February Events

I was attempting to thin out my file cabinet when some research caught my eye. It was a three page dated List of Events For February. February is a short month, but full of activities. So full,  that the fourth Friday and time for my blog had passed by unnoticed. List in hand I decided this list could become the subject of a short blog for a short month.
Writers need to be aware of what is happening in the world during the time, setting and within the social milieu of their stories. With that premise I used this list when I was writing my first historical novel, Four Summers Waiting. Several items were starred  that I had put into dialog, description or action  in the story. Below I've excerpted  ones that were pertinent:

                       Monthly History of February Events

      1732  The first President of the US and the first president of anything in the world was born,

      George Washington

      1783 Great Britain declared a cessation of hostilities with its former colonies, The USA

      1801 the District of Columbia was placed under the jurisdiction of Congress.

      1807 Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland Maine

1809  Abraham Lincoln born in present day Larue County, Kentucky

      1839  Congress prohibited dueling

      1857 A French court acquitted author Flaubert of obscenity for his novel. Madam Bovary

      1861 President elect Abraham Lincoln, departed Springfield Illinois for Washington

      1861 Jefferson Davis was sworn in as President of the Confederate States of America

      1885 The Washington Monument was dedicated

 

The list was an excellent help from the internet several years ago and it leads up to an event  for the present month of February, 2013 on the internet. Book Two of my back list,  Maine Shore Chronicles, Moonglade became available on Kindle! If you haven't read Moonglade,it is a cozy mystery heralded by Publisher's Weekly Reviews and it is now at a  bargain price compared to the hard cover Five Star edition. You can read about it on my author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/maryschoenecker. If you liked Finding Fiona you will love Moonglade.





Quote Worthy or Worthy Quotes

There are post-it notes on my desktop, tack board, calendar, monitor, and in my day minder. Many of them are lists of things to do and not forget, which I throw away with relish when completed. But the ones with the curled edges, that stay and stay, are the quotes that touched me.

"No one else has your unique voice. Cultivate it." (good advice for a writer, eh?)
"Write the story for yourself. Your story. Not for others."
"The imagination is the highest kite you can fly." ~Lauren Bacall 
"Surrender to the work. No agenda. Discover the story. Be receptive. Be willing to fail. Cool & detached." (see a theme, here? I have to remind myself to let the muse run with it...)

I was talking to my son the other day, who is an adult and a savvy business man. He said, "Mom, there's a difference between goal and dream." That's probably not verbatim but it's close. He's becoming more pragmatic as he ages, and frankly I think I may be more of a dreamer. What came to mind when he said that was Mark Twain's quote, "Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind...it doesn't matter."

Nietche said "Be who you are."

I used to have a huge file of quotes and funny quips, but I don't know what I've done with it. (Must be time to clean my office. <sigh>) Whenever the muse was MIA I'd pop open that folder and pick out something and USUALLY it resonated with me and got me thinking and words began for form. Quotes and poetry are a good way to explore free writing, which is  a great tool when you're blocked or just getting started with a project.

"Well behaved women rarely make history."~Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (one of my favorites that inspire some of the feisty women characters in my books)

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise to the writer, no surprise to the reader."~Robert Frost (definitely a good thing for writers to remember)

What quotes inspire or motivate you?

Why Do Series Novels Draw Readers? by Jacqueline Seewald

Why Do Series Novels Draw Readers?

 There are a number of reasons why series novels draw readers. Many readers enjoy a consistency of setting in a series. It becomes familiar and comfortable to them. My opinion is that the setting should be one the author knows well whether it be a city he/she has lived in, a rural community, an exotic place visited, or an historic location that has been researched in detail. This lends authenticity to the novel. For instance, in the first mystery in my Kim Reynolds librarian sleuth series, THE INFERNO COLLECTION, I chose a university setting because it was one I was very familiar with. I had not only received several graduate degrees, I both taught English and was an academic librarian (at different times) at Rutgers. However, intending to keep the series fresh, each of the three novels has a different locale in Central N.J. where I lived for nearly forty years. THE DROWNING POOL is set in a luxury apartment complex. At one time, we were members of a pool club much like the one in the novel. The main locale for THE TRUTH SLEUTH is a suburban NJ high school. Fifteen years of high school teaching gave me the background to create authenticity in the setting of this murder mystery.

In a series the author needs to create characters readers will want to return to again and again. We enjoy reading Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series because we know the characters and they make us laugh. We enjoy reading the Number One Ladies Detective Agency series because of the wonderfully charming and unique characters Alexander McCall Smith has created. In THE DROWNING POOL, the second mystery novel in my series, Kim Reynolds and homicide detective Mike Gardner return to solve another set of murders. They are joined by a new character, a woman of color, police detective Bert St. Croix. The three main characters are very different in personality and background but each lends something unique to the novel. While Kim Reynolds remains the main character in THE TRUTH SLEUTH, Mike and Bert are very important as well. As with Evanovich and Smith, these novels have humor as well as drama and crime.

I believe that plot is also a key factor in the mystery novel or any series. In the Kim Reynolds series, there are connected murders that need to be solved. The main characters may even become personally involved as in THE TRUTH SLEUTH when Kim initially finds the body of a murdered boy and later discovers another on the high school grounds.

I am pleased that THE INFERNO COLLECTION and THE DROWNING POOL are now available at low cost in all e-book formats. You can check them out at:

http://www.lldreamspell.com/JacquelineSeewald.htm

Do series novels have an advantage over stand alone novels? As a reader or as a writer, which do you prefer?  Drop a comment here, and if you want to be entered for a print copy of the new edition of THE TRUTH SLEUTH recently published by Harlequin Worldwide Mystery, include an e-mail address. Giveaway winner will be chosen at random. An excerpt from the novel is available at the Harlequin website: http://www.harlequin.com/storeitem.html?iid=27323

Literature: A Guide to Life

Few would today identify with the nineteenth century parlor maid who devoured novels to get a glimpse of the secret behaviors of the men and women who lived upstairs. But no one would deny the way novels let us look into other lives, experience other choices and other challenges. Fiction is as good as eavesdropping, as being privy to others' secrets.

I was thinking about this at the end of my vacation, three weeks in India in January, when the hotel manager mentioned that another writer who had often visited had had a reversal of fortune, as it were. The man in question was a travel writer who had given up his very lucrative business, handing it over to a relative, and eloped with his dream. He had always wanted to be a writer and now that he had money in the bank, he was going to live his dream. He moved to Asia, traveled around, and wrote about what he saw and experienced. 

As far as I can tell from limited Internet research, he published a dozen travel books, all with the same publisher, and lived the life he wanted. He traveled in Asia and wrote about many parts of it, often staying in the same hotel in India as I stayed in. And then his world fell apart. The meltdown of 2008 took his considerable savings. His books failed to sell, he lost his publisher, and he moved to--Paris? The story is he is now poor in Paris. (There are worse places to be poor, I'm sure.)

This story reminds me of one Somerset Maugham wrote (I have searched fruitlessly for the title, so if you know it, please let me know) that remains vividly with me. It concerns a young British insurance agent who vacations on the Riviera annually. He loves the area and promises himself he'll retire there when the time comes. But something changes him, and he decides not to wait. Before he is old enough, he cashes in his various savings and pensions and moves to France. There he lives the life he wanted, a life of ease on the Riviera, enjoying the people, the weather, the social life. 

But this wouldn't be a Maugham story if it ended there. Eventually, the money runs out when he is entering old age. The caretaker of the house he rented takes pity on him and gives him the use of a shed on his own small property. There the man lives out his years in abject poverty, at the mercy of the locals who provide a beggarly meal now and then. It is a pathetic story with a mean ending, something Maugham did quite well. I read it years ago and the story stayed with me almost as a cautionary tale. I remembered it when I heard about the American who gave up his business to live and write in Asia.

There's no moral to any of this, no special insight, no lesson to be learned unless you'd like to find one, which is up to you. For me, it's just one more example of the intimacy between fiction and real life. I love these stories of lives that match up with fiction, of men or women who seem to be stepping out of a novel or story. Perhaps I just like the idea of finding evidence that fiction is as real as nonfiction, and sometimes more so.

Labels: Somerset Maugham, India, Paris, short story, fiction, writing

Promotion

When I was a new writer I was impressed by an established author's promotion idea.  She had purchased small bottles of bubble bath, created a new label with her book cover and glued it over the label on the bottle. It was approaching New Year at her book signing and she gave the bottles with her books to "celebrate with a little bubbly." It was clever and successful.

A similar idea came to me when I purchased  a  small tea bag caddy at a craft show. There were a lot of tea drinkers in my series so the idea of using a tea caddy  giveaway seemed a good promotion. The verse  was perfect:

I cannot sit and chat with you the way I'd like to do, so brew yourself a cup of tea, You'll think of me, I'll think of you.   I added 

       Tea goes best with  PROMISE KEEPER.

 

I made templates of the verse and thumbnail image of the book cover, 10 to a sheet, and printed them. Preparation and materials included fabric, bows, using pinking shears and my sewing machine. I glued the verse on the front and the cover on the back. Everyone liked receiving this tiny memento.

 

Stretch your imagination or be a copy cat and I'm sure your readers will be impressed !

Edit is a four letter word.

Edit is a four letter word, and that implies that it may be a bad thing. The reality for authors is that Editing is where you find the really good stuff. (Not too technical, I know, but you get my meaning.)

No one writes the perfect novel the first time through. Even the greats edited, some to extreme (I'm thinking Hemingway here), but the resulting stories were always so much better. One of my writing mentors said that editing is finding gold in the garbage. One of my writing buddies said that editing is making the swirls in icing of the cake. (Don't you just love writers?)


Sometimes it's really hard to figure out when the manuscript is done. We edit and edit and edit some more, then realize that, hey, maybe this would sound better here than there and we start over editing again. At some point you have to say, okay, the cake is done, the icing is pretty and swirly and now it's time to send it out. YIKES! What if it's not good enough? What if I misspelled something? Did I put all my commas in the right places?

That's what our readers are for, guys and gals. Stephen King's wife, Tabitha is his reader and she points out all the things he missed when he edited it himself. (I'm making an assumption here - but I don't think my neck is stretched out too far...) Critique groups are good helpers, and there are even professional editors out there that will help for a fee. If you're like me you do your writing in your spare time, on a very tight budget, so paying an editor is sometimes hard to manage. But if you really want your manuscript to SING, have someone else take a look before you submit. It's worth it!

One parting comment. The bottom line is this, your manuscript is yours and any outsider recommendations should be thought through thoroughly before you make them. You will be editing again by any reputable  publisher, but it's important to send them the best product you can. Enjoy the journey!

NEW YEARS IN PRAGUE

The first book in my mystery series is set in Sweden, in Queen Christina’s court. Her army brought back a significant number of treasures from Rudolph II’s castle in Prague, and while researching for the book, I became intrigued with the capital city of the Czech Republic. For this reason, when I saw a trip over New Years that would take me there, I quickly enrolled. Looking back, it was a wise choice.

Unlike other large European cities, Prague escaped most of the devastating bombings that ruined other old buildings. Only minor damage was done to one of the newer buildings, according to our guide, and the residents are justly proud of the architecture, examples of which can be seen throughout the city, from Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque and Classicism, to Neo-styles.

Astronomical Clock in Old Town Square

The impressive Old Town Square is still the center for all major events, as it was during the Middle Ages.Twisty narrow streets lead to stone houses and monasteries. It was in this square where I saw one of three extant astronomical clocks, and the only one still working. We walked through the

Ceiling fresco Strahov Library

Old Jewish Cemetery, Europe’s oldest and best-preserved Jewish burial ground, which dates back to the 15^th century.

Christmas Markets in the Old Town and Wenceslas Squares offered Czech food, including sausages and potato pancakes, and always the roasted chestnuts and mulled wine.

Strahov Monastery entrance

I did get to see parts of the Strahov library, where old manuscripts are kept. The oldest parchment gospel-book is from the ninth century. There are also Dutch globes from the seventeenth century in the hall. Because of the holiday week, tours had been suspended, but from the open doors we could see the high shelves of early books and the beautiful fresco ceiling, pictured to the right.

Part of Rudolph II’s huge collection can be seen in the newer part of the building. He collected valuable paintings, stones, bird feathers, and everything imaginable, including wildlife specimen and exotic cats. The Silver Bible iin his collection, taken by Christina's army, inspired the first mystery in my series.
   

In the Grand Hotel Bohemia I attended a Mozart/Dinner where between each course, we were treated to various Mozart pieces, including arias from his popular operas. The dinner was served by candlelight in a neo-baroque, historically protected ballroom, not normally opened to the ublic. Another evening we splurged and bought box seat tickets at the State Opera House to enjoy Verdi’s Il Trovatore. That evening was worth the whole trip to this opera lover.

For further reading about Prague and it’s interesting history, I recommend The Magic Circle of Rudolph II: Alchemy and Astrology in Renaissance Prague, by Peter Marshall, or Prague in Black and Gold; Scenes from Life in a European City, by Peter Demetz.