its target:
“It is not the
belief in witchcraft that we are concerned about,” Foxcroft said. “We
acknowledge people’s right to hold this belief on the condition that
this does not lead to child abuse.”
What do you think? I welcome comments--is the belief in witchcraft harmful in itself, or a benign belief system?
The
image accompanied the article on CNN, with the caption "Children
branded as witches protest on February 26, 2009, in the southern
Nigerian city of Eket."
How I hate, hate, hate to write this post. It's been a long time since a modern-day witchcraft execution showed up in the news...and this time it was more brutal than usual.
We think of witchcraft as a belief abandoned in the Dark Ages.
It wasn't.
The Associated Press reports today that a woman was attacked by a mob, tortured by being burned with a hot iron, doused in gasoline and set on fire on a pile of tires. Sound familiar? Yes, in two ways. One, the description of the torture sounds exactly like the torture applied centuries ago to medieval people accused of witchcraft. Two, a "witch" was burned atop of tires only about a year ago in Papua New Guinea. Here's the link to my blog post (and another) about that. It seems tire burning is their favored method there. Burning rubber to cover the stench of burning flesh? Perhaps.
Either way, it's horrible and kills me to read. Hundreds watched this woman's suffering and did nothing to stop it. They say it looked like fifty different people "had hands on her" during her time of torture. Imagine being the one small person in the middle of all that anger directed at you?
It is said she was accused of causing the death of a six-year-old child through sorcery. She herself was the mother of two, and it's said her husband was the main attacker against her.
I'm not a praying sort, but tonight my heart and my prayers go to her soul.
David Nicolai, former director of the Pardee Home Museum now living in China, was here visiting this last weekend and I took the opportunity to do some more history tourism with him, just like when he visited about nine months ago.
We now live in Gold Country, so it was a quick jaunt over to Sutter's Mill. Why is this place important? It's where gold was first discovered (well, by the people who cared) in California, setting off the Gold Rush and forever changing the landscape and way of life here. John Sutter had set up a mill simply to create timber...yet one day in the mill race (the water current running the water wheel) a big nugget sat shining and ready for the plucking. It was plucked and the world changed.
Here is David and my husband in front of a replica of the mill. The original was a bit further down the river and fell prey to time (it was understandably abandoned in favor of gold mining) and water deterioration. Here at the wonderful Sutter's Mill State Historic Park, there is a glassed enclosure of several beams from the original mill.
The next picture is my husband being a miner at the American River steps away. Glumly, he found no gold. We couldn't believe how blue and sparkling the water was. It is truly a gorgeous river, but we wouldn't want to stand in its icy waters all day to pan for gold, as the Gold Rushers did.
Often, a few perceptive quotes are all you need to get through your day. Here are a few that have recently arisen in my life.
Alan: My dreams are understaffed. I need five bunnies to drive the tractor, not four.
Student in my class: What would unite our world? Another student: Brainwashing.
And in case you can’t read my teabag, it says “Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” –Unknown.
Please note the Lake Merritt Breakfast Club mug, a gift for presenting to them long ago for the Oakland Hills book. The club is a hugely benevolent group in Oakland, responsible for establishing and maintaining Children's Fairyland and fundraising to reinstate the necklace of lights around Lake Merritt. Club members start each meeting with a rousing rendition of Oh What a Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma...and yes, they meet really early. For breakfast.
What will you be doing on the afternoon of June 22? Will you be in the environs of St. Petersburgh, Florida?
If so, please consider signing up for the Historical Novels Society conference, where I'll be part of a witchcraft panel titled The Witchcraft Window: Scrying the Past. It takes place at 1:30 p.m. on June 22 . . . right after lunch. I don't think I'll be able to eat a thing.
My fellow panelists are Kathleen Kent, Mary Sharratt and Suzy Witten. I'll be discussing some of the choices I made in the writing of The Witch's Trinity, my novel set in medieval Germany about an old woman accused of witchcraft by her own daughter-in-law. And I can't wait to hear what the others have to say. From Salem, Massachusetts, to Pendle, England, and Tierkind, Germany: we all have different settings and approaches to our novels.
This weekend I picked up an old friend at the train station in Sacramento, David Nicolai. He now lives in China and was visiting for a few days before returning back.
I made a point of parking so that I could go inside the train station and wait for him...and I was rewarded by the sight of a vaulted ceiling and what was once a very grand station indeed. It needs some work--and that scaffolding looks like it's been there a while. But I could see past all that to something beautiful that just needs a little rehab work.
There was also a fantastic mural depicting the arrival of the first transcontinental train. I asked David if George Pardee (Oakland mayor and Calfornia governor) would have been in the picture, and he scoffed and said no, far too early. And maybe even too early for Enoch Pardee, George's father and also an Oakland mayor. More on my adventures with David soon.
The Pardee Home in downtown Oakland---home to California governor George C. Pardee and his globetrotting, antiques-collecting wife--is hosting an afternoon tea with the chance to look over Mrs. Pardee's wonderful collection of porcelain. If tea isn't your thing, simply take a tour to see the exhibit.
The home itself is well worth exploring, with intact furnishings from the time of the Pardees (turn of the century collections that the Pardee daughters never changed. The last of the Pardee line died in the 1980s, and the home was then turned into a museum.) "You won't want to miss Miss Helen Pardee's collection of exquisite demitasse cups, teacups and tea pots." www.pardeehome.org.
I'm coming to this late and some of you may have already seen this...
Someone sent a package to the University of Chicago addressed to Henry Walton Jones, Jr. The label is typed and of a vintage style (rectangular, with trimmed edges, limned in black), and the stamps and postmarks are from Egypt. The handwritten zip code doesn't appear to be vintage handwriting (and zip codes wouldn't have existed at the time this package would have been sent to Indy--1917 or so)
Henry Walton Jones, Jr. is of course Indiana Jones, and now the U of C is trying to figure out who sent the package, full of goodies like Abner Ravenwood's dusty diary with narratives like discovery of the Staff of Ra and what the Holy Grail might be made of, and photographs of Marion Ravenwood.
Here's the university's announcement of the wonderful, strange package. The school asks, "If you’re an applicant and sent this to us: Why? How? Did you make it? Why so awesome?"
Long before Thomas the Tank Engine entered my life, I experienced an attraction to the railroad. In high school I had a gorgeous Art Deco poster of a Wagons Lit poster on my wall, and I've always thought longingly of what it would be like to travel in the golden days of rail.
The Sacramento Railroad Museum shows amazing examples of cars, engines, and even....the element I most remember from my first trip a decade ago....the china and flatware used on various trains. An entire dining car is set for a meal with each seat showcasing the place setting of a different line throughout the U.S.
We visited again in December, and the car that is "dressed" for night, with windows blackened and occasional lights flashing, that rocks as if you are underway, was a real thrill for the younger set that accompanied me. In fact, I think we went through that train at least ten times. There's even a fellow (mannequin) sleeping in the lower bunk bed in the last car.
And right outside it, I noted a gorgeous dome lamp hanging from the ceiling: enormous, municipal and simply ravishing. And it turns out it is from the 16th Street station in Oakland, one of three chandeliers that once hung there. The station was damaged in the 1989 earthquake and I believe was recently restored and used in several movies as it is a truly grand example of a light, airy aesthetic station.
Although it's hard to tell in the photo, the lamp's glass looks like mother of pearl, and indeed a plaque at the museum notes that it was created at the Kokomo Opalesescent Glass Company in Indiana in the early 1900s. I love finding Oakland reminders, and this was a lovely one.
It's strange to imagine that a man who so mightily ruled France might be reduced to the blotches on a handkerchief, dipped in his blood post-guillotining, and then stowed in a gourd kept by an Italian family for over 200 years--until it underwent DNA testing recently to be confirmed as his blood.
Accounts of the French Revolution reveal an appallingly blood-thirsty populace. Wow, just typing that made me go to the kitchen to pour a glass of wine. I'm not kidding.
But it's white wine, not red.
The squash was inscribed, "On January 21, Maximilien Bourdaloue dipped his handkerchief in the blood of Louis XVI after his decapitation."
I can't help but imagine the crush of people at the scaffold. How and why did Bourdaloue get close enough to dip his handkerchief? And what do you do afterwards: fold it up and put it in your pocket, or carry it aloft all day long as you sing revolutionary songs, waving it like a flag as its drops fly? Shudder.
I also looked at a Telegraph article which added a little more information, such that the handkerchief itself has long since decomposed and it was the bloodstained interior of the squash that was tested. The bloodstains were a close enough match to the DNA of what is believed to be the mummified head of Louis IV, an ancestor of the Sixteenth's, to call it conclusive.
As I wandered around the exhibit, I found myself suddenly
arrested by a group shot of men. There were maybe five men in the image, and
one of them: well, he stared right out at me and I felt a jolt of recognition.
I don’t think I believe in reincarnation and yet I’m
obsessed by the idea. I love the concept that you might encounter the same
souls again and again in different incarnations. And if there is any truth to
the idea, then for sure I was looking at someone I once knew.
The image isn’t online, but I just now realized there was an
exhibition book that went along with the exhibit. I know what to put on my birthday
wish list! I’d love to see him again…again.
* * * * *
I was reminded of this exhibit recently for a few reasons.
One is that I wrote a gothic novel in which someone looks at a black and white
photograph with a loupe and has a moment somewhat reminiscent of my experience.
The other--and the reason that I actually googled around and
located the website for the 1998 exhibit at the Oakland Museum--is that I found
this guy pictured above. And he gave me a similar sort of jolt--not necessarily
the “I know you” jolt, but the “I would like to know you” jolt.
This is Charles Keeler circa 1895, an early Berkeley poet
and a founding member of the Berkeley Hillside Club. I’ll blog more on this
historic club later.
This photograph seems so contemporary to me, almost like it
was staged to look Victorian. Charles isn’t necessarily my type, but something
about his probing gaze is saying, “Let me set down my cheroot so I may better
address my attentions to you.” I picture him saying all sorts of banal
things but with an undercurrent of “I’m a gonna take your clothes off, layer by
lacy layer, stripping off that shirtwaist and throwing your whalebone corset across
the room.”
Charles: I’ve checked with my husband and timetravel hooking up isn’t
really cheating. I’ll meet you in 1896, okay? New Year’s Day? Right by the oak
tree in the Oakland City Hall plaza?
Novelists earn their keep by imagining themselves into other people’s
circumstances. We professionally emote. We empathize by trade.
Several weeks ago, I was in the middle of drafting a blog post, when I
clicked over to another screen and learned the news about Newton, Connecticut.
I grieved for those parents and those children and those teachers with my
entire body. Not just tears, not just sobs: entire back-breaking heaves that I
only hoped could somehow ease something there, just a bit, somehow. If I took
on one woman’s pain, just one tiny atom of its immense and universe-sized volume,
I hope I helped her.
Their world was altered in mere minutes and they will spend lifetimes trying
to return to the moments before that man entered the schoolyard with his
assault guns. They will never succeed.
My love and my grief to you, town of unspeakable misery.
Poem for Newtown, Connecticut
A dimple that is what they can remember maybe it will be her cowlick or her arm really at the wrong angle
to write correctly, coming down to the paper, not up to it. That report card. She was supposed to improve her sloppy handwriting but they didn’t get around to it yet.
She was wearing spirit wear. Her room is still messy. She had that light husky cough. They talked of keeping her home.
They can’t really remember those who passed, elderly parents and neighbors, without photographs. And so it will be with her.
It will someday be impossible to conjure up exactly how she was.
They will study the worksheets and the papers with their dotted lines inside solid lines like a road, really, an escape route
that showed her how to correctly form her letters. They will scrutinize the drawings: mermaids with wings, fairies with crowns, beetles crawling the margins. They are going to try very, very hard to retain her.
They are going to fail.
She was brevity itself.
She is already unsnatchable from the air, a vapour, a hint of something dear, something so wrenched from their very blood, their breath, the threads of their meat, the throb of their pulse, the water that still
rocks inside them, like they are oceans set askew, tilted.
They will comb the air for her, they will claw the air, they will scry the air for her,
they will look and look and look
and look and look
Now that I’m (slowly) coming out of my sleep deficit for
Nanowrimo, I wanted to post about my inaugural experience with it.
Nanowrimo is short for National Novel Writing Month, and
it’s an initiative invented by Chris Baty, a wacky Berkeley guy. When I interviewed
him for Oakland Magazine, he said, among many witty things, “In every group
of friends, there’s someone who says, ‘Let’s dress up like donkeys and go down
Market Street.’ I’m that guy.” After that, I knew I had to participate in
Nanowrimo myself.
In essence, each November 1, thousands of people around the
world drop everything and try to write a novel—well, at least 50,000 words—by
Nov. 30.
There’s a supportive, cheerful website that fuels the whole
endeavour, www.nanowrimo.org. You sign up for free, and once the month begins,
you are able to update your word count (obsessively, in my case) in a display
next to your name/photo. Your page includes a bar graph showing your progress
and the expected progress, and your statistics show you the date you can expect
to finish if you continue at the same rate. You can add buddies and track their
progress too. You can attend local write-ins, where you meet up with other
nanos and write together; I went to one with a group that wanted to talk rather
than write, but I really liked the concept anyway. At the end of the month, you
cut and paste your novel into a little text box, and within seconds your word
count is verified and you’re announced a “winner.”
If you hit 50K words, that is.
And it’s….really….just not that….easy.
To hit 50K words in 30 days, you must write 1,667 words per
day. That’s about six double-spaced pages. For me, six pages represents not just
a good writing day, but a great writing day. And therefore, during November,
you must have a great writing day every day. That’s hard.
Right away, I felt overwhelmed. By Day One, I was already
behind. By Day Two, I was thousands of words behind. By Day Three, I thought,
“I might not be able to do this.”
My month continued like that. Days where my word count was
abysmal, and then days when I would write hell for leather and almost catch up.
“Almost” being the key word. I kept watching that darn diagonal line in my bar
graph and trying to reach it.
I came up with a few strategies to up my word count:
1. If your sentences are excessively wordy, great! Don’t fix
them. Plenty of time to do that on Draft 2. Just let them stand. Every word
counts in Nanowrimo.
2. Find some kind of gimmick to up the word count. My novel
is set in Ireland so I hit on the idea of including characters from some of the
fantastic Irish ballads. Nancy Spain? Why yes, there she is on page 125, trying
to hawk her ring. The Star of the County Down? That pretty lady appears too.
3. Try writing from another character’s point of view. All
along, my novel was written first person. When I decided to write a few scenes
from another character in third person, suddenly pages came pouring out of me,
and I had a couple of 2K word days. I think those scenes enrich the book and
they’ll stay.
By the last week of Nano, I was exuberant. I knew I could
make it. I had to stay up to midnight to do it (my target bedtime is 9:30, wild
life, right?) and I’m still reeling from that. But it was worth it. It was just
one month out of the year, and I threw myself into a project with a zeal that
has previously only come from doing writing retreats where I was by myself and
someone else fed, sheltered and studio’d me.
Nanowrimo will certainly humble you if you can’t make space
in your life to achieve that “ridiculous” (Chris Baty’s word) word count. A
good friend’s father went into the hospital this November and she had to
suspend her nano writing or I know she would have made it (yes, he’s fine!).
It’s fun, zany, serious, debilitating, exhilarating, all-consuming. Thanks,
Chris Baty, for a fantastic month.
The other day I was looking at a list of donors for a local school’s
funding drive, and on one line by itself was this donor:
Magwitch.
I laughed with delight. I love finding literary jokes hidden
in the real world. Magwitch of course is the character in Great Expectations
who is a secret donor funding Pip’s education, although Pip believes it is Miss
Havisham (sorry for the plot spoiler, but the book is 200 years old!)
I wish I’d thought of it.
Anyone have any literary jokes they’ve come across
over the years?
The Historical Novel Society conference takes place June 21-23 at St. Petersburgh, Florida. I'm excited to report I'll be participating in a panel titled "The Witchcraft Window: Scrying the Past." This panel will talk about witchcraft in fiction, and features Kathleen Kent (The Heretic's Daughter), Mary Sharratt (Daughters of the Witching Hill), Suzy Witten (The Afflicted Girls) and me (The Witch's Trinity).
Each of us has a slightly different take on witchcraft and already via emails we've had some thought-provoking conversations, so I think this will be an interesting panel. Some of us believe in witchcraft; some of us don't. Some of us see it as a feminist issue; some of us don't. Some of us descend from women accused of witchcraft; some of us don't. Come to find out which is witch....er, which!
Kathleen and Suzy's books look at the Salem hysteria, Mary's book is about the Pendle Witch trials in England in 1612, and my book is a fictional account of a woman accused in Germany in the early 1500s.
The link to the conference is here. It's for both readers and writers--and agents and editors will be there too. I attended in 2011 and met fantastic people, one of which is now a very close friend. It's a fun time to get together with people who love history and love reading: a powerful combination.
It' s been amazing how many little bits and drabs of information file in sporadically on the woman known as "Timberline," the Dodge City prostitute whose image adorns the book jacket of my novel Woman of Ill Fame.
When I asked Heyday Books to use her photograph for the book jacket, all I knew about her was what I just typed in the previous paragraph.
Over time, readers have contacted me with different little tidbits to add and/or directed me to other references that source her. That was how I learned her real name was Rose Vastine, and that she had tried to kill herself: both facts that I found shocking. She does not look like a Rose to me! And I was very upset to learn that such a strong-looking woman had succumbed to such despair. I learned that Timberline was her nickname because she was over six feet tall.
Recently someone named David Huerbin contacted me to let me know her full name was Rosanna (again: surprise!) and that her nickname arose because she would ferry whiskey and girls to men living in the mountains above the timberline. That seems more plausible to me. She somehow just doesn't look six foot in her image, and given that people were even less tall in the 1800s than today, I just found the other explanation hard to swallow.
Just like me, this person was intrigued by her image and in fact has created a piece of art based on her. With his permission, I am attaching it here. The letter next to her image is a "suicide letter" he created for her. This piece was showcased in The Basement Gallery in Flagstaff, Arizona in 2002. More later.
I think I first heard this phrase from a buddy in my old writers group, author Kemble Scott.
The A/C Ratio is terribly important for writers. It is a part of everything they do. It's integral to productive work days.
A = Ass. And C=Chair.
It's monumental. It's cataclysmic. One has to actually SIT DOWN to write.
Sure, you can dictate while you breeze through your workout. You can certainly come up with devastatingly clever dialogue while standing talking to someone who is boring you. But at the end of the day, at some point: yes, you must sit.
I love this bit from Stephen Koch's The Modern Library's Writer's Workshop.
And you must sit down and write. It doesn't even really matter if you feel like writing. As Tom Wolfe says, "Sometimes, if things are going badly, I will force myself to write a page in half an hour. I find that can be done. I find that what I write when I force myself is generally just as good as what I write when I'm feeling inspired."....Joyce Carole Oates agrees: "One must be pitiless about this matter of 'mood.' In a sense, the writing will create the mood....I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes...and somehow the activity of writing changes everything."
Let's see if we can all improve our A/C Ratios in the upcoming weeks. I know I'm working on it.
