K. Velk's Blog, page 3

Origin Story

When the cover was a work in progress,,, by Juan Wijngaard
I was asked not long ago by a bookseller to contribute an essay about what inspired me to write Up, Back, and Away. Here's the answer, if you're also curious.

How'd You Get the Idea In the First Place?
As it happens, I can tell you!
I was listening to my iPod, Adele’s first album,one spring morning in 2007 as I was walking along the Stowe, Vermont Recreation Path. 
It’s a beautiful path that follows a rocky stream through woods and fields with the Green Mountains in the long view.  I had recently left full time work for a half-time job (I’m a government lawyer by day) and I had two kids in school.  This meant I had a little mental space and time with which to work for the first time in years.  I had been a writer before law school, for local newspapers and in a college PR office, and I had continued writing (for fun) on a blog that I have kept since 2006.  I mention this because I was in the writing habit, which helped, I think, to keep ideas coming.  The walking part is important too.  I walk every day if I can.  I got to thinking that day as I listened to Adele sing about how important it was for gifted people to arrive at the right place and time if their gifts are to be realized.
When this thought flitted across my mind, I immediately thought of Thomas Gray’s famous, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.’  It contemplates, among other things, those whose talents never stood a chance: circumstances were arrayed against them from birth. For most in that churchyard, it was the time and place in which they were deposited that was fatal.  I wondered what if some exceptional people weren't constrained by the circumstances of their birth?  What if the Universe had a way of, very occasionally, correcting these mistakes?  Of shifting people born in the wrong time and place to the place in time where they and their talents could flourish?
What about, a time travel story? One with a cosseted but basically good American rich kid at its center? What's on the other side? I didn't know. I went through.
Sending  my young hero to England in the 1920s would give me a chance to write about many of my favorite things: : English language and literature, social history, the differences between English and American culture, as well as their similarities, and about how we all must meet the challenges that life throws at us.   I could also write about fun stuff (for me) Staffordshire pottery, London in the twenties, the English countryside and English country living at its last gasp between the wars. I could include three-speed bicycles and manual typewriters and dogs and old buildings and old songs and new music and stranger-in-a-strange land and all of that! The revolution in the place in the world of the western woman is the great story of the last 100 years.  With time travel I could explore this, as well as the timeless story of the struggle to find courage and to come of age. How about a rescue mission – where our hero has to find a girl born out of her time and a secret not meant to be and then get home with them both so that she has a chance to fulfill her artistic destiny?


It was my own small “J.K. Rowling moment” –  the one we’ve all heard about, when Ms. Rowling was riding on a train and suddenly had an idea for a story about a school for young wizards?  I know I’m no J.K. Rowling, but I think I experienced something of the same thrill. The book unfolded itself right there.
Well, sort of.  I then had to spend the next five years working it all out.
It wasn’t all joy, working on the book.  But it did a great deal for me personally.  I enjoyed the research, writing the characters into being, and working out the plot lines.  Mostly I was trying to write the book I wished was out there for me to read when I was growing up.

Summer Sale Time - NO CAMPING!

And no need to camp! The whole security team has been sent home and the yellow tape has been taken down. You need only to click - at least if you live in the US or the UK - and for less than the price of the cheapest, crumbiest greeting card at the supermarket you can have a whole e-book.

For my fellow Americans, if you can find 99 cents rattling around somewhere and you have a Kindle, or a Kindle app for your device, you're all set.  (Well, you must also have a pulse and be able to read.) Here's your link.

And for you, my beloved Britishes, 99 p will carry you back to your country's own jazz-age past with a charming time-traveling American boy along for the ride.  Click here.

Don't wait! It's a Kindle countdown deal and the clock is tick, tick, ticking.  Thank you, as ever, for your kind attention.

My Not So Illicit Affair with Staffordshire Wares

Transferware in the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VermontCertain near relations give me a hard time about the number of plates I have hanging on my walls. (You know who you are).   My collection of Staffordshire transferware is modest compared to those  serious collectors and scholars whom I encounter in the Internet - but my love for it is real and enduring.  

I love to think of the people who worked so hard to make these things out of the earth around Staffordshire (which is a county in the English midlands): the skill, the effort, the quest to make things as pretty  as possible.  The wares were designed to appeal to the sweet tooth of the common man: they were shown off on dressers and cherished as family treasures in modest homes around England, the empire, and the USA.  (Those of you who have read Laura Ingalls Wilder must recall the China Shepherdess that accompanied the Ingalls family on their travels).  The actual creation of these pretty things was, however, a gritty, industrial business.  The towns of the potteries are not and never have been elegant vacation spots, which endears them to me - a native of the similarly-regarded Schenectady, New York.

The output of the potteries in the 19th century was colossal, and much of it destined for the American market.  I often wonder that the whole county of Staffordshire wasn't swallowed by an enormous pot hole. (That phrase, BTW, comes from the practice of digging good clay out of any old place in Staffordshire). No China Shepherdess in this collection but you get the idea - Shelburne MuseumIn Up, Back, and Away I cast Lady Fisher in the role of a Potteries Heiress.  Her industrial-based fortune made her and her brother, who redoubled the family fortune, into earthenware aristocrats - not so good as the old-time gentry but whose money bought grudging entry to the upper class.  There were many self-made men with a genius for pottery production - Josiah Wedgwood being the most famous example.

Whenever I'm out in an antique store, or even a modern kitchen goods store (they are still making pottery in Staffordshire, thank goodness) my eye always goes to the transfer-printed wares.  If you have any interest in the history of the English Potteries, here is a can't miss web site.  I'll venture a suggestion: next time you find yourself presented with a pretty old plate or cup, flip it over and have a look at the mark.  You might then enter that information at that website, or just plain old Google, and find there is story to that pattern and to the history of the manufacturer waiting for you. 


Enourmous Staffordshire jugs - also at Shelburne Museum.  

Brilliant Animation Brings 1931 Back to Life

I'm hoping to convince this genius, who's doing WONDERFUL things with his computer in Russia, to do a book trailer for me.  (I think he's actually famous and in demand so don't hold your breath).  In the meantime, you can marvel with me at what he has already accomplished.

Click and enjoy. Be sure to switch to full screen.




Alexey Zakharov animation - YouTube

Remembering the Somme - 100 Years Since...

The precipitating event, or one of them in Up, Back, and Away was the Battle of the Somme. I studied it for quite awhile before writing the Somme scenes. Just reading about WW 1, especially the personal stories of the soldiers (I recommend Robert Graves' memoir Good-bye to All That and Siegfied Sasoon's fictionalized life story, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man ) was very moving, but this commemoration is the most brilliant memorial I've seen - making the loss tangible and for reminding the rest of us of what their sacrifice (among so many others) made possible.  

Something to keep in mind over here during our Independence Day celebrations this weekend.

Midsummer Eve

Hello Gentle Reader. Welcome to summmer. Officially it begins tomorrow, which means we are right on the cusp of that magic moment - for those of us in the northern hemisphere - the longest day - the shortest night. I researched a lot of the traditions around midsummer's eve for the book. Daphne's advice to Dr. Slade to wet his face in the dew caught in flowers on the morning after is real. I mean that people used to recommend that. I'm a little ashamed of the druidical kink in my thoughts. I am one of those people who toss salt over my (left) shoulder when I've gone and spilled some. I don't even like to look at the number 13 (true confession - I turn away from my microwave as it gets to the last seconds to avoid spotting it). I once drove around the block when a black cat crossed in front of my car to avoid path crossing. I mean, why take a chance, right? This is the silly, low-end thinking that is part of something grander I think: mysteries of nature that baffle and terrify and also awe us. Here's hoping your summer is magic and not scary.

London's Famous Clubs And Cabarets No. 3 (1926)

Places that Look Impossibly Magical

Just a few that I've seen on Twitter this week:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The beautiful River Lune in Lancaster, England • photo: Greg Sick on Flickr <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/trip?src=... <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/travel?sr... <a href="https://t.co/mPDna6KYwd">pic.... RayPinch (@RayPinch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RayPinch/status/7... 6, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="http://quartersessions.blogspot.com//..." charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">A visit to the Hallerbos forest in spring to see the lovely bluebells is a must when in Belgium! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ttot?src=... <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/travel?sr... <a href="https://t.co/9fjaysZdE8">pic.... Yishai Mullins (@YishaiMullins) <a href="https://twitter.com/YishaiMullins/sta... 7, 2016</a></blockquote>
<script async src="http://quartersessions.blogspot.com//..." charset="utf-8"></script>

Thank You!

Is there a reader who recognizes this scene?If you're one of the thousands of people (wow!) who bought the book in the recent kindle sale - thanks so much.  At the risk of sounding smarmy,  I am truly honored by your time and your attention.  I hope you will like - or have already enjoyed- the book.  If not, I'm sorry to have disappointed.  At least you haven't lost much money.

If you liked the story, feel free to say so.  The book opens, as you will have noticed, with a quotation from Somerset Maugham.  Another of my favorite Maugham quotations is, "People ask for criticism but they only want praise."  I don't know who those strange creatures are, asking for criticism.  (We'll get it anyway, won't we?)  I'm along for the praise, though.

In other news, the Prize Pack (see the sidebar) has been awarded to a lady in Virginia.  She's sent me her details and I'll be packing up her goods this week.

I'm always pleased to hear from you, the nice class of people who constitute my readers.  Feel free to stop in for a chat anytime.  Thank you again.  

Summer Sale Time

It's here again!   So all you Britishes with 99p and a kindle (or a kindle app) and perhaps vacation plans that will include some reading - click away and Mr. Bezos will be happy to assist you.  

And, of course, on this Memorial Day Weekend I would not neglect my countrymen.  Here's the link for 99 cent copies for all of you.  Also, go ahead and enter for the the Anglophile Prize Pack.  (See the sidebar at the top).  A winner will be picked by Raffflecopter next week.  (US address only for this, sorry).

The photo above is of Erddig Hall in Wrexham, Wales.  The place that inspired "Quarter Sessions," the estate you'll be visiting in the book.