Linda Collison's Blog, page 17

Redfeather sighted at Book Expo America 2014!

For those discerning readers who are looking for Redfeather, the elusive book was sighted at this year’s BEA, thanks to Foreword Reviews, a well-regarded book review journal that offers a menu of marketing services for independent publishers.

Looking for Redfeather is going to book fairs all over the world this year with Foreword Reviews; I’ve already received interest from publishers in China, Sweden and Ireland  following the Bologna Children’s Book Fair earlier this spring.   Whether you are a reader, a writer, or both, check out Foreword Reviews for the latest and best books from small presses.

Look for Redfeather at Foreword Review’s display at the American Library Association’s Conference in Las Vegas June 26-July 1! Don’t miss this 21st-century American road trip story featuring runaway teens on a quest.

 

 

 

 

 

Why I don’t write for the reader

If you want to make a lot of money selling books, don’t bother reading any further.

I’m not on any bestseller list, though my writing has won recognition and awards.  I don’t really care whether I sell a lot of books or not.  I’m not in it for the money or the fame.

If you’re a writer just starting out, or maybe you’ve been writing for quite awhile but you’re looking for some inspiration, you’ve lost your mojo, or you’re adrift without a breeze in the Sargasso Sea, my advice is to write whatever the hell you want to.  Write the book YOU want to read.  Write the book that only YOU can.  Be a leader, not a follower.  Do what you love, the money will follow – or not.  These maxims have stuck with me over the decades that I have been a writer. Following your heart and being true to yourself won’t make you rich but it will make you a better writer if you concentrate on discovering the art and learning the craft of writing.

Market-driven production of consumable words doesn’t appeal to me.  I write what I must, what I’m driven to write, what amuses me.  Do I want readers?  Of course I want readers but not at any expense. The reason I write is to understand.  To express life as I experience it.  I write to write better.

Writing is an art form — bumbling and imperfect — but it is more than a product to be dictated by voracious readers hungry for entertainment.  Writing is a way of life, an on-going discovery, a way to experience past, future, and parallel lives.

 

Aaron Landon to narrate ‘Looking for Redfeather’ audiobook

I’m pleased to sign a contract with Aaron Landon to read Looking for Redfeather for the audible.com audiobook.

I wrote the first draft in 30 days while I myself was on the road in 2007, promoting Star-Crossed, published by Knopf and chosen by the New York Public Library to be among the Books for the Teen Age — 2007.  It only took another six years or so for the rewrites and publication…

Looking for Redfeather, a finalist in Foreword Review’s indie Book of the Year award, 2013 YA category,  will be available later this summer via audible.com, Amazon, and iTunes.  Just in time for an end-of-summer road trip… Let’s hit the road!

 

Literary agents: How to fall in love.

Agents, how many times this week have you written these words, “Sorry, I just didn’t fall in love with it” ?   How many blog posts have you titled  Five Things That Make Me Fall in Love with a Manuscript. Or, Sex Moves Your Lit Agent Can’t Resist?

What is this, Cosmo magazine?  Literary eharmony?  You ask for a partial, then a full, OK, now we’re intimate, then you dump me.  Why?  Because you’re not in love?

Oh, pu-lease!  You all say you want to “fall in love” with a manuscript.  But what you really want is to sign the next blockbuster.  Sure, I get it. And I want Maxwell Perkins OK?

Look, can we be honest? Why are we talking “love” when everybody knows the writer is the prostitute, the agent is the pimp, and the publisher is the desperate, dumpy guy on vacation looking to get laid?   Or maybe that’s the reader…  Anyway, if you want to “fall in love” so bad, why don’t you write your own Pulitzer Prize winning bestseller?

These days, writers have a choice.  Independent publishing is growing and traditional publishing is struggling, let’s face it.  Me, I’m looking for life-long commitment, which is a funny thing for a hooker, ain’t it?  Back in the day, you didn’t need a middle man, you sent your manuscript directly to the acquisitions editor.  Where are the nurturers and the mentors, the wise editors who stood by their green but promising writers through the awkward mid-list years?  These days it’s all bottom line and bean counters.  And agents, hungry for love.

Here’s a little of my history — pretend to be interested.  After a short-lived, three way affair with my ex agent and my second editor (unnamed but from one of the giant New York based publishing houses) I fell lower and lower, hanging out at the dive bars,  flinging myself at a series of horny, failed agents, resulting in sordid, one night stands.  The next day they’d text me,  “Sorry babe, there just wasn’t any magic.”

Finally a portly gentleman editor from a legitimate small press did fall in madly in love with my manuscript.  He wanted to publish a series!  Oh, it was happily ever after I thought, but then he up and died.  Yes, died!  Alas, I was a literary widow, single again.

Agents, you don’t fool me.  You’re all gold-diggers.  You talk about love but what you really want is money.  And where’s the ring, huh?  Oh, you’ll never commit.  It’s a book-by-book world we live in.

You say you wanna fall in love with my manuscript?  Here’s some unsolicited advice:

1. You never call.  You could at least text once in a while.

2. Little terms of endearment are appreciated, as are flowers, chocolate, and a bottle of Moet Chandon when you close the deal.

3. Be professional. Never insult me with snarky tweets making fun of the stupid query letters you received today.  It’s your JOB to read query letters.

4. Always remember that writers create the product. Which is a book. Without us, you’re back at your former lame-ass job, whatever that was.

5. Can you appreciate a little satire?  If not, I’m afraid I just can’t fall in love with you.  That’s OK.  Like Mama always said, there’s plenty more fish in the sea.

 

 

 

 

Soul on the page

A reader’s confession:

When it comes to novels, I really don’t care for “page-turners” so much. I’m more of a lingerer, a stop after every page and think about it reader. I want to make a book last, I want to smell its essence, suck the marrow out of the words, chew on the fat of intent, feel the spicy sting of satire or taste the sweet-sour of regret in the tone.  The writer has poured his soul into the soup and I want it to fill my mouth and savor it before I swallow.

Page-turners?  meh. What’s a page-turner but a cleverly contrived plot?  Bad guys chasing good guys or good guys chasing bad?  The good guy wins or the bad guy wins, I don’t really care.  In the end we all die, but how do we live, that’s what I want to know?  Sometimes I start a “page-turner,” and sure enough, I’m hooked.  But one of two things usually happens:  I speedread just to find out whodunit.  Or I lose interest about halfway through because the whole thing feels contrived.  This happened to me recently with Gone Girl.  I was initially seduced, and drawn into the story because of the characters — whom I soon quit believing in or caring about.

For me, page-turning thrillers are like quickie encounters; most of them these days are heavy on the gratuitous sex scenes.  Laughable soft porn, at best.  If you’re looking for auto arousal may I suggest literary erotica –  which is at least honest about its intent.  What keeps me turning the pages isn’t so much action as character, voice, and theme.  Ultimately, the feeling of discovery, the connecting with another human being, real or fictional.  And I’m not sure there’s a difference between the two.

My favorite genres to read are nonfiction, literary fiction, short stories, humor, satire and poetry.  I admire the writing of George Saunders, Dave Eggers, Michael Cunningham, Catherine Anne Porter, Anne Proulx, Garrison Keillor, T.C.Boyle, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain — oh, stop me, no one wants to read a list!

I’m currently reading Cunningham’s latest novel, The Snow Queen.  So much humanity packed into each paragraph!  Did I tell you I once took a week-long writers workshop led by Michael Cunningham, at the Napa Writers Conference, back in 1997, before he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in ’98 for The Hours.  Ah, but that story deserves its own blog post…

A writer’s confessions:

I’m an old-fashioned writer, trying to get better at my craft.  (I’m also an old writer.  But that’s the fine thing about writing, you’re never too old.  Consider Larry McMurtry and Doris Lessing.  OK, Doris is no longer with us, but she had a long career and finally won her Nobel prize.  In comparison, I’m in my salad days.)

I’m an old jack-of-all-trades and master of none.  Just as my mother warned I’d become.

I refuse to write for a “market.”

I don’t produce a product.

I write what compels me.

I write to discover.

I write to share the life I’m living and the lives I imagine.

I strive for soul on the page.

I’m looking forward to practicing my craft at the Chesapeake Writer’s Conference at St. Mary’s College of Maryland this summer, featuring acclaimed authors Jerry Gabriel, (conference director), Patricia Henley, Matt Burgess, Ana Maria Spagna, and Elizabeth Arnold.

The older I get the more I have to learn!

Margaret Skea on writing the second book of a series

I met Margaret Skea at the 2012 Historical Novel Society Conference in London and have been following her debut historical novel, Turn of the Tide, with great interest.  She’s giving us a candid glimpse today of what it was like for her to write the second novel in her promising series about dueling families in troubled 16th century Scotland.  Writing a sequel is definitely not a bed of roses, even for an award-winning author.   — Linda Collison

 Margaret Skea

  I can still remember the moment I first saw a print copy of Turn of the Tide – complete in almost every

respect – cover, ISBN and so on, except that it was one of six copies of the unedited manuscript rushed

out for a promised TV interview that didn’t happen. I’ve kept those six copies in the hope that maybe

one day they might be worth something…

 

But if that is ever to be anything more than a pipe dream I need to get the next book written and the

next, and the next. And just at this moment finishing Book 2, which has the working title A House

Divided, seems about as arduous as climbing Mount Everest.

 

I’ve heard it said that an author’s second novel is the hardest one to write. I certainly hope that’s true or

the series I fondly dreamed of when I first started on this journey may never materialize.

 

To backtrack a little – Turn of the Tide didn’t exactly come easy either. The first draft began life with

an historical person as the main character. After about a year, as I was beginning to think that the end

was in sight, I took my precious ‘baby’ to a residential writing course. I arrived with 70,000 words

and came home with 3,000 and a new, fictional main character, Munro, who rode into my head on his

horse Sweet Briar. Almost immediately I knew what the final scene would be, but no idea how I was

going to get there. Fortunately Munro had, and from that point on he took charge and the story flowed.

Occasionally he would go AWOL and I’d take some time out and write a short story or two, and when

he reappeared it was always with some new idea for the plot. Between us we wrote the new first draft,

taking about a year and then the real fun began.

 

I discovered that it’s actually the editing that I most enjoy, the challenge of honing and polishing and

cutting away the slack. The published novel is 102,000 words, but when I first typed ‘The End’ the

manuscript ran to 127,000. I didn’t trim 25,000 words in one go of course, and indeed cutting the word

count was never an aim, but rather an unexpected by-product of the editing process. For me macro-

editing involves looking for plot holes and points where the story sags, while micro-editing deals with

the language, the grammar, the (dreaded) punctuation, and finally the unnecessary words, the fillers

that add nothing to the meaning, words like ‘just’ or ‘then’. I shocked myself when the final edit,

cutting one or two words at a time, reduced the word count by a massive 5,000.

 

In writing Turn of the Tide I only had myself (and Munro) to please, and I’m still amazed and delighted

that not only did it get picked up by a publisher, but the response from readers has been really positive.

And that is half the problem. For now, as I write the sequel, I find myself wondering will readers like

what I’m doing with the characters, or will I write something that most people won’t be happy with,

like Jo not marrying Laurie in Little Women.

 

I’m outside my comfort zone in terms of the plot also, for I’m not sure if the current opening is the

right place to start, nor exactly how it will end. This is where positive feedback can itself be a problem.

So many people found the ending of Turn of the Tide powerful and unexpected, that I worry I won’t be

able to write an equally good ending second time round.

 

And then there’s the research. Mostly in Turn of the Tide I wrote from my existing knowledge of the

period, this time I wanted to spread my wings a little. No problem there as I love research – and it’s

the perfect, and easy to justify displacement activity when writing itself is hard. Except that I have

searched exhaustively for information on a particular event and come up with a blank. Now if the

specific information doesn’t exist that’s fine – I can then write from the general, but if it does and I just

don’t find it I run the risk of someone later telling me I got it wrong. Of course we can’t always get

everything right, but it’s important to me that I try.

 

Hardest of all is the time that I waste when I know I should just get on with the writing. If I could be

sufficiently disciplined to turn off the internet for most of the day… If I could resist the temptation to

go back over what I’ve already written and leave the editing until I have a finished draft… If I didn’t

watch re-runs of 1970s TV…

 

Before Turn of the Tide was published my writing was a wee hobby, but now my family and friends

take it seriously and are prepared to give me the time and space to write. So I owe it to them and to

myself and dare I say it, to the many folk out there who say they want to know what has happened to

the Munros, to get on with it.

 

If the second novel is the hardest, roll on Book 3!

***

The People’s Book Award will soon be announced, and Skea’s Turn of the Tide is a popular contestant.  Click here to read more about it what voting readers are saying about this author’s debut novel.  Check out her author Facebook page and her blog on her website

About the author:

Margaret Skea grew up in Ulster at the height of the ‘Troubles’, but now lives with her husband in the

Scottish Borders. An interest in Scotland’s turbulent history, and in particular the 16th century, combined with PhD

research into the Ulster-Scots vernacular, led to the writing of Turn of the Tide, which was the

Historical Fiction Winner in the 2011 Harper Collins / Alan Titchmarsh People’s Novelist Competition.

An Hawthornden Fellow and award winning short story writer – her recent credits include, Overall

Winner Neil Gunn 2011, Chrysalis Prize 2010, and Winchester Short Story Prize 2009. Third in the

Rubery Book Award Short Story Competition 2013, a finalist in the Historical Novel Society Short

Story Competition 2012, shortlisted in the Mslexia Short Story Competition 2012 and previously

long-listed for the Matthew Pritchard Award, Fish Short Story and Fish One Page Prize, she has been

published in a range of magazines and anthologies in Britain and the USA.

She has also flown a Tiger Moth (under supervision) and would love the opportunity to do it again.

The night Editor-in-Chief Myrna Blyth taught me to pitch…

Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman. That was the slogan of Ladies Home Journal, iconic women’s magazine which after 131 years has published its last regular monthly edition. In her recent AARP blog, former Editor-in-Chief of Ladies Home Journal, Myrna Blyth, calls it a sad ending to America’s oldest women’s magazine.

Let me tell you about the time I had dinner with Myrna and what she taught me about pitching in the major leagues.  Of magazines, that is.  It was at the Aspen Writer’s Conference, back in the early ‘nineties.  The conference was a weekend event focused on writing for magazines. This was back in the days before blogs and e-zines; a long-ago time when most people received their favorite periodicals in the mail every month or read them while standing in line at the grocery story. In the last century freelance writing for magazines was the way for aspiring novelists without an MFA behind their name to gain respect among editors. That was my path.

The two-day event featured talks and workshops by editors and successful freelancers, with plenty of networking and pitch opportunities. Saturday night was the gala event – a three course dinner with wine pairings at the Hotel Jerome.  (On second thought, it was not held at the Hotel Jerome, but at a more modest venue, like the Aspen Holiday Inn. After all, it was a writers’ conference…)

Bob (my husband) was to be my guest at the gala event.  He had spent the day hiking in the nearby Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness of the White River National Forest while I was listening to editors breathlessly describe the ethereal qualities of the perfect query letter.  When he finally got back to the hotel room, showered, changed out of his blue jeans and flannel shirt, and into his chinos and sports coat, we were running a little late.  In fact, we had completely missed the cash bar cocktail party. We gave our pre-paid dinner tickets to the doorman and stepped inside. Everyone else, already seated, turned to stare.

There were only two available seats remaining – two empty chairs at a corner table where the Head Honcha of Ladies Home Journal and her BBC journalist husband were sitting.  How could this be possible? At most conferences the speakers don’t deign to eat with the rabble. But there she was, Myrna Blyth, albeit looking aloof and unattainable.  But the only two empty chairs in the entire dining room were beside her and Mr. Blyth.

Bob and I sheepishly took our places, apologizing for our tardiness. After some very perfunctory, almost curt, introductions, I squelched any thought of pitching ideas and instead concentrated on buttering my dinner roll.  It was clear the venerable editor was not the least impressed with conference attendees.  I kept my mouth shut while she expounded on all the gaffs freelancers made, wondering why she had bothered to accept the speaking engagement if we were so hopelessly inept.  Oh, right.  It was Aspen.  She and Jeffery probably were staying at the Jerome –at the writers expense.  But perhaps she had endured an arduous journey from New York City, pestered by cab drivers, baggage handlers, flight attendants and thoughtless bellman who pummeled her with their story ideas.  Myrna let it be known with bitter sarcasm, how tiring it was to have to deal with “you people.”  I’m not sure if she meant the conference attendees or writers in general.

I nodded and continued to butter my bread.  Secretly fuming. No way was I going to expose myself to ridicule by even mentioning my current projects or my past publishing credits.

Eventually Myrna paused for a drink of water and I gladly turned my attention to Mr. Blyth, an affable Brit.  Bob asked him some conversational questions about current events and soccer and they chatted through the salad course.  It seemed like I might make it through dinner with minimal damage to my ego.  When the man-talk petered out, I asked Myrna about her writing, and she related how she had climbed the ladder to literary success.  It was an impressive story.

By the time the main course was served, we knew quite a bit about Myrna and Jeffery, but they knew very little about us. There was no way I was going to pitch an idea for an article after the “you people should know” rant.  No way was I going to talk about what I write, or even admit I was a writer.  As for stooping so low as to pitch her a story idea, I’d sooner choke to death on my dinner roll.

But the accomplished writer and editor-in-chief couldn’t help herself; all good writers and editors are curious by nature.  “So, what is it you people do?”  She asked at last.  I let Bob talk a bit about his studies in astrophysics and his being on the board of a family business dealing in railroad parts.  Myrna and Jeffery were like, whoa.  Suitably impressed.

Then Myrna turned to me.  “What about you?”

“Linda,” I said, reminding her of my name.  But what to say? I was a jack of all trades. How to explain my unconventional composite career?  I had no “elevator speech” prepared and I certainly didn’t even want to remind her that I was one of “you people.”

“I’m a registered nurse,” I said, choosing the one topic that always works. “I work night shift in a Denver hospital emergency department.”

“Really?”  Myrna’s entire affect changed.  She leaned forward on a bent elbow and looked me in the face.  “You know, we’re always interested in stories about nurses.”  We, meaning Ladies Home Journal.

I would not be baited, but instead concentrated on forking a slippery slice of zucchini. Waiting for her to say more.  She did.

“Nurses are one profession people trust. More than doctors, people trust nurses. Nurses and firefighters.  We like those kind of stories. ”

I nodded. Sipped thoughtfully at my wine.

“I’d love to see an article, an information piece; What Nurses Know. Or, What your nurse knows that your doctor won’t tell you.  Practical advice for readers from a trusted nurse.  You know, things like…”  She proceeded to outline the article for me and by the time the cheesecake and coffee were served, I had written it in my head.

Two days later, back in Denver, I wrote a query letter to Editor-in-Chief  Myrna Blyth.  Knowing a lowly intern would be reading her mail (one of “you people” undoubtedly) I began the letter by mentioning the lovely dinner we enjoyed the other night, and thanking Myrna for her direction.  I queried the proposed article, using Myrna’s own words.  Needless to say, I got the assignment. My article was published about six months later — What Nurses Know that Doctors Don’t Tell You by Linda Collison – and I was paid enough for that article to cover my expenses at the Aspen Writers Conference, with money to spare.

But it’s not all about the money. Being published in Ladies Home Journal was a credit that has always gotten concise, well-targeted queries past the intern and onto the editor’s desk. That article in Ladies Home Journal (along with publishing credits in other magazines) helped me get our first nonfiction book published (Rocky Mountain Wineries) followed by my first novel, Star-Crossed, published by Knopf.  And I hope the article helped readers learn a few tricks for getting better health care.  At the heart of it, that’s why “we people” write; to share our experience and to make a difference in someone’s life.

Here’s the take-home lesson:  Attend writers conferences.  When it comes to pitching your story, play a little hard to get. Make them want you. Never be a bore – don’t allow yourself to be classified as one of “you people.”  Always arrive fashionably late to the party, and never ever underestimate the power of a woman.

Thank you, Myrna Blyth, for teaching me how it’s done.

 

How We Write: Seamus Beirne on his process of writing The Ice House

Seamus Beirne and I both have ties to Barbados.  My novel Barbados Bound and Seamus’s forthcoming novel The Ice House are both partially set in historical Barbados, when British plantation owners were making fortunes from sugar cane at the expense of slaves and indentured servants.  Both novels are published by Fireship Press.  I asked Seamus to share something about how he writes:

Writing for me is a journey of discovery. Unlike many writers I do not have an outline or a plot summary before I begin. That does not mean that I don’t know where I’m going, I do, but I don’t have a GPS map of the road to my destination. For example before writing my current novel, The Ice House, I started with this premise: Michael Redferne runs afoul of the local landlord’s son. For his trouble he is kidnapped and deported as a slave to Barbados, known as the Sugar Island. There he is branded, abused and beaten, before escaping and making his way back to Ireland. That’s a skeleton and it’s a long way from a completed story.

The question now becomes, how to put meat on those bones. I can sit down with a pen and paper or at a computer and speculate outside the world of the story what direction this tale will take, but nothing of significance happens. That exercise is analogous to being asked to describe the paintings in the Louvre without having been there. So the key for me is to get into the world of the story, and since I’m the creator of that world, I need to start writing the actual story, otherwise I’m shut out. I’ve discovered I can’t sneak in by writing a summary.  Holding a pen or putting my fingers on the keyboard is like turning the key in the ignition. Nothing happens until I do that, and when I do, the energy starts to flow. Of course one of the downsides to such an approach is the danger of going down blind alleys which a writer may not discover until the end of the story. Worse still, it may stall the forward motion of the story. No, I don’t have an answer to that dilemma.  Writing sometimes is a frustrating business.

As you can deduce from all of that, such an approach does not lend itself easily to starting out with well-developed characters, where all of their foibles, weaknesses, goals, and motivations are laid out on paper beforehand. Many writers do, arriving at a core understanding of their characters, through paper interviews and descriptions to determine their personality types before getting into the world of the story. Best selling historical fiction writers Ken Follett and Ben Kane are examples of that approach. I’m not knocking that, it simply doesn’t work for me. I know little about my characters until I meet them, and I meet them within the context of the ongoing story. Then I know only what they allow me to know, like people in real life. The content of my characters is revealed to me gradually, by their actions, thoughts, and how they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.

I didn’t know beforehand that my protagonist, Michael Redferne, would be callous and indifferent to his wife, or that landlord Robert Preston, bent on clearing his land of poor peasants, would turn out to be a man with a conscience, or that Isaac, an African slave, could rise above the indignities heaped upon him by the white power structure. All that emerges gradually as the story of The Ice House unfolds.

***

About Seamus Beirne:

A native of Ireland, I have lived in California for over forty years. I have an M.A. in English from CSULA and spent thirty years as an English teacher and administrator in high schools and college. My wife Ann and I have three children, all now plowing their own furrow—the gods be praised. We’re holding our breath, but none of them have moved into the spare room yet. Ann spends two days a week taking care of our grandsons, Colin and Roan. I spend seven days a week wrangling our two-year old, full of p and v, German shepherd named Lucy. Ann has gotten the better end of that deal.

In my spare time I write–two novels so far and one in the making. My second novel, The Ice House, is due to be published this year by Fireship Press. I have received the following awards: Conference Choice Award winner for adult fiction, San Diego Writers Conference, 2010, 2011, and 2012. Runner-up for adult fiction, San Francisco Writers Conference, 2010. Finalist in the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference, 2011. Along with writing, I run a web-based college essay editing service www.essayplus.com

– Seamus Beirne

Author of The Ice House (forthcoming from Fireship Press)

Like Seamus Beirne’s author page on Facebook.

 

 

 

 

Blog Hop: Meet my main character — Patricia — posing as Patrick MacPherson.

Meet My Main Character  is the historical novelist’s blog hop of the month.  Everybody is tagging everybody in a flurry of social networking, akin to some sort of dance.   If you’re the new kid in school,  a blog hop is the new  sock hop; a social exchange in which authors post on their own blogs the answers to a list of preset questions someone poses, then tag other writers to do the same.  The exercise is useful to the author as it helps focus aspects of one’s work-in-progress, and it serves to enhance networking among our literary coterie.  It also stirs up a little pre-release buzz for upcoming publications.

Antoine Vanner — author of the Dawlish Chronicles, a series-in-progress set in the Victorian era, often aboard steamships — tagged me first.  Antoine’s knowledge of human nature, his passion for nineteenth-century political and military history, and first-hand experience of their locales provide the background for his stories.  Antoine portrays lesser known but exciting events and exotic settings for his vibrant novels, Brittania’s Wolf, and Brittania’s Reach.  His main man Nicholas Dawlish is a complex character, heroic yet imperfect,  a man of his times.

Thank you, Antoine, for your interest in my main character.  Who is she?  Why would you be interested in what happens to her?  Here we go, let’s pop the questions…

What is the name of your character? Is she fictional or a historic person?

     Well, you see, a name is not such a simple thing.  Not for a woman, it isn’t.

     “Who needs surnames?” I said, still muddle-headed. “They’re never our own anyway.” 

     Rachel’s smile was rueful. “How true. first we’re given our father’s name, then we take our husband’s. Only our given name remains the same. But what shall I call you?

“Patricia.”

Meet Patricia:  Born Patricia Kelley, to her chagrin, the illegitimate issue of the profligate Baron Sheldon Hatterby and his Irish indentured servant.  Although daddy  sent her to England to be raised as gentleman’s daughter (albeit a natural daughter) he didn’t give her his name.  Upon his untimely death she rashly steals away aboard a ship bound for Barbados in a brash attempt to claim the Hatterby sugar plantation.  When that seems out of the question, Patricia becomes Mrs. MacPherson upon marrying the old Scot, Doctor Aeneas MacPherson, serving as ship surgeon.  At that point in her life she’ll do just about anything to survive.  After her husband dies she keeps his last name and the tools of his trade, and takes the first name of his nephew, Patrick, along with the dead man’s identity as a ship surgeon’s mate.

 

Hannah Snell, Royal Marine in Captain Graham’s company, Colonel Fraser’s regiment.

While Patricia was born of my imagination, the cross-dressing marine pictured here in the bright red coat was quite real.  Hannah Snell was one of dozens, perhaps hundreds of women who chose to portray themselves as men and serve in the navy or the army, in former centuries.   More than just a romantic icon, the stuff of ballads and broadsheets,  many verifiable incidents of  cross-dressing sailors and soldiers have been revealed.  Military standards were different then; there were no thorough physical exams like we know today, that would reveal a recruit’s sex.  Because young boys often served on ships as servants and apprentices, young women were able to pass themselves off as teenaged boys or young men.  Many readers are surprised to learn there really were women who got away with their disguise, living and working alongside men, in some cases for years.

History conveniently forgets many, if not most women – unless they happen to be the wives, lovers or daughters of famous men.  Titles such as The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Mapmaker’s Wife,  The Bone Setter’s Daughter,  The Hangman’s Daughter make me ask why women are so often defined in relationship to men?  What about The Time Traveler’s Husband, The Mapmaker’s Ex-Husband, The Bone Setter’s Son, the Hangwoman’s Lover?  Why can’t the woman BE the time traveler, the Bone Setter, the Hangwoman?  In my series Patricia, posing as Patrick, IS the surgeon’s mate, the adventurer, the seaman.  She does not play a passive role or a supportive role. In writing the Patricia MacPherson books I’m exploring what it might have been like to have been a cross-dressing woman in the mid to late 18th century.  Why might a woman choose that path?  How could she get away with it?  What rewards would it bring?  At what cost?

The idea came to me while I was serving as a voyage crew member aboard the Bark Endeavour,  a working replica of Captain James Cook’s 18th century ship, sailing around the world, training willing sailors to sail the ship.  I served on the passage from Vancouver to Hawaii, in 1999.  Endeavour was a floating time machine and I was fortunate to spend three weeks aboard, as part of the crew.  I’ve also sailed thousands of blue water miles with my husband on a modern sloop; enough sea time to learn how to navigate, steer, and handle sails.  My twelve years experience as a nurse in acute care settings have also played a role in imagining Patricia’s life as a surgeon’s mate.  Patricia is my own daughter, in a sense, born two centuries before I was.

When and where is the story set?

Barbados Bound; Book 1 of the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventures begins in 1760, in Portsmouth, England, and ends in Havana in 1762, at the end of the Seven Years War.  Surgeon’s Mate, book 2 of the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventures, takes place during the following months.  Book 3, not yet published, takes place in 1765, during the Stamp Act.  Patricia has effectively become a Rhode Island Yankee, passing herself off as Patrick MacPherson on a colonial trading schooner, which she is part owner of.  She has an opportunity to make a great deal of profit trading illicitly with Havana, recently given back to the Spanish after the Treaty of Paris.  The risk is great but the reward, greater.

 What should we know about your character?

In  Barbados Bound, we meet Patricia, a young woman caught between two worlds: That of Britain, a rising world power and Colonial North America.  She’s caught between male and female roles.  She struggles with dependence and liberty. She presents herself as a man in order to earn a living, as I suspect was the reason most women in precarious positions donned breeches.  It was that or prostitution, in many cases.

While Patricia comes to enjoy the freedom of being a man in a man’s world, she is alone.  In Surgeon’s Mate; Book 2 of the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventure Series she became separated from her lover, Brian Dalton, the gunner aboard HMS Richmond.  At the beginning of book 3, she has put Dalton out of her mind.  It’s been nearly two years since they parted company.

 What is the main conflict?  What messes up her life?

Patricia, an adventurer, or smuggler, if you will, must evade Customs, which is now cracking down hard on Colonial merchants carrying sugar and molasses from foreign ports.  At the beginning of book 3 Parliament has just implemented the onerous Stamp Act.  Riots in New England port towns and the beginnings of organized resistance among the people.  British warships are patrolling Colonial waters seizing merchant ships and their cargoes.  She will either make a good profit, or lose everything if caught. Another conflict involves matters of the heart when the gunner Brian Dalton, shows up again.

In Havana Patricia meets up with the French Lieutenant who captured her during the war.  He suspected she was a female then, and now, in Havana, invites her to join him in his lucrative smuggling ventures, as well as in his bed.  Also, in Havana, her services as a surgeon are needed to attend the governor’s daughter in a situation that must be kept secret.   The outcome could affect the illicit trade currently allowed to go on.

What is the personal goal of the character?

Patricia, as Patrick, has been made master and factor of the trading schooner Andromeda for this run from Rhode Island to the Caribbean.  If the trip is successful and she evades the Customs officials in Havana and Newport, she will make a tidy sum on her share of the profits.  Money means everything to her now; it has become her goal in life, to make enough to be comfortable.  She doesn’t dare think too far in the future, because what sort of future can a woman disguised as a man look forward to?  A deeper motif is that of finding her true self, sharing her true self with another, and finding a place for herself in the world.  A home.

 Is there a working title for this novel and can we read more about it?

At first, the working title was “Yankee Moon,” but during the rewrite, the French Lieutenant and Havana took on more importance.  I’m now calling it, “Leaving Havana.”  If anyone wants to suggest a working title, I’m open!  In any case, it will be subtitled Book 3 of the Patricia MacPherson Adventure Series.  You can read more about it here on my website, and on Patricia’s Facebook page.

When can we expect the book to be published?

I’m working on the rewrite — and hoping to see an early 2015 publication date.

 

Thanks to fellow writers:

Antoine Vanner, author of the Dawlish Chronicles. Antoine was my guest blogger recently, on the thread How We Write, with his essay Getting Inside the Victorian Mind.

Debra Brown, author of For the Skylark (and creator of  Victorian characters Dante and Evangeline, lovely names both!)

Debra and I co-hosted Aloha Across the Centuries, a recent on-line writer’s retreat in virtual Hawaii

Helen Hollick, prolific author of many historical novels, including the Sea Witch series.

I had the pleasure of meeting Helen in person at the Historical Novel Society Conference 2012 in London, where we joined Margaret Muir, Rick Spilman and David Davies on a nautical historical fiction panel.

Judith Starkston,  author of Hand Of Fire, and my guest author blogging about How We Write with her essay, Character Motivation; Love-driven Rage in the Bronze Age.

Margaret Skea, award-winning author of  Turn of the Tide, whom I also met at the London HNS. Margaret will be my guest author May 5, blogging about How We Write.

All five tagged me, but Antoine asked first.    Sadly, I haven’t been able to tag anyone else.  The music has stopped and all seats are taken. The cheese stands alone!

Seymour Hamilton on imagination and Astreya

 “How does my imagination work ?”

Unpredictably.

I start with a place.  But I can’t say “I’ll write a story set in Bermuda, or New York City or Mars.”  It’s not enough that I have been there, as in the case of the first two, and it’s not enough that I could imagine a place such as Mars.  I have to start with a place I know so well that it is far more than just a snapshot loaded onto Facebook.  I have to be able to walk around it in my mind. In such a place, I know how the wind moves the clouds, what wildflowers grow there, how the pines smell after rain, where the tidal whirlpools are and how to sail around them.

Mysteriously, words can get me there, words that can do for me what the words “Once upon a time…” did when I was much, much younger.

The Astreya Trilogy begins with the words I wrote first:

Ancient round-shouldered mountains met the sea only a little south of where winter held the ocean ice-clad the whole year long.  Along the coastline, where harbors were few and hard to find, jagged rocks combed the breakers grinding at shards of wood that might once have been ships.

Whenever I got lost and didn’t know where the story was going, I came back to those first two sentences, and read them out loud.  They are my charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas.  Through them I gain entry into Astreya’s world.

Such a place, and the right words as passport to it, take me where I can watch someone (not me) living out a story, which with luck, I can tell.  Luck, because I have to believe in what I’m writing. If I run out of luck and stop believing, it takes a hellofa long time to get back, which is why it took damn near 40 years from first sentence of The Astreya Trilogy to the final word of the third volume.

The moment I start doubting where, what and who I’m writing about, I’m lost in darkest academic doubt and denial. I can take time out to remind myself that the wooden bumper-thing built into the side of a boat just a bit above the waterline is called the rubbing strake, but if I ask myself what the hell I’m doing writing about a fellow with a funny name who’s trying to find his birthright and destiny and avoid being killed by his uncle while at the same time getting back to the girl into whose eyes he looked when they first met… well, if I doubt any of that, I’m lost.  Sometimes for years at a stretch.

You see, I’m a discovery writer. A pantser.  No plan.  I have to go where the story takes me.  If I try too hard to make things happen, I end up having to throw stuff away.  On one occasion, this amounted to more than 200 pages.  This was because what they were about didn’t happen, because they were contrived.

Don’t think that I have no idea where I’m going.  Astreya gets his father’s riddling notebook from his widowed mother in Chapter 1.  Many, many pages later, just before book three ends, the riddle is unriddled.  In between, I was wondering what it meant.  I honestly did not know. But I knew that eventually I would.

Writing is a risky business for me, the more so because for so long I spent most of my life doing the absolute opposite of writing, which is studying and teaching literature, at which I sucked, because I enjoyed reading too much to do the steadily depressing analytical two-step (with buck-and-wing footnote) which is necessary to get published in what are pompously called “learned journals.”

By contrast, writing is such fun.  When things go well, that is.  And revising is fun, too, although it’s of a different kind.

Joss Whedon, a man I greatly admire, talks about the joy of creating a world, and also of the finicky business of choosing not just the words, but what kind of words, how they sound, how they feel, how they fit.  For example, in Astreya’s world there are no meters, miles or inches.  (I had to relent and allow depth of water to be measured in fathoms, because, well, it felt right.)  Consequently, everything is measured in human terms:  a handful, an arm’s length, a stride.  Why?  Because those words belonged there.

Careful editing of words keeps me within the enchanted place where the story happens.  Because I can hear characters talking in my head, I have to find ways of getting their styles and accents onto the page.  Roaring Jack talks like a Newfoundlander in that distinctive variant of Irish which is separated from Ireland by 300 years and the Atlantic Ocean.  So Jack says things like “Oi niver, niver want to hear yer say that agin, b’y.”  Gar, the itinerant painter with an obscure past, lapses into nautical speech when things get exciting.  Astreya’s wicked uncle oscillates between sounding like a career bureaucrat with control issues and a whispering psychopath improving his advanced skills in torture.

Getting the words right and keeping them right over the course of the story makes me concentrate more than I have ever done in my life.  I lose consciousness of wherever I may be keyboarding on my dented and trusty MacBook Pro.  I disappear too, so that there is only the story unfolding onto the page, to be burnished by re-reading (mostly out loud) and tinkered with until it’s right.

When it’s all over and I hold the book in my hand, it’s something that I did, but it isn’t mine any more.  It’s a world waiting for others to enter.  My hope is that those who go there will take the time to linger and enjoy.

 Seymour Hamilton’s lyrical epic Astreya Series is published by Fireship Press, the publisher of my Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventures.  To appreciate the author’s lush language and imaginative setting,  Listen to the author read from Astreya.  

The Voyage South (book I), The Men of the Sea (book II) and The Wanderer’s Curse (book III) are available on-line and at your favorite independent bookstore (ask them to order for you.)

I would love to see this series made into a movie.