AMERICAN HISTORICAL NOVELS discussion
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And They Called It Camelot
And They Called It Camelot
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Interview with the Author
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Would love to read And They Call it Camelot.
I too teach history! What a great job.And I think we all need a bit more information about #2. ;)
I am also fascinated with anything Kennedy. What a truly amazing, strong, family, who have seen so much joy, and so much tragedy. And They Called It Camelot sounds fascinating!
Amanda wrote: "I too teach history! What a great job.And I think we all need a bit more information about #2. ;)"
Fellow history teachers unite! As for #2, I worked a make-up artist to put myself through college. Arnold Schwarzenegger came up to Alaska for the opening ceremonies of the Special Olympics and I was on the team assigned to do his make-up. Pretty minimal--he really just wanted something to cover the gray in his beard!
Tracey wrote: "I am also fascinated with anything Kennedy. What a truly amazing, strong, family, who have seen so much joy, and so much tragedy. And They Called It Camelot sounds fascinating!"That's really what struck me most about Jackie once I finished writing her story--her extreme strength and grace in the face of so many tragedies.
Dyana wrote: "Would love to read And They Call it Camelot."Thank you! Happy reading!
Mod
I’m a writer and high school history teacher who has been obsessed with infamo..."
If I had not chosen English as my major, I think I would've chosen History! Love them both!
I’m a writer and high school history teacher who has been obsessed with infamous women from history since I was twelve. My first four novels reimagine the lives of ancient women, but I recently turned to 20th century American women and wrote American Princess: A Novel of First Daughter Alice Roosevelt about Theodore Roosevelt’s hellion of a daughter, followed by And They Called It Camelot, an intimate retelling of Jackie Kennedy's life.
How were you inspired to write And They Called It Camelot? What sparked your interest in Jackie Kennedy?
After writing American Princess, I wanted my next story to be about another iconic American woman and Jackie Kennedy was the first to come to mind. I found that while people think they know her story, many of the details of her life—the deaths of her children, the monuments she saved, her many tumultuous family relationships—have already started to gather dust. Also, while there are enough nonfiction books about her and the rest of the Kennedys to fill an entire library, I quickly realized that there was an opportunity to transform her momentous life into historical fiction, to really let the reader feel what it was like to be Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. While I love a good nonfiction read, there’s something special about experiencing life through the eyes of the person who lived it. (I often joke that historical fiction is the closest thing to a time machine, but it’s true!) I loved being able to transport readers to see what it would have been like to be the one and only Jackie-O.
Can you give us insight into your writing process?
Since I’m also a teacher, wife, and mother, I pretty much snag whatever writing time I can whenever I can. The long Alaskan winters give me plenty of time to outline, write, and revise.
What research did you do for And They Called It Camelot ? Travel? Go to historical societies? Read memoirs?
I now have an entire bookcase bulging with Kennedy non-fiction. I also dragged my husband and daughter back East—to the Smithsonian, Arlington National Cemetery, and the Kennedy Presidential Library—to walk in Jackie’s footsteps as much as I could. I really felt that, in order to get this story right, I needed to know Jackie as intimately as I could—she’s such a beloved public figure that anything less would have felt artificial. That meant reading every Jackie Kennedy book that I could get my hands on—including her own interviews after JFK’s death all the way to a children’s book about her international trips as First Lady. And there’s really nothing quite so special as seeing a letter Jackie wrote or one of the evening gowns she actually wore. In fact, many of the things I discovered while researching—items like the letter Jackie wrote to Joseph Kennedy calling him Poppy Doodle, the items on JFK’s Oval Office desk, and the children’s drawings Bobby Kennedy hung in his office—all made their way onto the pages of And They Called It Camelot.
Did you find anything in your research that was particularly fascinating or that helped shape the novel?
We’ve all seen images of Jackie in Dallas in the back of the Lincoln Continental limousine and then wearing her blood-spattered pink suit standing next to Lyndon Johnson while he took the oath of office on the day that JFK was assassinated—it’s impossible to truly imagine how horrific that day was for Jackie. However, one thing I didn’t realize until I started researching is that Jackie—and not Bobby’s wife Ethel or even his mother, Rose Kennedy—was the family member who signed the consent forms to terminate Bobby’s life support after he was shot at the Ambassador Hotel during his primary campaign. It seemed to me further proof of Jackie’s deep well of strength—that this woman who had survived so much—was able to muster the courage to face so many tragedies.
What is your favorite time period to write about? To read about?
I definitely love writing women’s stories set in the ancient world—there’s more wiggle room for a writer’s imagination when you’re writing what it was like to be an Egyptian pharaoh or Genghis Khan’s chief wife. I’m an omnivore when it comes to reading—I love ancient history all the way through to more modern history. I’ll read anything so long as it’s a good story!
What has been your greatest challenge as a writer? How have you been able to overcome that?
Learning to juggle the demands of writing with teaching and being a wife and mom has been quite a tap dance, which is why I’ll sometimes even sit down to write a paragraph or revise a single page in the five minutes while dinner is cooking. Who needs sleep, right?!
Who are your writing inspirations?
I like to think that I pick up inspiration from every book I read. I swear that The Hunger Games taught me more about plotting and pacing than any instruction manual I’ve ever read. Behind every good writer is a voracious reader!
What are you reading at the moment?
I just finished Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate and absolutely loved it. Next up is rereading City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty so I can finish the whole trilogy!
What are three things people may not know about you?
1. I studied to be a biological archaeologist.
2. I once did Arnold Schwarzenegger’s make-up.
3. I make a mean sourdough boule.
Care to share what you are working on now?
My next novel, Clever Girl (July 2021) is about Elizabeth Bentley, a Cold War spy-turned-informer who inadvertently started the Red Scare.