Natasha Ewendt's Blog - Posts Tagged "p-j-parker"
Author Showcase Guest Post - PJ Parker: Fire on the Water, continued...
This is the latest in a series of Author Showcase guest posts. The posts are by authors from around the world, sharing their tips for writers and readers, discussing their books and careers, and generally sharing any nuggets of wisdom and useful information they may have.
Today’s post is by New York-based Aussie P.J. Parker. It’s a curious addition to his latest historic fiction Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, written especially for Author Showcase.
Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Through extensive research into the life of Mary Shelley, American biographer Rachel Walton uncovered dozens of letters written by Mary during her summer tour of Switzerland in 1816. Several of these were transcribed exactly in the work (Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein published on 12 December 2013 by The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House) but one was not. Ms. Walton offered no comment on her reasoning for not including this letter in her work but acknowledges that with the recent release online of Mary Shelley’s original handwritten manuscript, the literary public should also be aware of this letter’s content. Below is the correspondence in full. Per Ms. Walton, the original is on file in the Château de Chillon Archives, Montreux, Switzerland.
Mister Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Hotel de l’Union
Chamonix-Mont-Blanc
France July 1816
My lyric Bysshe,
This afternoon I was enamored by the strangest of waking dreams. I had just finished afternoon tea down on the villa terrace with Doctor Polidori—an extravagance of puff pastry and cream with tea flavored with bergamot. Both of us agreed that the afternoon could only be made complete by a nap, before readying ourselves for the dinner gong. I climbed the stair and curled up on the settee in my private suite, Willmouse fast asleep in my lap, and I dozed. (Young William has been a pleasure the entire time you have been away tramping through the wilderness of Mont Blanc but of course we both miss you terribly and cannot wait until the eve of your return.)
Now to my dream, my darling.
Once again it involved the creatures of which I write for the ghost story competition. But even as I wrote the words of Captain Robert Walton, who relayed the story of Doctor Victor Frankenstein I sensed that I myself was caught in a literary web—that I was being written about by an unknown author whose work was being written about by yet another. The very convolution of my thoughts made my mind boggle. In truth I wondered whether I was any more or less real than those of which I write or those whose ink scratches out my own story. I cuddled Willmouse tightly as I wondered, indeed, if I were real. And if I could have such thoughts then surely those that my quill has swept into existence must also consider themselves real flesh and blood—with hopes and dreams, uncertainties and fears. You may chuckle at my dilemma however I have also seen it cross your countenance as you place the final words to any of your poetry—the construction of a world, a thought, an emotion that is perhaps more accepting than the actual one in which we live. And one caught forever on parchment to be enjoyed and savored by countless others whose own world is not as they would like it or are willing to recognize.
My waking dream turned to me and I speculated that in some distant future Victor Frankenstein and his wretch may hold more of a reality than my own life—one that is cared for and possibly loved in its detail, one that would outshine my own existence and take on a vitality of its own.
I expect my wretch is conceivably the best (and worst) of my inner thoughts. But then, if there is a higher author, one whose pen and ink attempts to define who and what I am (or may have been) I have a certainty that the pen would not be guided by his hand alone—that I myself, even as a figment of imagination, conjecture or love may also influence the flow of ink toward my own truth.
Your Mary
(Kisses from Willmouse)
About the author:
P.J. Parker was born and raised in rural Australia. With a bachelor of science in architecture from the University of New South Wales, he has travelled and lived extensively around the world, focusing on cultures of historic interest and buildings of architectural significance before transitioning into a career as a fraud analyst and programmer with a leading international financial institution. An avid reader and researcher, P.J. undertakes his writing with a passionate and exacting attention to detail. P.J.’s latest historic fiction, Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has garnered critical acclaim from readers internationally.
http://about.me/author_pjparker
https://www.facebook.com/PJParker.aut...
More about Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Published by Australia’s The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House, ISBN (paper): 978-1-61213-196-2, ISBN (ebook): 978-1-61213-197-9):
Rachel, a young American biographer researching the life of Mary Shelley in Montreux, Switzerland, is entangled and consumed by the escalating threads of her investigation. Shards of Shelley’s creation are exhumed from the past. Precious memories are hacked and sutured to the unthinkable. The unblemished flesh of the one she loves is stripped back to reveal what lies beneath—aspects of Frankenstein incised and ripped from the nineteenth century and transplanted into her own. The archival records contained within the chiseled stone of Château de Chillon give some insight into a life long gone. It is, however, the contents of a document trunk that has remained unopened for generations that discloses what truly occurred in the idyllic Swiss Riviera village of Montreux to jolt the monster into existence. Personal letters and diaries detailing events, suppers, lectures, and conversations between Mary Shelley and her confidant, Doctor John Polidori, reveal a spiraling progression of horrors, dismembered cadavers, and uncertainties. Doctor Polidori assists the local gendarmerie in their investigation, unaware of how closely the knife will cut to Mary’s life and his own. Rachel is drawn into the centuries-old conversations as she attempts to discern fact from fiction. But opening the trunk could not come at a more difficult time for Rachel. Her boyfriend has recently been killed in a motorbike accident and now, as she attempts to reconstruct her life, she is repeatedly confronted by a man of gigantic structure, of uncommon beauty, of intriguing origin. Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein interweaves Rachel’s search with the plot of Frankenstein and the horrific occurrences of the summer of 1816 when Mary Shelley dared to dip her quill into the ink of her darkest of waking dreams. The truth is given life.
http://ph.thewriterscoffeeshop.com/bo...
http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Water-Comp...
Natasha Ewendt is the author of This Freshest Hell, a vampire novel released in 2013 by Lacuna Publishing. Also a journalist at the Port Lincoln Times and the director of Port Lincoln Copywriting Services, Natasha is reluctantly addicted to coffee and The Walking Dead.
Today’s post is by New York-based Aussie P.J. Parker. It’s a curious addition to his latest historic fiction Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, written especially for Author Showcase.
Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s FrankensteinThrough extensive research into the life of Mary Shelley, American biographer Rachel Walton uncovered dozens of letters written by Mary during her summer tour of Switzerland in 1816. Several of these were transcribed exactly in the work (Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein published on 12 December 2013 by The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House) but one was not. Ms. Walton offered no comment on her reasoning for not including this letter in her work but acknowledges that with the recent release online of Mary Shelley’s original handwritten manuscript, the literary public should also be aware of this letter’s content. Below is the correspondence in full. Per Ms. Walton, the original is on file in the Château de Chillon Archives, Montreux, Switzerland.
Mister Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Hotel de l’Union
Chamonix-Mont-Blanc
France July 1816
My lyric Bysshe,
This afternoon I was enamored by the strangest of waking dreams. I had just finished afternoon tea down on the villa terrace with Doctor Polidori—an extravagance of puff pastry and cream with tea flavored with bergamot. Both of us agreed that the afternoon could only be made complete by a nap, before readying ourselves for the dinner gong. I climbed the stair and curled up on the settee in my private suite, Willmouse fast asleep in my lap, and I dozed. (Young William has been a pleasure the entire time you have been away tramping through the wilderness of Mont Blanc but of course we both miss you terribly and cannot wait until the eve of your return.)
Now to my dream, my darling.
Once again it involved the creatures of which I write for the ghost story competition. But even as I wrote the words of Captain Robert Walton, who relayed the story of Doctor Victor Frankenstein I sensed that I myself was caught in a literary web—that I was being written about by an unknown author whose work was being written about by yet another. The very convolution of my thoughts made my mind boggle. In truth I wondered whether I was any more or less real than those of which I write or those whose ink scratches out my own story. I cuddled Willmouse tightly as I wondered, indeed, if I were real. And if I could have such thoughts then surely those that my quill has swept into existence must also consider themselves real flesh and blood—with hopes and dreams, uncertainties and fears. You may chuckle at my dilemma however I have also seen it cross your countenance as you place the final words to any of your poetry—the construction of a world, a thought, an emotion that is perhaps more accepting than the actual one in which we live. And one caught forever on parchment to be enjoyed and savored by countless others whose own world is not as they would like it or are willing to recognize.
My waking dream turned to me and I speculated that in some distant future Victor Frankenstein and his wretch may hold more of a reality than my own life—one that is cared for and possibly loved in its detail, one that would outshine my own existence and take on a vitality of its own.
I expect my wretch is conceivably the best (and worst) of my inner thoughts. But then, if there is a higher author, one whose pen and ink attempts to define who and what I am (or may have been) I have a certainty that the pen would not be guided by his hand alone—that I myself, even as a figment of imagination, conjecture or love may also influence the flow of ink toward my own truth.
Your Mary
(Kisses from Willmouse)
About the author:P.J. Parker was born and raised in rural Australia. With a bachelor of science in architecture from the University of New South Wales, he has travelled and lived extensively around the world, focusing on cultures of historic interest and buildings of architectural significance before transitioning into a career as a fraud analyst and programmer with a leading international financial institution. An avid reader and researcher, P.J. undertakes his writing with a passionate and exacting attention to detail. P.J.’s latest historic fiction, Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has garnered critical acclaim from readers internationally.
http://about.me/author_pjparker
https://www.facebook.com/PJParker.aut...
More about Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Published by Australia’s The Writer’s Coffee Shop Publishing House, ISBN (paper): 978-1-61213-196-2, ISBN (ebook): 978-1-61213-197-9):
Rachel, a young American biographer researching the life of Mary Shelley in Montreux, Switzerland, is entangled and consumed by the escalating threads of her investigation. Shards of Shelley’s creation are exhumed from the past. Precious memories are hacked and sutured to the unthinkable. The unblemished flesh of the one she loves is stripped back to reveal what lies beneath—aspects of Frankenstein incised and ripped from the nineteenth century and transplanted into her own. The archival records contained within the chiseled stone of Château de Chillon give some insight into a life long gone. It is, however, the contents of a document trunk that has remained unopened for generations that discloses what truly occurred in the idyllic Swiss Riviera village of Montreux to jolt the monster into existence. Personal letters and diaries detailing events, suppers, lectures, and conversations between Mary Shelley and her confidant, Doctor John Polidori, reveal a spiraling progression of horrors, dismembered cadavers, and uncertainties. Doctor Polidori assists the local gendarmerie in their investigation, unaware of how closely the knife will cut to Mary’s life and his own. Rachel is drawn into the centuries-old conversations as she attempts to discern fact from fiction. But opening the trunk could not come at a more difficult time for Rachel. Her boyfriend has recently been killed in a motorbike accident and now, as she attempts to reconstruct her life, she is repeatedly confronted by a man of gigantic structure, of uncommon beauty, of intriguing origin. Fire on the Water: A Companion to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein interweaves Rachel’s search with the plot of Frankenstein and the horrific occurrences of the summer of 1816 when Mary Shelley dared to dip her quill into the ink of her darkest of waking dreams. The truth is given life.
http://ph.thewriterscoffeeshop.com/bo...
http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Water-Comp...
Natasha Ewendt is the author of This Freshest Hell, a vampire novel released in 2013 by Lacuna Publishing. Also a journalist at the Port Lincoln Times and the director of Port Lincoln Copywriting Services, Natasha is reluctantly addicted to coffee and The Walking Dead.
