Rosina Lippi's Blog, page 21

Writing Prompts

I used to be in the habit of posting writing prompts. Today I was thinking about starting that up again, which meant going through all thousand+ posts on this weblog to find the ones I already used.  Probably something I should do anyway, but that’s a long-view goal. And it requires some research. My favorite kind of writing prompt has always come from short news stories, and I may repost a few of them. But for immediate gratification I decided to look to other writers and websites, and I found some great resources.

Reddit

Reddit has a huge Writing Prompts subsection. Many prompts are very short, and there’s a definite leaning toward sci-fi, but there are also some gems. Examples:

“Passengers, this isn’t your captain speaking”

Your wife’s last words are surprising. So surprising in fact, that you put down the knife and let her finish speaking.

Awesome Writing Prompts

These are short and tend to run to formula. You are give a title (“Any Given Psycho”) and have to write the story that fits it. Or three nouns that have to figure prominently in your story (a rooster, an empty bag of peanut M&Ms, a diary with a broken lock).  This kind of prompt — a handful of nouns or a simple phrase — often work well for me. I wrote a story called “Emergency Exit Only” following from a similar prompt.

Poets & Writers Magazine

On their website they have a weekly feature called The Time is Now. One example:

Portals

C. S. Lewis used a wardrobe, J. M. Barrie used the second star to the right, and Lewis Carroll used a rabbit hole—each a gateway to another world. This week, pick an object that is important to you and transform it into a portal to an alternate world. Write a story about someone discovering the portal and adjusting to life where everything is foreign. Take into consideration where this secret passage is located and what it feels like to pass through it.

Random First Line Prompts

From the UK, a generator that gives you a first line. Example “Why had nobody ever mentioned Mom’s twin?”

Creative Writing Now

This site has a pretty good stash of prompts. Example: “A babysitter is snooping around her employer’s house and finds a disturbing photograph.”

 

If you know of a really great on-line resource for writing prompts, please let me know in the comments.

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Book Expo America and free books

I’m going to Book Expo America at the end of the month, where I’ll be signing ARCs of The Gilded Hour  to give away. Lotsa writers and novelists there doing the same.  Publishers Weekly has a list of major books to grab, including The Gilded Hour.

Fighting crowds has never been my thing, but I’m going to try to get a copy of Maira Kalman’s Beloved Dog.

And then there’s Alice Hoffman’s The Marriage of Opposites.

 

 

 

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insomnia: here I sit, thinking

It has to do with getting old(er), that’s what they tell me. I went to bed at eleven, read for a quarter hour, fell asleep.

At one I was awake, and at two I gave up, turned on the lights, and here I am.

I finished the last of the proofreading for The Gilded Hour, which is always kind of odd. You go through the messy process of giving birth, and then you have to wait to see the product of all that work.

The idea is to get back to sleep,  which means no YouTube, because once I go through that door I find it hard to back out again. I can’t read anything new, because if it’s good, I’ll end up reading for the rest of the night. I can’t read my own work, because if I come across a less-than-felicitous sentence, I’ll have to spend a lot of time worrying about it. There’s always the news, but then when I do finally get back to sleep, I will dream unpleasant things.

So I’m not sleepy, but I bet you are, reading this.

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Historical novelist confesses: I love this anachromism

So here, I’ll open up what will probably be a very short discussion: I love the book jacket art for The Gilded Hour, but I can’t deny there’s a big anachronism right in the middle of it. The novel takes place in 1883, and photo on the cover shows the Washington Square Park arch. From the NYU website:

Inspired by Roman triumphal arches, this structure was erected in 1889 to celebrate the centennial of George Washington’s inauguration. It replaced an arch on near the site which was a temporary structure made of wood and stucco. Having met with popular approval, Mckim Mead & White’s original design was rebuilt in marble in 1891.

The story is in 1883, the cover art photo was taken sometime between 1889 and approximately 1905. And I okayed this cover because I love it. It captures something elemental about the period that I am trying to convey: that IS my story, and I AM sticking to it.

Now, the very talented person who put the cover together worked hard at finding just the right photo, and he was terribly unhappy when I pointed out the problem. Apparently he sorted through a thousand photos looking for one that was both accurate and atmospheric. I happen to know from personal experience that this is not an easy undertaking. And so I agreed to go with this (in my opinion) truly beautiful cover art.

My editor, in trying to make me feel okay about it said: won’t the later books in the series get to 1889? Which is an interesting comment, as my contract with Berkley doesn’t touch on “later books in the series.”

I dream of reviewers pointing their fingers and howling at me.  It’s like Reagan during Iran-Contra. I can confess to knowingly doing something wrong, or let people think I didn’t know something I should have known.

Note: I do realize that the book jacket of my tenth novel can’t reasonably be  compared to Iran Contra.  I even realize that few people would have noticed the anachronism if I hadn’t hung bells on it with this post. And I’ll admit straight out that  anachronisms are almost impossible to avoid in historical fiction (ask Shakespeare), and there will be other flubs I’ve missed in this novel. (This is not an invitation to go looking for them, in case you’re wondering.)

But I’m hoping confession will be good for the soul. Or at least put a stop to imaginary reviewers pointing out what is now obvious.

 

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dum-da-dum-dum: tweet

I am told that I should be tweeting, and so I’ve resurrected my dormant tweet account @rosinalippi and if I can figure out how, I’ll add a sidebar widget where tweets will show up.  So if you are a tweeter, please feel free to follow me.

And here’s a perfect illustration why the whole tweet-dom bothers me. I do not like that dopey bulging bluebird icon. A quick search tells me there’s nothing even vaguely better out there. So here, a post without an image.

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New York city skyline 1876-present

This image is from an article at UrbanPeek. It’s hard to imagine what the city was like in 1883, but the 1876 photo does help. In the oldest photo you can see the Hudson on the other side of Manhattan Island, but that has changed by 1932. You’ll note too that the Brooklyn Bridge was still under construction, and that there are ships’ masts in the bay. While steam-powered boats were rapidly taking over long-distance travel, at this date crossings were often by sail.

The opening of the Brooklyn Bridge is a pivotal event in The Gilded Hour.

Who is this blue-eyed man?

I’m always looking for images of people taken in the 1880s.  When I come across an interesting photo like this, I try to track down whatever information might be out there.

This time I came up with nothing at all. By the width of the lapels I can be pretty sure that it wasn’t taken in the 1880s, but that’s all I can say with any certainty. If you have any ideas, please speak up.

The Gilded Hour ARC giveaway

I’ve been struggling to get a major problem with the user database on this website fixed (some of you will have noticed this already), and at this point I have had to purge everything.

This means you will have to register again. Also (to get all bad news out up front) the registration process is a little more complicated that you might expect. You’ll have to do the email-verification thing, and then you’ll have to wait for me to manually approve. Which I hope to do very quickly, but please be patient.

I’m sorry all this increased security is necessary. But here’s the silver lining:

I’ll draw two names at random from the new user database, and those two individuals will receive signed ARCs (advanced readers’ copies) of The Gilded Hour in late May or early June. Rules:

You have to register (link to the right, about middle of the column).

You can only register once (and hence, only put your name into the hat once).

You have to leave a comment here once you have registered  (you won’t be able to comment unless you register first) AND you must include this little statement in your comment:

I agree not to sell the ARC or even give it away before the book officially goes on sale. It is for my eyes only.

So go forth and register. And thanks for putting up with the complications.

Mary Putnam Jacobi

Mary Putnam was a physician who proved to her male colleagues that women had the minds and mentality to be scientists. I think she should be more widely known. The Atlantic Monthly apparently agreed with me as they recently ran a feature article about her: The Godmother of American Medicine. It’s a wonderful article, really worth reading. So please do. Dr. Putnam Jacobi plays a small part in The Gilded Hour.

Mary Putnam Jacobi

BookExpo America and ARCs on the horizon

NOTE: There’s good news at the very bottom of this post. So keep reading.

I’m not really very good at conventions. Even small ones, where I know a lot of people. My anxiety exhibits as an unhappy digestive system, and I tend to disappear for longer periods of time. This makes colleagues and friends think I’m blowing them off. Early on I gave up on ever explaining.

This time it’s a great big convention where I know just a handful of people. This is what Wikipedia says about BookExpo America:

BookExpo America (commonly referred to within the book publishing industry as BEA) is the largest annual book trade fair in the United States. BEA is almost always held in a major city over four days in late May and/or early June. Nearly all significant book publishers in the United States, and many from abroad, have booths and exhibits at BEA, and use the fair as an opportunity to showcase upcoming titles, sell current books, socialize with colleagues from other publishing houses, and sell and buy subsidiary rights and international rights (although not on the scale of the rights negotiation that occurs at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October). Authors, librarians, and buyers for book retailers also attend the event.

Now, it’s actually a big deal for an author who has a book coming out to be there, and I have to be glad that my editor has arranged some marketing-type events. Professionally I am very glad. And I am looking forward to seeing my agent and everybody in her office.

The view from Hoboken’s Maxwell Place Park

But really what I want to do when I’m spending four days in Manhattan is very simple: The New-York Historical Society and the Museum of the City of New York. And there’s my cousin Tommy in Hoboken.

And I’d do my usual walks (in pieces) all the way from Wall Street to Central Park, in one direction along Fifth, in the other along parts of Sixth and Third Avenues. Then all the way down Broadway.

But alas, I’ll be spending most of my time at the Javitz Convention Center which is at least in Midtown, on 34th near the Hudson River Parkway. One of the things I’ll be doing is signing a huge pile of advance reading copies of The Gilded Hour.

And then I’ll come home and give a couple away.

Information on how you can grab a copy for yourself coming soon.