Essays and travelogues about Medieval France and Italy, focusing on the legends of Charlemagne as well as an occasional post on anything else that strikes my fancy.
The next three months are going to be busy for me as I will be at three different conferences.
The first chronologically is the Women's Power and Strategy Conference organized by my friend Patricia V. Davis and being held on Saturday, March 24 from 9-5 pm at the San Domenico School in San Anselmo, California. I will be a vendor at this conference that is billed as "a gathering of leaders from diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise who are joining forces to educate and inspire women of all ages to believe and invest in their own talent, skills, and potential.
Speakers include keynote Malissa Feruzzi Shriver, California Arts Council Chair, Founder - Feruzzi Fine Art, Evan Bailyn, Erika Bjune, Christine Bronstein, Nancy Calef, Zoe Fitzgerald Carter, Marisa Churchill, Kaye Cloutman, Deborah Cooper, Verna Dreisbach, Deborah Grabien, Dr. Tamarah McClintock Greenberg, Jeb Harrison, Laura McHale-Holland, Joe Klocek, Dena Kouremetis, Vicki Larson, Linda Lee, Frances Lefkowitz, Monique Lessan, Ivory Madison, Gil Mansergh, Amanda McTigue, Hyla Molander, Kimberly Moore, Justin Oliver, Kim Pipkin, Laurie Berry, Rebecca Rosenberg, Jeannette Sears, Ransom Stephens, Alex Vargas, Niko Volonakis, Jody Weiner, Susanna Solomon, and Mimi Towle.
All registrations of adults at the regular rate of $100 will include a gift registration for a girl. More information and to register for the conference can be found here.
I will be a presenter at my writers club upcoming conference on Saturday, April 28th at the Santa Rosa Junior College in Santa Rosa, California. It is Redwood Writers Next Step Conference where writers are encouraged to take their "next step."
I will be moderating the luncheon panel of four industry experts: Mark Coker founder of Smashwords, Charlotte Cook principal of Adapting Sideways, Joel Friedlander proprietor of Marin Bookworks, and Laurie McLean literary agent with Larsen-Pomada Literary Agents. We will be discussing the rapid changes in the publishing industry in the 21st century and how writers can use those changes to their advantage.
The morning keynote address will be done by the marvelously talented David Corbett.
A description of the talks given by the following presenters can be found here.
Abby Lynn Bogomolny
Catherine Brady
Frances Caballo
Robert Digitale
Verna Dreisbach
Kate Farrell
Jody Gehrman
C.W. Gortner
Deborah Grabien
Suzanne Lang
Rob Loughran
Pete Masterson
Arlene Miller
Kemble Scott
Jeane Slone
Geri Spieler
Lee Stein
A special newsletter created for the conference can be found here.
There is also a banquet the night before the conference with the focus on poetry including the keynote speaker Al Young, California Poet Laureate Emeritus.
And lastly, I will be presenting a paper "Deconstructing Carolingian legends to discover feminine archetypes and symbolism" at the biennial national conference of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology being held in San Francisco from May 11-12. For more information about that conference, please see their website here.
The rules of this award are that the recipient is to list seven things that they love and choose seven other bloggers to honor.
Here are seven things I love:
1. Chocolate. I prefer really good chocolate. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, chocolate covered almonds, chocolate covered strawberries, raspberries with chocolate. Mmmmm.
2. Wine. Especially wine that pairs well with chocolate. I also love big, bold red wines that taste of fruit and not filled with tannins. Zinfandel is my favorite varietal and Fred Scherrer is my favorite winemaker.
3. Sunshine and warm weather. I grew up in Michigan which was cold and overcast most of the year, so I appreciate living in the wine country of Northern California and not having to worry about shoveling snow or wondering about wind chill factors.
4. The ocean. I live about a 45 minute drive from the gorgeous Sonoma Coast. I enjoy watching the waves crash on the shore and am reminded of the transitory nature of human existence. Mother Nature is far more powerful than Man's shelters.
5. Traveling. I love seeing new sites as well as taking friends to see some of my favorite places.
6. History. Pair that with my love of traveling and you have a research based trip to historical sites.
7. Entertaining. I love sharing good food and wine with my friends. Especially if it is food that my husband has created. He has earned quite the reputation for his cooking skills.
Now onto sharing the blog award with others. I will admit that I follow a lot of blogs. When I take the time to read blogs, I will come across links to other blogs that look intriguing and then subscribe to them. Subsequently I have approximately over 100 blogs in my Google reader. They are an eclectic mix of agent and author blogs, writing and marketing blogs, medievalist blogs, and well - miscellaneous blogs - to boot.
I am regularly overwhelmed by the number of unread blog posts waiting for me to read and so I wind up scanning the titles of the blog posts before reading or ruthlessly clicking "mark all as read" in my attempt to streamline the process. I dislike unsubscribing thinking that I will miss out on something really cool.
The bloggers that I have chosen to give this award to are bloggers whose work I admire.
1. One of the first Medievalist blogs I came across was Richard Scott Nokes' Unlocked Wordhoard. He is a professor of Medieval Literature at Troy University in Troy Alabama and his blog serves as a clearinghouse for medievalist blogs with his regular feature Morning Medieval Miscellany which provides links to posts he thinks are worthy of attention.
It is due to his blog that I have discovered many other Medievalist blogs, including
2. Jeff Sypeck's Quid Plura? blog. Jeff wrote the book Becoming Charlemagne: Europe, Baghdad and the Empires of A.D. 800 which I found helpful in my research about the historical Charlemagne for my novel. Jeff's blog also includes helpful links, but his original posts about the nexus of Medievalism and pop culture are quirky and entertaining.
3. Erika Mailman. Erika wrote a wonderful novel The Witch's Trinity set in 16th century Germany focusing on one community's shared hysteria surrounding witch trials. Many of her blog posts deal with the historical aspects of superstition regarding witchcraft (including fabulous woodcuts), but many posts also concern current day persecution of people accused of being witches.
It is not just a horrible nightmare of our past.
4. C.W. Gortner is another historical novelist blogger. Christopher had a recent post "Don't Defame the Dead" where he passionately defended the medium of historical novels against criticism by some historians. I found that post to be thought provoking for me since I had taken some historical methods classes when I was in graduate school. I understand both perspectives, and recognize my own struggles with trying to adhere as closely to historical reality as possible while also having an eye to the needs of storytelling without boring the reader.
His book The Last Queen is about Juana of Castile, the last queen of Spanish blood.
Some late breaking good news for Christopher. His next novel The Confessions of Catherine de Medici is scheduled to be released on May 25, 2010.
5. Lee Lofland's The Graveyard Shift blog covers a wide range of topics related to law enforcement and regularly has guest posts from experts. His blog should be required reading for anyone writing mysteries, using any law enforcement characters or is interested in a career in law enforcement. Lee is a retired police officer/homicide detective, author of the Writer's Digest book Police Procedure and Investigation: A Guide for Writers and is an all around good guy.
Speaking of law enforcement and mysteries...
6. Tess Gerritsen is the New York Times bestselling author of the Jane Rizzoli/Maura Isles series. She writes spine tingling and multi-layered thrillers which resonate with her attentiveness to detail and a knack for taut storytelling. Tess is a warm individual and a generous author willing to "pay it forward" for other writers. Her blog is one aspect of her generosity because she provides insight about what it is like to be a full time author.
I was astonished to read the tone used in an email from a publisher to her when they were hoping she would provide a blurb for a forthcoming book for one of their authors. They seemed ignorant of concepts put forth by Dale Carnegie years ago in trying to win friends and influence people. I hope that most publishers who are seeking blurbs from famous authors would adopt a "pro-choice" attitude and offer options as to how galleys would be submitted to them: paper or PDF. Eliminating printed versions might lower the publisher's printing and postage costs, but it might also prevent their forthcoming books from getting some coveted blurbs which could help boost sales.
It would be well worth the tine and effort for aspiring writers to poke around through Tess' archives to discover other gems about the publishing industry. By the way, her latest book The Keepsake is due out in paperback August 25th!
John takes literary criticism to heart. His analyses of the Harry Potter series is among the best I have read. He looks deeply into the text and recognizes symbols of literary alchemy that I had never known before. I have garnered a new appreciation for the series due to his scholarship.
He has several books exploring many different aspects of the Harry Potter series. One of his most influential books was Looking for God in Harry Potter which rebuts the criticism in some circles that J.K. Rowling's books are promoting witchcraft and are therefore worthy of being banned or burned.
John has now turned his attention to another series to analyze. It is the Twilight series and his blogging on that subject can be found at the Forks High School Professor blog.
Hopefully these links will help my readers discover and enjoy a few of my favorite blogs.
A few weeks ago I saw a guest post by Kamran Pasha on Christopher Gortner's blog. He discussed why he thought his debut novel Mother of the Believers would stir up controversy with Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
After reading Pasha's essay, I knew I had to read the book.
Here is the review I posted on Amazon, Barnes and Noble.com as well as Good Reads. Please note that I do not include any plot spoilers.
Good historical fiction transports readers to a different time and place. Wonderful novels immerse their readership in worlds so realistic that it is disorienting to stop reading and re-enter day-to-day life. Kamran Pasha takes his readers to the seventh century in the Arabian peninsula. It is an uncommon time and place for novels, but one that provides rich dramatic material.
The subtitle accurately describes this as “a novel of the birth of Islam.” Pasha tells his tale through the eyes of Aisha, one of Muhammad’s wives, who had been born into a family of believers. The followers of Muhammad and his faith were still quite small at the beginning of the story, but they were being watched closely by the powerful families in Mecca.
This small band of followers were viewed first as an amusement, later as an annoyance, and finally as a threat by the power elite. There were assassination attempts, plots to isolate and oppress them economically, and later outright declarations of war against the Companions of Muhammad.
Pasha wove a beautiful tale showing the humanity of these historical figures. This novel is designed to be enjoyed by Muslims and non-Muslims alike as the customs of Islam are subtly explained in the text. It is a wonderful story detailing the history and culture of one of the great religions of the world.
In these troubled times, it is important to remember that what unites us is greater than that which divides us.
This is a long overdue review of a novel that I loved.
C.W. Gortner's debut novel The Last Queen will be released in trade paperback on May 5th.
So in trying to help in his book launch, here is my review:
Good historical fiction not only entertains readers by transporting them to another time and place, but also informs.Often you can learn more through fiction than you can through dusty tomes written by historians.
Such is the case in Gortner’s brilliant novel The Last Queen.I was ignorant of the lifestory of Juana of Castile until I read this book, and I wonder why her story isn’t more popular. It is filled with passion, intrigue and betrayal by those who should have supported and defended her.
Juana was the daughter of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, who I knew growing up as the patrons of Christopher Columbus. She was the sister of Catherine of Aragon, the queen of England and first wife to King Henry VIII. She was married to Philip, the Archduke of the Hapsburg Empire and mother to Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor.
And because of deaths in her family, she inherited the title of Queen of Castile.
Her story is well known in Spain and Europe, but is relatively unknown in the United States.Gortner brings to life a woman who history has marginalized as being “mad.” This is Juana’s side of the story and it leads me to think that the official historical record may have been propaganda covering the truth of “Juana la Loca.”
I highly recommend this book.
For those in book clubs who would like to schedule a chat with Christopher, you can contact him via his website. He also has a wonderful blog that I follow.
The Redwood Writers branch of the California Writers Club
I started this post a week ago, but have not had much chance to finish it due to visits from relatives and - ahem - home improvement projects.
On Sunday, December 7th my writers club was fortunate to have Christopher Gortner as our guest speaker. The title of his talk was: "Thirteen Years in the Making: C.W. Gortner's Personal Journey to Publication."
Before the meeting started I was chatting with Christopher and happened to mention an anecdote about one of the members of my club. As he heard her name, Christopher's eyes grew large.
"You know Persia Woolley?"
"Yes." I looked around the room, saw her and said, "and she's here today."
He told me how much he loves her book How to Write and Sell Historical Fiction and how he refers to it frequently during his writing process and that he has bought replacement copies of it over the years.
I beckoned Persia over and made introductions.
Persia Woolley and Christopher Gortner
Christopher is also a fan of her Guinevere trilogy and expressed regret that he did not have his copies with him to be signed.
Persia's books may be classified as out of print, but they continue to have an impact on readers and writers. Hopefully her trilogy will be reprinted for new audiences to discover and she should update the How-to book to incorporate the internet age and how to sift through information found by online searches.
Now onto the meat of Christopher's talk. He loves historical fiction. He loves reading it and writing it.
He has always wanted to be a novelist writing historical fiction, even when the market for the genre was considered to be "dead."
His first agent was from New York City and his first novel about Anne Boleyn made the publishing rounds. During the waiting period of hearing back from publishers, Christopher busied himself by writing another book. This one was on Juana of Castile also known as "Juana la Loca."
After his novel got some glowing rejection letters and the novel The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn by Robin Maxwell was published it was suggested there would not be much interest in the market for another Anne Boleyn book at the time.
Disillusioned with New York, Christopher signed with a different agent, one who was from another part of the country.
She sent his book on Juana of Castile around, but did not have any better luck. The publishers liked his style and his voice, but no one was buying.
At one point she told him that the difficulty might be in his name. Because most buyers of historical fiction are women and it was thought that female book buyers preferred books about women written by women.
She suggested he adopt a pen name like Caryn Gortner. Or Catherine Gortner.
He did not want to do it.
For one thing, he would be hiding behind a persona and for another, how are you supposed to publicize your book if you are a man pretending to be a woman? Dress in drag to signings?
His agent was not amused.
He received one offer for his book on Juana, but there were some matters that needed to be agreed to before any contract could be signed.
The biggest sticking point concerned the ending.
They wanted it to be changed, because they wanted a happy ending.
Juana of Castile is an historical figure with a tragic life story and it is not in any form a Happily Ever After Ending.
Yet that is what this publisher wanted to have happen. They wanted this story to be a category romance with those genre expectations which are antithetical to the historical reality of the person depicted in the story.
His agent was pushing for him to accept the deal and make the changes.
Christopher was torn because he really wanted to be published and he had been through the publishing merry-go-round for several years at this point in time. He consulted a trusted friend and she told him that if he did what the publisher wanted that he would live to regret it.
He would be savaged by the critics for changing history and he might get steered into becoming a category romance author. He prefers writing about complicated historical figures with tragic fates. That is not the formula for category romance success.
Christopher declined to change the ending. His agent then dropped him from her list of clients.
He tried again with a third book, this time about Catherine de Medici. He signed with an agent at the Jean V. Nagar Literary Agency and once again he had a book making the rounds.
Christopher said that each book seemed to take about 2 1/2 years of submissions and received about 45-55 rejections. Many of the rejections described how much they loved his work, but mentioned all the difficulties in the marketplace, including the perception that historical fiction was a dying genre and the tremendous challenges in launching an unknown author in the genre.
During this time, his agent left the agency and wanted to take him with her. There were some contract unraveling that needed to be done, but he chose to stay with her rather than try to have his book "adopted" by another agent.
He decided at one point to chase writing trends and he spent countless hours in a book store studying the market. It was because of that experience that he wrote a short "thriller" set in the Tudor Court and with a male protagonist. Christopher said that he would not recommend anyone trying to follow trends because by the time you finish writing your book and if it makes the publishing rounds and gets picked up, you are talking a couple years from when you did your initial research. By that time, that trend may no longer be in vogue.
The situation with his third agent deteriorated and after a final round of submissions for his Tudor thriller, they parted ways.
For years he had been excited when he talked with his literary friends because he had an agent and his work was "making the rounds." He was anticipating good news. The years of repeated rejection had begun taking its toll on his psyche.
He avoided the literary community, because he did not want to admit he had given up.
He stopped writing for eight months and went through a period of depression, until his partner gave him a swift kick in the backside and instructed him to start writing again.
Christopher decided that his writing deserved an audience and if New York publishers could not find their way to publish his works, then he would himself. He started researching various POD publishers such as iUniverse and AuthorHouse when he met someone who was planning on starting a small publishing house. This guy knew of Christopher's writing reputation and offered to publish a book without charging him any fees.
He chose the short Tudor court thriller as his first test case. The Secret Lion was all set to print and he received a call saying that there was trouble with the cover. His name was giving them fits because of its length.
It was "the name thing" again.
Christopher asked them to try his initials of C.W. and see how it looked.
That worked.
And so, due to cover art considerations, he adopted the pen name of C.W. Gortner.
Using the strength of the internet and his own networking of friends and associates, he wound up selling around six thousand copies of The Secret Liononline.
He followed up that success by self publishing The Last Queen and had sold about a thousand copies of that title within a month when he received a phone call from Jennifer Weltz at the Jean V. Nagar Literary Agency. He had talked with her during the process of leaving the agency to follow his previous agentand she remembered him when she came across his name while looking at The Secret Lion at Amazon.com. She asked about his sales record as well as wanting to see his manuscripts. Christopher sent her everything she requested and signed with her, but he did not allow himself to get his hopes up.
He had been through this dance three times before.
Then in a few months, Jennifer called with good news. She had an offer, but other houses were considering the manuscriptand she wanted to notify them that an offer was on the table. To everyone's surprise, the book ended up going into auction.
In the end, he had a two book deal for six figures with Ballantine.
Huzzah!
Christopher Gortner and Linda McCabe
The Last Queen is a wonderful book. I loved it.
I knew from the book trailer that Juana suffered a tragic fate, but I was unfamiliar with her life story and did not know how it would end.
Christopher has painted a vivid picture of how limits felt by women of the time and the motives of those surrounding her were predicated upon political power.
If you are looking for a Christmas present for someone who loves historical fiction, I heartily recommend C.W. Gortner's The Last Queen.
The topic of his discussion was "Why I will not write today" and dispeled several myths about the writing process and how writers allow impediments to interfere with their writing. He tossed out that question to the room and there were numerous replies from being too tired, too busy, and nothing to write about. One woman, who was a first time attendee of our meetings, said, "Because I'm afraid of writing crap."
I was not running the meeting and so I had to restrain myself from trying to take the reins of the meeting and interjecting my thoughts to her in response.
The first draft is important to get your thoughts down on paper or in your computer screen even if it is crap. I remember Gillian Roberts saying in a keynote address that writers should not worry about "writing it right, you need to write it down." Later you can fix it.
Anne Lamott has said on more than one occasion that she has never writes anything but "shitty first drafts."
Hallie Ephron said at the recent East of Eden Conference that she hates writing, but loves re-writing. Only after the first draft will she have something to work with and to perfect.
I wanted to share those accumulated bits of wisdom I had heard from other writers over the years and reassure this woman that she should not her first draft. She may find that the first words written are indeed crap, but that in the creative process she might also come up with something inspired. The first she needs to do is get it down on paper and she can fix it later.
However, I was not the guest speaker and did not want to interrupt in order to interject a point because when it comes to writing I have many opinions and insights. Unfortunately, after the meeting I did not get the chance after the meeting to schmooze with her convey my thoughts in response to her statement.
It was an enjoyable meeting and I found this statement by Guy Biederman to be profound: "writing is not therapy, but it is therapeutic."
Onto the subject of guest blogging. My friend Erika Mailman will be guest blogging at Lee Lofland's wonderful Graveyard Shift blog on Wednesday, October 8th. His blog normally deals with police procedurals and anything law enforcement related. This time the subject will be expanded to look at historical interrogations in the form of witch trials and the Malleus Maleficarum which Erika used as inspiration for her novel The Witch's Trinity now available in paperback. Here is a direct link to her post which is chilling.
She will be there all day answering questions, so if you have any in regard to the tests used to determine guilt or innocence of those accused of witchcraft, be sure to post it in the comment trail.
Erika has other events associated with the launch of her paperback including other guest blogging stints, public appearances and a radio interview planned for this month. You can find a list of them here.
Now to book trailers. I wanted to share a wonderful book trailer that I saw yesterday that makes me want to read about a woman from history I had not heard about before. She is Juana of Castile also known as Juana la Loca. She was the sister of Catherine of Aragon (Henry the VIII's first wife) and the mother of the Emperor Charles the V. She was the last queen of Spanish blood and is said to have gone mad over love.
The Last Queen has made the Marin Independent Journal's best seller list and the rights have been sold in nine countries.
Christopher Gortner will be our guest speaker in December for my writers club and I am excited to hear him speak. His topic will be his path to publication which took thirteen years, four agents, and included self-publishing a novel that was later republished by a large publisher.
Women such as Mary Ann Evans hid behind the masculine pen name George Eliot in order to be published and now a man has been told he needs to hide his true identity in order to be published.
GAH.
That is why Christopher uses the name C.W. Gortner.
J.K. Rowling had been told that boys prefer male authors and so she was advised to hide her sex behind her initials. As it turns out, I do not think that boys really care if the author is a man or a woman as long as the book is enjoyable.
I feel that women are the same. Write a book that takes me away from my own day-to-day life and I will not care if it was written by a man or a woman.
I feel insulted that such a suggestion was made to an author, especially since we are told time and again that writers must actively promote their books. No writer cannot depend on reviews causing books flying out of the bookstores without working to make sure people know about the book in the first place.
One cannot sit back and depend on the publicity department of a publisher to do that for you.
Nor can you simply hire an independent publicist so they can handle those pesky matters to generate sales while you can devote your time and attention to writing your next book.
Not in today's publishing world.
It is up to the author to push their product.
How is a male author supposed to do that if he has a female pen name?
Guest blogging with a picture of some hot chick might work, but what about when you are scheduled for personal appearances? Do you hire someone to play the part?
And isn't that what made all kinds of people upset with J.T. LeRoy?
I am glad that Christopher has achieved success without having to follow such a suggestion.
:head on desk:
...
Now onto a subject that disturbs me and I find myself continuing to think about days after first reading it.
Gil Mansergh is another one of my writing friends and among his many talents he reviews movies. He views over three hundred movies a year and he found the movie Towelhead so disturbing that he felt compelled to write an open letter to Alan Ball the screenwriter and director.
In part, Gil wrote:
What were you trying to accomplish when you made this film?
Because whatever you intended your message to be, the inclusion of voyeuristically graphic sex scenes between the dad-next-door and the thirteen-year-old girl make your movie into a pedophile's fantasy come true.
Gil then mentions that he is also a "psychological educator who uses movie clips to teach thousands of teachers, psychologists and other licensed mental health professionals in seminars like 'Sex, Trust and Intimacy,' 'Parenting Teens.' And 'Spousal/Partner Abuse.' "
In these seminars. I use carefully selected clips from some quite controversial films (i.e. Larry Clark's "Kids," Alexander Payne's "Election," and Catherine Hardwicke and Nikki Reed's "Thirteen,") to focus on important topics for discussion including sensuality, sexual identification and sexual abuse.
Gil goes on to describe how in this movie a character methodically ingratiates himself with the teenaged girl until she sees herself as his girlfriend and submits to his sexual advances so that force is unnecessary.
Gil's description of those scenes make me ill.
Movies are powerful because they project images that resonate with our subconscious and their influence can last for years.
I do not think that I could stomach watching such a movie. I like Aaron Eckhart as an actor, but I will not subject myself to watching him play the role of sexual predator of a child.
I would not be entertained, I would be sickened.
I trust that Gil's assessment of the film is spot on and shall spare myself from needing to take a long, hot shower after going to the cinema.
I hope that mentioning this on my blog will spare others from seeing a movie whose content you might not be fully aware of beforehand. Consider yourself forewarned.
