Karen Essex's Blog: Into the light: contrasting life early and late Victorian London; girls learn and unlearn posture; and some fun stuff to do in the city

KE: The film producer Lynda Obst once told me that she came up with the idea for the George Clooney/Michelle Pfeiffer romantic comedy One Fine Day, when she—overworked, exhausted—was lying on a massage table thinking that to meet a man she would have to literally crash into one with her car. Andrew Davidson, who I chatted with recently on the blog, opened his bestseller, The Gargolye, with a car accident that transforms his character, body and soul. And I have always been a fan of the ...

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At the HNS Conference, C. W. Gortner and I caught the great Margaret George red-handed in the bookstore buying our books. We were so thrilled that we had to have the incident preserved for posterity!

KE: At the Historical Novel Society Conference this summer, Margaret George, C. W. (Christopher) Gortner and I answered questions about gender and the art—and marketing—of historical fiction. Margaret’s novel, The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (1998), is now...

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In their respective novels The Gargoyle and Stealing Athena, Andrew Davidson and Karen Essex both tell parallel stories that take place in two different time periods, intertwining the lives of people separated by centuries. The books also explore common themes of the mystical, the mythic, karmic debt, the creation of art, and romantic love. In a candid and uncensored phone conversation, the authors compare their writing processes and talk about the sometimes numinous, sometimes laborious pro

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From my blog at the Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-essex/who-owns-art-who-owns-dem_b_218161.html

After years of announcements and embarrassing delays, the New Acropolis Museum -- a $190 million spectacular building designed by Bernard Tschumi -- will finally have its official opening on June 20. Yet the dramatic glass gallery on the top floor overlooking the Acropolis and facing the Parthenon will remain empty.

Built specifically as a catalyst for the return of the Elgin

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I want to apologize profusely to anyone who came to Davis Kidd Bookstore in Memphis last month to see me. I’d spent the day doing local media to promote the event, and apparently, a nice group had arrived at 6pm. Too bad that I had been asked to arrive at 7pm! I was six minutes away in a hotel, yet no one called me. I could have been dead! Anyway, stuff happens, but a big mea culpa.

Still, Memphis is a great town! I walked along the Mississippi River and toured ever-gentrifying downtow

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For the last week or so, I have found myself preoccupied with an article in The New York Times about the startling study, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” based on a study by two economists. The authors of the study found that across lines of economic status, race, class, and geography, and in spite of women’s greater equality and choices, women report more unhappiness than women in the early 1960s. According to this study, we are even unhappier than………MEN!!

Readers, what do you

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Dear Friends and Readers,

We all know that the war against women is often waged by women, and even more often, takes place within the family itself. I have explored this theme in a Mother’s Day essay, which is featured today in MOTHERLODE, the popular NEW YORK TIMES blog that intelligently explores all aspects of parenting and family issues.

Please take a look. I’d love to hear readers’ comments, particularly from mothers and daughters.
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/mot

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I’m pleased to announce that the paperback edition of Stealing Athena,(with a saucy new cover) will be available wherever books are sold on April 28th. I will be returning to the States from London to tour in May and June, so please check in with the website for the dates and locations, and please do come out and see me. If we’ve never met, please introduce yourself!


http://karenessex.com/lectures.html

I’m also booking phone chats (and dinners, if the locale is right) with book clubs so

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I was moved by the monument of the Victorian boxer Thomas Sayers, who wanted his faithful dog, Tim, commemorated as well. Though boxing was illegal in the 19th century, Sayers was enormously popular, and his funeral was attended by 10,000 people—a larger funeral than the Duke of Wellington's.

“The Victorians had very small weddings and very big funerals.”

Thus said our cheery guide by way of explaining the elaborate monuments of Highgate Cemetery, where I and my friend Caroline Kellett-Fra

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Friends and readers, you know how I like my swan themes. Readers often ask why I chose “Leonardo’s Swans” as the title to that book. I’ve always thought it was self-explanatory. Swans, like the heroines of the book, are creatures of immense grace, dignity, and power. In certain mythologies, swans represent the soul and one’s inner radiance. Swans are also associated with transformation. Zeus turned himself into a swan to seduce the mortal queen Leda. The misfit duckling of the fairy tale

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