V.R. Christensen's Blog, page 8
March 26, 2012
Regularly scheduled broadcasting will resume…
This week I'm in two places at once! Please visit me at Cathleen Holst's website. She's the lovely author of the truly wonderful novel Everleigh in NYC.
I'm also really honoured to be hosted at Gev Sweeney's blog. Her novel, The Scattered Proud, was a gorgeous piece of Historical Fiction, and one I'm not likely to forget.
It was sort of an unplanned blog tour, but it's been great and a lot of fun. This is the last week, though, of both the tour, and the giveaway, and then I'll be back to my regularly scheduled blog posts. In the mean time, don't forget there are
ONLY FOUR DAYS LEFT TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY!
March 19, 2012
I’ve been interviewed!
By the lovely Steven Novak of Literary Underground. For all those interested, here is the link.
And don’t forget about the giveaway! Just a week and a half left to enter.
I've been interviewed!
By the lovely Steven Novak of Literary Underground. For all those interested, here is the link.
And don't forget about the giveaway! Just a week and a half left to enter.
March 12, 2012
Giveaway! Giveaway! Giveaway!
With the screaming success of my Amazon promotion (a week and a half later, it's still a bestseller!), I've very nearly forgotten about my giveaway. But how could I? EBooks are one thing, a revolution in progress and all that, but PHYSICAL COPIES? How could anyone resist? I still prefer good ol' hardcovers, but you know how old fashioned I am.
So here it is, the Rafflecopter giveaway. It looks complicated, but it's really not. Just enter, click the buttons, do what it says and that's it! You collect points for everything you do. Do one thing, do them all and increase your chances! If I get fifty entries, I'll double the prize! How's that? So please participate. And while's you're here, why not stay a while? There's exciting stuff happening all the time.
March 5, 2012
The story behind Of Moths and Butterflies
This week's post is at
Don't miss it!
And don't forget there's a giveaway!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
You need javascript enabled to see this giveaway.
February 29, 2012
Of Moths & Butterflies giveaway and guest blog!
I'm being featured at
Literary Underground!
Check out their official website. (The link above is for the blog.) It is BEAUTIFUL! Isn't it? These are some uber talented folks, as you'll discover when you click around the site. Don't forget the store. These people thoroughly amaze me, particularly Steven Novak, who is responsible for the site design as well as most of the cover art. He's brilliant!
I hope you'll visit, and check out my blog post there, and PLEASE participate in the giveaway! It's easy, and fun! Details below.
And just a little reminder…
February 26, 2012
Blind – available now!
(click on the cover for an excerpt)
Arthur Tremonton is a man of wealth and property, yet cursed from birth to live without sight.
Zachary Goodfellow is a young man raised in poverty, once blind, now deaf.
These two, though worlds apart in station and circumstance, have more in common than one might suppose. Not the least of which is the mutual acquaintance of Rebecca Adair, a young woman with an unusual gift, and the wisdom to know that the lack of physical sight is only one of many obstacles which might prevent a man from truly seeing.
Faced with the choice between seeing clearly and seeing truly, which would you choose? Rebecca intends to ask the question of them, but in order to do that, they must be persuaded to meet. Pride, vanity, fear, these prevent them from seeing what they might do for each other, what they might be to one another, if only they would open their eyes.
What would you sacrifice for the gift of sight? What, in fact, does it truly mean to be Blind?
And don't forget!
February 24, 2012
February 23, 2012
V.R. Christensen on Flawed Heroines
In the series on Flawed Heroines, I've chosen to go last. Not strategically, so I might benefit from the windfall of readers my wonderful writing buddies have brought to my website (Thank you!) but because I've really been avoiding it. I know it must be done, but Imogen's flaws are very personal. I have received some criticism that her reactions to certain events in her story are overwrought and too drawn out. Before I defend her, let me tell you her story.
When Imogen's mother died from cholera, she was sent to live with an uncle, despite the fact that her aunt was her godmother. Drake Everard was very wealthy. He had worked in finance, in banking and then investments. And then he began to dabble in personal loans. To be honest I borrowed him from Dickens' Ralph Nickleby, prurient tendencies included. Like Mr. Nickleby, Everard's beautiful niece served as some enticement to keep the young and fast set coming to borrow money from him. It was not his intention that he should offer her as merchandise, but there was an unspoken understanding that some favoured patron might win her particular attention. One young man took the challenge, and finding an opportunity one afternoon, when the moneylender had gone out, took advantage of a moment alone with her.
I suppose one must also understand a bit about the education of women of the time. A woman was meant to be pure and innocent, she knew little if anything about the ways of men and women. If she was fortunate enough to have grown up on a farm, then she might have witnessed for herself the reproductive ways of the common beast. Not that this would have served as any admirable example to her own mode of conduct when she found herself so circumstanced as to engage in such activities. Imogen was not raised on a farm, but in colonial India with an absent father, and then in London, with her uncle. She understood that if she made herself appealing, she might have a way out of her uncle's house. He was not opposed to making his own impositions on her, though he never carried these out to their foulest ends. She knew, at least hoped, that by using some charm and a little feminine encouragement, she might win herself a husband. What she did not understand is how easily a gentleman, and a young one with few principles (he was given to borrow money, after all) might be persuaded to take a little more than encouragement and a little less than marriage. This very sudden awakening to the ways of men and the world is part of Imogen's trouble.
Another contributing factor is the fact that, upon her uncle's death (which she deems her fault, as it happened when she was trying to resist him) he bestowed her with the entirety of his fortune. This, she deems, is a way of remunerating her for services rendered. She may be spoiled, damaged goods, but she is not a prostitute and she still has some hope of earning a respectable life. If you're wondering, yes, I did borrow from Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. In fact the story haunted me so I had to try my hand at rewriting her story.
Another thing that must be considered is the fate of a young woman with money. And money, particularly, that others might get at, and feel they have a right to. Her ability to trust has been shattered. She might not ever gain it back. What hope has she of finding someone who would love her for herself and not for a sheer desire to get at the money that would come with her? And if they did, could she tell them about her past? She might keep the secret, but she knows that others know it. It might be revealed at any time, at which point she'd be ruined. But, like Tess, she is a woman of fatal honesty. She will not misrepresent herself.
So Imogen runs away, and, like Tess, tries to work her way to penance, to carve away a little place in life where she can live quietly and respectably, below the notice of others. But of course, being pretty, and having been raised in something of a genteel fashion, her condescension to the station of a housemaid is somewhat apparent. At least she becomes a curiosity and her employer, and his young nephew, take notice.
All of these things conspire against her when her marriage is arranged, yes, for a fortune. What would you do under such circumstances? The guy may be drop dead delicious, that doesn't mean you would automatically place your heart in his hands ten minutes after he had bought it. Does it?
I probably needn't say that my marriage wasn't arranged. I probably needn't say I did not inherit an immense fortune, or ran from it or hired myself out as a servant in a large country house. But I did go into marriage with some of Imogen's issues. And I know from experience how difficult it was to trust, even though I knew my husband to be a good man (which is why I married him). I still had to deal with those issues. And there were rage issues too I had not expected. One minute I would be just fine and the next I thought I would explode. Imogen didn't have the benefit of counseling or therapy. She didn't have modern mores to say that a woman going into marriage unblemished was the norm rather than the exception. She had guilt, she had self loathing, she had anger. And a lot of it.
So, despite the injuries imposed upon her, despite her nearly fatalistic need for independence, Imogen's greatest flaw is the hatred and loathing she bears for herself. How does one overcome it? It can't be done through another. Her husband may adore her, but that means nothing considering how their union has come about, the deceptions he necessarily engaged in, or that others did in his behalf, in order to bring the marriage about. Not when he has bought her. Not when he has a right at any time to demand of her what Lionel Osborne did, and in any fashion he may like, for she is as surely property to him as the money that came with her. Only that isn't quite right, because there is another complication in the mix in the way of his uncle, upon whom he is dependent, and toward whom he is indebted. And so, quite understandably (at least to my mind) it takes her a long time to learn that her happiness is in her own hands and no one else has that responsibility. That, despite whatever obstacles might have been placed before her, happiness is ultimately a choice she alone must make for herself. Perhaps it takes her longer than it should. But that is the very point I wished to make.
Perhaps I'm alone in my reaction to my own circumstances. I don't believe so. And if Imogen gives one other person in this world a reason to hope, there is nothing more I could ask for. It will have been enough.
V.R. Christensen attended Brigham Young University, Idaho, where she earned a degree in Interior Design, while, at the same time studying English Literature, Art History and Sociology. When she is not writing, she is designing impractical clothing, redecorating her historical homes, or making impossible demands of her husband of seventeen years. She travels a great deal and considers herself a citizen of the world.
Currently, V.R. makes her home in Appalachian Virginia, where she lives with her three children, seven cats and a dog named Jasper.
V.R. is a member of Historical Fiction Authors Cooperative, Past Times Books, Authors Anon and Literary Underground, all of which are aimed at ensuring that the publishing revolution now upon us produces some of the finest work available to the reading public–and makes it available.
Of Moths & Butterflies is available in hardcover and paperback at Barnes & Noble and Amazon. A Kindle edition is also available, and will be offered free for three days March 1-3.
February 22, 2012
Gev Sweeney on Flawed Heroines
from The Scattered Proud
by Gev Sweeney
We like to joke about obsession and blame obsessive-compulsive disorder for everything as destructive as drinking too much to the less damaging, if mildly annoying, twisting of a lock of hair around a finger (my trademark stress reliever). But while obsession is a flaw, it can also be a catalyst for hope, if not outright salvation. Janet Watters, the young heroine of The Scattered Proud, is as messy as a character can get without being addicted to alcohol or any other misuse-able medicinal in vogue in America at the end of the 18th century. Though her obsession can't be seen and is something she hides from others, it governs her life and the lives of those around her.
Janet has been born into a time when people live close to the notion and reality of death and regard it as a necessary, if disquieting, fact of life that compels them to think about their purpose on earth and what will become of them after they die. Their solace – and, often, the foundation of their life's purpose – is religion, in this case the Episcopal Church. Janet's widowed father, a successful and respected lawyer, is on the vestry of St. Peter's Church in Philadelphia, and has cultivated a circle of influential friends that include the church's rector and his family. Though Janet is 13 when the story opens, she's still a very much a little girl, subject to the dictates of her parent and the adults around her. But she has no child's sense of fun or desire to explore the world. She magnifies what should be a child's ordinary lot in life into a continuous exercise in dread. She can't do anything or go anywhere without thinking something dreadful is going to happen to her. And, in an age when girls are raised to become wives and mothers, she disparages herself as unwanted, and foresees a future as a lonely spinster.
Instead of turning to religion for solace or security, she gleans comfort from the presence of Kit DeWaere, the rector's kindly, understated son who is sometimes the victim of his father's self-importance. Kit believes that doing little or nothing to help people would be an abuse of God's trust in humanity. Incited by a sense of servicehood that wavers between humility and hubris, he surrounds himself with people who, like Janet, are flawed: the beautiful but self-absorbed escapee from the French Revolution who becomes his wife; the mentally handicapped toddlers of the orphanage that houses the secret Episcopal mission he leads in late Revolutionary Paris; the victimized wife and son of a former political prisoner, whose attempts to survive have an unlikely connection to Bonaparte's coup d'etat of November 1799.
Kit himself is flawed. He doesn't know his own limits. He acts expecting the best because he's doing his best, as he thinks God intended, but his good intentions go awry. As the vicar of the church's mission in Paris, he tells Janet, who's been brought against her will to work at the mission: "We all have only one destination, just as we all have only one journey. Everything that befalls us on the road is another blow from the Great Sculptor's metaphysical mallet. It's not a matter of how the blow shapes us, but how we choose to interpret and withstand the blow. Do we allow ourselves to be shattered in pieces, like the proverbial earthen vessel, or do we embrace our circumstances, taking heart from knowing their true source?"
But when Kit's pregnant wife leaves him, he shows none of the strength his words imply and becomes warped by unspoken despondency. It's not his counsel that resonates with Janet. What resounds is her disappointment in him, and her eventual guilt at that disappointment:
I conceded to myself that I was glad to leave Kit behind [in Paris]. He had exposed himself as one of those people who spout great thoughts and noble acts when all is well, yet crumble under difficulties that demand them to exemplify their own teaching. I conceded but could not believe. I was equally certain that Kit's decline was no mere deficiency of character. It was the creeping decay of self that comes from knowing one has not merely made a mistake, but has lived for a long time thinking all was well. I remembered how, so many years before, he had spoken to me about man's responsibility to use his intellect. Somehow, since then, his own intellect had failed to discern anything about his wife to foretell a withered marriage. He did not know how to live with either himself or the consequences of his error. I should have taken him aside and reminded him what he had said about the Great Sculptor's metaphysical mallet. (…) But I said nothing. And because I said nothing, I fall asleep at night wondering how different everything could be.
Kit's decline is a turning point for Janet. Though she says, "I could do no more than await the further lessening of Kit DeWaere, a collapse I never could have imagined, not even in a fevered dream," she does indeed do more. She continues to dwell upon him. His name and image pervade her interactions with the family who, on Kit's behest, took her in after her father died, and with George Frederick Cunliffe, the haughty, handsome priest sent to Paris as Kit's assistant. From obsession comes strength. When Janet and Kit become trapped in political machinations that never should have been their concern, Kit's fate gives Janet a fresh reason for being. The once-scared, self-castigating child becomes something she never could have imagined of herself: a woman in love with life and the world.
Gev Sweeney has been telling tales since sixth grade, when she was caught daydreaming about a failed jungle expedition. She grew up to become a journalist who did everything from getting caught in a riot to shooting a Brown Bess (not during the riot). She advocates historic authenticity in fiction, but forgives Shakespeare for all those horrid anachronisms in Julius Caesar. She lives at the Jersey Shore with her guinea pigs, Auden and Philip Baby-Boar.
The Scattered Proud is published by PfoxChase Publishing. To find out more about Gev Sweeey, please visit her website.
