In the meantime, this is a guest post that was originally put up on March 18, 2012. My other posts have dealt with my already-published work My Apple Tree, but this one deals with my upcoming historical novel, The Truth Seekers. Release of this novel was delayed because I just didn't feel like it was ready yet, so I am looking forward to seeing what kind of reception it gets now that it's been overhauled and revised within an inch of its life. Take a peek and see what you think, and while you're at it, check out Lisa's blog!
The Story behind the Truth Seekers
[This year,] my novel The
Truth Seekers will be released by Renaissance Romance Publishing, and I
couldn’t be prouder. Or more completely freaked out.
It’s a little nerve-wracking to
let other people read this book, partially because it marks the first time my
work is being read by anyone who doesn’t feel some sort of social pressure to
be nice to me, and partially because of the kind of novel this is. I am a
writer of snark, a speaker of snark, a blogger of snark… as a general rule,
just very snarky. And yet, here I am, cranking out a debut novel that is not
only snark-free, but also quite serious. As anyone can tell you, our serious,
deep emotions are the ones we keep hidden from the rest of the world, lest our
poor little hearts are broken by mockery and malice. It takes a special kind of
bravery to put those kinds of feelings on display, particularly in front of
strangers, as any man who has proposed in public can tell you. You suspect that
you look completely barmy, but you don’t want to draw attention to it in case
no one else has noticed yet. At any rate, publishing this particular novel
feels somewhat like a group of strangers just caught me singing “Dancing Queen”
in front of my mirror into my hairbrush/microphone. Not that I’ve ever done
that.
So why write it in the first place?
It all started with some words: words that would not get out of my head. They
rolled around and around in my brain like the prose was full-on stalking me. At
last, desperate to get my own brain back, I sat down at the computer and
started to type what I “heard” in my head. It began, "I
may miss you, but I will not canonize you. You were a sinner, your soul was a
fire, and I backed away to save myself even as my eyes were snared by the wild
beauty of your burning.”
It turned out to be a letter from
a heartbroken woman to a man she desperately loved. It was elaborate, it was
elegant, and it was passionate. And yet I had absolutely no clue what the back-story
behind it was. Who was this woman? To whom was she writing? What had happened
to separate them? No answers appeared to be forthcoming, so I closed the
document and turned my attention to other things, just chalking it up as one of
those weird writing phenomenon that make the rational world convinced that all
novelists are slightly mad.
Then the next night it happened
again, only this time, it was the gentleman’s response that was bouncing around
in my brain. Surrendering to the inevitable, I pulled up the document and more
or less took dictation from my imagination. It flowed onto the page almost
effortlessly, but when he’d said his piece, the tap shut off abruptly. I still
had no idea what their story was, only this time I was really eager to find
out.
All this happened not too long
before November, which is a significant month to novelists the world over. For
the uninitiated, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. A
wonderful non-profit organization called The Office of Letters and Light
organizes a month-long novel writing challenge: write 50,000 words in thirty
days. There’s no real prize for “winning;” you just get the ego boost of
knowing you crossed the finish line. Not everyone does. I had never attempted
NaNo before, but I decided to take my two letters with no story and build a
novel around them.
I won the challenge that year by
the skin of my teeth. The nature of the NaNo beast is that you are so focused
on your word count that you are forced to ignore your inner editor entirely if
you want to have any hope of victory. There simply isn’t time to second-guess
yourself, so you find yourself tossing everything but the kitchen sink into
your book. You write down every random, crazy idea that pops into your head
because, even though you may have to edit it out down the road, right now it’s
another five hundred words that you didn’t have before. Because of this
“anything goes” feeling, I postponed reviewing the manuscript for several
months after NaNo ended – I was attempting to psych myself up to face the
catastrophic mess I just knew I’d made.
Imagine my shock when I finally
read it and found I actually liked it. Oh, it wasn’t publication-ready by a
long shot, but it had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and they all happened
in the correct order. There were only a few continuity howlers instead of the
great hairy beasts lurking behind every corner that I had expected to find.
Eventually, the lovely people at Renaissance Romance Publishing got a look at
it and threatened to cut off my caffeine supply if I didn’t let them publish
it, and the rest is history. Or it will be, once I finish the final edits.
The story itself is a product of
a place from which I have pulled quite a lot of inspiration over the years:
Chautauqua Institution in New York State. Chautauqua has served as a hub of
creativity, philosophy, art, religion, music, and dance for over two hundred
years, and I can’t imagine anyone with a soul not responding to it on some
level. My parents began taking me there for a week each summer when I was a
little girl. I swam in Lake Chautauqua in my Wonder Woman bathing suit. I met
my pen-pal there. I took a puppet-making class. I saw the Temptations perform
live. I walked across a miniaturized version of the Holy Land. It was
wonderful.
And it was there that I had one
of those Life Moments that you remember forever. Madeleine L’Engle, author of
the astoundingly wonderful Wrinkle in Time trilogy and many other
equally amazing books, came one year as a guest lecturer. It was there in the Amphitheater
that she gave me the first advice on writing I ever received. I met her
afterwards and was completely seduced by her charm and wit. This encounter
marked a huge shift in my life; I stopped mucking around with little snippets
about rock stars and really started to focus on writing an actual book. Madeleine
L’Engle essentially had shown me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I
think the experience fundamentally changed my hard-wiring for life.
When it came time for me to
create a novel about two passionate, star-crossed lovers from the past, it was
almost ridiculously easy to place them in this wonderful world. Since the
buildings are protected and maintained zealously, it takes no effort to imagine
that you’ve been transported back to 1900. It was walking in the Hall of
Philosophy where my protagonists first meet that I found the title for the
novel. Along the floor are a series of mosaics, one for each “class” year. The
mosaic for the Class of 1896 was titled “The Truth Seekers,” and this struck me
as a perfect description of my young lovers.
Many of the other locations
mentioned are actual places in Chautauqua, like the hotel across the street
from my hero’s lodgings. The real St. Elmo Hotel (demolished in the late 1980s
and rebuilt as condominiums) was also the inspiration for the screenplay for St.
Elmo’s Fire, which was written by a lovesick bellboy one summer. The
governor’s mansion is based on the Packard Manor, and even the assorted benches
and paths have real life equivalents.
Of course, I was not in the same
position once my hero absconded to Italy. However, thanks to my art history
studies (I was something of a Renaissance junkie in college) and the
terrifyingly heavy textbooks I’d held onto, I was able to at least send my
imagination on the journey while a crew of men tore off and replaced the roof
on my house. I’d love to travel to Florence, but I’m far keener on keeping my
home in one piece. For the time being, I’m content to just live vicariously
through my imaginary friends.
This is a novel I didn’t see
coming, but it is also one that ties into many different important areas of my
life. Because of this, it is intensely personal on many levels – as is all good
fiction, I think. My characters were certainly insistent that this story be
told, and I hope that Geoffrey and Miranda capture my readers’ hearts and
imaginations as much as they’ve captured mine.
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