Ciji Ware's Blog, page 2

Creating Characters Before The Novel Is Written

Pin ItIn an previous blog I talked about the task facing authors beginning a new work to figure out what was going to happen to keep readers turning the pages of one of those novels sitting in the library or on your bookshelf. The central question a writer must ask before typing page one is: “What do your characters want, and what are they willing to do to get it?” As I mentioned in an earlier post, in That Summer... Read More...

Why I Love Edinburgh

Pin ItOn Tuesday night, June 11, just before midnight at London’s Euston Sation, my husband and I are boarding the ScotRail sleeper train to Edinburgh. “The Night Train to Edinburgh.” Just typing those words sounds like the title to a novel, but in this case, I’m off to research a new book that follows That Summer in Cornwall—and it’s set—guess where?–in one of my favorite cities: the historic capital of Scotland built on a volcanic outcropping that protected its residents... Read More...

Creating Fictional Characters – The Magic of “Who?”

Pin ItWhen starting a new project–as I am doing with That Autumn in Edinburgh, a novel that follows the previously published That Summer in Cornwall in my Four Seasons series—I fall back on twenty-five years experience as a working reporter.  I have always found asking those journalists’ questions: who, what, where, why, when to be rather magical in the way they find me the answers I need to get started. “Where?” is obvious for this novel: Scotland, and more specifically,... Read More...

Scotland by the Yard

Pin ItThe first thing a person learns about Scottish woolen manufacturing—an industry which will figure in the background of the next novel after That Summer in Cornwall in my forthcoming Four Seasons Quartet series—is that the vibrantly patterned cloth for which Scotland is so renowned may be called “plaid” by the uninitiated, but in the region of Scotland where much of it is made, you’d be well-advised to call it “tartan”—as in “family tartan.” In the novel I’m currently researching, That... Read More...

Are Ancestors “Fair Game” in Fiction?

Pin ItI remember when I was a young consumer reporter in my early days at ABC—long before I’d written or published novels like That Summer in Cornwall —when the subject of one of my radio assignments became very angry that I revealed that his company was pumping air into its ice cream to increase the bulk (and hence the weight) which, of course, meant they could charge-more-for-less. I told a veteran newspaperman about the significant blowback I received from Mr. Ice... Read More...

Researching a Novel–Honestly!

Pin It In less than a month I’ll be heading off on what, to an outsider, probably looks like a lark. Researching a work of fiction might sound like an oxymoron, but as a reporter with more than twenty-five years of experience in the world of “fact checking,” I’ve discovered after seven novels that getting the details right about the real world aspects of a story is just as important in a piece of “make-believe”  as it is with “breaking... Read More...

My Mother, The Typist

Pin ItIn honor of the Mother’s Day celebrations across the land, I want to pay homage to Ruth Ware, the quintessential Flapper when she graduated on the eve of the Great Depression from Radcliffe College–a school known in her day as the “Harvard Annex.”  (Just an aside, but now women graduate from Harvard…) We have long heard stories from friends like Maggie Richardson (on right, slanted hat–a newspaper woman in the 1940s and later editor for the Women’s Section at... Read More...

Venice, Publishing, and My Paper Lion

Pin ItWho doesn’t love Venice?  Oh, I know, if you visit in the hot summer when the crowds are clogging the Piazza San Marco–and even buying a scoop of gelato can set you back ten bucks–you might not fall in love with the city as passionately as my husband and I have.    And yes, having espressos at Café Florian where Hemingway reportedly consulted his writer’s muse when staying there set us back $40 (and that was in October, no less!),... Read More...

Dateline: 200 Years Later…

Pin ItI’ve realized recently, preparing for my trip to Scotland in June to research the second in the 4 Seasons Series ,that the next book—That Autumn in Edinburgh—may be the “ultimate sequel.”  That’s because the story it continues, Island of the Swans, left off at the end of the eighteenth century. The new books starts in 2013!  Crazy idea? Here’s how it happened… Not too long ago, my husband and I were driving the two hours from the Bay Area to... Read More...

Mother’s Day Kudos to “Storytelling Moms”

Pin ItRecently my son sent me this wonderful photo of my daughter-in-law reading to our two grandsons.  As an author myself, and the daughter, granddaughter, and niece of professional writers, I say hats off and a huge thank you to all the “Storytelling Moms”–and Dads–who take the time to share their love of literature with the next generation. However, Mother’s Day is upon us on May 12th, and this is by way of honoring the women in children’s lives who... Read More...