Jessica Knauss's Blog, page 51

SSS: Maybe She's Crazy...

I've been participating in Six Sentence Sunday (follow the link for more mind-blowing excerpts) for an entire year. It's done wonders for my blog in ways I never imagined. Thank you to the organizers and the participants!

These six follow on in Chapter Six of The Seven Noble Knights of Lara several pages after last week's. The seven, their mother, and doña Lambra have agreed to travel to Barbadillo, ostensibly to see if there is any good hunting. We're inside Lambra's head, on the road.

* * *

The second day, as they entered narrow passageways between rocky outcrops shaded by pines, the seven brothers surrounded Lambra on their horses as if they were her personal guard. She looked at the wispy brown hairs moving with the breeze on the back of Gonzalo's neck and imagined using a shining copper razor to get rid of that ridiculous stubble on his chin, holding the smoothed face in her hands, bringing the round red lips toward hers. No: not even finishing the friendly shave before – accidentally, of course – making a sudden strategic slit under his ear, all the way across to the other ear. She cleared her throat and said loudly for Gonzalo to hear, "Oh, Justa, do you think there are robbers hiding in these hills? It's doesn't matter anyway, with my nephews here to protect me."Every one of the brothers grinned, baring white teeth, and sat up a little taller in his saddle. 

* * *
Thanks for stopping by! I have eternal gratitude for those who comment!

I may be taking a short hiatus from SSS in the rest of April, for reasons that I hope will be really great. Stay tuned.

Hug a Medievalist Day

I found out from the wonderful Joyce DiPastena that today is Hug a Medievalist Day! Second annual! This only goes to show that Facebook has failed, because apparently it started there, and I've never heard of it before.

Among medieval people, of course, I would hug Alfonso X el Sabio. I would hug him in the precise moment in the late 1260's when scholars think he was hit in the face. The injury resulted in a long and painful decline and death at age 62. Yes, Alfonso, I would take the "bullet" for you!

Medievalists (explained here) are extremely huggable. If they were here, I guess I would start with Joseph Snow and go on to my most medieval authors, Moonyeen Blakey (The Assassin's Wife, available soon!) and Kim Rendfeld (The Cross and the Dragon, available this summer).

And of course, I'm a medievalist, so I welcome hugs!

Guest Post: Prehistorical Fiction Author Kathleen Flanagan Rollins

Please welcome author Kathleen Flanagan Rollins to Famous Writer. I reviewed her novel, Misfits & Heroes: West from Africa on Monday. Coming from a historical perspective as I do, I asked her to tell us how she came to write a prehistoric adventure novel, and this is her thorough, informative, and passionate reply:
I'm fascinated by very ancient history.  I wonder about those people – what they did and felt, how much of what mattered to them is exactly the same today and how much was so radically different that I couldn't begin to understand it.
I suppose my interest began when a college friend and I were hiking in Canyonlands National Park. We ran out of water, so we split up (a really stupid thing to do) to look for water in potholes. In my wandering I came across a series of handprints on a rock face, negative prints actually, since the color was blown out over each hand. They were shocking, not just because they were ancient but because they were timeless. I'd seen school banners full of prints just like these, left by people who pledged not to drink and drive on prom night or who supported the football team. So who had left their mark on this rock? No one lived in the area: the water table had dropped sixty feet hundreds of years before, leaving the land too dry to support much of anything. There weren't even any mosquitoes. But people had once stood on the very spot I stood on. I put my hand on the rock under the prints and a thrill ran through me, right up to my scalp.
The moment was absorbed into the general impressions of the trip until I saw petroglyphs in the area: combinations of recognizable figures (people and animals) and mysterious symbols, all carved into rock. I felt people were talking to me in a language I couldn't understand. So I started studying rock art, then ancient peoples of the southwest, then ancient cultures all over the US, then south into Mexico, then farther south into Central America, then farther yet into South America. Along the way, I visited famous and not so famous sites in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. If you're going to be hooked on something for several decades, you might as well do it up right.
I have to admit I was momentarily taken with the Eric von Danikken (Chariots of the Gods and other books) theories of extra-terrestrial influence in the great sites like the Nazca Lines and Machu Picchu. However, the more I learned, the more I came to see all of this as the work of humans. Brilliant, amazing humans who lived a long time ago.
What if our fundamental perception of civilization as a flight of stairs is incorrect? What if it's actually a roller-coaster instead, with periods of great insight and invention followed by dips into anarchy and chaos? What if we're not the folks at the top of the stairs, we're only on a different hill of the coaster? This theory of expansion and calamity is common in creation stories worldwide, including the Bible, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Popul Vuh. Jared Diamond discusses it at length in Collapse.
What if your history books' version of Western Hemisphere history is incomplete? Many of us were taught that everyone got to the Americas by walking across the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, during the Ice Age. What if that was only one route of many? The oldest human remains in the Western Hemisphere have been found in South America. Did they walk all the way from Alaska to Chile and then die?
It's far more likely that people came to the Western Hemisphere from many directions, just as they do today. If you have a globe handy, take a look at Alaska and then South America. It's quite a hike to get from one to the other, especially with glaciers covering a lot of the northern section. And yet, West Africa is quite close. A young woman recently rowed (yes, rowed) from West Africa to South America in 47 days – solo. The prevailing winds helped. It's possible that our ancient ancestors did too. They went across the sea to Australia at least 60,000 years ago.
Here's another piece of the puzzle. The civilization generally recognized as the oldest in the Western Hemisphere, the Olmec, left massive basalt sculptures astounding in scale and craftsmanship. They were so big that later people were afraid of them and buried them when they couldn't figure out how to destroy them. The larger one pictured, from an Olmec site in southern Mexico called LaVenta, is about eight feet tall. The other one is somewhat smaller, but you can see the scale from the person next to it.
There are others, each one apparently the portrait of a different individual. You can find them easily by putting "Olmec heads" in your search engine.
If you put these pieces together, you have some sense of why I began my series of adventure novels about ancient explorers with a group coming across the ocean from West Africa to what is now southern Mexico. It's called Misfits and Heroes: West from Africa.
I wanted the main characters to be complicated individuals, not the over-simplified heroes that history books give us. They are misfits, escapees from troubles in their past that prevent them from going home, so they head off into the unknown. They become heroes when they take up the challenges thrown down in front of them.
The story is set in 12,000 BC, which has caused several readers to question whether they could be talking and planning and otherwise acting like modern humans. My answer is absolutely yes.
As long as 80,000 years ago, people in northern and southern Africa were mixing red ochre compounds in abalone shells, working heated stone for better tools, hunting big game, decorating shells, burying their dead with jewelry and fine tools, and traveling great distances. In order to do these things, they needed a sophisticated language, a sense of cooperation for the common good, and a concept of an afterlife. We've grossly misrepresented these people as grunting fools.
So what's next?
The second novel in the series, my WIP, concerns a group of explorers coming east across the Pacific from what is now Indonesia. The third follows a group from what is now Basque country in northern Spain. Eventually, they all meet (at least that's the plan) with rather complicated results.
About Kathleen Flanagan Rollins
After spending over thirty years teaching composition and literature at a community college, as well as doing freelance work, I retired and devoted my energy to my own complicated, often frustrating projects. It's been an amazing experience.
My blog misfitsandheroes.wordpress.com started out as a way to give readers additional material, but it has since morphed into a discussion of all things ancient and their echoes in the present. Stop by for information on hamsa charms, sandroings, Clovis points, San rock art, shamanistic half-death, decorated ostrich shells, and other interesting topics!
Misfits and Heroes: West from Africa is available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other vendors.

Review: Misfits & Heroes: West From Africa

Don't let the cover fool you:
it's not a Western.This novel has an agenda: the author wants to correct any lingering notions that ancient humans were primitive in any way or incapable of complex thought. Though the story takes place in 12,000 BCE, the characters in Misfits & Heroes have intricate societies, elaborate artwork and a full range of baser instincts and noble emotions.

Throughout the surprisingly fast-paced plot, the reader comes across nuggets of wisdom recognizable as the origins of several different schools of thought that have lasted to the present day. I strongly sympathized with Asha and Naaba, but even minor characters have realistic psychological characteristics, and motives we might not understand are fully explained in the context of this nascent society, though never in a patronizing way.

Everything in the book is believable because of the masterful descriptions of the way the humans interact with the natural world, something that seems kind of foreign today. The idea that ancient people might have made it to South America from Africa is fascinating in itself, and the author manages to throw in weddings, wars, hunting, and artistic creation to make each step long the journey just as interesting for its own sake.

I'm a fan of historical fiction, and this prehistorical book would be right at home with the most vivid books about better-documented times.

Please join me here on Wednesday for a fascinating guest post by the author, Kathleen Flanagan Rollins.

SSS: Quick Healers

This is the bird Suero takes with him everywhere. Imagine sitting across the breakfast table from this guy!

We're still with doña Lambra at that breakfast, following last week's post.

* * *

She slid her gaze to Gonzalo's face and saw that he had healed much more quickly than Ruy Blásquez. Five faint reddish spots were the only reminder of the cut that had made him lose so much blood. Doña Sancha sat next to doña Lambra and looked up at her eagerly. Lambra seized the goblet back from Gonzalo and took another swig. "Ruy Blásquez must abandon me to my fate. Don't you leave me, too, dear sister," she said.

* * *
I think some scheming is taking place...

Thanks so much for stopping by and leaving comments! I appreciate it sooooooo much and will return the favor.

Charmaine Gordon, I always enjoy your snippets, but I just can't comment on your blog. Sorry!

Goodreads Giveaways!

I have two exciting giveaways on Goodreads right now! They both end on April 27, so get your names in the hat! 



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Goodreads Book Giveaway








Dusk Before Dawn


by Jessica Knauss

Giveaway ends April 27, 2012.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win





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Goodreads Book Giveaway








Sail to Italy and Sail from Italy


by Jessica Knauss

Giveaway ends April 27, 2012.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Magical Realism

The genre "magical realism" is is mystery to a lot of readers. While some would lump it in with fantasy, I studied it in an academic context and most of the magical realism I've come across really belongs with literature.

In magical realism as I understand and write it, the reader enters a world very similar to our own -- either contemporary or historical -- but with at least one element that is impossible, unlikely, or undiscovered as yet in our world, and which is accepted as everyday truth with no explanation needed within the world of the story.

A lot of readers are really piqued by the aspect of "no explanation" of the unusual elements, but that's the part I love best! For me, real life is pretty darn inexplicable at times, and I love writing that embraces that.

Popular authors of magical realism include Isabel Allende, Alice Hoffman, and many others (largely Latin American). Have you read any magical realism? Did you love it, or did it frustrate you?

My best example of magical realism is my story "Middle Awash in Talent." It's told with the wry humor of an extraordinarily self-centered and unreliable narrator whose sister is "talented," which is to say, she has magical healing powers and the ability to move objects using only her mind (telekinesis). The talents are rare, but are a well-known element of the world in which the story takes place. They have a history of government control, etc, which never has to be fully explained, only hinted at.

I first excerpted "Middle Awash in Talent" a year ago for Six Sentence Sunday. The narrator meets her love interest for the first time in this longer excerpt. Another excerpt, which I have indeed changed substantially since I posted, is here. Mainly you get the tone and narrator's voice from these segments, but I hope you enjoy them! I've finished the first (long) part of this story, and I hope to share it with you in full very soon.

The Greatest Film of All Time

Great movies on an unusual weather day in Arizona
It's been 25 years since The Princess Bride came out in theatres, and luckily for people of discerning taste, it occasionally shows up in theatres again. I saw it when it first came out, and I was at just the right age to be deeply impressed. I wonder how my life would be different if the movie hadn't made it to the screen exactly at that moment. Would I have latched on to something else? Or drifted through a sad, jaded life?

Is there any piece of media -- book or movie -- that has influenced your life so strongly that you will never forget it?


The Princess Bride has influenced my reading choices, my writing style, and my life choices ever since. I read the book ten times in the year I was fourteen and took the whole thing deadly seriously. I now appreciate the humor and plain silliness on display especially in the masterful comedic performances of the actors in the movie. Because of this story, I value silliness (as well as princesses and Spaniards) much more than anyone even really should.

My husband and I went to see the showing at our art house cinema this weekend. The outside of the building didn't impress me, but walking inside was just like the old-time theatres in the small towns where I grew up. The posters everywhere, the fliers of coming events, the community feel and the smell of popcorn! The front row of the auditorium was red leather couches, so of course we sat there, moving pillows around freely and getting as comfortable as at home. Then the show started, and it was on what looked like an original, unrestored, nitrate print, with blotches and the occasional glitch in scene change.

Thank you, Loft Cinema, for making me feel like I was back in 1987! It was even better than the original release, because I had my true love at my side. Bliss, bliss.

SSS: Desire for the Enemy part 2

We're still in doña Lambra's head. These lines follow directly from last week's.

* * *
That young, sinuous arm pushing the flap open did not belong to her husband. Her eyes snapped open. They alit on Suero, sitting across from his mother, with that ever-present goshawk perched on his specially padded shoulder. He handed bits of bread up to its sharp beak. She wondered at his audacity to carry the bird with him after what it had done to her husband's face. The count should have had it killed. 

* * *
Thanks so much for stopping by! I appreciate your comments more than I can say. I will definitely return the visit!

Check out all the great sentences at SixSunday.com.

More from the Tucson Festival of Books

Last year, my first in Arizona, I was terribly nervous about participating in the Tucson Festival of Books because I'm shy, and not having a clear idea of what exactly is going to happen is the most disturbing part of any experience in which I interact with people. This year, I undeniably had some of the same nerves, but not to the same degree. I knew it was going to be fun, possibly the best experience of the year, and also my dear husband decided to come and hang out with me for an hour or so before my volunteer shift started. He doesn't comprehend social anxiety, so it's hard to experience it while he's telling me it simply doesn't exist! He was very proud of me when he witnessed my first volunteer interactions, which involved directing some festival-goers to a place I was very familiar with.

My described duties as a volunteer included escorting an author to the place where she was giving her talk and then to her book signing. I was fortunate to escort Bonnie Marson, author of Sleeping with Schubert, a delightful book about the genius in all of us. She gave an inspiring talk about the joys of writing fiction, in the process telling us that her popular novel is only the second thing she's ever written and that when she was sitting with her New York editor, she could hardly believe it was really happening. The book is soon to be made into a movie, so the stars have really aligned for Marson, but I think she fully appreciates her luck. This story had been in a drawer for years because she didn't think she could tell it within the space of a short story. She finally began to work on it again when a friend told her, "Just write it until it's finished." What a wonderful way to think of taking a big project one step at a time.

Setting up the booth.The publisher I work for, Fireship Press, got a really sweet booth on a corner and near the culinary tent. Most festival-goers were surprised to see that we are local and amazed by the breadth of subjects we've published books on. We did attract quite a few comments in pirate-speak. It would take me a few more days to really settle into a retail environment, but I was able to sell a discounted copy of Geronimo's autobiography to an interested customer. I was thrilled to sell a couple of copies of Tree/House and one of Dusk Before Dawn. Unfortunately, I was always away when those sales happened. One customer came in and showed interest in Tree/House when I was there, but I think my presence was too much pressure or something. I gave away quite a few of the cards I posted on Monday and a few bookmarks, and it felt exciting and nerve-wracking every time. I hope to reach a few more readers I wouldn't have otherwise.

My big star-struck moment came when I snuck off to see Lydia Millet's presentation. I purchased her latest novel, Ghost Lights, before the event and I'm thrilled to see it's a continuation of the story she began in How The Dead Dream. In that book, the writing is so good, and the events so devastating, that I wasn't surprised that the title of her panel was "Heartbreaking Journeys." The other author on the panel was Naomi Bernaron, who's written Running the Rift, a novel about the genocide in Rwanda. The moderator wanted both authors to talk about social justice, but, as Millet pointed out, her protagonist in How The Dead Dream is the causer of social injustice, if anything. It started out a little unevenly, but once the audience got to ask questions, both authors were equally fascinating as they spoke about their craft in self-deprecating terms such as "I'm a liar," and "I'm lazy." Millet considers herself lazy because writing is such a pleasure to her, it's not really work to pound away at the keyboard for hours a day. I feel the same! I was also astonished to find out that Millet lives in Arizona. So I took away those similarities between her and me, coincidental as they are, and felt exhilarated by them. An audience member asked Millet whether she felt bad about doing such terrible things to her characters. She responded in the negative because not only are the characters not real people, but conflict is also necessary to storytelling. I'm keeping both of those points in mind as I continue with my Seven Noble Knights of Lara, in which unspeakably awful things happen in the name of revenge.

I also got to see some writers pals of mine from The Writer's Studio and my writers' group. Other highlights from the festival included the literary circus and numerous musical events, Lil Orbits donuts, and overhearing a kid telling his mom, "I didn't know books could be so much fun!" And that's what it's all about, folks. Sure, it's exhilarating to be in the presence of so many books and so many (more than 100,000) people who love books, but getting the word out that reading is fun is the most important mission of the festival. Any profits that come from the festival go back into literacy programs in the Tucson area. So much fun for such a good cause!
Gepetto operates on Pinocchio to turn him into a real boy at the Literary Circus.