Sandra Gulland's Blog, page 29

Mirror Sense: a delightful on-line novel set in 17th century Europe

{Illustration from Page 1 of Phoebe Spanier's Mirror Sense .}

I don't recall how I happened upon it; what I do remember is the joy of discovery. 

Mirror Sense, by Phoebe Sanier, is a delightful illustrated novel, coming to us Dickenesque week-by-week on the Net. It's original, it's illuminating, it's … enchanting! 

The novel is still "in process" at this date — but I believe it fair to say that it's about the intrigue required by the Court of Louis XIV to gain access to Venetian mirror technology. 

One of the things I love about Mirror Sense is how the author-as-researcher weighs in with each "page" of the story. 

The other thing I love, most of all, is how original it is: Phoebe Spanier is as adept at writing poetry as she is at making art as she is at story-telling. What a combination! 

Phoebe, a U.S. citizen now living in Tel Aviv, has been a Marketing and Media Manager, a Book Scout and Editor.  She has been kind enough to answer a few questions for me.

What got you interested in the 17th century?

I started reading about 17th-century France for a project I developed with Hachette Livre jeunesse in Paris a few years ago. (My background is in children's book publishing, though I've jumped jobs and countries quite a bit.) The period just fascinated me and I began thinking about a novel set in the late 17th century. I've really enjoyed the research, both textual and visual … 

I love the mix of art, poetry and history. I love how the story is one part, and your historical/research notes are another. How did you conceive of this unusual format? Do you imagine that you will ever offer it in print form, or as an e-book?

Webcomic artists usually blog alongside their comic posts, which I enjoy as a reader. I wanted my story and notes to be side-by-side to really encourage people to read both, and also to accommodate a vertical-scroll reading experience (as on the "Read from the Start" page on my site).

Luckily a very patient programmer friend was willing to help me set this up. I would love to offer this project as a printed book and/or an ebook… one day when it's completed. (For now I'm taking it a page at a time!) I'm not sure how I would incorporate the blog, though.

I love the illustrations. Are you an artist? A poet? (Clearly: both.)

I've enjoyed writing and drawing ever since I can remember, and I like thinking about how words and pictures can fit together on a page or screen. I've always been most interested in picture books — this is my first time trying my hand at an illustrated novel.

You tell a story in a minimalist way I find enchanting. Do you cut a great deal?

Yes! I guess it's my strength and weakness. Revising is almost synonymous with deleting for me! 

Thank you so much, Phoebe!  I look forward to seeing how this story unfolds. 

 
 

Phoebe quotes Martha Graham in one of the posts. It was a quote I found quite moving, and I quoted it myself on this blog. Phoebe said about this quote:

"… I want to use this post to remind myself of the importance of creativity. I don't mean creativity in the grand, masterpiece way. I mean it in the small ways that enhance all our lives. Baking a cake. Sewing a doll. Coming up with a new idea at work. Or creating an eccentric, flawed illustrated novel…"

Hardly! Do have a look at this delightful creation. 

On giving a workshop, becoming a publisher, revising …

A few weeks ago, as I've likely mentioned on this blog, I gave a workshop at the San Miguel Writers' Conference: Net Book Promo for Luddites. I had given this workshop two years before at the Kingston WritersFest, but quite a bit had changed since then.

My intention is to someday offer the content of this course as a free e-book on this site, but for now, you can read it on-line. 

The workshop went very well, but the experience, for me, was a bit fraught because: 1) of course the Wi-Fi didn't connect, 2) we needed to track down a cord that would connect my newish Mac to the projector, 3) only to realize that I didn't have the files I needed on my computer (because I was expecting a different type of projector).

And then Naomi Wolf slipped into the class: she of the kazillion Social Media followers! (If you haven't read her book — or seen the resultant movie — The End of America: do. Extremely important.) 

During the conference and after, writers Merilyn Simonds, Wayne Grady, Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson stayed with us. Do you think we talked about writing and publishing? You bet. It was a wonderful week.

With the help of novelist, designer and tech wiz Kris Waldherr, I'm getting closer to launching Sandra Gulland Ink, my e-book publishing venture. 

The covers have been finished, accounts set up with Kobo and Amazon — iTunes yet to come. (Apple is so slow!)

I read a lot of e-books, and I want these to be special. Kris has done a beautiful job of designing the books inside and out. I'm imprint proud!

Also, of course, I've had to re-read all my books, to proof them. Also, of course, I've made changes. 

I've been putting off re-reading Mistress of the Sun, however — but the time has come. It's timely, because right now I'm working on the final draft of This Bright Darkness (working title), and the two novels are linked. 

As I'm rewriting, I think often of Ariel Gore's summary of the revision process: lather and rinse, lather and rinse. Right now, I'm lathering, working up detail, adding scenes. Then I'll edit (rinse) before I send the manuscript to my editor.

And then it will be time to dive into the next novel, my YA about Josephine's daughter Hortense. 

Busy: yes!  

 

A queer divine dissatisfaction …

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.

"And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.

"It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

"You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. …

"No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others" 

— Martha Graham

What's going on: 

I'm working on draft 6.1 of This Bright Darkness (the Next Novel's working title), trying to get it to my editor by the end of this month. Lots to do!

In the background, Kris Waldherr is working on getting the first of my Sandra Gulland Ink titles ready to launch into the stratosphere. Very exciting! Kris is a wonderful designer, and these e-books are going to be exceptional. 

The San Miguel de Allende Writers' Conference was excellent this year. I've notes, notes, and more notes to gather together and share.

Anon …

I've a novel to finish! 

 

How to (easily?) make a podcast interview

{Image: "The World in 2030″ by E McKnight Kauffer, as shown on the wonderful blog BibliOdyssey.}

My friend and excellent literary writer Catherine Mayo (C. M. Mayo) is also a tech and Social Net wiz (although she would never admit it). She's making audio podcast interviews with writers and making them available on her website, iTunes and other sites. 

Here's how she does it.

First, you will need:

1) A Mac. (Sorry! This process can no doubt be done on a PC, but Catherine and I are Mackies.) You will also need the software GarageBand, which comes with the Mac.

2) Skype software and an account. (Free.) To record an interview, both parties must be on Skype. 

3) Skype recording software, Call Recorder: download here. (This is an add-on to Skype, $19.95 U.S., but you can try it out for free.) Once installed into your Skype software, select Skype preferences, and then click "Recording" on the far right.

I selected AAC Compression for Audio Encoding (because I have a newish Mac), High Audio Quality and, under Recording Options, "Audio Only."

I opted to "Show Recording Controls at Launch" and to "Keep Recording Controls in Front During Calls." I also checked "Record Voicemail Playback Automatically" — although I don't know what that means. 

I opted to save the audio file to my Desktop so that I wouldn't lose it. 

4) An account (free) with podOmatic.com. 

Then:

1. She interviews the person on Skype, using Call Recorder.

2. She edits the recording with the Mac software GarageBand, using the "podcast" instrument setting. (Okay, I've a bit to learn here!)

3. She then uploads the audio file to PodOmatic.com, which will send it to iTunes.

4. She puts the link to the interview on her website.

5. She also makes the interview more widely available — and thereby giving it more exposure on Google — by uploading the podcast as a .mov file onto YouTube and Vimeo. 

Okay … I'm going to give it a try and report back. 

Hortense as a teen — the subject of my next-next novel (surprise!)

(Hortense as a teen, at right, with one of her best friends.)

I have news today. (It's already being tweeted on the Twitterverse!) I'm going to be writing two Young Adult novels for Penguin Canada. The first — and possibly both — will be about Josephine's daughter Hortense, taking me back to the Napoleonic era. The books will be published in Canada as  part of Penguin's Razorbill line and in the U.S. as part of Viking Young Readers.

I got the offer some time ago quite out-of-the-blue. It arrived on my agent's desk in a ribboned box containing chocolates and the proposal.

I needed time to think about it. I'd been long planning to write another (adult) novel about the women in Molière's life — this I will still do.

But YA? I was interested. For over a decade I was co-editor of a YA series for reluctant readers. Too, many teens are fans of my adult novels. The idea of writing YA intrigued (and challenged) me.

I spent quite a bit of time reading YA and re-researching Hortense's life, imagining what her story might be. I wasn't sure I wanted to return to the 18th century — but then I got hooked. Hortense is a very appealing character, and her teen years are dramatic, but also very sad. It's a truly sweet love story, as well of the story of a girl having difficulty coming to terms with a step-father (Napoleon).   

It's going to be a very interesting few years! Somehow, I feel that I can do all of this all at once: finish This Bright Darkness, begin another adult novel set in the 17th century, write two YAs and a short novel for GoodReads, as well as launching my own e-book imprint. 

A sense of reality, apparently, hasn't clicked in with my advancing years. 

I just got off the phone to a book club in Geneva — wonderful! The Skype connection was excellent. They were deep into the Trilogy and had lots of very interesting questions, a pleasure to chat with. (I told them secrets.) Thank you, Karen Smith, for organizing it.

If any of you reading this would like me to chat with your book club … just send me a note (sgulland AT sandragulland DOT com).

It's so much fun!

 

Too true!

Purely Julianna Baggott: an interview with an amazing author

I've mentioned before on this blog (here and here) that I'm a fan of author Julianna Baggott (also known as  Bridget Asher and N.E. Bod).

I loved her novel The Province Cure for the Brokenhearted and read her blog — Baggott • Asher • Bode —  regularly.

She a Writer Wonderwoman! She has published sixteen books in the last decade. (Imagine that.) Her latest novel, Pure, has just come out and is set to rocket.

"A great gorgeous whirlwind of a novel, boundless in its imagination. You will be swept away." — Justin Cronin, New York Times bestselling author of THE PASSAGE

She's be walking the red carpet for this one: a Fox 2000 film is already under way. 

What comes through in everything Julianna writes is heart. Big time. 

And so, a few questions: 

Julianna, you're on tour now. Forgive such a nuts & bolts question, but: How do you pack? How do you cope?

I pack badly, messily. I forget things like shoes and have to buy them on the road.  I sometimes like to talk to people on planes, other times I shut down. I'm terrible at sleeping in hotels. I don't like germs.

I DO like people in bookstores, very much. They're my kind of people. (But I'm not doing a huge traditional bookstore tour right now…)

You have a complex writing life (you write in a number of genres for several publishers under three names), a no-doubt demanding job as a professor, plus you have a large, young family. I know you've been asked this a million times, but: How do you do it? 

I've learned to write while not writing. I keep the work in my head.

I write lists — lots and lots of lists. Every night before I fall asleep, there are lists before I can drift off.

I've learned to make interruption part of my creative process. To accept it.

Do you use an assistant? If so, what does he/she do for you?

I've had assistants over the years and right now I'm working this wonderful smart young woman, Tara Gonzalez, who knows the world of YA literature extremely well, works at a library, and is attending college. She's incredible. Organized, smart, and plugged into a world where I need a guide.

I loved watching this old video interview of you: A Day in the Life of Julianna Baggott:

Wow. 12 years ago. I haven't seen this in so long. This was before, in so many ways, I had my ass handed to me. This was a completely pivotal time. I was just about to fail — very personally and professionally. And my life would change completely within one year. Everything I thought I knew here was about to be upended. Failing was about to become more intimate. Pulitzer, ha. I can't even bear to listen to myself talk.

And yet, that was who I was and in so many ways still am.

And, God, I still love the man in that video. 18 years together. And those babies!

Your definition of success at that time was seeing someone on a bus or airplane reading your book. Has that happened? 

Nope. And frankly with e-readers it probably won't. You don't see jackets anymore.

What's your definition of success now?

My definition of success now is that I get to stay on the field. I want to keep playing.

Fox acquired the film rights to Pure. Is "script writer" yet another hat you will be wearing?

I do write screenplays, but I think they're going after someone who has a really serious track record in the industry; I like that. I really respect the producer on the project, Karen Rosenfelt, and her assistant, Emmy Castlen. They're smart and creative people with a real eye.

What do you dream of doing that's yet to come?

Right now, I'm one foot in front of the other. I loved the world building aspect of Pure. It's a trilogy so I'm at work on edits for the second book and then the third is due right on its heels. I've got to carve out some mental space to build all of that architecture.

Thank you, Julianna!

As for myself, I've ordered Pure and very much look forward to reading it. From the reader comments already on Amazon.com, I'm sure this book is going to be a hit.

Check out the awesome book trailer!

Links: Julianna Baggott on Wikipedia

Sun & surf: not a bad office environment

My husband and I have just returned from two weeks at a lovely beach in Barra de Potosí, just south of Zihuatanejo on the Pacific coast. Fourteen miles of clean, uncongested, undeveloped beach! Heaven! We saw whales!

We have been coming to this beach every January for some time. This year, the casitas where we always stay (Solocito) had a temporary problem with their Net reception, so my New Year's Resolution to withdraw from the Net each day was made frustratingly easy. (We could get and send email, but not much else.)

I read/edited This Bright Darkness (The Next Novel) each morning while here: spent lovely, quiet mornings working to the sound of the crashing surf, broken by reflective walks along the beach. This is an ideal way to edit. We return every year, so I'm going to aim to have a MS in hand next year.

I also read a great deal (and yes, in a hammock).

For research: Ladies in Waiting; From the Tudors to the Present Day, by Anne Somerset (which made me think English history was far more randy, violent and repressive than that of the French), and A History of Mental Retardation by R.C. Scheerenberger (an amazingly interesting account).

For pleasure, I very very much enjoyed reading The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. What a poet! Was a master of similie! Here are a few — only a few — examples:

As we drove to and fro, we listened to Elmore Leonard's Out of Sight on tape. He's such a master. I think he only gets better and better.

She got up slowly and swayed towards me in a tight black dress that didn't reflect any light. She had long thighs and she walked with a certain something I hadn't often seen in bookstores.

Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.

His office had the musty smell of years of routine.

I've also discovered and very much enjoy the ByLiner series of e-book essays. The two I read:

The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life by Anne Patchett. I'd recently read (rather: read and been knocked out by) Patchett's novel State of Wonder, so I found her account of her writing life and process particularly interesting. A few quotes:

Why is it that we understand that playing the cello will require work but we relegate writing to the magic of inspiration?  . . . If a person of any age picked up the cello for the first time and said, "I'll be playing in Carnegie Hall next month!" you would pity her delusion, but beginning fiction writers all across the country polish up their best efforts and send them off to The New Yorker.

I did – didn't you? 

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.

Write the story, learn from it, put it away, write another story. Think of a sink pipe filled with sticky sediment: The only way to get clean water is to force a small ocean through the tap.

I got better at closing the gap between my hand and my head by clocking in the hours, stacking up the pages. Somewhere in all my years of practice—I don't know where exactly—I arrived at the art.

It was Patchett who inspired me to look into Chandler, a journey well-rewarded.

The other ByLiner title was Advice to Virgins, by Amy Tan. Wonderful!

I think the ByLiner series is a particularly brilliant use of the new technology.

I also began reading The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I'm usually somewhat resistant to magic in a novel, but Morgenstern sets the stage very well.

Here are a few photos I took, inspired by the light in the sky and on the water at sunset: 

Two weeks didn't seem like quite enough. Adios, ocean! Adios, beach! Hasta el proximo. 

Day One: Resolutions

One of my resolutions for 2012 is to disconnect from the Net for one hour a day while I'm writing. I've two programs that I hope will help make this possible: SelfControl and Freedom.

I suspect I'll like SelfControl best: it sits on my (Mac) dock. Also, from what I understand, it only cuts out email and Social Net. I will still be able to Google, which I use for on-the-fly writing research.

Is that cheating? I'll see.

I'm bravely considering cutting out email until 11:00 a.m.: that way, when I begin writing in the morning, I won't get distracted. (I can feel myself going for nine or ten already. Junkie!) 

Debbi Ohi posted a similar resolution on her Inkygirl blog. Her cartoon expresses the problem perfectly:

Do you have writing resolutions?

{Image at top: from 'Liber Floridus' (Book of Flowers), a Medieval encyclopædia, from one of my favourite visual blogs, BibliOdyssey.}

Happy New!

I'm excited about the year ahead. So much will be happening!

I got a wonderful editorial memo from my editor at HarperCollins Canada on The Next Novel. The suggestions were great. I've work to do, but I'm excited about it. 

My wish for you: May the muses pester you like crazy! 

Here are two New Year's blogs I loved: 

One from Lilian Nattel, who reads this blog. Do read her post: you will love it. 

The other from Neil Gaiman's blog (which I also love): here is a poster a friend made from his New Year's wish for his fans: 

Excellent thoughts!

Enjoy this evening!