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…
If These Castle Walls Could Talk…
April 5, 2013 by ciji · Leave a Comment
There are travelers who will tell you, “You’ve seen one castle, you’ve seen ‘em all,” but when I’m in the throes of constructing a novel set in Great Britain, castles seem to me as important as “characters” as any of the humans that populate my stories.
Each of these fortresses has its own, specific story to tell: who built them and why? What were they trying to protect? Who was born here; who died here? And most importantly…who loved—or hated—their fellow inhabitants here?
Call me the Ultimate Romantic, but over the years of researching my various historicals, I sometimes think that the stones 
whisper their tales…if the traveler can just remain quiet enough to hear what they have to say.
I felt that “presence” of those who had come before so vibrantly at Caerhays Castle, the turreted stone edifice that was the model for “Barton Hall” in That Summer in Cornwall. It’s round towers and views of the English Channel and the lonely lookout cottage on the property’s cliff conjured up a story that practically told itself.
Now that I’m in the midst of the preliminary research for That Autumn in Edinburgh which will focus on the descendants—one Scottish, one American—of the star-crossed lovers in my first novel, Island of the Swans, I find myself also plotting my trip to the Scottish Border territory south of Edinburgh.
Here I’ve set up an interview with the man who has spearheaded the mulit-milion dollar refurbishment of Sir Walter Scott’s Abbottsford where I’ve recently discovered the novelist’s family were intermarried with descendants of Jane Maxwell, 4th Duchess of Gordon, the heroine of Island of the Swans whose clan once inhabited this ominous turreted fortress on the right.
And then there’s Ayton Castle, the forerunner of the now-destroyed Ayton House where Jane received a letter a month following her arranged marriage to the Duke that the great love of her life had not died in an American Indian skirmish outside Fort Pitt, Pittsburgh, and was coming home thinking to claim her as his own.
Knowing this story, how would a modern Maxwell male descendant, struggling to keep a traditional tartan mill afloat–along with a Fraser, visiting from America in an attempt to recover from a tragic loss of her own– feel as they walked the banks of the River Eye on the exact spot where Jane learned of her lover’s survival, far too late for her to find lasting happiness with Lieutenant Thomas Fraser?
Asking a simple question like that…and listening intently to the standing stones and rustling wind might easily spark a writer’s imagination…
Wicked Company Should be a Movie!
September 19, 2010 by ciji · Leave a Comment
On October 1, Wicked Company is about to have a new life as a nice, juicy trade paperback, courtesy of my publishers, Sourcebooks Landmark, but really, truly, I think one day it should be a movie on a large screen, in full color, and powered by THX sound!
I hold this opinion not merely because I’m proud of this historical novel–which I am, of course– but because, when I did the research, the images I found in the depths of the Huntington Library, or in the archives of the Theater Museum in London leapt out at me in a fashion that just begs for someone to make a film.
I mean, just look at the cast of characters:
We have King George III, Drury Lane actor-manager David Garrick and his wife, struggling women playwrights like the two Hannahs (Hannah More and Hannah Cowley who hated each other),along with numerous actress-playwrights like Kitty Clive and my fictional villainess, Mavis Piggott, plus the weedy little censor Edward Capell–not to mention the hero and heroine, based on a composite of theatrical figures of the day whose lives I encountered when doing the years of research.
Added to this are the amazing locations of this novel: Edinburgh, Covent Garden, Bath, Stratford, the Welsh countryside, Annapolis, Maryland, even! Theaters on both sides of the Pond became the places I had to visit when researching and writing this book.
As I look over my own photo collection, such wonderful memories rush back. The day I discovered this image of David Garrick about to stab his co-star in an eighteenth century play, now long forgotten, was a red-letter moment.
I even let out an audible yelp in the hallowed bowels of an archive not-to-be-mentioned when I stumbled across an example of the very tickets issued to gain entrance to the first Shakespeare Festival held in Stratford-Upon-Avon in 1769.
And then there was the day when I uncovered the fact that one of my historical figures, writer James Boswell, had turned up in the pouring rain at the Shakespeare Festival dressed as a Corsican and brandishing a tall, crooked staff in order to promote a book he was writing! I mean, really! Does nothing change?
These are the moments when an author is transported back in time and can see a story unfolding as if it were a film! (From my computer to God’s ears….)
How I Became a “Scot-O-Maniac”
July 19, 2010 by ciji · Leave a Comment
My passion for Scottish history and culture began in my mid-thirties. I was then working as a reporter and commentator for ABC Radio and TV in Los Angeles and was handed the assignment of covering the International Gathering of the Clans which brought members of the Scottish Diaspora from all over the world to Edinburgh. As I’ve mentioned previously in this blog, both my husband and I are of Scottish-American heritage (Here we are on a moor at the Lord Hamilton shooting estate in Glen Affric, the Scottish Highlands). Between us are the family names of McCullough, McGann, McAlister, Alexander, Bell, Harris and Hunter in our family tree. Read more
