Tosca Lee's Blog - Posts Tagged "behind-the-scenes"
Behind the Scenes: On Iscariot
From the first moment that an editor friend suggested the story of Judas, I was running fast and hard in the other direction. I knew how much research that story would take and was completely cowed.
At some point after avoiding the idea for about a year (this is before work on Forbidden began), I found myself sitting in a restaurant scribbling a scene between Judas and his mother on the paper tablecloth. My head was in my other hand. I was a goner, and I knew it.
I called my agent a few days later, fully expecting him to talk me out of it. He didn’t. All my friends failed in this regard. I flailed around for a few more months. I couldn’t do it.
The thing that finally got me was the idea of slipping into the skin of the only disciple Jesus called friend, of sitting down at the side of this mysterious healer, teacher and uncontrollable maverick called Jesus. I wanted to see him for myself, to experience him in this way.
Over the next year I compiled a library and consulting team of academics, theologians and Bible experts. I went to Israel (and ate so much hummus I couldn’t touch the stuff for two months after returning), read incessantly and then sat down to write. The project took more than three years, (during which time I also wrote Forbidden with Ted Dekker).
Once again, I overwrote the book—this time by 140,000 words (more than 500 pages). Somewhere in that giant forest of history and geek theology I realized I had lost my way, had utterly obscured the trail of this journey and the mystery of Judas and Jesus’ relationship with it.
I thought back to my time in Israel. I had stood on the shores of Galilee’s lake, sat in Capernaum’s synagogue, had seen the theater of history. I had learned so much. But as I entered Jerusalem, I was bereft. Ascending toward the Dome of the Rock that day, steeples and mosques and temples crowding the horizon like so many hands reaching for God, I realized I had not experienced one moment of mystery. I fought back tears on my way toward the mosque, where I stopped to give an old beggar woman a few shekels. The moment I did she grabbed my hand in both of hers, and I nearly fell to my knees. Here was God. And I knew without a doubt I had traveled all the way to Israel just to hold her hand.
I returned to the manuscript and pulled it apart, throwing out three theses’ worth of detail. I returned to the heart of relationship. Iscariot was no longer Judas’ story... it was mine.
The Spring after Iscariot was released, as I was sharing a Styrofoam container of soggy nachos on the floor in front of my TV with my mom, who was visiting at the time, a text came in from my publisher: “Iscariot won the Gold Medallion!” I blinked at the blue bubble of text, a floppy chip hanging out of my mouth. Iscariot had won fiction book of the year. Celebration was short-lived; I was in the final stretch of edits on my novel of Sheba’s infamous queen. I showed the picture of the plaque to my mom, set her up with a TV show, and went back into my office.
At some point after avoiding the idea for about a year (this is before work on Forbidden began), I found myself sitting in a restaurant scribbling a scene between Judas and his mother on the paper tablecloth. My head was in my other hand. I was a goner, and I knew it.
I called my agent a few days later, fully expecting him to talk me out of it. He didn’t. All my friends failed in this regard. I flailed around for a few more months. I couldn’t do it.
The thing that finally got me was the idea of slipping into the skin of the only disciple Jesus called friend, of sitting down at the side of this mysterious healer, teacher and uncontrollable maverick called Jesus. I wanted to see him for myself, to experience him in this way.
Over the next year I compiled a library and consulting team of academics, theologians and Bible experts. I went to Israel (and ate so much hummus I couldn’t touch the stuff for two months after returning), read incessantly and then sat down to write. The project took more than three years, (during which time I also wrote Forbidden with Ted Dekker).
Once again, I overwrote the book—this time by 140,000 words (more than 500 pages). Somewhere in that giant forest of history and geek theology I realized I had lost my way, had utterly obscured the trail of this journey and the mystery of Judas and Jesus’ relationship with it.
I thought back to my time in Israel. I had stood on the shores of Galilee’s lake, sat in Capernaum’s synagogue, had seen the theater of history. I had learned so much. But as I entered Jerusalem, I was bereft. Ascending toward the Dome of the Rock that day, steeples and mosques and temples crowding the horizon like so many hands reaching for God, I realized I had not experienced one moment of mystery. I fought back tears on my way toward the mosque, where I stopped to give an old beggar woman a few shekels. The moment I did she grabbed my hand in both of hers, and I nearly fell to my knees. Here was God. And I knew without a doubt I had traveled all the way to Israel just to hold her hand.
I returned to the manuscript and pulled it apart, throwing out three theses’ worth of detail. I returned to the heart of relationship. Iscariot was no longer Judas’ story... it was mine.
The Spring after Iscariot was released, as I was sharing a Styrofoam container of soggy nachos on the floor in front of my TV with my mom, who was visiting at the time, a text came in from my publisher: “Iscariot won the Gold Medallion!” I blinked at the blue bubble of text, a floppy chip hanging out of my mouth. Iscariot had won fiction book of the year. Celebration was short-lived; I was in the final stretch of edits on my novel of Sheba’s infamous queen. I showed the picture of the plaque to my mom, set her up with a TV show, and went back into my office.
Behind the Scenes: On The Legend of Sheba
Why write about the famous Queen of Sheba?
My on-screen answers have to do with wanting to explore this rich, pagan queen who impressed the authors of Kings and Chronicles so much that they included what amounted to her endorsement of King Solomon in their narratives. But my first reason was that I wanted to be a girl again.
After writing the first-person characters of Clay in Demon and Judas in Iscariot, as well as numerous male characters in the Books of Mortals, I missed the female voice I had so enjoyed in Havah. And, being set nearly a thousand years before the time of Christ, the queen’s story would be much easier to research with more room for speculation than, say, Iscariot,
Wrong.
If Iscariot proved difficult for the sheer volume of material available on first century Israel, The Legend of Sheba proved difficult for the opposite reason. Scholars don’t even agree whether Almaqah, the primary god of Sheba (probably present-day Yemen) was a moon or sun deity. Never mind the involvement of the mysterious Ark of the Covenant and all the conspiracy theories surrounding its disappearance and hidden location. Once again, I consulted the experts: missionaries who had served in Yemen—a place too rife with conflict and kidnapping for me to travel for research—history professors, doctors of archaeology and the Hebrew Bible.
This time, I did not overwrite the story, but kept the heart of it forefront in my mind: the ideas of love, possession, and the desire to be truly known.
I had, by this time, begun to date a single father of four—a land developer and farmer who lived an hour away from me. (How we met is another story—one I will tell you if you ask me in person.) I set up shop on sunny days at his kitchen counter when my office became oppressive, a pillow wedged onto a wooden barstool, toes curled round the rungs. The banquet chapter and the bulk of Sheba and Solomon’s letters were written there in the country, out of reach of my cell phone service. I fell in love with a second man during that time—the queen’s loyal eunuch, Yafush, whom I shamelessly modeled after Karen Blixen’s butler Farah in Out of Africa, one of my favorite movies of all time.
The Legend of Sheba took several months longer than expected—about a year and a half—to write. It released September 9, 2014. Four days later, at my home Barnes & Noble book signing, my boyfriend proposed. (The story in photos is on my website.) By the time my next book releases, I will be getting married (you won’t mind if I forego book tour in lieu of a honeymoon, will you?)
My on-screen answers have to do with wanting to explore this rich, pagan queen who impressed the authors of Kings and Chronicles so much that they included what amounted to her endorsement of King Solomon in their narratives. But my first reason was that I wanted to be a girl again.
After writing the first-person characters of Clay in Demon and Judas in Iscariot, as well as numerous male characters in the Books of Mortals, I missed the female voice I had so enjoyed in Havah. And, being set nearly a thousand years before the time of Christ, the queen’s story would be much easier to research with more room for speculation than, say, Iscariot,
Wrong.
If Iscariot proved difficult for the sheer volume of material available on first century Israel, The Legend of Sheba proved difficult for the opposite reason. Scholars don’t even agree whether Almaqah, the primary god of Sheba (probably present-day Yemen) was a moon or sun deity. Never mind the involvement of the mysterious Ark of the Covenant and all the conspiracy theories surrounding its disappearance and hidden location. Once again, I consulted the experts: missionaries who had served in Yemen—a place too rife with conflict and kidnapping for me to travel for research—history professors, doctors of archaeology and the Hebrew Bible.
This time, I did not overwrite the story, but kept the heart of it forefront in my mind: the ideas of love, possession, and the desire to be truly known.
I had, by this time, begun to date a single father of four—a land developer and farmer who lived an hour away from me. (How we met is another story—one I will tell you if you ask me in person.) I set up shop on sunny days at his kitchen counter when my office became oppressive, a pillow wedged onto a wooden barstool, toes curled round the rungs. The banquet chapter and the bulk of Sheba and Solomon’s letters were written there in the country, out of reach of my cell phone service. I fell in love with a second man during that time—the queen’s loyal eunuch, Yafush, whom I shamelessly modeled after Karen Blixen’s butler Farah in Out of Africa, one of my favorite movies of all time.
The Legend of Sheba took several months longer than expected—about a year and a half—to write. It released September 9, 2014. Four days later, at my home Barnes & Noble book signing, my boyfriend proposed. (The story in photos is on my website.) By the time my next book releases, I will be getting married (you won’t mind if I forego book tour in lieu of a honeymoon, will you?)
