Erika Mailman's Blog, page 16

Delighted to announce...Anne Perry!

Anne Perry is an internationally-known and bestselling
writer (since 1970! Thirty years of book publishing. We all could want a career like that). She’s also Guest of Honor at the Historical Novels Society conference coming up next month in St. Petersburg, Florida. Perry’s website says, “None of her books has ever been out of print, and they have received critical acclaim and huge popular success: over 26 million books are in print world-wide.”


She has been writing the well-known Victorian crime/mystery series about detective Thomas Pitt and his aristocratic wife Charlotte since 1979, and in 1990 started a new series set about 35 years earlier, with private detective William Monk and sidekick nurse Hester Latterly. She’s still publishing more new creations focused on WWI as well as her most recent novel, a stand-alone, titled The Sheen on the Silk,

set in the exotic and dangerous world of the Byzantine Empire. She lives in Scotland.

As part of building up buzz for the conference, each day in May a different panelist will be featured on a different blog, a wonderful engineering feat organized by author Vanitha Sankaran. I’ll be featuring four authors on each of the upcoming Fridays in May, and I’m delighted that today’s author is such a behemoth of mystery writing. Vanitha wrote the questions, solicited the answers, and gave each of us bloggers free range to cull what to use, and how to illustrate it. Since Perry has literally dozens of books out—I counted 78 but may be incorrect—I have decided to festoon this post with as many book jackets as I can manage.





Now without further ado, here’s a brief Q&A;

How do you find the people and topics of your books?
In present-day news.*

Do you follow a specific writing and/or research process?
Yes, when I've got the topic, I think of the main character (i.e. Pitt or Monk) and what story will carry that theme. Then, I research what is necessary to make sure that story would work. Then I outline the story chapter by chapter then do the final research for the details.

For you, what is the line between fiction and fact?
Fact is what did happen, fiction is what could happen.

Do you have an anecdote about a reading or fan interaction you'd like to share?
Not a specific anecdote, but the thing that's most important to me is when someone says reading something I have written has helped them through a hard, tough patch.

Is there an era/area that is your favorite to write about? How about to read?
One I'd love to write about is the French revolution.

What are your favorite reads? Favorite movies? Dominating influences?
Favourite reads are present-day American mysteries, just for pleasure. Movies: A Good Woman (Oscar Wilde) with Helen Hunt. Intouchables (a superb French film). I think poetry and GK Chesterton in particular.


Is there a writer, living or deceased, you would like to meet?
GK Chesterton! I think sometimes it is better not to meet your idols for fear of they don't like you.

What book was the most fun for you to write? The Sheen on the Silk, because I loved letting rip with Zoe.

A few comments from me:
1. She’s an outliner! I guess for mystery writers it’s absolutely necessary, but I’m still excited to read this since I’m such an outlining advocate.
2. I noticed that without a hitch she changed the Americanized “favorite” to “favourite!” Good thing the questions didn’t involve any lorries, lifts, chips or flats.
3. How awesome would a French Revolution novel from her be?!

 * I found her answer that she found her book topics in present-day news fascinating, because Perry’s life itself has been splashed across headlines. Born as Juliet Hulme, she and her best friend murdered the friend’s mother when they were teens, in 1954. Kate Winslet plays Hulme in the film Heavenly Creatures. After serving a prison sentence, Hulme changed her name and began writing fiction. Her appearance at the conference falls on the anniversary of the crime, June 22, 59 years later.

Perry will be speaking at the dinner on June 21 as guest of honor, and then at 9:30 a.m. on the 22nd she’ll be a panelist speaking about “Writing the historical fiction mystery” along with my bestie Susan Spann, Annamaria Alfieri (who I’ll be hosting here on the blog May 31), Frederick Ramsay and Judith Rock. I can’t wait for this session!

Many thanks to Anne Perry for participating in the Historical Novels Society blogathon!



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Very illustrious guest bloggers coming: watch this space!

I'm delighted to be hosting four historical novelists over four Fridays in May. We're building up excitement over the upcoming Historical Novels Society conference next month in St. Petersburg, Florida. Giving you a little taste of what discussions and panels could be like at the conference, my four guest bloggers will be answering questions about writing historical fiction, their favorite of their own novels, and more.

Here are some hints as to who my guests will be:

1. Three words: Thomas and Charlotte
2. Jamie in a kilt
3. A young girl who kills herself in a Spanish convent
4. Blogger and novelist focused on 16th-century France

(answers below)

I attended the Historical Novels Society conference in 2011 (every other year it takes place in the U.S., alternating yearly with England). I reveled in the company of all the other people who prefer to read--and in many cases write--books set in the past. It was a chance to geek out with other history nerds!

When I went, I didn't know a soul, but girded my loins to be friendly and meet people. Many of the events can be solitary, like watching panels and readings, but at the mealtimes I enjoyed getting to meet new people and hear which eras are their favorite. I heard someone say at the last conference, "I'm used to introducing myself by saying I write historical fiction; here I have to specify which era!"

So the answers to the hints are:

1. ANNE PERRY
2. DIANA GABALDON
3. ANNAMARIA ALFIERI
4. JULIANNE DOUGLAS

I am hosting these amazing writers and I couldn't be more excited! Check back here on May 10 when Anne Perry will be my guest. Anne Perry, people! This international best-selling author is guest of honor at the conference.


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Alluring daguerreotypes

A few months ago I blogged here about the experience of finding men in daguerreotypes who got the heart racing--"Having Crushes on Victorians," I called it.

I just learned I'm not the only one who enjoys the hot gaze leveling out from sepia. Here's a link to My Daguerreotype Boyfriend.

Enjoy! And don't forget to step into that time machine when its doors open and roses are thrust out at you.


Pictured here is Charles Keeler, an early Berkeley poet.



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Finding gold: diorama style

Earlier in the year, I had the opportunity to visit Sutter's Mill, the place where gold was first discovered in California, setting off the Gold Rush and forever changing this once relatively-untouched area.

And forever changing the way of life for the native peoples.

In the wonderful museum near the mill site (it has been lost to the river, but a replica now stands close to the original siting), you can see two human figures in a lifesized diorama: James Marshall bending to pick up the glint in the mill race, and the Native American standing nearby watching. I hope it isn't irreverent to say it, because I do truly deplore the fate of the people who were here first, but the look on the Native American statue's face honestly did look like, "Oh, crap."






The water in the exhibit really did run!

The museum is well worth a visit with some great artifacts and good explanations--and yes, in an exhibit case some (fake, but based on reality) chunks of gold the size of bread boxes. There are buildings scattered among the incredibly beautiful, green grounds: a Chinese apothecary business, a working blacksmith's forge (more on that in another post), a still-in-use Grange Hall, and others.

The most impressive feature is probably the American River itself, a blue so bright it seems fabricated. And oh so bitter cold. Not the thing you'd at all want to stand in all day, panning for gold.



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Penis theft: not again

Yes, penis theft is in the news again, with this article on Yahoo commenting in turn on an article in Pacific Standard magazine.

Penis snatching (or shrinking) makes its way into our news every year or so. It would be hysterically funny, this Freudian fear that someone has snatched your penis, made it invisible, or made it smaller, were it not for the fact that the people accused of doing this nonsensical act are often killed.

Yes, killed.

For the crime of penis theft.

It's considered an act of witchcraft...and it dates all the way back to medieval Europe. The Malleus Maleficarum, the famous witchhunting Bible, has several passages about witches stealing men's penises, including one in which a multitude of snatched penises are stored in a bird's nest. Whenever I hear about these modern-day reports, I blog about them, so here are some archival posts if you are interested:

 http://erikamailman.blogspot.com/2009/10/ive-blogged-before-about-passage-in.html
 http://erikamailman.blogspot.com/2008/05/more-things-change-more-they-stay-same.html
http://erikamailman.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html

These posts date, in order, from October 2009, May 2008, and April 2009.




The image is from the 1489 edition of De Lamiis, a book about witchcraft. It shows witches calling down the rain.

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National Keep Your Chin Up Day for Writers: second annual!

A year ago, I established (in my own mind, and on this blog) March 19 as National Keep Your Chin Up Day for Writers. I was responding to a friend who was exhibiting despair on Facebook about his writing career after decades of trying. The original post is here.

A year later, that guy has spent serious amounts of time with a Hollywood actor who is working on producing a film based on his novel. He doesn't need the pep talk anymore!

But many people do. Writing is the most serious "spec work" there is. We can spend years on a single novel, with not a bit of encouragement other than our own sincere belief that it can find an audience. Our work is often lonesome, unless if we have the focus and poor hearing to work in cafes and other public spaces. We're driven to write, and we hope that when we reach "The End," a literary agent will be eager to represent the work, an editor will fall in love with it, and it will see its way into print.

It's difficult to get published these days, as countless mournful forums on the internet testify. It used to be hard, and the gatekeeping was stringent. But these days the hatches have been battened down and fewer books find publishers. It's the economy. It's the book industry.

But we have to keep our chins up. We never know when good news is coming. And if it makes anyone reading this feel better, out of all my published acquaintances--from undergrad to grad school to writing workshops and retreats--only one has had an effortless path. (Hint: his book was about kites and jogging just a little bit faster.) I know dozens of people who hit the bottom of despair's tank...but their feet found purchase at the bottom and let them drift back up to the surface. We can't give up when our feet are itching to shove against that dank interior and rocket us to air, to gusty inhales.

Chins up. Believe in yourself, in your craft. If you are genuine in your search to improve your writing and tell a compelling tale, then publication will come. It may not be for this novel. It may not be for #2 or even #3. But devoted workmanship and a steady diet of reading others' quality work will yield results. For everyone who is craving publication today, acknowledge the desire and reassure yourself that you are doing everything possible to make that happen, by:
A. Sitting in the chair, eking out sentences until the book is done
B. Spending serious time and thought in revising--not just rearranging sentences and fixing commas, but truly re-evaluating scenes and how characters behave
C. Encapsulating the story in an elegant paragraph you embed in the query letter
D. Researching the correct literary agents to send it to

"Yes" is a word we delight in hearing. We can't hear it with our chins buried in our chests.



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SummerWords...a writers' feast in May/June

I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be a presenter at the SummerWords Writing Colloqium, where T.C. Boyle (pictured) will be the keynote speaker. There is an impressive roster of writers presenting and teaching at this event, held at the American River College May 30-June 2 in Sacramento, and I hope to see as many of the sessions as I can.

I’ll be teaching a workshop on historical fiction 11:30-12:45 on June 1 called “Delving into the Past” (come prepared to wrestle an idea into submission and build a loose outline for a novel) and later that day from 1 to 2 I’ll be giving a Shop Talk where I’ll read a bit of my work and discuss it. A few highlights at SummerWords to look out for: * “An Evening with T.C. Boyle” on May 31 * The release of Michael Spurgeon’s novel Let the Water Hold Me Down (each attendee will be given a copy!) Michael and I both attended the same small college in Maine—Colby—and the same graduate program at UA Tucson. Now we both live in the greater Sacramento area. Uncanny coincidences, and it was wonderful to meet with him a few months ago and share anecdotes from these shared academic experiences, although we hadn’t known each other at the time. I’m a little…cough…older than him. * An incredible, diverse array of poets and novelists and even a literary agent! Names that may ring a bell are Anthony Swofford, whose book Jarhead I used as a text when teaching Critical Thinking at Bay Area community colleges, his wife Christa Parravani whose memoir Her was just released this month and is receiving a lot of buzz, and Christian Kiefer, whose novel The Infinite Tides has also received a lot of attention. I’m excited to meet the other incredible sounding writers I see listed on the colloquium’s website. It sounds like the attention will be on workshops for this sessions, so writers should definitely check it out. And for readers, there will be shop talks and plenty of opportunities to hear wonderful work. Tickets are only $95 for four days of “panels, workshops, readings and talks with writers and poets of regional and national prestige.” To learn more and purchase tickets, please visit http://www.arc.losrios.edu/Programs_of_Study/English/SummerWords_ARC_Writing_Colloquium.htm   . . . . .

Do you love historical fiction? I have an idea for you...

If you’re someone who loves historical fiction, you should consider giving yourself the gift (or asking someone to give it to you! Spring birthday, anyone?) of attending the Historical Novels Society conference this June in St. Petersburg, Florida.
What is the conference? A gathering of people who love historical fiction.
Some of us will be writers, some of us will be readers, some are literary agents, some are editors with publishing houses. There are opportunities, if you’re a writer, to learn more about the craft of writing. If you have a manuscript you’re interested in pitching, you can have a free meet-up with several well-known agents and editors. If you’re a reader, there are opportunities galore to hear authors talking about their books, their research, the golden allure of the past.
I attended my first HNS conference in 2011 in San Diego. Besides listening in on panels that had so much great information I scribbled notes all over my conference brochure, I got to meet several people who are very important to me now.
And that’s the other part of conferences that’s so attractive: meeting like-minded people who form a community of people who love the past.
One was Susan Spann, then an unpublished author pitching a novel: this year, she’ll be coming as an author (and panelist) whose book will be published by Minotaur the month after the conference. Within two years, she has gotten a three-book deal and ushered the first of the series through to publication. I just met with her yesterday and saw the gorgeous galley (prepublication paperback version) of her novel Claws of the Cat. 
I met Susan when we started chatting in the conference bookstore (that’s another benefit of the conference; you can get your books autographed by the authors) and then agreed to meet up for dinner. We had a great time getting to know each other and I was psyched to learn she lived in the city I was about to move to. She’s now my closest friend here, and we have loved sharing manuscripts with each other, advice, cheering on, and fellowship. I’m not claiming you’ll meet a bestie at the conference, but you will for sure be surrounded by people who love what you love, and if you can strike up a conversation you might just make a wonderful connection.
I was also excited to have the chance to meet for the first time with my former Crown editor Heather Lazare. That’s one of the oddball things about publishing; you often never meet the people who have such an effect on your life. I had lunch with her and the ever-fabulous Michelle Moran.
I had many great conversations with people throughout the conference--too many to mention, but I’m excited to see you all again in a few months!-- and was happy to be in the same ballroom with people who love to read… and love to read historical fiction in particular.
I’ll be on a panel at HNS this year, “The Witchcraft Window: Scrying the Past.” If you loved The Heretic’s Daughter, or Daughters of the Witching Hill, or The Afflicted Girls, or my novel The Witch’s Trinity, come and hear us authors talk about what drew all of us to this topic. There are many, many other fantastic panels to choose from. See the conference website where the schedule is already posted.
Registration is open now and the conference is actually quite reasonable in price. It’s $350 for the weekend which includes all meals (and there’s also a few events on Friday too).  If you’re a member of HNS, it’s only $325. The guests of honor are well-known bestselling authors Anne Perry, Steve Berry and C.W. Gortner.
Please visit http://hns-conference.org/for more information…and hopefully to register! See you there.
Where and WhenRenaissance Vinoy Hotel
St. Petersburg, Florida
June 21-23, 2013


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Guest post on social networking

A friend from my former writers' group, Ann Marie Meyers, hosted me and seven other writers at her blog today to talk about striking a balance between writing and social networking. You can read it here.

To supplement what I wrote there, I'd add that in general I always try to do the hard work first, and the easy last. This always backfires when tasks are canceled and procrastinators exult, but in general I like coasting once the hard stuff is done. And for me, writing = hard, and social networking = timeconsuming but easy.

Well, "hard" isn't really the right word. Writing isn't hard for me. I love it. I get carried away with it. What I mean is, it's hard to get into the mental space required to write, whereas social networking requires no such mental preparation.



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Educate a Girl: Girl Rising

When it came time for my eldest to go to school, we were coincidentally also trying to purchase a home, so we spent a lot of time researching school scores and rejecting houses based on the schools they fed into.
Both my husband and I grew up in communities so small there was only one school, so at first we were taken aback to realize there were choices, and you had to figure out school boundaries, because it would be awful for your child to be doomed to attend a school that ranked only a four, when they should be attending a 10.
All that was set on its head for me on Sunday when I went to a screening of Girl Rising, sponsored by Intel. My dear cousin Karl Mailman and his wife Lynette, Intel employees, invited me. This film follows nine girls around the world as they struggle to attend school, a right we take completely for granted here in the U.S. (and often squander). I’m not talking about college. I’m talking about elementary school. I’m talking about the chance to learn one’s numbers and letters.
Did you know in some countries you must pay to attend school? And it’s not mandatory? A particularly chilling scene in the movie shows a 7-year-old girl in Haiti’s earthquake aftermath, trying to attend a tent school in the rubble, and being told by her former teacher that she had to leave because her parents had not paid.
In between the vignettes showing girls in Peru, Egypt, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, and other countries, viewers are given statistics about how much good arises when girls are educated. The facts are compelling. We need to educate our girls. Here are a few of their facts:1. There are 33 million fewer girls than boys in primary school worldwide.” - The UN’s Education First initiative2. “Girls with eight years of education are four times less likely to marry as a child.”-UN’s Education First Initiative3. “Educated mothers are twice as likely to send their children to school.” -Unicef
The movie isn’t easy to watch. But change can never happen unless people face unpleasant facts.
Is it fair that a three-year-old must carry heavy buckets of water every day, most likely destroying her own developing skeletal system, to cleanse the hands of her healthy, grown male relatives? Should an 11-year-old (11!) be sold into marriage, and the proceeds used to buy her older brother a used car? Should a six-year-old be sent to live with strangers to serve as their slave, called a “bonded laborer” (kamlari)?
Of course, as you watch it is impossible not to think of children you know at these same ages, picturing them made to do the same things.
I’m outraged at the fate of lost little girls (and boys) around the world, and glad to puncture the little bubble I live in. One of the best things I took away from the movie was the idea that helping just ONE person means the world. It’s overwhelming to think of changing entire villages a world away…but we can change lives one at a time and still do good. My eyes are tearing up as I compose this blog post here at my comfortable local Starbucks, my belly full of a warm scone and a decaf mocha, with sunshine flooding the windows, knowing that my child is now safe at school, learning: learning happily, safely, carelessly.
Please visit www.girlrising.com to find a screening near you or to donate ($50 can send a girl to school for a year). You are also invited to host a screening of the film; information to do so is on the site.
Final note: the girl pictured above, "The Phoenix," is Sokha of Cambodia. She was orphaned and lived literally in the dump, each day picking through the trash to find food and goods to trade for food. She's now a star student at a top school, and as you can see a beautiful traditional dancer. No child should ever have to pick through other people's trash while other kids attend school. As the film says, she was literally thrown away herself.

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