Elizabeth Wein's Blog, page 7

e wein & sara in the Race for Life

Hey everybody, next Sunday is the Race for Life again, and Sara and I are both running in this 5 k women’s only race to raise money for Cancer Research UK. Last year we were inspired to do this (Sara’s idea) because my friend Amanda had just had a double mastectomy. To all our delight and relief, she is now considered fully cured, and less than a month ago had the final surgery of her “rebuilding” (from which she is still recovering). It’s not over yet and we’re running again in her name!

Our goal is to raise £200 and we’re still £45 short of that, so if you’ve got even a couple of £ (or $) to spare, please consider sponsoring us! It’s safe and easy to contribute online here:

http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/gatland-girls

If you’re a UK taxpayer, please tick the GiftAid box as well.

Many thanks for everybody’s support and good wishes - I don’t think I’ll beat my last year’s time!

The Queen's Jubilee in Scotland

I am compelled to report on our participation, because Mark was marching with the Scouts in the 1000 Pipers Parade in Perth (which culminated in an ACTUAL PERFORMANCE by all 1000 of them).



PKC info re 1000 Pipers Parade (I've decided not to subject you to the videos.)


We did not participate in the Kilt Run which followed, and so you can blame MARK for being one of the 16 kilted non-participants who caused this race to fall short of being the LARGEST EVER KILT RUN. The record is currently held by Perth, Ontario, with 1089 participants. Only 1074 crossed the finish line in Perth, Scotland. I AM ASHAMED.

PKC's Kilt Run info

Most of our Jubilee weekend was pretty low-key, but on Monday I started getting beacon-itchy. I mean, I kept hearing how they were lighting all the beacons and then some, and starting them on the other side of the globe, and I thought… wouldn’t it be cool to go see a beacon alight?

So I did a little web-surfing. And I found the most wonderful, ridiculous website EVER - The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Beacons website.

(To fully appreciate true nerdy amazingness of this website, I have to give you a little background here. I call myself the Queen of Google. Even my geeky kids acknowledge that if I can’t find it, it’s not on the Internet. But when I first started hunting for Jubilee beacon info I actually used too many search terms. It turns out you only need One. Beacons. That’s it. If you do a Google search simply for "beacons," this website is your number one hit! I seriously recommend you poke around on this site. It includes a flame-covered interactive map, insurance forms, a PDF guide that shows you how to construct a beacon, and the wonderful, mysterious "Lighting Times" schedule. It is so slick and yet so specific - an expensive, user-friendly, beautifully designed site that’s good for ONE DAY.)

Well, using their Beacon Locator, I figured out that the nearest beacon whose site-location I actually recognized was East Lomond Hill in Fife. Sara was at music camp and Mark had no school the next day because of the Jubilee, so even though Lighting Time was after 10 (it doesn’t get DARK till after 10), it didn’t matter if we were going to be up late… (also, we had champagne to drink when we got home, for reasons unrelated to the Queen’s Jubilee).

So we drove up to East Lomond Hill not really knowing what to expect, but kind of figuring on sitting in the car and watching a bonfire from a distance. ( katranides , you were there with us on Christmas Eve once - do you remember?)

What we GOT was a trail of 60 pairs of fire baskets marking the path to the summit, minor fireworks, and a procession of 200 people (including us!) carrying lighted flambeaux. And a very jolly bonfire on top.









Our Lighting Time was 10.26 (the Lighting Times are specific and appear to be extremely random), which means that the East Lomond beacon was one of those run by "All other charities, organisations and individuals etc, including hospitals, clubs, pubs, Lions, Round Table and Rotary Clubs, Masonic Lodges, Caravan Club, Trinity House, commercial companies, Private Households and others etc." I don’t know which of these was running the show, but there was some historic connection with the mining communities of Fife, because one of the tableaux fireworks they set up was a Davy lamp - a safety lamp created in 1815 specifically to reduce the risk of explosions in coal mines.



There was also one guy carrying an actual Davy lamp - Tim, who grew up in the coal mining part of Kent, was quite excited about this. Fife, too, is coal mining country - since the 16th century. They still do open cast coal mining in Fife (I love Fife. The county is still called the Kingdom of Fife, you know).

The Davy Lamp... now you know.

The torchlight procession to the beacon site is quite possibly the most pagan event I have ever participated in. Nobody sang "God Save the Queen."





The tune stuck in my head was "Sumer is icumen in," although it was freaking FREEZING (note how everyone is wearing winter coats). From the top of the hill we could see 7 other beacons and some distant fireworks. (It was fun trying to guess where they were. "Crieff Knock! Berwick Law! Arthur’s Seat!" Clearly, we have gone native.)



The poem stuck in my head was A.E. Housman’s "1887." Yes, HONESTLY, I had Housman’s "1887" stuck in my head as we watched the Jubilee beacons burning all around us. From Sound and Sense in Randy St. John’s 10th grade English class back in Harrisburg, PA in 1979. Nothing is wasted. So it seems entirely appropriate to finish with it here.


1887

From Clee to heaven the beacon burns,
The shires have seen it plain,
From north and south the sign returns
And beacons burn again.

Look left, look right, the hills are bright,
The dales are light between,
Because ’tis fifty years tonight
That God has saved the Queen.

Now, when the flame they watch not towers
About the soil they trod,
Lads, we’ll remember friends of ours
Who shared the work with God.

To skies that knit their heartstrings right,
To fields that bred them brave,
The saviors come not home tonight:
Themselves they could not save.

It dawns in Asia, tombstones show
And Shropshire names are read;
And the Nile spills his overflow
Beside the Severn’s dead.

We pledge in peace by farm and town
The Queen they served in war,
And fire the beacons up and down
The land they perished for.

"God save the Queen" we living sing,
From height to height ’tis heard;
And with the rest your voices ring,
Lads of the Fifty-Third.

Oh, god will save her, fear you not:
Be you the men you’ve been,
Get you the sons your fathers got,
And God will save the Queen.

- A.E. Housman

CNV with all the spoilers

tiboribi has created a Spoiler Friendly CNV discussion group on Goodreads, here:


This is actually something I've been wanting to do for a while, but sort of thought it ought to wait till after the US book release. There are an awful lot of blogger reviews out there and they are all, without exception, extremely careful about revealing anything. So here's a place to speculate about whether You-Know-Who and You-Know-Who actually end up together, or whatever.

I'll be lurking - I think it might not be appropriate for me to join in the converation, so I'll try to keep my oar out. Go take a look if you're interested. BUT ONLY IF YOU'VE READ THE BOOK, FOR GOSH SAKES.

interview with Verity

On women's roles in wartime and the writing of CNV, over at the Daily Fig on figment.com. It was an inspired idea to write this from V's point of view, but OH. MY. GOD. How I wept over that final paragraph while writing it. Thank god for ball point pens.

http://dailyfig.figment.com/2012/05/22/verity-speaks/

V-Day giveaway results!

The winners of the CNV giveaway are jane_dark , ginnyland , and nocoward_soul .

And in case you missed it the first time, when it appeared late in the comments, rosaleeluann has done a gorgeous CNV picture ♥:


A Sensational Team by ~RosaleeLuAnn on deviantART

V-DAY - 15 MAY

North America enters the CNV Field of Operations. Or in civilian terms, it’s time for the Code Name Verity online launch party and giveaway!




(Amazon links:

When:

Tuesday 15 May 2012! That’s when Hyperion in the USA and Doubleday Canada both release their editions of Code Name Verity. In addition to taking my teenage daughter to the orthodontist and watching the boy play in a cricket match against his sister’s school, I thought it would be nice to celebrate a little with a North Atlantic Operations party online. Indeed, a worldwide party, open to anyone from the far-flung corners of the globe.


Where:

Well, here on my ridiculously underused blog. But you can pretend we are holding it in the drawing room of Craig Castle, Castle Craig. Or someplace like it.



(that's the drawing room, way over on the left, with the big bay window. And the little short round tower at the extreme left is one of the tiny libraries. Probably the one where the manuscript ends up.)


Guests of Honor

Meet some of the real life spies ’n’ pilots, and, um, a few others, who inspired CNV.


Noor Inayat Khan (SOE agent)

Alix d’Unienville (SOE agent) (She’s still alive and her Wikipedia entry doesn’t tell you anything about her life after her escape attempt that was foiled by the Gestapo in 1944. This link tells more about her life, but it’s in French. This is the not-so-great English translation of the previous link. Here’s my Goodreads review of one of her books, which I adore, a sort of cross between Anne Morrow Lindbergh and Antoine de St. Exupéry from the p.o.v. of an early flight attendant… unfortunately only available en français as far as I know.

Violette Szabo (SOE agent). She is allegedly the role model for the game Velvet Assassin. (okaaaay.)

Odette Hallowes (SOE agent), who has just been put on a UK First Class postage stamp! (It doesn’t happen often that you spend the day writing about the Ravensbrück concentration camp, then walk into a post office and recognize a Ravensbrück survivor smiling enigmatically at you from a display in the new stamp window.)

Lettice Curtis (ATA pilot)

Diana Barnato Walker (ATA pilot)

Betty Lussier (ATA pilot; she also did Intelligence work for the OSS)

Hans Kiefer (German Intelligence officer. Yes, Amadeus von Linden has a prototype too.)

Virginia Hall (SOE agent)

Jane Anderson (American broadcaster and Nazi collaborator)

This blog entry includes portraits and bios of most of the SOE women I mentioned, except Alix d’Unienville.


Refreshments

Sorry, we are out of butter again. Have some virtual whisky. It’s pre-war. If you don’t drink, I’m afraid it’s nowt but cold beans straight from the tin (I am shameless).

ETA: Oh yay, the Moon Squadron has smuggled us some champagne on their return flight. I *knew* this party was missing something.


Entertainment


An audio sample of Morven Christie reading Verity. Yes, the whole 10+ hour unabridged audio is this good. I am in love. No, my name is not pronounced Vine, despite the Gaudy Night-ish overtones. The mispronunciation of my name is my punishment for probably mispronouncing estara ’s and tiboribi ’s names in the ‘Author’s Debriefing’, which they let me read myself. (My name is pronounced Ween, in case you are wondering.)

So, here is an interesting artefact for you. It is an early version of a short story called ‘Findo Gask’, featuring Theo from ‘Something Worth Doing’ (she also makes a cameo appearance in CNV), piloting a Spitfire over Scotland and encountering ghosts. No, it is not historically accurate. It is a draft and was written in 2006. The finished version is much shorter and about a boy (a fighter pilot). I posted it here in 2008 for International Pixelstained Technopeasant Day, but the link is broken. This is the original in all its glory.

And I have a picture to show off, too! Becky Yeager, BLESS HER, has produced a lovely piece of fan art coincidentally in the nick of time. (It was Sara who noticed the character differences in the way their names are written in this picture. I am in love with the neat, smug, not-actually-sleeping-cat expression on Queenie’s face, and her control and poise in spite of her small stature. So perfect.)

Also:


...Sara's mock-up cover from a couple of years ago


How about some music?

‘The Last Time I Saw Paris’ (*sob*)
‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’…
Here’s the Mendelssohn from Colonel Blimp that makes Verity cry. Daft thing. I chose this version not for its sound quality but because I am tickled by the serious earnestness of this student orchestra.


Ready to leave?

If you’re heading out, here’s a list of museum exhibits some of you may be lucky enough to catch:

Women in Aviation: World War II is an exhibition going on at the moment in New York City at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum (it’s on the Intrepid aircraft carrier) – this exhibit closes 8 July 2012. I am SO SORRY to be missing it, so I hope some of you will enjoy it vicariously on my behalf.

Beauty as Duty, Textiles and the Home Front in WWII Britain, is another exhibit it is KILLING me to miss. It is on at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA until 28 May 2012. GO SEE IT OR ANSWER TO ME PERSONALLY. ( tiboribi , THIS MEANS YOU.)

The Imperial War Museum, London, has a permanent display on Special Operations and spies during World War II as part of their ‘Secret War’ exhibit.

The ATA Museum in Maidenhead (45 minutes west of London on the train). There is a special permanent exhibit there dedicated to the women of the ATA (the exhibit is called ‘Grandma Flew Spitfires’).


Giveaway: One of each!

I’ve got one US edition, one Canadian edition, and one UK edition to hand out, all signed of course - Giveaway now closed. Will post results soon, when I've got the Random Scratch Generator Boy to pick numbers.


Admission Mission:

This is your chance to join the CNV Special Ops. Here’s what’s going on: A V-Day Invasion. On 15 May, stop in at your local bookstore, your local library, your school library - any place you’re likely to find or borrow or purchase books, and demand they make CNV available to readers. Or indeed, mention any book you’re passionate about. Tweet, Facebook, comment on Goodreads, blog - boast about your encounter and ask all your reading friends to go do the same. Readers in the UK, the book’s already out here, so for goodness sake please join in - your job should be easier here. An Allied Invasion of Literary Establishments!

SO! Get out there in the bookstores and libraries and museums, get tweeting, spread the word about the giveaway, and above all, enjoy.


Minesweeping, for those of you who are still around…


These links are to interviews and discussions that I’ve mostly written myself, not to reviews. So if you want to find out more about How I Wrote CNV, it’s all (mostly) here somewhere.


Wizard Interview with Bookshelvers Anonymous with Shelver 506 (part 2 of 2), 20 June 2012

Wizard Interview with Bookshelvers Anonymous with Shelver 506 (part 1 of 2), 19 June 2012

How I Researched CNV, blog entry for Figment, 24 May 2012

Verity Speaks, which is actually an interview on women's roles in wartime and a comment on writing the book... from Verity's point of view, since essentially we share the same views on writing the book. Over on Figment, 22 May 2012

Interview with Monica Edinger in the Huffington Post, 22 May 2012

Flying, Friendship and Theme Songs: interview for Figment, 18 May 2012



‘The Plot Kept Surprising Me’ - Interview with Shelf Awareness for a Maximum Shelf issue, 26 April 2012

Bookbag Interview (by Jim at YaYeahYeah), 22 April 2012

International Women’s Day guest post and interview with Amy at Turn the Page, 8 March 2012


The literary inspiration behind CNV, for the Booksmugglers, 10 February 2012

On the real life people who inspired CNV, for Daisy Chain Books, 9 February 2012



E Wein’s encounters with wartime aircraft, on I Want to Read That, 5 February 2012 This post includes LOTS of links to museums with wartime aircraft collections, and also youth aviation schemes within the UK.



Telephone interview with Reading Zone, February 2012

On the theme of friendship in CNV with Booktrust, 30 January 2012


Disclaimer

IT’S A BOOK ABOUT A PILOT. IT HAS PLANES IN IT. For some reason, this seems to take some people by surprise.

Flying / Looking Back

It is 10 years this spring since I started taking flying lessons, and 5 years since my license was current. For the past six months I have been working on revalidating my currency. I am SO SLOW, partly because of my persona as ‘The Flying Housewife’, partly because of the dratted weather. I was slow to get my license in the first place and I am slow to recover it. However, I do a practice test on Thursday. Today I was working on navigation and a diversion. In the rain. What fun! (My instructor said, ‘I love clouds. I really love clouds!’)

Honestly, I spend so much time working on handling, on practicing steep turns and stalls and forced landings - i.e., what to do in an emergency - that it always takes me by surprise when I find myself flying straight and level in the cruise, in trim, hands free, holding a heading toward a destination which won’t appear for another 15 minutes or so. Take a deep breath and look around! The sky is gray and full of cloud, but you can see the squalls and the hills and stay away from them. The fields of eastern Scotland are unbelievably green, except for the bright gold patchwork of oilseed rape here and there.

As I was doing the outside aircraft checks before take-off, a lark was singing over the runway, and I stopped to watch it - rising higher and higher, trilling constantly as it went, until I lost it. They seem to fly straight up.

I have been re-reading some of my notebooks in real time, from 10 and 20 years ago. I hardly wrote anything down during the first six months of 2002, and that is because I had a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old AND I was learning to fly. But sometime in August I did comment on the flying. Bear in mind, reading this, that I hadn’t even soloed yet when I wrote it.

You know what’s missing from this notebook? My flying lessons. Partly I feel like having a few measly old flying lessons doesn’t actually qualify you as learning to fly, and partly I am so swamped with learning it all and studying the books and doing the lessons that I haven’t got time to write anything down, and partly I am just scared out of my wits by it. Although I am not actually scared of the flying: I am scared of doing it wrong, of being on stage, of performing, of Looking Stupid. Isn’t that weird?

My flying is nothing. I have about 15 hours behind me. I can’t navigate, I can’t work the radio, I don’t know the law, I can’t do anything by instinct, I grip the control column in a death grip. But two things: steering the plane on the ground (I mean, how dull and prosaic can you GET?); and landing. They give me enormous satisfaction. In the last two lessons I have actually caught on to landing; and now I’ve been kind of walking around occasionally marvelling to myself, ‘Hey. I can fly a plane.’

Because it’s not cool; it’s massive hard work, and concentration, and boring reading, and humiliation, and disappointment (rain, failure) - and then, suddenly, ‘I can fly a plane.’

A bit like writing a book.

---------------------------------

And here’s part of my notebook entry for 20 years ago today. No kidding:

8 May 1992, Park Town, Oxford. I dreamed that I caught Loki at the tail end of my father’s funeral and, while not exactly outwitting him, managed to make a deal with him. He said, ‘I don’t make deals,’ and something to the effect of, ‘You’re playing with fire and you’re in over your head,’ and I said, ‘I happen to know that you made a deal with the Lord of the Dream World and that he took your hand in exchange for your freedom. Well, I can give you back your hand’ - which I had, right there, this disembodied hand - ‘But it’ll cost ya’ - thinking, Not a bad thing to have Loki in yer debt! …Hmm. I suspect that my part of the bargain has something to do with this short-story I was going to write. Note that my soul was NOT part of the bargain.

I want to say something like… Really, I just write the same thing over and over and over, don’t I?

And no, I’ve no idea what the short story in question was.