Writing Historical Fantasy: Blending historical fiction with fantasy elements

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It has been far too long since I posted an update to my blog. A few months ago I spoke at a writers conference at JFK University and spoke on the challenges of writing historical fiction and fantasy.

The attendees were an enthusiastic group of writers who asked some insightful questions. My presentation was largely built on the handout I gave. I thought perhaps it might be helpful to other writers, so I am posting it here. If other bloggers would like to re-post, please do so. I only ask that you link to this as your source 

Writing Historical Fantasy: Blending historical fiction with fantasy elements

by

Linda C. McCabe, author of Quest of the Warrior Maiden

Differences between the genres of historic fiction, historic fantasy and fantasy novels:

Historic fiction is a story written about a real time and place in our history, with or without real historic figures and events. E.g. Philippa Gregory's novels about Tudor England vs. Erika Mailman's novel The Witch'sTrinity set in a fictional German village but painstakingly describes witch trials of the 16th century.

Historic fantasy is a novel about a real time and place in our history, with or without real historic figures and events along with magic and fantastic creatures. Examples are stories using Arthurian or Carolingian legends.

If a story about King Arthur doesn't use magic, it is historic fiction and not historic fantasy. An example of that is Persia Woolley's Guinevere trilogy.

Fantasy novels without being set in a real place and time in our history are not constrained to use the correct historical elements such as period armor, specific religious practices, etc. Examples are C.S. Lewis' Narnia series, J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, and George R.R. Martin's Westeros. The challenges of writing in this genre is world building where you have to define the history, climates, locales, countries, religious rules, cultural practices, races of magical peoples, etc.

The primary goal of all writing is to create a compelling narrative. Every aspect of your writing should serve that primary goal.

Secondary goals include:

1. Historical accuracy for the time period

2. Devising a dramatic plot and memorable characters

Historical research:

1. Perform general research on the time period of your story before you start the creative writing process. (You can do outlines for your plot, but it would be better learning broad historical constructs before you write chapters worth of unusable text.)

2. Absorb the information. Go to a library and check out as many nonfiction books as you can find on your period. Browse the table of contents and read subjects that you think will be of interest/use. Follow footnotes, read bibliographies and find more titles. If your library doesn't have the new titles, request them through interlibrary loans. Books that are a treasure trove of information should be ones that you purchase for your own reference shelf at home.

3. During the writing process continually ask yourself about the various details in your story and do ad hoc research as necessary. E.g. Recently I have been reading up on Islamic burial practices including washing of the dead.

4. If possible, travel to the places you are writing about. Seek out the sites in your story and see where they are, what remains, and breathe in the locale. Become inspired.

5. Find experts on various aspects of your story who are willing to review passages for accuracy.

Including historical research in your narrative:

1. Remember the primary objective is to create a compelling narrative, and not to impress your readers with neat trivia you've discovered in your research.

2. Avoid data dumps where there are block paragraphs explaining arcane information. That is what nonfiction books are about. Instead weave the historical details into your narrative in descriptions and/or dialogue.

3. Use the details you learned about cultural practices, beliefs, gender roles, food, clothing styles and fabrics, architecture, weapons, technology, medical practices to give a richness to your narrative and to demonstrate how life during that time period is different than it is today.

4. Avoid using modern sensibilities regarding marriage, relationship, gender roles in previous centuries. Unless you are using time travel with modern people being transported back in time and this is to contrast the different mindsets.

5. Do not turn your average nobleman into a religious expert so that you can have exposition about the religious practices during the Middle Ages.

6. Describe the religious practices as how they were performed, but do not explain the theological reasoning behind them. Consider that most laypeople simply followed religious dictates without question.

7. Recognize and avoid including certain historical details from your research will be difficult for readers to follow and/or would derail your narrative. E.g. allowance for the consumption of beaver tails on fast days.

8. Be on the lookout for terms in your manuscript that would be inaccurate for the time period. Eliminate them when found. For example, clocks were not as commonplace as they are today and so you should not use the terms minutes or seconds. Instead use "a few moments later" or phrases to illustrate the amount of time passed. An example from my novel: "I have seen Rodomont use a woman in less time than it takes for a horse to pass water." It not only demonstrates a length of time, it also serves to reveal crudeness of the character who was speaking.

9. Try to create a different linguistic style for the period you are trying to evoke. Avoid slang. Consider using curses and swearing, rather than profanity as used in modern discourse.

Cursing: "May Mandricardo's manhood shrivel to match the size of his brain."

Swearing: "You must do my bidding, or I swear to make good on my promise to castrate you."

Profanity: "Are you a bastard son of a swineherd?"

10. Other details such as foods, flowers, etc. Verify that they were a) indigenous to that locale, b) in season c) have a symbolic meaning which agrees with its contextual usage (that's optional, but it adds an additional layer of meaning and depth to your writing.)

Balancing dramatic needs vs. historical accuracy

1. If there is a conflict between your dramatic needs and being historically accurate, remember your primary goal: create a compelling narrative. Boring your readers is the greatest sin of all. I choose to side with Drama and then include my dramatic choice in the author's notes to inform my readers that it was an informed decision and not one made of ignorance.

2. Bending of the historical record should be done as sparingly as possible and not for trivial items such as including foodstuffs, flora, or fauna that were from the Western hemisphere and not known to Europe in that time frame: potatoes, tomatoes, corn, sunflowers, tobacco.

Fantasy elements in historic fiction:

1. Build on existing mythology such as divination practices of scrying, runes, tea leaves, Tarot cards, etc., rather than simply creating new ones. Also knots to seal magical spells, braiding of hair, etc.

2. Symbolic usages of water, caves, labyrinths, etc., add strength to your narrative. E.g. River Lethe, Spring of Mnemosyne, Cave of Trophonius.

3. Include tension between magical and non-magical people. Are magical people thought of as trustworthy or colluding with Dark Evil Forces?

4. Invoke magic when the laws of physics or nature would otherwise be violated by your plot points, e.g. travelling on horseback a distance of four hundred miles in a single night.

5. Be creative when creating enchanted realms. For example, you can use unnatural lighting, heating, ventilation, etc., without much explanation as long as you specify it is unnatural.


http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2014/05/writing-historical-fantasy-blending.html

Kreativ Blogger Award

I have been overdue in making this announcement, but I was given my first ever blogging award last month. It is the Kreativ Blogger Award and it was given to me by Nicole Krueger of Books and Bards. Nicole has a recent post showing a list of some "lesser-known editing and proof-reading marks"which I found amusing. She also won a "flash fiction" contest that my friend and fellow Redwood Writers club member Ann Wilkes posted on her blog.

Nicole discovered my blog through a post I made regarding my thoughts on the Twilight series.

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 do my best to follow the trades by reading Publisher's Lunch and PW Daily as well as agent blogs, but they cannot provide the same perspective that Tess does on her blog. In particular, she alerted me to the downside of what might be a trend by publishers to cut costs in regard to phasing out printed galleys.

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!



7. And lastly is my friend John Granger's The Hogwarts Professor blog.

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's most recent book is Harry Potter's Bookshelf: The Great Books behind the Hogwarts Adventures.





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.

First Drafts, Guest Blogging, Book Trailers, and a Movie Review

On Sunday my writers club had their monthly meeting and our guest speaker was Guy Biederman.

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.

At one point, he had an agent suggest he adopt a pen name that would make him appear to be a woman. Because it is thought that since women buy most historical novels that they prefer books written by women.

The irony of it all.

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.

Linda

Demon Sex, Mummies, Literary Alchemy and more...

Yes, I am experimenting with catchy titles, but I will cover all those topics in the headline I promise.

First off: Demon Sex.

Erika Mailman updated her blog with a post discussing the sexual demons known as Incubi and Succubi and includes passages from the Malleus Maleficarum.

Her book The Witch's Trinity will be out in paperback in October, so if you have not read it yet - be sure to pre-order a copy today while you are thinking about it. Her novel was a Bram Stoker Award finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Book of Note of 2007.



Tess Gerritsen has a forthcoming novel The Keepsake that deals with murder and mummies. I had the pleasure of talking with Tess at the San Francisco Writers Conference this past February along with my friend Cindy Pavlinac. We chatted about her fascination with Egypt and archaeology as well as the process of mummification.

Tess decided to commission a book trailer to be made for The Keepsake and it is fabulous. Check it out:



She discusses some hidden benefits of book trailers on a guest post at the blog Murderati as well as how she went about commissioning the trailer to be made. Tess mentions that as a consequence of this filming she now has shrunken heads and rubber corpses occupying space in her garage. Hey, she will be all set for Halloween this year.

Onto a forthcoming book from another big time author is Katherine Neville's long awaited sequel to her classic novel The Eight. If you have never read that book first published in 1988, then you are in for a treat.

As described on her website:

Katherine Neville’s groundbreaking novel, The Eight, dazzled audiences more than twenty years ago and set the literary stage for the epic thriller. A quest for a mystical chess service that once belonged to Charlemagne, it spans two centuries and three continents, and intertwines historic and modern plots, archaeological treasure hunts, esoteric riddles, and puzzles encrypted with clues from the ancient past. Now the electrifying global adventure continues, in Neville’s long anticipated sequel: The Fire.

It is more than that, The Eight is a novel about the complex game of chess and she weaves in the historical figures of Charlemagne, Talleyrand, Robespierre, David, Sarat, Napoleon, and Moammar Qaddafi. There are two parallel stories being told. One takes place in the 1970s in New York City and later in Algeria, the other timeline is during the French Revolution. In both time periods, there is a deadly game being played in order to secure the pieces of a chess set that once belonged to Charlemagne. The novel combines murder, chess, Charlemagne, the French Revolution, literary alchemy, and Fibonacci Numbers. I mean, what's not to like?

Katherine has updated her website and it looks all bright and shiny. I am excited to see the list of signings to promote her forthcoming novel The Fire due out in October because she will be coming to my area. I look forward to meeting her and getting a signed copy.

Now to go from the sublime to the absurd.

John Goodman has returned to filming the adaptation of the novel Pope Joan. It took a lawsuit to accomplish this feat. You see, he decided that a supporting role in the movie Speed Racer might be better for his career than playing Pope Sergius in an epic historical move.

Speed Racer.

He chose to be in Speed Racer. Over Pope Joan.

Wow.

Of course hindsight is 20/20 and Speed Racer was a clunker, so I cannot help but think he made a boneheaded choice to back out of a signed contractual agreement to be involved in what turned out to be a lousy movie.

(I am grateful that my father-in-law sacrificed a few hours time to take my son to see Speed Racer because I did not want to suffer in the movie theater like I did a few years ago when I endured having to watch Home on the Range. Things you do for a child or a grandchild.)

Back to discussing Pope Joan the movie. I met Donna Woolfolk Cross, the author of Pope Joan, ten years ago when she was gracious enough to do a benefit book signing for an organization I headed at the time. She told me then that there were plans of a movie being made and she was given the opportunity to adapt her novel into a screenplay and she had just started working on the script. I gave a few suggestions of condensing early events into montages to get to the heart of the story, then I told her to be prepared that it might take longer than she expected. I had previously been interested in writing screenplays and so I had learned a lot about the movie industry and knew that it was a fickle business. I warned her that it could be a long drawn out process, and unfortunately for her, I was right.

I hope that the project is completed before long and that the film lives up to all her expectations.

Speaking of film delays...I am wondering about the status of the movie Love and Virtue. The production company's website has not been updated in a long time, and my Google Alert on the subject does not turn up much new information. I have seen some mention in regard to articles written about various actors associated with the production and it seems as if they had filmed the movie, however, I do not see any specific date as to when it will be released.

I did find an ominous posting on a message board for IMDb which does not seem all that hopeful to see the release of this movie anytime soon. That's a shame, because there are not many movies based on the legends of Charlemagne and even though in my humble opinion I think some of the actors are too old to play the part of specific characters...I still would like the movie be a success if only to spur interest in the epic poems of Orlando Furioso and Orlando Innamorato which inspired the storyline.

There are a few operas based on this luxurious source material and at least one play, but the legends of Charlemagne are woefully underserved in comparison to the legends of King Arthur.

For the record those operas are:

Alcina by Handel
Ariodante by Handel
Orlando Furioso by Vivaldi

and the play is Bradamante by Robert Garnier.

In other news, several of my friends have done interviews recently. Here are some links to those:

Agent Nathan Bransford was interviewed for a podcast by Bleak House as was as retired homicide detective Lee Lofland. Here is a link to Lee's interview.

Jeff Sypeck was interviewed by Julie K. Rose about songs he listened to which inspired his writing the book Becoming Charlemagne. The transcript of the interview is here and a podcast of Julie discussing the interview is here.

Then in somewhat old news, there is the controversy about Random House canceling the publication of the novel The Jewel of Medina. For those interested in reading a sample of the book for yourself, the blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books contacted the author Sherry Jones and has posted the Prologue online.

For those interested in reading a Muslim's perspective on the controversy, here is a post by blogger Mike Ghouse entitled Self-Censoring Muslims in which he responds to an editorial published in the Washington Post on the subject.

And lastly for now...the blog War and Game posted a review of the book The Moral Treatment of Returning Warriors in Early Medieval and Modern Times. I had never heard of this book before, has anyone else read this book?

Go ahead and leave your thoughts about any of these disparate subjects. Hopefully you found something intriguing.

Linda

Medievalism, Writing, Triumph, Love and Loss

I have some miscellaneous items about medievalism and writing that I wanted to share today.

I picked up a copy of Time Magazine this week and laughed when I saw this quote:

"Even the patience of the brothers was being tested by our slow Internet."

-- Father Daniel Van Santvoort, Cistercian monk, on his Welsh monastery's decision to get broadband access.

The image of monks in my mind's eye is one of balding men wearing robes and diligently copying sacred texts with quills and parchment in candlelight or possibly tending gardens and making wine, all the while being subjected to periodic or extended vows of silence.

I did not imagine them surfing the net, sending email or complaining about the slowness of dial-up internet connections. I guess even the habits of monks evolve over time.



Gabriele Campbell has shared pictures of the Regenstein castle in Germany that shows a castle different from traditional stone fortresses because it is partially sculpted from the mountainside. She has two posts on that subject. Post one and Post two.

Her pictures of Regenstein castle remind me of the ruined fortress at Les Baux-de-Provence. I have to continue with my travelogue posts, and my day at Les Baux will be the subject for a future post, but in the meantime here are a few pictures of that site to illustrate my point.



You can see smooth portions of the mountain as well as bricks that are attached in order to achieve the shape of the fortress. Well, what is left of the fortress for it now stands in ruins.





Below we can see why this location was chosen besides having the natural resources of rock. Namely it has a strategic vantage point.




For those who are a part of the medieval blogosphere, you have probably already read Jeff Sypeck's analysis of the military conflict going on in Ossetia between the nations of Georgia and Russia. If you are one of my readers who is not a medievalist, I recommend you take a few minutes to read his post for it puts the current conflict into an historical perspective that spans more than a few centuries and actually goes back to the time of the Romans.

On other news, I discovered the other day that my friend Erika Mailman's book The Witch's Trinity is due to be released in paperback on October 7th, just in time for Halloween.

It is an historical novel that deals with the hysteria surrounding witch trials in Europe and uses the Malleus Maleficarum as inspiration of the various "tests" used to determine guilt or innocence of accused witches.

Erika's blog includes several different posts including woodcuts from that era along with passages from texts as "extras." Here are two that I think are well worth examining:

Precursor to the broom where shapeshifters are in animal forms on a stick while flying through the air and trampling the cross where witchcraft is seen as a reversal of Christian traditions.

And for some unknown reason, the reviews for her hardcover version no longer appear on Amazon.com.

Here is what I had posted before as my review which has somehow been "disappeared" by Amazonmort:

Human nature can be strange. The mentality of a mob for example, shows how brutal people can become when surrounded by others who are filled with passionate anger.

Erika Mailman shows us through the eyes of an elderly woman what it would have been like to live in the Middle Ages when witchcraft was thought to be the cause of any misfortune.

The famine described in this small village of Tierkinddorf, Germany is haunting. It made me feel strange reading the novel while having my lunch. I began to feel guilty knowing that the characters were willing to accuse others of witchcraft just to get a bite to eat.

A scapegoat was needed to place all the blame of the village's misfortune. It was thought that then, all things would revert back to days of plenty. That the famine would end.

The paranoia, the suspicion, the opportunity to point the finger of blame at someone whom you bear a grudge.

An accusation of milk spoiling was enough to damn someone to being burned to death, and you didn't even have to bring forth the spoiled milk as evidence. Your word was enough, if coupled with other such scurrilous complaints, to condemn someone to death.

Given today's sensibilities the thought of public execution is abhorrent. However, it is a gruesome part of our history that drawing and quarterings, beheadings, hangings, and burning at the stake were all done in the village square to serve as a lesson to all.

Beware or it may happen to you.

The Witch's Trinity is a potent tale whose ending surprised me.

I highly recommend it.

You can pre-order a copy here.

Speaking of friends and books...Lee Lofland, author of Police Procedure and Investigation: A Guide for Writers, alerted me to an interview this past week where he was a guest on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation. The subject was about ethics in police interrogations and its genesis was due to the accusation that the intense and/or obsessive scrutiny by the F.B.I. in regards to the Anthrax murders led to the suicide of Dr. Bruce Ivins.

Gus Van Zandt was also on that show and you can listen to that interview here.

Closer to my home, Gil Mansergh reviews the movie Bottle Shock which is a Hollywoodized version of the events in Paris in 1976 when a California wine shocked the wine world when it beat the French wines in a competition. Gil then created a list of movies which includes mentions of wine. He even included the Muppet Movie's mention of a fine Idaho wine.

Another item of local (and national) interest is Sonoma County's own Levi Leipheimer winning a bronze medal in the Summer Olympics in the Men's Cycling Time Trials.

I was unhappy with the organizers of the Tour de France disqualifying the Astana team from participating in this year's tour. They were punishing Astana for the actions of former riders who were caught doping, but by not allowing that team to compete it penalized Levi and Alberto Contador who had just signed with the team and had never been linked to cheating.

Sonoma County will be looking forward to having another grand celebration to welcome Levi home as we did in 2007 when he place third in the Tour de France.

Santa Rosa loves cycling and it shows. We have been a part of the Amgen Tour of California since it started three years ago, and have had the largest crowds of any city in the tour. So we will once again be included in that race and will root for our Favorite Son Levi to win the stage and stand at the winner's podium.


Life in the cosmic sense delivers good news and bad news sometimes close together. So while I am celebrating on behalf of Levi's success in life, I am also honoring the life of someone who passed away recently.

Joan Price is a writer in my community who was a guest speaker for my writers club and brought along her husband Robert to the meeting. He did not say much, but it was evident there was a strong love between them. Joan recently posted notice on her blog of Robert's death from cancer.

They had seven years together as a couple.

It was a love that she waited years for. She had other relationships, but none like the one she had with Robert. In her time of mourning, people are telling her that they envy her for having had such a powerful love relationship because they have never experienced such a thing.

Her reply? It is never too late for love.

She also posted in her comment trail how the gift of poetry can help in such a time of profound loss.

For example, a man I barely knew recited from memory a 12th century poem about love and loss that starts:

Tis a fearful thing
To love
What death can touch.
To love, to hope, to dream,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
Love,
But a holy thing,
To love what death can touch.

I wish everyone the ability to love with their full heart and have that joy unconditionally returned by another. Even if the time with your beloved does not last for your entire life, the love will.

Be well,

Linda

Success in Writing and Publishing: A Mixture of Hard Work, Networking and Luck

I had been asked to write a summary of Kemble Scott's talk for my writers club, and thought I might share those efforts with my blog readers as well. Think of it as revising and extending my remarks from earlier when I posted about him and his book.

Kemble Scott was the guest speaker at the second annual Marin-Redwood Writers Joint Meeting. He is a San Francisco Chronicle Best Selling author of SoMa, a novel about the South of Market Street neighborhood in San Francisco.

Scott is a journalist, an alumnus of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, and has won three Emmys for his work in television news. He moved to San Francisco and wanted to live in an "urban" setting and decided against the tonier neighborhoods with Victorians and instead chose the SoMa neighborhood. He moved there without really knowing about the area's longstanding reputation. Some of the streets there were named after prostitutes from the Gold Rush era when the neighborhood first developed its own distinctive character.

After living in SoMa for awhile, Scott started becoming aware of unorthodox activities surrounding him and some of the dirtier secrets of San Francisco. Due to the sensitive nature of these human interest stories, he decided rather than use his reporting skills -- which might potentially embarrass people -- that he would take the events and situations and fictionalize them.

He also wanted to separate his fiction writing from his journalism writing and adopted the nom de plume Kemble Scott.

He couldn't find a proper venue for his stories, so he created one: the SoMa Literary Review. He was new to the literary scene in San Francisco and decided to take a leap of faith by launching how own online literary magazine and hope it would find an audience. The first issue featured ten of his stories and he used ten different pen names. Word quickly spread about his online literary journal and he soon received submissions from real writers meaning that he no longer had to hide behind multiple personas.

Scott also created the San Francisco Bay Area Literary Arts which sends out email blasts every Friday to publicize literary events and book signings. This effort has helped him generate many contacts within the literary community which came in handy when he sought venues for book signings.

He joined the Sanchez Annex Writers Grotto as well as the San Francisco Writers Workshop where he has connected with many authors such as Erika Mailman, Tamim Ansary, and Khaled Hosseini.

At one point, Scott was approached by an editor and suggested he turn the SoMa Literary Review into a book. He took the man at his word and printed out his favorites and stapled them together and sent it off. However, the editor did not want a collection of short stories, he wanted a novel with an overarching theme that wove those stories together in a compelling narrative. Scott had never written a novel before and it took him a while to figure out how to do it.

By the time he had something to show, the editor was no longer at that publisher. Scott "lucked out" and one of his manuscripts at the house of a trusted reader happened to be spotted by an agent who picked it up, started reading and liked it. The young agent contacted Scott and offered to represent him. Scott thought it was the break he needed. As it turned out, the agent was unable to sell the book and after a year, Scott fired him.

He decided to strike out on his own and identified an editor at Kensington Press who had published several offbeat travel books and thought it might be a good fit. Not only did he send off a manuscript, but he included blurbs from his writing friends and even one from the notorious JT LeRoy. Then Luck played a part. The editor was on vacation at the time SoMa arrived in the slush pile. The editor's assistant read the manuscript and fell in love it. The day the editor returned from vacation, his assistant sprang at him and passionately insisted that he buy this book.

Getting published was one hurdle, but spreading the word about his book was going to be an even greater hurdle since getting reviews for his book would be a difficult proposition. Newspapers have been cutting back on their book reviews and his novel's subject matter deals with kinky sex making it less likely to be reviewed.

One of his neighbors worked for YouTube and suggested he make a video about the book and post it online. Scott decided to make a series of short promos showing some of the locations mentioned in his book. Along with showing the places, he uses suggestive language to reference some of the unusual behavior in those places which are represented in his book. The video clips preceded the publication of his book and his novel appeared on the San Francisco Chronicle's best seller list the first week it was released, and according to Google he was the first author to publicize a novel on YouTube.

His video promos were panned on an online Silicon Valley gossip site named ValleyWag, but they spelled his name right and they included weblinks to help promote his book.

Because SoMa was listed as a best seller by a nationally recognized newspaper, even though it was not a New York Times best seller, his book has been purchased by libraries and has been sold in venues such his local Costco and even airports in Singapore that otherwise would never have carried his book.

Overall Scott's advice is to become part of your local writing community, network with other writers, create your own opportunities when you need to, be persistent and hope for a little luck.

2008 San Francisco Writers Conference

Last year I wrote a post about why anyone should go to a writers conference as well as my experiences having volunteered at the 2007 San Francisco Writers Conference.

I volunteered again this year, and had an even better time than before.

I carpooled down to The City (which is what San Francisco is called by people in the Bay Area - NOT Frisco or San Fran) with my friend Cindy Pavlinac. I have known Cindy for several years and she holds the same position on the board of directors for the Marin branch of the California Writers Club as I do on the Redwood Writers branch.

Cindy and I arrived early Friday morning wanting to hear Kemble Scott speak at the opening session. That was important because we wanted to introduce ourselves to him since he will be our guest speaker at a joint meeting for our two clubs in April. He had been a speaker at Litquake last fall with my friend Erika Mailman talking about their experiences as newly published authors.



His session was great and he gave several anecdotes demonstrating his business savvy. His book is entitled SoMa which is a nickname for the gritty South of Market Street neighborhood of San Francisco. He made Youtube videos of the areas in his novel helping to publicize his book.

One thing he did not plan on was being attacked by a local online critic who hates everyone. At first Scott was taken aback, but then he realized that it was great publicity. People were learning about his new book and it increased sales.

His book has gone on to become a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. Not bad. Not bad at all.

He has many reviews listed on his website, but this one seems the most intriguing to me:

"I read the first page of SoMa and never put it down until I read the last page. Then my housemate took it from me and read it in a day. It flows through your hands like water, yet it shocks, awes, repulses, exposes trade secrets, and illuminates the deep motives for extreme behavior. I know people who are less real than these characters. I laughed out loud. Kemble Scott is one sick bastard."

— Joe Quirk, best-selling author of The Ultimate Rush and Sperm are from Men, Eggs are from Women.

I had a great time meeting and schmoozing with Kemble Scott. I think he's a great guy, even if Joe Quirk thinks he's "one sick bastard" from his novel. It was nice that Scott hung around the conference all three days, and not just there simply for his session and leaving afterward. I even was fortunate enough to go out to dinner with him, Yanina Gotsulsky and Ransom Stephens on Friday night. We had a great time laughing, telling tales, and enjoying each others company.

I haven't read Scott's book yet, but I shall make a point of doing so before his talk at our joint meeting.




At our arrival I ran into Bryce Holt and his brother Kyle. I had met Bryce the previous year and had corresponded with him a few times over the past year. It was nice to see him again and to hear about his progress to publication in the intervening time.

I was surprised when I looked up and saw someone who had been a member of my writers club, but had moved to Oregon. I was happy when I was able to immediately come up with his name. As it turns out it was his first writers conference and being greeted by an old friend at its onset helped set his mind at ease.

Here's a picture of me with J.S. McDaniel as well as the glamorous Yanina Gotsulsky.


On Saturday morning as I was on my way to the first session of the day I crossed paths with J.S. He was on his way downstairs to the lower conference rooms. I asked where he was going, and he told me the name of the session he was planning on attending. I shook my head and said, "No. You need to go hear about Pitchcraft. Trust me." Then I redirected him to attend the session by Katharine Sands of the Sarah Jane Freyman Agency. J.S. had paid to participate in the Speed Dating for Agents on Sunday morning, so I knew he needed to hear what Sands had to say.

He did thank me, by the way.

I knew J.S. from the Redwood Writers meetings, and for some reason he always reminded me of Ransom Stephens. Here's a picture of Ransom and I mugging for the camera.



Yes, Ransom and J.S. are both white guys with black hair, about the same height and around the same age, and are both writers. However, Ransom has a dry, acerbic wit which is far different than J.S.'s style of humor.

I wanted to introduce them to each other because if for no other reason than they are both friends of mine. I had forgotten that both used spirituality in their novels. (Then again, I have only talked with them about their writing and without reading their stories, so I have an excuse for not recognizing that commonality.)

They hit it off with each other and I am hoping they will develop a correspondence and their own friendship.

That leads me to what I feel is most important aspect of the conferences. It is not the workshops, but it is interacting with the people there: the speakers, the organizers, and the attendees. It is in exchanging of ideas and expertise about various aspects of the craft of writing and the business of publishing that allows you to expand your circle of literary friends.

One of the best summaries I have ever read of how best to schmooze with others at a writers conference was written by Beth Proudfoot the past chair of the East of Eden Writers Conference.

She urges everyone to embrace any and all lines at conferences as opportunities to speak with people, exchange business cards, and establish friendships with people who share your interest in writing.

In my volunteer duties I saw myself as a roving ambassador to help answer questions about what to expect at the conference as well as offering tips for blogs, websites, etc.

I worked the Editors Roundtable session on Saturday afternoon. There were about ten editors participating and each sat at their own table with nine seats for participants to ask them questions. Each person had two minutes.

The volunteers had two minute egg timers to enforce the two minute rule.

Two minutes is not a lot of time to pitch your book and have an editor form an informed opinion about your book that you have spent years agonizing over each fine detail. We did not want individuals to try and monopolize time with the editors and cause others at their table to be given the short shrift. Overall, I think it ran pretty smooth.

The volunteers were allowed to choose which table they preferred working at and I picked Ten Speed Press. That is because of my time spent as a bookseller at Barnes and Noble and my being impressed with not only their titles but their organization as a whole. They are one of the largest independent publishers which produces about 150 titles each year. (That tidbit is from their website.)

I was impressed with the writers who pitched to the editor from Ten Speed because I think for the most part, they understood what that house published. The pitches were succinct and well received. I was surprised when Jo Ann Deck actually took sample pages, book proposals, etc., from writers. In the past I have seen most agents or editors refrain from taking anything, but instead handing out their business card to those people whose projects interested them.

She left that night with an armload of information and had made connections with a lot of writers who had promising sounding books.

And they did it in under two minutes. Incredible.

I was given another task which was to serve as a greeter at breakfast. Basically I was there with another woman to assure that those walking in for the coffee and pastries were paid conference attendees and not just people staying at the hotel who wandered downstairs and thought, "hey, free food!"

We greeted the bleary-eyed writers who were in desperate need of caffeine. I tried reading the badges for the home towns of the attendees as they walked by and saw that they were from all over the country. I remember seeing Florida, Virginia, New York, Nevada, Michigan and Hawaii. The one that surprised me the most was Zita Weber, a writer from Australia. She crossed seventeen time zones (!) to attend that conference.

Now that is commitment to your career.

On Sunday morning I not only worked as a breakfast greeter, but I worked the Speed Dating for Agents session. I was stationed outside in the hallway and did my best to answer questions of those who standing in line waiting to go inside.

Here I am trying to calm their jittery nerves.


If you squint you can see the logo for the California Writers Club on my tote bag. Yes, I was a walking advertisement for my writers club.

The one piece of advice that I tried to impart most often was to not immediately launch into a pitch upon sitting down in front of the agent, but instead to take a moment and make eye contact and smile. Make a human connection first before you start talking.

I also warned about complaining about anything, especially about not getting the full amount of time (three minutes) should the person in front of you not get out of the chair when they were supposed to.

You do not want to be perceived as a Client From Hell.

Agents are looking for professionals whose writing excites them and are a pleasure to work with. They do not want temperamental primadonnas.

I had read an agent's blog a year ago where an anecdote was related about two different writers at a Speed Dating session. The first writer grumbled and complained that they only got two and a half minutes and not the full three minutes (meanwhile wasting valuable seconds while whining.) The second writer sat down, cast a knowing glance behind them at their predecessor and then said something like, "wow, that must have been fun."

The agent was so grateful that s/he was far more likely to ask for a partial from the second writer even if it was not a subject s/he is normally interested in. Because the second writer treated him/her as a human being and not a magical gatekeeper lacking feelings.

After the conference I saw a post on Nathan Bransford's blog and contacted Joe Ramelo who mentioned he had attended the conference in his reply. I wrote to him, and as it turns out, Joe was one of many people I spoke with while waiting in line. He felt that I was an "encouraging presence" who dispensed good advice.

Yay. It is nice to know that my objectives were achieved.

One of the high points of the conference was having the opportunity to meet and talk with Tess Gerritsen. She is an amazing author as well as a warm, engaging and witty person. She gave a fabulous key note address on Sunday afternoon in which she talked about the idea of storytelling as an organic process that is difficult to define or predict.

She has given lectures to physicians who want to become novelists and she says that many of them are astounded when for the first time in their life they are not successful. They all want to know the secret. As if there was a mathematical equation which can be described and used to allow them to simply plug variables into an algorithm and get the desired result.

It is not that easy.

She gave as an example two people who might have had the same experience. "Uncle Harry" who when he begins a story causes everyone to yawn and check their watches and "Aunt Maude" who can tell the same story and have people hang on her every word.

It is not necessarily the events that are important, but it is the telling of the tale.

I was also blessed by chatting with Tess on Saturday night about medicine, wine, archaeology, and California along with my friend Cindy Pavlinac. At one point Tess looked at the two of us and remarked with a little surprise about how open we were about expressing our opinions. She now lives in Maine and people there are reserved.

We kind of shrugged at that. Cindy and I are both Midwestern gals who now live in Northern California and we do not hesitate in speaking our minds. It is part of who we are.

Here I am standing next to the lovely and talented Tess Gerritsen. I think she must have leaned down a little, because she is statuesque, whereas I am decidedly not.



I want to thank my good friend Cindy Pavlinac for taking these pictures and allowing me to share them on my blog. (My camera was being used in Yosemite while I was in San Francisco.)

All in all, I had a wonderful time at the San Francisco Writers Conference. It was some of the best weather I have ever experienced in The City, and I got the chance to schmooze with a lot of people.

For those who are interested in hearing any of the sessions from the conference, they are available on CD as well as downloadable MP3 at VW tapes. You can also find sessions from other writers conferences including the famous Maui Writers Conference at the same site.




By the way, after I returned home from the conference I was checking my overstuffed email box. I opened my spam folder and quickly scanned the contents seeing multiple notices for my winning overseas lotteries that I never entered, confidential communiques from people requesting my assistance in transferring large amounts of money from Nigeria, offers to lengthen anatomical body parts that I lack, and advertisements for horribly spelled pharmaceuticals. It was after I hit "delete all messages" that I noticed the letters SFWC in one of the message lines.

Too late. I did not notice the name of the sender and it was gone. Forever.

So if anyone reading this post tried sending me an email after meeting me at conference, and I did not respond to you -- I apologize and request that you write to me again.

Thanks and I hope everyone muse is treating them well!

Linda