Mother’s Day Kudos to “Storytelling Moms”
April 29, 2013 by ciji · Leave a Comment
Recently 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 offer writers like me the inspiration to just keep typing! So here’s my heartfelt tribute to women like…
…our country’s First Lady. Not only has Michelle Obama used her own Bully Pulpit to urge us to be mindful of healthy eating, she has been tireless in her promotion of literacy and the joys—and necessity—of reading to our kids.
And let’s remember to show our gratitude to the women across the country that not only read to their own children, but—as teachers—read to nation’s children nearly every day in the classroom. For youngsters who may not have anyone else in their lives taking the time to read to them, these are the people who often provide the spark that ignites a lifetime of literacy.
I also appreciate the celebrity moms like the singer Madonna who show by example that reading to their kids can never begin too early…or stop too soon.
Reading to children has been around along time, of course. Just have a look at this wonderful portrait by the American painter Mary Cassett (1844-1926) who created a number of lovely images of women with books in their hands, surrounding by young ones. A friend of Edgar Degas and other French Impressionists, Cassett emphasized the intimate bonds between mother and child and she did a remarkable number of works that are variations on this theme.
So on this upcoming Mother’s Day, let us pay homage to all mothers (fathers and grandparents, too) who consistently read to their offspring–and even to their canines, as you see here with First Dog, Bo!
Not only do they create the readers that authors like me aspire to please, but their efforts most often result in the molding of that most wonderful creation: a literate human being!
That Summer in Cornwall is Ciji Ware’s latest novel that deals with good moms—as well as the other kind…
Creating Characters: Their Actions Drive the Plot!
April 25, 2013 by ciji · Leave a Comment
Next time you look at a row of books on a shelf, think of how the authors of these novels had to figure out what was going to happen in these stories to keep you turning the pages—in other words: the plot.
When I was in the process of planning out my next novel, That Summer in Cornwall, which is a stand-alone sequel to A Cottage by the Sea (a book I’d written a decade before), I remembered the words of a very experienced storyteller that once said, “What do your characters want, and what are they willing to do to get it?”
After going the distance on six 100,000-word-plus novels, I finally get it: doing something to get what a person wants implies action…and action and conflict are elements that drive a plot.
It’s not that complicated, when you think about it, but figuring out what “they” are willing to do to get what they want requires imagination, for we all know that people will do all sorts of things—either admirable or despicable–to get what they want. It’s the author’s job to figure what a character would do, depending on—well—their character…what sorts of folks they are. (We can take up the all-important “biographical sketch” many authors write, early on, in another blog post here…)
Meredith Champlin, the heroine in blue jeans and Wellington boots, basically wants to re-boot her life. With her service dog, Holly, trotting at her side, she escapes a dead-end relationship with a charming but alcoholic rodeo rider, along with her grueling job as a pediatric emergency room nurse at a children’s hospital in Wyoming to spend a few months at the “Money Pit” belonging to her cousin who has married an impecunious British landowner with a castle and an estate that is reeling from the current economic crisis.
Added to that, Meredith, who ran a pet therapy program at her hospital, wants to help raise much needed cash by founding the Barton Hall Canine Obedience Academy, to say nothing of trying to turn her computer-addicted, eleven-year-old “Beverly Hills Brat” legal ward–whose mother has just died in a plane crash–into a decent human being.
And what does the hero want?
Simple. To be left in peace–far from the woman who betrayed him before he departed for Afghanistan as a member of the Royal Army’s bomb squadron—and to avoid his mother who lives in a Cornish village near the castle, a woman who virtually abandoned him and his two brothers when they were young. Now a newly-minted veterinarian and large farm animal manager, the only living creature he likes and trusts besides his employers is his Border Collie, T-Rex, who is his partner on the local Cornwall Search and Rescue Team.
And what do the canines want? To stay as close together as possible, which is how the two protagonists in That Summer in Cornwall meet in the first place!
See how this works? Ask what the main characters seek, and the rest practically takes care of itself!
The hard part, of course, comes when the author has to start typing….
Creating Characters: What Do They Want?
April 22, 2013 by ciji · Leave a Comment
When I originally had the notion for That Summer in Cornwall, my plan was to have my heroine, arriving in late May at shabby chic Barton Hall from Wyoming, get involved in the nursery business that had saved her cousin’s family mansion from bankruptcy a decade earlier in the prequel, A Cottage by the Sea.
However, Meredith Champlin, an emergency room nurse at a children’s hospital, is no gardener like her cousin, Blythe Barton Teague. She was born and raised on a western sheep ranch, so I began to ruminate on what her life goals and desires might be, recalling what a wise person in the writing business once said. “Ask what your characters want—and what would they be willing to do to get it!”
First I had to ask myself: what elements are common both to Wyoming and Cornwall? The latter is a place where many immigrants came to the American West from Britain’s tin mines and fields to work in the copper and coal mines in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and Montana and till the vast open stretches of land, raising animals for the nation’s food supply in the years following the pioneer days.
Cattle and Sheep need herding, I thought, which meant dogs. Meredith, 35, is a pediatric nurse, so what if she had raised Corgi herding dogs as a rancher’s daughter, and also developed a pet therapy program at her hospital?
Bingo! Corgis are known as “The Queen’s Dog”—so obviously they would exist in Cornwall, too, especially because a lot of sheep are raised in the beautiful fields and on the moors in the West Country.
So, I had the answer to “what does Meredith want?” She wants to be deeply involved in the world of working dogs and would never leave her beloved Corgi, Holly, behind when life’s circumstances land her six thousand miles from her home. It was a natural fit that she could help keep Barton Hall solvent by founding the Barton Hall Canine Obedience Academy on the castle grounds.
And what about her past? She also wants to forget an unhappy love affair with a charming, alcoholic rodeo rider and forge an entirely new life away from injured and dying children after a decade of intense, worthwhile, but exhausting service. In other words, she wants a new beginning and a way of re-inventing herself and her life’s work.
And as it happens, in Cornwall, working dogs are also trained in the field of search and rescue, due to the type of terrain where “holiday makers” routinely fall off cliffs that skirt the dramatic coastline facing the English Channel, or get lost on the remote moors, or disappear down deserted mine shafts left over from the previous century’s tin industry.
Then one of those “Eureka!” thoughts struck. The hero could be a veteran of a dog bomb-sniffing unit in the British Forces, late of Afghanistan, who, along with his Border Collie T-Rex, has returned to Cornwall and is now a veterinarian and a member of the Cornwall Search and Rescue Team. All he wants is to be left alone to nurse his psychic wounds that vastly predate his service in the Royal Army, though at his core, he yearns for a sense of safety, connection with kindred spirits, and “home.”
So, through the magic of asking (and answering) “What do the main characters want?” I could begin to write Chapter One of That Summer in Cornwall.
The question “What are the characters willing to do to get what they want?” is the engine that drives the plot…a subject that I will probably discuss another time for readers who speculate about such things. It’s a subject I am certainly wondering about as I prepare to start work on That Autumn in Edinburgh..a sequel two hundred years after the conclusion of my first novel, Island of the Swans…
Tea Addiction in Fiction
April 18, 2013 by ciji · Leave a Comment
There must be a “tea gene” running through the Ware and McCullough clans, because I’m pretty sure there’s a scene where someone is making, delivery, pouring, or drinking tea in every single one of my seven works of fiction…
In That Summer in Cornwall there must be about a half dozen such scenes, and in each one, I try to recall some wonderful repast that included tea, scones, cucumber sandwiches, smoked salmon, and—gasp—even little cream puffs.
I think it all began with my father, Harlan Ware, a mid-century writer of novels, screenplays, short stories (remember The Saturday Evening Post, anyone?), and—for fourteen of its twenty-seven years on the air, the radio drama One Man’s Family set in Sea Cliff, San Francisco, not too far from where I live.
The Barbour Family in that show was always discussing “life” over a cup of tea…but, of course, listeners only heard the clinking of the chinaware, courtesy of the sound engineer baffled behind the sound-proof screen in the old NBC studios.
When I was growing up in Carmel, California, my father and I would walk the length of the beach at four o’clock when I got home from school and he’d finished his daily script…and then go home for a “nice cuppa.”
The strange thing was that my dad had never set foot outside the United States, but he was as British as any Londoner, and having tea between four and five o’clock every day was just one example of the strength of his family origins tracing back to Devon and Cornwall.
And now, I, along with many of my closest friends, are likewise addicted to teatime. In my case, however, I am very likely to inset a scene—or two or more—into my fiction where the characters find themselves discussing life, love, and whatever problems they are having over a nice, strong amber brew.
So perhaps I can persuade you one day soon, to cozy down with a good novel, put your feet up, and enjoy a cup on me?
Book Bargain Bulletin from Ciji!
April 16, 2013 by ciji · Leave a Comment
I woke up to the news this morning that–in the mysterious ways of Amazon–my ‘time-slip’ novel A Light on the Veranda is today’s (April 16th) “Kindle Daily Deal”–which means you can secure an 88% (!) saving if you click over there asap! These deals usually only last a day or two, so I wrote this “emergency blog” to let any reader who wanted to get a copy could quickly grab one!
The story, set in both nineteenth and twenty-first century Natchez, takes place in “The Town That Time Forgot” where there are sixty “tour-able” mansions built in a time when “Cotton Was King” and plantation owners erected replicas in this market town of their larger, elegant houses in the nearby Mississippi countryside.
The heroine, Daphne Duvallon, was the character in Midnight on Julia Street who blew off her wedding in the first chapter and high-tailed it back to New York City, never to be heard from again until her brother’s wedding forces her to return to the South and confront her devils. Thanks to a harp whose vibrations whisk Daphne back to the time of her ancestors, she discovers events from her family’s past that still echo down to her own life, and that of the arrestingly handsome Simon Hopkins, a nature photographer in the Natchez area stalking birds once painted by John James Audubon.
Given that spring has sprung along the Mississippi right now, what better time than to indulge in a bargain book that will whisk you to one of the most historic and memorable places in the United States?
Thank you Amazon/Kindle!
