Venice, Publishing, and My Paper Lion
May 6, 2013 by ciji · Leave a Comment
Who 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!), but hey! I’m a published writer and I absolutely, positively had to sit in those chairs and look out at the same stunning vista he did.
We were blessed with cool weather and went to all the tourist attractions as early as they opened and thus had a perfectly delicious time during our week in Venice last year, even as the Agua Alta was rising.
The city swiftly and expertly put up the boardwalks, and besides, I was reading a gripping Donna Leon mystery novel, Aqua Alta, in my Pensione Accademia each evening before the gently sloshing water in the canal outside my window lulled me to sleep. Long term, the city is in peril, but on this particular visit, it was an experience I’ll remember always…
It was also the perfect way to commemorate 35 years of marriage and a very BIG birthday for both my husband me last year. “A celebration of lions” I called it, adoring all the images of these regal creatures we saw everywhere throughout this water-laced city. We learned that if the lion had his paw on an open book, the Renaissance City State of Venice was at peace; if the lion’s paw was on a closed book, Venice was at war.
Our writer pal, Michael Llewellyn had been this route before us and eventually sent us wonderful images of lions that he’d captured with his “real” camera, in contrast to my iPhone 4.
When we got home from our Grand Tour last fall and decided to launch our own, independent publishing enterprise, the idea of using the concept of the Venetian lion as our colophon (i.e. “logo”) to signify our company instantly appealed to everyone involved.
So we sent a couple of photographic images to our designer and look what Kim Killion came up with…our magnificent Lion’s Paw Press “King of the Beasts” has his foot on three books, not one. And author Llewellyn gave us the best compliment of all. “I wish I’d thought of doing that!”
The icing on the cake is that Book 3 in my “Four Seasons Series” ( Book 1: That Summer in Cornwall, published in Feb of this year; Book 2: That Autumn in Edinburgh, due out next Fall) will be That Winter in Venice, set during the celebrated Carnivale season of exotic costumes and mist rising from the canals…
It’s tough duty, but it seems we’ll just have to head back to La Serenissima in February of 2014 to witness Carnivale for ourselves. Research, you know…
Dateline: 200 Years Later…
May 2, 2013 by ciji · Leave a Comment
I’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 Sacramento to see our Godchildren and tossing ideas back and forth as the California scenery sped by. During the previous twenty-five years, I had written the words –The End–on seven 130,000 word historical novels, along with two weighty nonfiction books and was feeling, as my late novelist father Harlan Ware was wont to say, “that the well may be running pretty dry.”
Like my dad, (seen on the right in a portrait by Donald Teague) I love reading as well as writing fiction, but producing historical novels to the standard I think the reading audience deserves takes a commitment of a couple of years, each, and I had hit a very significant birthday recently. To launch into another big project like one I’d been mulling over in the middle of the Great Recession would require living with no income during the time it took to produce the book, to say nothing of the expensive and extensive travel required to truly do the subject justice,
And then there would be the huge struggle to get it traditionally published in today’s ever-changing and tumultuous media industry, not to mention the effort required to promote an historical novel set two hundred years earlier to audiences who were less and less likely to have studied history prior to World War II!
“I’m running out of runway,” I recall complaining to my writing pal, Michael Llewellyn. “The readers who like my stuff are as old as I am! Maybe I should hang up my spurs?”
Then a thought struck: why not write some sequels to those same historical novels, but set them in contemporary times? I was yearning to try a new direction in my writing life, but as a practical matter, the good news was that I already “knew the territory” of each book’s setting; knew the characters from whom their modern-day counterparts descended, and I grew excited to accept the challenge to develop stories that echoed down from the distant past.
I have long been interested in the idea that events far back in a family’s line filter down and affect later generations. I’d seen this in my own family where my ancestors had originally sailed across the Atlantic from various parts of the United Kingdom to settle in the American colonies in the eighteenth century, pushing West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My father, who’d never traveled to Europe, was nevertheless about as British as they come, serving tea each day, promptly at four o’clock. Why was that, I’d always wondered? Could having a cuppa be encoded in one’s DNA?
On my mother’s side, her four-times great grandfather and his son had been officers in the American Civil War on the Union side, captured at the Battle of Shiloh and put in a prison camp, and returned to Missouri broken, self-medicating men, with repercussions that were felt down through the generations—even to my own day.
So, I wondered, why not tell the uncompleted story in my biographical historical novel, Island of the Swans. Reveal to the readers what ultimately happened much later in their lives between Jane Maxwell, the 4th Duchess of Gordon, and the “lost lieutenant” Thomas Fraser who had been reported killed in battle and came back to Scotland to claim her as his bride shortly after she was married to the Duke. How had Jane’s losing the love of her life impacted the Maxwell-Gordon-Fraser children? (Yes, there is quite good evidence that one of Jane’s offspring was not by the Duke!)
What if two descendants of the star-crossed lovers happened to meet in Edinburgh, Scotland in the first decade of the twenty-first century and–
And thus, as with That Summer in Cornwall, a modern-day sequel to an historical novel is born: That Autumn in Edinburgh. So watch this space…
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…
