The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat

Believe it or not, some Winter 2008 catalogs are already out, so I've updated the HNS forthcoming books page with new novels from Simon & Schuster and Penguin through next May. I also added St. Martin's Press titles through December. Note that Penguin will publish three historicals next January with the word "serpent" in the title - by Suzanne Arruda, Ariana Franklin, and Bernard du Boucheron. Are you tempted?

Useless historical fiction fact du jour: Winter Serpent is the title of two older historical novels, one from Maggie Davis (about the Vikings) and another by Aileen Armitage (about Rasputin).

Looking at my Librarything account, there are an awful lot of historical novels with "serpent" in the title. Now we'll have three more.

Moving along, a few days ago I posted the August issue of Historical Novels Review Online and the ToC for the print HNR's August issue, which should be leaving the printer any day now, if it hasn't already done so.

As of yesterday I'm done with my historical mystery chapter, aside from assigning keywords to the annotations and revising the intro. I'll probably work on historical thrillers next, but with 95-degree temps all this week, I'm finding it hard to get motivated. I'm also awaiting more review books in the mail. The new Lian Hearn, which I hope will be here tomorrow, has my name on it.

Meanwhile, an ARC of Ken Follett's World Without End showed up yesterday, all 960-odd pages of it. It weighs 3 1/4 lbs.

Interview with Jane Kirkpatrick, part 2

For Part 1 of this interview, see yesterday's post.

I wonder if you can talk about the dialogue and speech patterns you created for Emma and the other Bethelites, because they feel very natural for people of their history and background.

Thank you for that! I didn't want to use dialect as I think it can detract from the flow of the story. I decided I'd use a few German words and phrases and focus on sentence structure. Many of those phrases I heard often from my own grandmother and great aunts and uncles. (Gee, you might even be able to see it my structure here!)

I love listening to people and trying to figure out where they came from regionally, and seem to have a good ear for small nuances in speech patterns. There is often a sentence construction unique to a region such as "Throw the horses over the fence some hay." That's a phrase I heard often in my German community. Most of us would say, "Throw the hay over the fence to the horses" or "Go feed the horses," but you can see the difference in word placement. I did use one phrase for the character named Jack where he'd say "I might could do that," something tentative. It was his marker. But when I asked my German linguist friend to read the text, he said I couldn't use that phrase because a German speaker learning English in Missouri wouldn't say that. My stomach dropped! He said only people from Texas, Mississippi, or maybe Arkansas would say "might could." But he told me I could say "Maybe could" so that's what I did.

Oh, and the books are being recorded unabridged, and I was asked if I wanted the reader to use a German accent throughout. I said no, that German is a difficult accent to hear over a long period of time. Unlike French, it tends to make the character harder over time instead of soft and flowing. I didn't want Emma seen that way. What I asked for in a reader was a woman whose voice could convey many emotional states and to use the sentence structure and the few German words in the text to convey that these were German-Americans. The production company hired an actress, and we spoke for an hour or more talking about certain words, phrasing, etc. She's going to be terrific!

In the Q&A at the back of A Clearing in the Wild, you mention that Emma's parents left their own religious tradition to follow Keil, yet their family had a tradition of questioning religious authority, and one of Emma's uncles served as ambassador to France. I admit I was used to thinking (maybe wrongly!) about utopian societies as isolationist and conformist, with minimal connections to the outside world. Could you speak some more about Emma's family background, and the appeal that the Bethel colony may have had for them and others?

I'm with you in thinking these utopian societies wanted to be isolationists. But what I learned in reading the historical context is that the 1700s in Europe were times of great tumult, often related to the suppression of religious freedom and the freedom of expression in general. Religious authorities became entrenched in rules and regulation over the spirit of belief. In the 1800s, many of these people made their way to North America, where they saw the hope of being able to worship without the rigidness of religious rule and without state interference, but they didn't see themselves as being isolated from their neighbors. In fact, Emma's family embraced the communal aspect of giving to the common fund, and everyone drawing from it as needed, as being a foundation of living a Christian life. “Love your neighbor as yourself” being one of the great commands of the New Testament.

We see the Mennonites settling western Canada then, for example. And this is when the Hueterittes, Shakers, Inspirationalists and others formed in the US, the early 1830s. But these groups discovered that there is a delicate balance between isolation and engagement. Faith communities today have similar struggles, really. Most of the communities needed economic interaction with their neighbors to survive. Some of the religious groups sought new recruits from the larger society but others simply wanted to be left to live in peace and support their families.

There is some evidence that Emma's grandfather, father and uncles might have been part of a group in Bavaria who petitioned the emperor about reforms and were banished as a result of this perceived disloyalty and challenge. They didn't see themselves as disloyal people. When they came under attack by their government, they fled. But they were accustomed to being followers, so it seems likely they'd seek another strong leader to follow who kept the faith, so to speak, but who didn't get caught up in rules and regulations. They found this person in George Rapp in Pennsylvania.

But leaders sometimes get taken with themselves! When this happened, Wilhelm Keil was one of the first to resist. When he broke away from George Rapp, Emma’s grandparents followed suit. Her father remained with Keil until the 1870s, but an uncle, the ambassador, did not. Correspondence suggests that the brothers remained close despite having chosen different paths, a sign of religious tolerance and engagement in the larger world through political means. Until Keil seemed to lose some of this egalitarian focus, Emma’s family faithfully followed him.

Do you have a preference for writing about historical as opposed to fictional characters, or do you go with whatever stories inspire you?

Joyce Carol Oates in a lecture I heard said one of the things a good story should do is to be a witness to voices that would otherwise not be heard. I'm drawn to actual historical people, often those whose stories have been overlooked in my mind. Women in particular. Native women, for example. Or in this instance a woman involved in a male-dominated religious community. But certain events also capture me. I'm always wanting to answer, "How did that happen?" or "What was she trying to do that got her there?" and then finally "What does her story have to say to a woman/man/community of today?"

I always loved biographies as a young reader. But while they answered what and when, they never answered why very well for me. Probably the mental health person in me seeking information. Fiction - story - allows that speculation. And from what my readers tell me, they find inspiration and encouragement in the lives of people who actually lived or in authentic fictional characters dealing with a particular historical challenge. It's become my "brand" as they say: Real stories, real people, real hope.

What do you hope readers will take away with them after finishing your novels?

That living in communities of all kinds requires the ability to change, to know when to stand firm and when to be flexible. That life is filled with challenge and uncertainty, and it's a mark of our character how we allow others to help us find new direction in a time of trial. That all of us need to have our voices heard. That grief has many siblings, and loss must be honored and witnessed to or it will hold us hostage. That engagement with community enriches the soul and contributes to the larger world even if all desires of one's heart are never fully met. That doing the best we can for our families without losing ourselves in the process is worthy work that has been going on especially for women for generations.

I once spoke to a group of second graders asking how they'd describe the word "powerful." To me it means being able to set a goal and then gather resources in order to achieve it. I think most of my stories are about how people did that back then, how ordinary people did that and what they have to teach us about doing that today. But the kids said things like "rich" or "strong" was what powerful meant. Then this one boy sitting quietly in the front said "Oh no. Powerful is when you want to quit but you keep going." I hope my readers find within themselves that kind of power through my stories.

Thank you, Jane - this has been fascinating!

To recap, A Clearing in the Wild was published by WaterBrook Press ($13.99, 370pp, 1578567343) in 2006, and A Tendering in the Storm ($13.99, 383pp, 9781578567355) in April 2007. Visit Jane's website at http://www.jkbooks.com/ and her blog, http://www.janekirkpatrick.blogspot.com/, for more information.

Interview with Jane Kirkpatrick, part 1

Jane Kirkpatrick's Change and Cherish Historical Series traces the life of Emma Wagner Giesy, a German-American woman who became one of Oregon's earliest pioneers. Both the Wagners and the Giesys, Emma's parents and in-laws, belonged to the Bethelite colony, a utopian religious group in Bethel, Missouri, whose members believed in simple and communal living.

The first novel, A Clearing in the Wild (named a 2007 WILLA finalist last week), begins in 1851 and sees Emma's marriage to Christian Giesy, a kind man of her father's age who assists Wilhelm Keil, the Bethelites' founder, with the colony's leadership. Then Keil, believing that the outside world is encroaching too much on their lifestyle, decides to send a group of scouts, Christian included, on a mission to found a new settlement in the Pacific Northwest. Strong-willed Emma, who has always chafed against the restrictions against women in their sect, demands to accompany the group.

A Tendering in the Storm begins in 1856 and sees the Giesys settled with their young family along Willapa Bay in Washington State. Conflict arises when Keil arrives at Willapa with a second contingent of Bethelites, insisting that the land they have come to love is inhospitable. While Keil's group moves south to Oregon Territory to found a new colony, called Aurora Mills, the Giesys informally break away from the Bethelites. Then tragedy strikes, leaving a pregnant Emma to raise her family alone -- which makes her vulnerable to bad influences, including her husband's cousin, Jack.

All of the main characters are historical figures; character lists and maps are included. Both novels are lyrical, compelling, and inspiring reads, bringing to life a little-known woman from the mid-19th century who sought balance between her need for independence and her desire for community.

Jane, who like Emma is a native Midwesterner who settled in the Pacific Northwest, is an award-winning author of many historical sagas, mostly based on early women pioneers. A Clearing in the Wild was published by WaterBrook Press ($13.99, 370pp, 1578567343) in 2006, and A Tendering in the Storm ($13.99, 383pp, 9781578567355) in April 2007. Visit Jane's website at http://www.jkbooks.com/ and her blog, http://www.janekirkpatrick.blogspot.com/, for more information.

You mention that you first found Emma's name in a quilting book. With so little information to go on, how did you begin researching her?

I contacted the author of the quilting book to find out where she got some of her information as a place to start. She sent me to the Aurora Colony. But the society was in a huge remodeling project, and it wasn't convenient to have me explore their archives then, so I pursued the Bethel angle. I located articles written about the colony, some in German, that my local librarian helped me get a translation of. I made contacts in Bethel, Missouri, found there was a historical society there as well, and posted on some genealogy sites that I was seeking information. That led me to Willapa Bay in Washington State, where the scouts of which Emma was a part first settled.

Census records were a gold mine. Territorial records gave me more details. At the Washington historical society, I gathered up copies of correspondence from the 1920s between descendants trying to identify all the scouts of this colony. Emma wasn't even included in the discussion! Well, that just encouraged me to go deeper, as she'd been overlooked in my mind. A passing comment to a photographic archivist at the state historical society introduced me to a specialist in communal studies who happened to live in the community Emma eventually moved to, the one with the remodeling project. He got me into the archives. The society ran an article about my interest, descendants contacted me, and from there... the rest is history, as we say.

Did you find the research process for this series any more challenging than for your other novels, given that the Bethelites were a German-speaking community?

Because the community lasted for more than twenty years and were the only communal society to really survive that long in the West, there were several non-fiction books that included sections about them. Some of these were written in German but had been translated into English already. When I located some descendants, I learned that they had many letters, in German, that they'd slowly been translating. There was a great day when we had a huge dining room table of some of the translated letters lying around. I happened to pick one up, read it and discover it was signed by Emma herself! Her great-nephew hadn't realized he had that letter... he'd been looking for letters from his great-grandfather. But overall, their German-speaking was less of an issue than researching my Tender Ties series based on the life of Marie Dorion, a Native American woman! Now that research had its challenges!

I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Christmastime at the Wagners' home in the beginning of the first book. Where did you learn about these and other German-American traditions?

A book written in the late 1800s, in English, about several colonies included some of these tidbits. Another descendant wrote about the Bethel Colony as recent as the 1990s included a few more. I was fascinated that they celebrated Christmas so early in the morning or that they etched eggs with great beauty for Easter or other occasions such as births! And because their musical instruments were so unusual, the state historical society had done an article some years back about those. There were actual letters from the leader, too, that identified some of the traditions. Websites about German-speaking people offered up clues. I had German friends who own a B&B and taught me about German dishes and traditions.

My own heritage is German-American, and when I read about women recording their daily activities in those little almanacs "Bessie had her calf today" or "Rained four inches. Rivers flooding" I remembered my aunt doing that when I was a child. It's how the women kept their stories and often those almanacs of treasured data are not kept when a woman dies the way a journal might be. But for many busy women, those were her journals.

What made you decide to write this series in the first person, with Emma as principal narrator?

My own need for variety, I think in part. I'd done my last seven books in third person. Then, too, as I learned about how women's voices weren't often heard in this colony, I felt a greater need to explore what kind of a woman would be remembered through the generations and how she might have thought. First person allows a little more intimacy with the reader; but then the character has to be able to sustain that intimacy and fascination, too, for a first person trilogy so it was a challenge. I wanted people to like Emma, and yet she made some pretty puzzling decisions, or at least they seemed puzzling until I dug deeper into the historical records.

While A Clearing in the Wild is told exclusively from Emma's viewpoint, A Tendering in the Storm alternates between Emma, Wilhelm's wife Louisa, and Emma's sister Catherine Wagner. What made you decide to include two new viewpoints in the second book? Will we be seeing more of Louisa and Catherine in the third?

I wanted a way to tell about the trials of both women as wives of leaders and their challenges in two different sites. Since the story was being told through Emma's eyes, I couldn't put her 150 miles away in order to share what was happening in that offshoot colony in Oregon while she was in Washington Territory. And since some of the tension came from the reluctance of the Missourians to sell the property back there and join the leader in Oregon, I needed a way for Emma and Louisa Keil to know about that and used the epistolary format for that from Emma's sister, Catherine. In the draft, I actually had many more letters from Catherine, but my editors suggested we cut some of them back.

Plus, I knew that eventually all three women end up in Aurora, so I wanted to introduce the other two women's points of view in the second book to prepare for the final book, coming out in the spring of 2008. I also thought that three different people exploring the same events can remind us that the way we see the world is not the only way to see it.

Over the course of the two books, Emma is forced to reevaluate her feelings about the Bethelites, and Wilhelm Keil in particular. In the course of your own research and writing, did your feelings about either change from your initial impressions? Did you learn anything about either that surprised you?

Yes. I was pretty much not liking Wilhelm Keil during most of the first book. Then while writing the second I discovered the divorce petition Emma had filed thirty years after she left Washington State and the letter I mentioned earlier. That petition answered some family stories that had been confusing -- which included her first husband's death, then her remarriage to a cousin of his with the same last name! Both of these suggested that Wilhelm Keil had befriended her later on and made a safe haven for her. He even had a house built for her in Aurora. I also learned of the death of four of his and Louisa's children of smallpox, and some of his behavior after that softened me to him. And I saw Louisa as a strong woman in her own way, and she stayed with him so there had to be something there.

I had made him a pretty hard person in the first book, so I had to find a way to make him less so, or Emma would not have rejoined the main colony. She didn't do so for several years, and that needed an explanation too. And then there was one final surprise I had to weave in for the third book that I won't reveal here. It was another puzzle I had to work out.

Part 2 of the interview with Jane Kirkpatrick will be posted tomorrow!

My view from the PC, and short takes

This is the latest version of the bookshelf to the left of my PC, as of last week; I like to change the display every so often to reflect new purchases and pretty covers. It's already changed a bit since then.

On this slow Sunday morning, we're expecting another day of 90 degrees, which means I'll probably be out on the porch most of the day, alternately reading and trying not to fall asleep, though we may go up to Champaign later.

I haven't posted any reviews in a while, and these books deserve longer writeups, but I figured short takes were better than nothing. Most of the other recent reads on my sidebar will appear in a future NoveList column.

Molly Brown, Invitation to a Funeral (St. Martin's, 1999, c1995). Restoration playwright Aphra Behn takes the stage as amateur detective. She scours all of London to discover the murderers of two brothers who kindly arranged a funeral for her father, who died aboard a ship en route to Surinam with her and her mother fourteen years earlier. This madcap adventure presents a who's-who of Restoration England, for nearly everyone of importance (Nell Gwyn, Samuel Pepys, Louise de Keroualle, and of course the rakish Earl of Rochester) makes an appearance, save Charles II himself. Brown has a gift for comedy: Aphra tries and fails to teach a beautiful empty-headed thespian how to act, and Louise de Keroualle, publicly on a hunger strike in despair over the loss of the king's affections, secretly raids the royal kitchens after dark. Great fun. This appears to be Brown's only novel. What ever happened to her?

Marjorie Eccles, The Shape of Sand (St. Martin's, 2006). In 1946, while her family's former country estate of Charnley is being renovated for new owners, construction workers uncover letters and a diary belonging to Harriet Jardine's mother, Beatrice, who disappeared after a house party in 1910. Harriet and her two sisters, teenagers at the time, believed the gossip that Beatrice ran off with her half-Egyptian lover, whom she'd met on a visit to Egypt seven years earlier. The truth is none so simple, as the sisters learn when workers uncover a mummified woman's body behind Charnley's walls. Scenes shift between the postwar and Edwardian periods, with glimpses of Egypt as seen through Beatrice's journal. Readers expecting a traditional mystery may find it moves at a languorous pace, and there is no formal detective, just a gradual uncovering of the mystery. Yet it's a gripping character study that makes you wonder how well it's possible to know someone.

Melanie Gifford, The Gallows Girl (Piatkus, 2006). I bought this novel from Book Depository purely based on the blurb, as I'd heard nothing about it elsewhere. This is a shame, because despite having no "marquee names," it's an atmospheric story with a completely unpredictable plot. In 18th-century Hampshire, Isaac and Harriet Curtis run a coaching inn, Green Gallows, along a major thoroughfare to London. They raise their elder daughter, Lucy, to be a lady, hoping to find her a rich husband, while they treat their other daughter, Rachel, more like a servant. Fifteen-year-old Rachel has always loved working the stable yard, and ignores her unkempt appearance, though can't help feeling jealous of the attention Lucy receives. When rumors of a new toll road reach Green Gallows, Isaac fears for their livelihood and takes action, selling off Lucy into marriage to an odious, wealthy older man. And that's only the beginning. Most remarkably, though the setting rarely leaves Hampshire early on, it never feels claustrophobic, and it introduced me to a richly described world of financial struggles amongst the rising middle classes in small-town Georgian England. This dark, suspenseful novel of power, obsession, and revenge is also a very unusual coming-of-age story.

Bits and pieces from the web

Simon & Schuster emailed earlier to announce a live web event featuring Philippa Gregory that will be broadcast on Sunday, September 16th, at 2pm EST. Details here:

Philippa Gregory LIVE will feature a live simulcast streamed through the Internet of Gregory speaking to an audience in London. She will discuss her historical research; writing process; her latest novel, The Boleyn Inheritance; the upcoming major motion picture based on The Other Boleyn Girl; her next novel, The Other Queen; and much more. Throughout the one-and-a-half-hour long event, online attendees will have the opportunity to ask Philippa their own questions and interact with other fans and book clubs.

You can sign up at http://www.philippagregorylive.com/ and get a reminder in your email with login directions when the date draws closer. I vaguely recall that this is a weekend date I signed up to work the reference desk; I hope I'm wrong.

From Smart Bitches, Trashy Books comes this article by Pam Jenoff, author of The Kommandant's Girl, on the vagaries of genre classification. Her novel was nominated for a Quill (it received a starred review from Publishers Weekly) in the romance category, and the PW review called it "historical romance at its finest," yet it's not really a romance by definition. The novel itself - not to mention its title and cover art - have gone through several iterations, mainstream to romance to mainstream again, before final publication.

And then we have the UK cover, which keeps the same title yet shows an embracing couple from the WWII years; decidedly more romantic, which may have helped it become a bestseller there. I can't help but remember the frilly, sentimental UK cover of Michael Wallner's April in Paris, which features another embracing couple. Yet if readers pick up that novel expecting a traditional romance (rather than a fairly dark thriller with a love story on the side), they'll be quite surprised.

Finally, something every household needs: possessed books. Amuse your friends, scare your enemies. (And your cats.)

Alice Borchardt, 1939-2007

Just read on RRA-L (the soon-to-be-defunct list Romance Readers Anonymous) that historical novelist Alice Borchardt, sister of Anne Rice, passed away last week, July 24th, of cancer. Word hasn't really gotten out yet otherwise, I don't think, though her Wikipedia entry has been updated with the news. The next novel in her Guinevere series had been listed on Amazon UK for a while, but it was removed some time ago; apparently due to her ill health, she wasn't able to complete it.

I'd never gotten around to reading her novels, though I own copies of them all. Her obituary is in the Houston Chronicle.

Things may be quiet around here as I try to get my historical mystery chapter completed (I'm almost done, and it's - sigh - quite long), but I'll be posting the first part of my interview with Jane Kirkpatrick next Monday.

Welcome back, Potter

I admit I haven't yet read a single book in the series, but this Harry Potter parody video is just too good to resist posting. It will probably only make sense to Americans who've seen the original show.

But for what it's worth, click here and turn your speakers on.

An interview with David Blixt, Part 2

See yesterday's blog entry for Part 1 of the interview, if you haven't read it yet. And apparently, because I said the word "bastard" too much in that post, this blog is now rated R. You've been warned.

You've drawn on many sources: Shakespeare, Dante, early 14th-century Italian history… All these elements seemed to come together very well, but surely there were times (probably many times!) when this information was in conflict. Can you give an example of a time or two when this happened, and how you resolved it in the plot?

Actually, it was all fairly fortuitous. Starting with the initial idea from Shakespeare, I took the historical events and worked the Shakespeare into it. Since Dante was a part of the history, it was a matter of choosing which version of his life’s story best fit my needs.

The hardest part was not mixing Shakespeare with history, but Shakespeare with Shakespeare. There is some overlap, intentional and otherwise, between the Bard’s plays. There are three shows that mention Verona prominently – R&J, Shrew, and Two Gents. Petruchio and Lucentio are mentioned in R&J, giving it a relationship to Shrew. And Mercutio is said to have a brother named Valentine, who is the lead in Two Gents. There’s a servant named Launcelot in both Two Gents and Merchant. Meanwhile, Benedick from Much Ado is said to be from Padua, while the Prince of Aragon is mention in Merchant as well as Much Ado. On top of it all, the Prince in Measure For Measure is an Escalus, making him related to the della Scala clan. So all of these interlocking plays allowed me to toy with the crossover, and that wreaked a little havoc with my history – who was the Prince of Aragon when? What was going on in Vienna? These are problems I look forward to resolving as the series goes on.

On the topic of historical accuracy, here’s a story my wife wants me to tell: a month ago, while finishing the sequel, I was doing research on a family from Ferrara when I discovered a death-date for Cangrande’s eldest sister. It drove me mad, as I had looked for it ages ago and come up blank. It also made me furious because she appears in MV. So I called Keith, my editor at St. Martin’s, and begged him to change the two passages that mention her, wiping her out. To my amazement, he was able to do it. I’m sure there are other mistakes in the book, but that one would have had me tearing out my hair and apologizing to strangers on the street.

I feel like I haven’t answered the question. I'm certain there's a great story about combining Shakespeare and history. But for the life of me, I can't think of it. The resolutions of conflicting storylines aren’t nearly as interesting as they should be, because whenever the solution came along, it did so without much help from me. History was always the answer. Whenever I’m at a loss, I return to the research. The solution to any dilemma always lies in events or facts I haven’t paid enough attention to.

I learned a number of things from the novel, and it refreshed my memory about others, such as Shakespeare, which I hadn't read for years. Also, the expression "giving someone the fig" has found its way into my vocabulary, which, hmm, may not be such a good thing. What are some especially interesting or surprising things you learned while researching?

There were revelations, and like the fig, most of them were small but fun. Take the word Carnival. I studied Latin in high school, but it never occurred to me where that word came from until I was researching Venice, and found out it was the festival that marked the beginning of Lent – Carne Vale, “Meat Farewell.”

Another example – while we were in Verona in 2002, our friend Rita Severi showed my wife and me "death doors." Maybe I had just missed it in other works, but I was not aware that the living and the dead were not allowed to pass through the same doors. So all the houses had these waist-high doorways called death doors. Creepy, but neat. I didn’t have cause to use it in MV, but I plan to make use of it soon.

The research took me all over the place. I learned about horses, pharmacology, falconry, fresco painting, cooking, numerology, and a dozen other subjects. Since I wasn’t raised Catholic, a great deal of practice and belief was new to me. And, of course, I learned a ton about astrology, since the great unifying theme is that Cesco is “star-cross’d.”

One big revelation was Dante. I had never read his Commedia before this, and because it was the Harry Potter of its time, I knew I needed a deep understanding. So I read a couple of different translations and a lot of footnotes (as or more informative than the translation choices). Then Jan and I were able to meet Dante’s descendant, living on the estate Pietro bought in 1353. After an afternoon of discussing his family history, he invited us to a reading in the Piazza della Signoria, with actors doing dramatic interpretations of Dante’s works. I was blown away.

That same week, Jan and I were taken around the city by a woman named Daniella Zumiani, who showed us the Roman ruins beneath the current city. They’re public property, but they’re underneath all the shops and restaurants in the main drag. So she would take us into a shop, brazenly stroll past the proprietors, and lead us to the basement to view the ruins, preserved beneath plexiglass. That was the inspiration for the Roman baths beneath Cangrande’s palace.

As far as the fig goes, there’s a character in the Inferno who gives God the fig. How spitefully, horribly wonderful. I’ve taken it back to Shakespeare, making the fig the insult that starts the opening brawl in R&J. And my world turns full circle…

What scene(s) did you find the most enjoyable or easy to write, and which the most difficult?

The scenes I struggled with most were the scenes I never wrote. I often found myself with an idea for a scene, but resistant to actually writing it out. I’d move on to something else, planning to circle back later. But whenever I did try to return, I decided to make something entirely different happen. If I was bored by what I had in mind, how could my audience not be? Far better to change direction than force a scene I didn’t want to write.

The easiest scenes for me were the ones that were purely dialogue. By the time I was into chapter four or five, the characters were so clear in my head that they practically spoke. All I had to do was transcribe their words. Which made that final scene so surprising, and so enjoyable. It’s all dialogue, and I wrote it in a day, it came out so fast. I never saw it coming.

Historical novels set in 14th-century Italy are few and far between. Do you feel that this was an advantage or a disadvantage in the writing/publication process –or some of each? What finally convinced St. Martin's Press to buy it?

I’m really not sure why it’s an under-mined era. Bernard Cornwell hit it with his Grail Quest series, and everyone loves Edward II, but the rest of the century seems to leave people cold. Is it the plague? Is it that we were forced to read Chaucer in high school? Or is it that the next couple centuries are so rife with potential that we look on the 14th as mere backstory? I don’t have an answer. It’s certainly not a lack of exciting information – look at Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror!

This was actually a help in the writing, because I had very few preconceptions about the era, and could create with impunity. As opposed to another series I have in mind, where I'll be setting foot on some very well-trod boards...

But this lack of interest in the period was definitely a hindrance in selling the book. However, there were so many other obstacles that I don’t know how big a part it played. Time and again, publishers passed on the novel. I was told that historical fiction wasn’t as big a seller as it used to be, something I don’t believe. My first agent kept trying to sell MV as a romance novel, which it isn’t. Shakespeare and Dante were considered too scholarly for mass consumption (mind-boggling, but true). And then there’s the size – not long compared to what I like to read, but longer than most editors want to buy. My favorite rejection was from a large company who said the book was too popular for their high-brow press, but too high-brow for their popular press.

When Michael Denneny became my agent at the beginning of 2004, he sent it around to many people, including his old cohort at St. Martin’s, Keith Kahla. But after reading it, Keith decided to give it a pass.

Then, eighteen months later (!), the two of them were at lunch when Keith said, “Hey, is that Shakespeare novel still available? I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.” Needless to say, it was. By then, I had cut a third of the book, trimming it down to a lean, mean 192,000 words. Keith read the new draft, really liked it, and guided me through the process of getting it sold. All in all, it was twenty-three months from the time he first read it to the actual offer. And it will have been another twenty months from the offer to publication, a time that saw another 28,000 words added and a few significant changes. I doubt I’ll ever have the luxury of that long ramp up again, so I’ve tried to enjoy it.

What can you tell us about the forthcoming second book in the series? How many novels do you have planned in all?

Ah, the sequel. Funny story.

I’ll start with the basics. It picks up eight years after the end of MV, and covering five months in the year 1325. The narrative follows both Pietro and Cesco, with a little Antonia [Pietro's sister] as needed.

Now, the story behind the story. I finished the first draft of the second book – originally entitled IL FALCO (meant to follow IL VELTRO) – over two years ago. But after doing a production of Merchant of Venice, I realized I could do more overlapping with that show. So last fall I went to rewrite it, and I realized I simply had too much story. Details and characters were being denied their full potential. So I cut the book into two parts. Fine. Had a good sucker-punch for the ending of each, I was happy.

Then the contract arrived from St. Martin’s. And there, on the page, in cold black and white, was the devil in the details: they had imposed a word limit. 175,000, no more.

Why? It’s simple. They were having trouble with MV. Advance readers are daunted, a major foreign market doesn’t want to spend the money on translation, and the audio-book folks are balking at the size. So they want the second book to be shorter.

(Let me pause for a moment to express my pleasure that St. Martin’s bought the sequel in the first place. They could have waited until MV was out to see how it did, but they have enough belief in the series – and in me – to commit to the next book. Cheers to you, St. Martin’s Press, and thanks!)

The only trouble was, I was four chapters from finishing the first of the two IL FALCO books, and I was already at 177,000 words.

So I chopped it in half again. IL FALCO is now books two, three, and four.

It meant finding a new ending where one did not exist before, but that was a lot of fun, and a great challenge. And I was able to find some events and develop some characters, as well as include one major historical plot point, that I had been glossing over until now.

As far as how many books, it was originally six. Then nine. Then I did this splitting, which takes us to, what, eleven? But I honestly have no idea. I know the timeframe, I know where Cesco is going and what is going to happen. But how each book breaks down is still an undiscovered country.

What I can say is that certain historical figures are going to crop up, including: Roger Mortimer, Isabella, Edward III, Orhan (son of Osman), Emperor Ludwig IV, Pope John XXII, Petrarch, Gil Álvarez Carrillo de Albornoz, William of Ockham, and many more.

All this will culminate in the events laid out in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet – though I may be tempted into writing a coda novella. It’s just difficult when most of your leads are dead.

It’s very strange to think about, but I’m writing a series that everyone already knows the end of. So it really is the journey, not the destination, that matters to me. That, and a few surprises waiting along the path.

Thanks for letting me play, and forcing me to think about the forest as well as the trees. Cheers!

And thanks for your willingness to do the interview - it's been very informative, not to mention lots of fun!

To recap: The Master of Verona will be officially released today in hardback from St. Martin’s Press ($27.95, 608pp, 978-0-312-36144-0). Visit http://themasterofverona.typepad.com/ for more information.

An interview with David Blixt, part 1

David Blixt’s first novel, The Master of Verona, begins a generation before Romeo & Juliet, positing a reason for the deadly feud between the Capulets and Montagues. However, it’s much more than just a prequel to Shakespeare’s classic tragedy. It brings together elements from Shakespeare, the life of poet Dante Alighieri, and the political scene in early 14th-century Italy to form a sweeping historical epic replete with adventure, intrigue, betrayal, and star-crossed romance.

Let's look back in time to the year 1314. The scene is set, of course, in Verona. Dante Alaghieri (the spelling is deliberate), the infamous Florentine poet, arrives at the court of his patron, Francesco della Scala, who is widely known as Cangrande: “the Great Hound," or, perhaps, “the Greyhound.” Attempts have been made against the life of an infant nicknamed Cesco who may be Cangrande’s bastard son; rumors fly about the child’s origins, as Cangrande has no heir from his marriage.

Pietro Alaghieri, Dante's 17-year-old son, quickly gets caught up in Verona's longstanding wars with Padua, following Cangrande into battle to defend his interests. He also becomes best friends with Mariotto Montecchi and Antonio Capuletti, two young men of Verona. But when Mari and Antony both fall in love with the same young woman, it rekindles an ancient blood feud between their families.

David Blixt is a Shakespearean actor and director from Chicago currently starring in the title role in the Michigan Shakespeare Festival’s production of Macbeth. His swashbuckling tale is a perfect read for those who love Shakespeare, know Dante, and want to know how their stories might have fit together. But even if you know nothing about either one, The Master of Verona will make you want to find out.

The novel will be officially released tomorrow, July 24th, in hardback from St. Martin’s Press ($27.95, 608pp, 978-0-312-36144-0). Visit http://themasterofverona.typepad.com/ for more information.

In the afterword to Master of Verona, you mention that there isn't much information about the historical Pietro. After you did the research on him, how did you fill in the blanks?

Honestly, Pietro became what the story needed him to be. The first time I sat down to write, I started from Mariotto’s point of view. But that felt like taking sides right from the get-go. I needed a third party to witness the implosion of the Mari-Antony friendship. Dante’s son, who was new to Verona and pretty much a tabula rasa as far as the audience was concerned, seemed a perfect choice. Then, suddenly, he was drawn into a whole new level of intrigue, and we were off to the races.

As far as coloring him in, there are a few clues from his later life that I could draw upon. Pietro goes on to become a judge of sorts, have a large family, and write a commentary on his father’s work. So young Pietro became interested in the law and justice, owned an instinctual liking for children, while at the same time he was grudgingly familiar with poetry.

Like most of the story, Pietro took shape during the writing. Looking back, I can see how interacting with Mari and Antony made him take on the role of a Shakespearean best-friend, the voice of reason, like Horatio and Benvolio. Here, however, that person was front and center – Pietro is the one fighting duels and making hard choices. I didn’t want my lead narrative voice to be a passive watcher.

But, unlike Cangrande, Pietro is not meant to be a lead in a Shakespearean tragedy. If he has any flaw, it’s his need for approval from authority – something he developed living in his father’s shadow. But that flaw is not Tragic, it doesn’t lead to his destruction. Just his disillusionment.

It seems clear that you're an admirer of the historical Cangrande. Why do you say he's one of your heroes? (And, given that you're also an admirer of Dorothy Dunnett… maybe I'm mistaken, but is there a touch of Lymond in Cangrande's character?)

I feel guilty about the historical Cangrande because I haven’t quite done him justice. I don’t admire him the way I do, say, Caesar or Wellington. But I do feel that he’s been given short shrift in the history books – I certainly knew nothing about him before I started researching the history of Verona. His career is astonishing, his exploits as full of daring as any popular hero’s. As a patron of the arts, he really did help start the Renaissance. So, while far from perfect, he was regarded by his contemporaries, friend and foe alike, as the ideal man.

As far as Lymond goes, I was in the midst of Checkmate when I sat down to write, so I absolutely had him in mind. Cangrande is taller, less acerbic, but just as witty and skillful and sly. Then, in a single chapter, he went from Lymond to Graham Mallett. I was as surprised as anyone.

Dunnett is, to me, the pinnacle of the genre. I have never felt an emotional punch the like of hers. The character that will interest Dunnett fans is Cesco. In MV he’s the object of many plots. In the sequel, he’s old enough to be a participant. If anyone ever wondered what Francis Crawford was like as a child, before he was wounded by life, they should pay attention to Cesco. His wounds will be quite different, causing him to grow into a very different man, but the twinkle in the eye is the same.

I normally find battles hard to follow in novels, maybe because character development often takes a distant second place to the action; I have trouble distinguishing between the people involved. However, I never had this problem in Master of Verona. I particularly enjoyed the early scenes where Pietro follows Cangrande into battle against Padua. Given your experience as an actor and director, how do you choreograph action scenes?

Thank you for the compliment. I do have a peculiar advantage here. Having spent the last decade choreographing fights for the stage, my approach to action is very theatrical, almost cinematic. I’m not interested in relating tactics, but in conveying the story of the battle.

There are a lot of bad fights in theatre, and most of the badness can be attributed to one of three things: the actors are bad fighters, the fight is happening faster than the audience can follow, or the choreographer is showing off a bunch of cool moves with no regard to the story. In a book you can easily control the first two. It’s the last one that can kill you.

A good stage fight tells a story. In essence, combat is desire and denial. The desire is to kill, the denial is the need to stay alive. I like to take the weapons away from my actors and have them work it from an emotional perspective. The stabbing becomes reaching, the parry becomes an emotional refusal. So it’s just another relationship, only played out with weapons. Which makes each fight unique, and intensely personal.

The best example of what I’m talking about is, ironically, from Romeo & Juliet. In that show there are two duels back-to-back – Tybalt/Mercutio and Tybalt/Romeo. These are very different fights. The first one is fun, playful, a pair of guys showing off, not actually trying to murder each other. The second is vicious and brutal, with kicks and bites and desperate lunges, surging the action this way and that all over the stage, ending in death.

How do I know this? It’s all in the characters’ motivations in the moment. What do they want? Mercutio wants to humiliate Tybalt. Romeo wants him dead.

That’s what I tried to bring to the battle sequences. While it’s fun mentioning fancy fighting terms and techniques (Roversi! Mollinello! Passado!), they’re only tools to move the story along – and story is all about character.

The Greyhound ("il veltro"), as quoted from Dante's Inferno in the novel's beginning, is enigmatically prophesied to be a mystical savior of Italy. Many characters believe Cangrande to be this person, as do many Dante scholars today. Yet, as the novel reveals early on, "il veltro" has another meaning. How did you discover this interesting fact, and, later, decide to use it in the story?

It was one of the first things that popped up in the research, though not from any book. Back when I started this, in May of 2000, I was living in Ann Arbor. I had a brief Italian history of Verona that I needed translated. Sylvia Giorgini at the University of Michigan was recommended to me, and she took about a week to pull out highlights from the short text. As she handed me her notes, she said, “It’s funny about Il Veltro. They keep saying the Greyhound, but you know that it also means the Bastard, right?”

When the story stopped revolving around the Mari-Antony feud and became about Cesco, this little tidbit was a delightful play on words that I couldn’t resist. Because bastard has just as many meanings as veltro does: 1) born on the wrong side of the sheets; 2) a true hardass or malicious character; 3) a sword that can be used as either a one-handed weapon or two.

As you know, it was actually the original title for the book – in a perfect world, it still would be. But the irony and charm of IL VELTRO doesn’t translate unless you know colloquial Italian, so it was quickly dropped. Sigh.

You talk on your website about Lady Montague's offstage death in Romeo & Juliet, and how that line inspired you to make her the catalyst for the Montague-Capulet feud. I loved the scene from the novel where she's introduced, as a young woman - it's incredibly vivid and dramatic. (I won't quote from it, though, so readers can discover it for themselves!) Given that she's nearly absent in Shakespeare, but looms so large in Master of Verona, was her character a challenge to create?

It was and it wasn’t. She’s actually a character who is a delight to write, and whom I thoroughly despise. Maybe I’m just a guy who's lost too many friends because of girls, but man, she makes me mad. Which is great. It was also surprising, because I had intended her as the ideal woman – another Julia. But instead she became a Guenivere (a comparison that would no doubt delight her).

In terms of her character, it was a fairly simple proposition. She started, as you point out, as a catalyst for the feud, inspired by a single line of text at the end of the play. The only words she utters in Shakespeare’s text – a mere three lines! – are all about Romeo, and how she’s worried about him. And the end of the play tells us she died because Romeo was exiled. That’s all we know.

But she’s Romeo’s mother, and Romeo is a character in love with love. Where did he learn that? Why not from his doting mater. And based on my interpretation of that single line, she breaks her engagement to run off with Mari, her true love. That’s the act of a romantic. So I made her the uber-romantic.

I find it amusing that St. Martin’s promotional tagline for MV is “Romeo & Juliet is the greatest love story ever told – and every story has a beginning!” To me, a great love story is where the lovers live! It’s this idea that love has to be tragic in order to be “great” that horrifies me – and fascinates Gianozza. She buys it, really believes that only untimely death can make a love live on for all eternity. She doesn’t understand that while drama is and must be conflict, love doesn’t have to be. She’s interested in love as drama, and so she will always seek out the conflict.

Watch for Part 2 of the interview with David Blixt tomorrow!

The usual quarterly announcements

The editors' choice reviews from August's HNR are online.

The forthcoming books page has been updated (par moi) with US titles through April '08, and a selection of UK titles through the end of '07.

There aren't any new deals to post because historical fiction hasn't been mentioned much on Publishers Marketplace lately.

I'm presently very itchy and sleep-deprived after a much-needed weeding of the garden last Sunday resulted in a bad case of poison oak. So I expect I'll be posting more later, when I'm more coherent.

Just for the fun of it

I managed to earn this rating because I said the word "dead" twice and "corpse" once, and that was in quoting the Chabon-related pieces last week. I gather dead corpses are not considered appropriate for children.

All the words to catch me on, and they're not even fun words.

Book designs along gender lines

Interior book design is one of those things meant to be unobtrusive - if you notice it, there's something wrong. Yesterday evening I read with curiosity the latest post from Booklist Online's blog, Likely Stories, about the mismatched, over-the-top book design for Andrea Barrett's upcoming historical novel The Air We Breathe, out in October. The post is very funny ("taken together, it’s like trying to read a novel through a doily") and, of course, it compelled me to find the ARC of Barrett's novel I'd grabbed at BEA.

Perhaps what's most interesting that if this post hadn't pointed out the issues with the design, I doubt I'd have noticed anything. To me, The Air We Breathe is designed to look like an authentic 19th-century novel, with chapter numbers superimposed against a woodcut print of a leafy tree, and dropped caps beginning the text of each chapter. I'll admit that the font used for the author's name in the headers on the left-hand pages, with its old-fashioned script flourishes, doesn't go well with the all-cap outline font the title uses on the right. But it wouldn't be so noticeable as to distract me from the text.

On the assumption this difference in opinion was gender-dependent, I asked Mark to take a look at the galley. Apart from commenting on the mismatched fonts on the headers, he didn't notice anything majorly wrong. So I don't know.

Do you like it when interior book designers subtly (or maybe not-so-subtly) try to evoke a past era through their choice of fonts, graphics, etc., or do you find it distracting? Put another way, is this a girly thing? I'm trying to think of other examples where this is done, and failing, but maybe someone else can come up with one.

Evaluation at the halfway point

On January 1st of this year, I posted a small number of reading resolutions. Alas, I haven't been doing very well by them so far. The only one I can truly say I've kept is (5), keeping an ongoing reading list, which you'll find on the sidebar here. I've read an embarrassingly small number of books in 2007, about forty in six months. Don't ask how many I've bought or acquired over the same period. It's probably about ten times that. yikes.

Also, generally, the books I've been asked to read for review have been the ones I've enjoyed most. (See the multiple DNF indications on the sidebar - all non-review books.) There are exceptions, but it makes me wonder if I'm better off having other people dictate what I read.

Things coming up in the immediate future - I'll be posting a two-part interview with David Blixt beginning on Monday, July 23rd, the day before the official release date for The Master of Verona. I'll also be participating in Jane Kirkpatrick's blog tour for A Tendering in the Storm, which will involve a brief interview (based on that novel and its prequel, A Clearing in the Wild, which I just finished). It'll be going online in early August. And sometime in the next two weeks I'll be writing a readalike on W. Michael and Kathleen O'Neal Gear's prehistoric novels for NoveList. This means reading one, preferably two, of their novels to remind myself (as it's been a while) what their style is like. I'll be starting People of the Moon tonight.

I'm currently knee deep in my Historical Mystery chapter, after finishing up with Sagas two weeks ago. Despite the craziness that was June, I'm doing my best to write a chapter every month. This one's a long one, and I started late, so I'm not sure I'll make it. But going through and making notes on the books I want to include are adding an awful lot of historical mysteries to my TBR pile.

On the death of genre fiction

What happens when you write a review of an alternate history novel that not only grants a number of backhanded compliments to the author, but slams genre fiction in its entirety?

`Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it.' (Ruth Franklin, Slate, May 8 2007)

You leave yourself wide open to a zinging rejoinder from Ursula K. Le Guin:

... 'But it was dead, dead! God damn that Chabon, dragging it out of the grave where she and the other serious writers had buried it to save serious literature from its polluting touch, the horror of its blank, pustular face, the lifeless, meaningless glare of its decaying eyes! What did the fool think he was doing?' ...

Read the whole thing, though; it's worth it. The novel in question is Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Literary snobbery at its most obvious.

Your favorite historical novels 1997-2007

We're looking for input for a feature in the next Historical Novels Review (August - the 10th anniversary issue). We want to know which historical novels from the past 10 years are your favorites.

Email Bethany Latham (blatham@jsu.edu), HNR's managing editor, with the title(s) of your favorite historical novel(s) published between 1997 and 2007. Bethany will be tallying the votes and compiling the list. The only qualification is that the novels should have been published for the first time within the last decade.

Don't be shy - we need more contributions in order to have enough data to run with the feature. And thanks!

Me but not me

I found it amusing but a little strange to discover via the HNS Online Newsletter that there's a new historical novel, Owen Sheers' Resistance, whose protagonist has the same name as me. (Or that I had. Lewis is my maiden name.)

Maybe I should read it to learn what I was doing in Wales back in 1944? At least it got a good review...

Photos from the HNS conference

... are now online at Kodak Gallery. Enjoy the show. (Click on View Slideshow - you don't have to sign in.) I'll be linking these up to the HNS website later tonight.

Photos by Chris Cevasco, Richard Scott, Mark Johnson, Nancy Castaldo, and Val Perry's husband Mike. Captions by me. There are a bunch of people whose names I didn't know, so if you recognize any of them (or if you're one of them), let me know and I'll make the corrections.

Anyone else who took photos and is willing to have them added to the gallery, please get in touch.

The mysterious Lady Kate

While scanning through Waterstone's list of historical novels this morning (with thanks to Kieron for making me look at their site again), I noticed what looks like a new historical novel from Pamela Hill: Lady Kate, from United Writers Publications, a subsidy publisher from Cornwall. I'm wondering if this is the same Pamela Hill who wrote many historicals, mostly for Robert Hale, starting in the 1950s. Her novel Flaming Janet (aka The King's Vixen) about Janet Kennedy, a mistress of Scotland's James IV, is one of my favorites, despite the silly title - which may have been pretty risque back in 1954, who knows. I own nearly everything she wrote.

What intrigues me is that the subject of Lady Kate is very much typical of Hill. Per Amazon UK (Waterstone's doesn't have a description) it's about Lady Katherine Gordon, wife of Perkin Warbeck and several other men besides - I don't know much about her later life. Unfortunately, the Tudor lady on the jacket art appears to be sporting a five o'clock shadow.

Even curiouser, Fantastic Fiction not only has Lady Kate grouped with older Hill novels, but it lists several newer ones too, mostly from United Writers. One is about Shakespeare's supposed journeys in Scotland, which is also in keeping with her usual subjects. I wonder why she's not with Robert Hale any longer, and why I hadn't heard about these additional novels before.

Has anyone else read her? Many of her older novels were published in the USA. And you can read more here (from a previous blog entry) about her novel Countess Isabel.

What my library catalog can do, but Amazon can't

Amazon UK, that is. And neither can Book Depository, Good Book Guide, or Waterstone's online...

Why do they make it impossible to search for books by publication date, or to sort results by "newest first"? I'm writing up my publishing column for August's HNR, the section listing interesting historical novels that will be in stores within the next 3-6 months. Normally I use Amazon UK for this. The advanced search page lets you sort by date, but after you view the first screen's worth of search results, it switches to the usual "sort by bestselling status" arrangement.

This functionality used to be there, but it's not any longer. Other versions of Amazon can do it, though. What I ended up doing to get a list of UK-published historical novels coming out in 2007 is searching Amazon.de for English-language historical fiction, which seems to cover UK as well as US, though it doesn't appear comprehensive.

Maybe only librarians look for this sort of thing, but this annoys me. Grumble.

Reading the Past meets Cute Overload

Aww.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Book discussion will resume tomorrow.