Monthly Archives: March 2013

Books

Falling in Love with Literature

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readingLove or tradition? That is the question.

This week’s New York Time’s Book Review essay, “From the Heart” by Dean Bakopoulos, gives his opinion on the best way to teach literature while instilling a love of books. Is it through traditional theory or through reader reaction? In short, the author argues that people – not just English majors – connect more to a book if they form a relationship with it. He believes that asking basic questions about what makes your spine tingle in a work and what lines you wish you’d written are a better way to learn the arts of reading and writing than classical deconstruction. I’m not a teacher, but I have to say, I agree.

As a book lover and English major, I wish more attention had been paid to how a book made me feel when I was in school. I would have learned more about the craft of writing from analyzing questions like, “Why did this passage move me?” or “What makes me hate this character?” – all things I’m learning to do now as I read as a writer – than, “What form of literary theory was used here?” or “What do you think the author meant by this?” (How the heck do I know? I’m not in their head!) Perhaps these traditional teaching methods informed me in a ways I fail to recognize – after all, I never thought I’d find value in the dreaded History of the English Language class, and I use it all the time – but I think there are more accessible ways of learning about literature.

Thinking back on college, I remember very few of the books I was required to read, mostly because I’m not a big fan of the classics and that’s what we focused on. But those I do remember, I recall because they moved me – not because I was able to elucidate a hidden literary theory or expound upon their narrative form. I remember the independence I admired in Moll Flanders, the heart-rending pain of Tess of the d’urbervilles, and the laugh-out-loud hilarity of the Importance of Being Earnest (or anything else by Oscar Wilde).

Today, when I reach for a new book, I don’t often ask myself what the critics thought (although sometimes I do ask myself that upon finishing a book!) or what school of literary thought the book comes from. But I can tell you what I tend to go for in a plot and why I like a certain author’s writing. In the end it comes down to one thing: I connect with the book. If I don’t, I usually don’t finish it.

The books that truly move me are the ones I could easily teach a course on, but it wouldn’t be Ivy League accepted curriculum; it would be why I and the students like/hate the characters, how the author builds a world we want to inhabit more than this one, and what it is that tugs at our souls when we read it. These are the things that make people avid readers and what give them the urge to try to create something themselves. This is how we make sure literature, whether classical or popular, doesn’t die out, and how we inspire generations of future writers to make that same connection with readers.

What do you think? Is there value in traditional methods of teaching literature? Or would you rather focus on the emotional connection with the reader? Why or why not? What moves you as a reader? English majors: what was your experience in school? Teachers: how would/do you teach?

Social media, Writing process

Social Media Rule #1 for Writers: Be Social!

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So many social media choices... (Base image modified by me. "stick figure - choosing" By Obsidian Soul (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

So many social media choices… (Base image modified by me. “stick figure – choosing” By Obsidian Soul (Own work)) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Social media is an interesting part of modern life, especially for a writer. We’re constantly told to use it to build a platform and connect with possible fans, who will hopefully buy our books. I get the logic behind that, but not the way some people go about it. Some people blast links to their books or reviews all day long. But you know what I’ve found it most useful for? Making friends!

Yes, just like everyone else, social media should first and foremost for writers be about making connections. To give you an example, last December on Twitter, I met up with a wonderful group of writers from across the world. I’m not exactly sure how it happened. I was off work (day job) for Christmas break and was participating in a few writing contests, while working feverishly to finish the first draft of my second book. Somewhere in there, we just came together, like it was meant to be. Soon @dyingechoes and @adrianaryansc called us Team Awesome (#TeamAwesome) and @EmmieMears was declaring 2013 would be our year.

Now we do writing/editing/researching sprints together and we just held our first virtual happy hour. An agent among our group came to represent one of our writers and we’re up to about a dozen or so members. I can’t speak for the rest of Team Awesome, but I feel like we’re really friends and I can’t imagine life without them. None of us try to sell our books to each other, but we have read each other’s work and in some cases have become critique partners and collaborators. Most of all, we’re support for each other in a profession that can be both isolating and lonely.

And that’s not to mention how much Twitter influenced NaNoWriMo for me, or how it helped me get my agent – but those are stories for another day.

I’m slowly figuring out the Facebook page/profile thing. For me, the biggest advantage there has been to connect with groups of other Arthurian/Celtic enthusiasts who I can learn from. Some are even historians whose work I’ve used in my research or authors I’ve long admired. Without social media, I wouldn’t have had the chance to interact with them, ask questions or meet with people of like mind. Sometimes through our interactions we naturally end up subscribing to each other’s blogs or buying each other’s books, but very few are overtly selling, which is the key.

Now I’m trying out a new form of social media called PushPages. I found out about it from my favorite actress and muse, Rachelle Lefevre, who tweeted about it. The thing I like about PushPages, besides being really easy to use, is that the whole point of it is a giant Q&A. It’s like an ongoing interview that allows you to get to know people. It seems to be very new, and could possibly be a rival for Tumblr (which I cannot for the life of me figure out.)  If you have any questions for me, drop by and ask. I’ll answer as long as they aren’t proposals of marriage or anything obscene. 🙂 What its long-term benefits are remain to be seen, but I like the idea of being able to interact with people spontaneously.

There are so many types of social media, I could go on for another 1,000 words. (If you want to read another great article visit Andy Rane’s page.) I guess my point is this: if you’re going to use social media as a writer, or a purveyor of goods of any sort, get to know people and transactions will naturally follow. Shouting about your books or shoving them in people’s faces is just going to annoy them. Be a friend first and if anything else is meant to come of it, it will. And you’ll be enriched in the meantime. Who knows what friendships or future business connections you may make?

What about you? How do you use social media? Which ones do you prefer? What have your experiences with writers, celebrities or anyone else with a product to sell been like? Who do you think does social media particularly well? Do you have any tips on using it successfully?

Arthurian Legend, Celtic society

Marriage in the Celtic World

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The Uninvited Guest by Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Uninvited Guest by Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

“Marwage. Marwage is whaught bwings us togethor, today. Marwage, that bwessed awangement, that dweam within a dweam.”

(If you don’t know where that quote is from, get thee to Netflix!)

Celtic marriage was very different from what we think of today. It was very rarely done out of love, usually out of political gain for the families/tribes involved. It also was not a religious event, but a contractual agreement. (Celtic law is very complex, so what I’m going into here merely skims the surface. It’s based in Brehon Law, which is the only extant law we have for the Celtic people. It is known as the law of Ireland, but likely similar laws existed in Britain as well.) The laws governing marriage were set up to ensure children were protected (illegitimacy did not exist – more on that in a future post), make clear the rights of the husband and wife, and protect the property rights of both parties.

You may have heard of the practice of handfasting, trial marriages that lasted a year and a day. These did happen, most commonly on Lughnasa when the tribes were together, but when this occurred, it was more like an engagement. The realities of contractual marriage were much more complex. (If you want details that will make your head spin, read Thompson’s book, p. 129-175)

Under Brehon Law, there were 10 forms of marriage, each diminishing in importance, legal rights and desirability (thanks to Epona Perry for this simplified list):

  1. A first degree union takes place between partners of equal rank and property.
  2. A second degree union in which a woman has less property than the man and is supported by him.
  3. A third degree union in which a man has less property than the woman and has to agree to management of the woman’s cattle and fields.
  4. A fourth degree union is the marriage of the loved one in which no property rights changed hands, though children’s rights are safeguarded.
  5. A fifth degree union is the mutual consent of the man and woman to share their bodies, but live under separate roofs. (And ideal situation for some, I’m sure!)
  6. A sixth degree union in which a defeated enemy’s wife is abducted. This marriage is valid only as long as the man can keep the woman with him. (We see this a lot in Arthurian legend and traditional Welsh tales.)
  7. A seventh degree union is called a soldier’s marriage and is a temporary and primarily sexual union (a one night stand).
  8. An eighth degree union occurs when a man seduces a woman through lying, deception or taking advantage of her intoxication (equivalent to the modern definition of “date rape”).
  9. A ninth degree union is a union by forcible rape (this also occurs in Arthurian legend and Celtic folk stories).
  10. A tenth degree union occurs between feeble-minded or insane people.

Under the law, women had the right choose their husbands and could not be forced to marry. Although, given the nature of some of the types of marriage listed above, and the likely influence (read: threats) of family members, one has to wonder how much choice some women really had. Dowries were very important, as brides were purchased from their fathers by their husbands for what became known as a bride-price. Some of this was kept in reserve for the woman, should her marriage end at the fault of her husband, so she would not be left destitute. (More on divorce in a future post.) There was also a virgin-price that guaranteed the wife’s purity. It’s also interesting to note that if two people of unequal rank wanted to marry, the person of lower rank was responsible for the financial burden. We can assume this was meant to keep Celtic nobility from “marrying down.”

The Celts were believers in polygamy, so second wives and concubines were common, especially before the Roman invasion of their native lands. Multiple husbands were less common, but not unheard of. There were even laws that stated a first wife could legally murder the second wife within the first three days of marriage! She would still have to pay a fine, but other than that she was within her rights. (Brehon Law used the payment of fines to solve just about every problem, from divorce to murder.) Some say this is where the tradition of a honeymoon, or a husband and second wife going away for the first few days of their marriage, originated. (Seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up.) A chief wife had rights to her husband’s estate, while other wives were govered by informal contracts that often didn’t require the first wife to provide for them at all, or for the husband to leave them anything in the event of his death.

It’s hard to tell how Roman law, and then Christianity, affected these practices, but I believe it’s safe to assume polygamy and some of the more scandalous forms of marriage fell out of favor once Christianity became a major factor in Celtic life. We know that by the time these laws were written down by Irish monks, they were already amending pagan-era rules to suit their Christian audiences.

In my books, I use these laws as the basis for my characters’ actions, but I don’t stick strictly to them since we know so little about where and when they were really applied. Besides, the threat of death is much more dramatic than just paying a fine, and I find it hard to believe that the war-like Celts didn’t exact bloody revenge when they were wronged.

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Sources
Ancient Celts: Celtic Marriage by Epona Perry
Women in Celtic Law and Culture by Jack George Thompson
The Brehon Laws: A Legal Handbook by Laurence Ginnell

What about you? What have you read/heard about Celtic marriages? How have you seen them portrayed in books and in Hollywood? What do you think about these laws?

Arthurian Legend, Interviews

Author Interview: Kim Headlee, author of Dawnflight

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Today I’m honored to feature an interview with Kim Headlee, a fellow Arthurian author whom I’ve admired for years. She and I were on the same Arthurian list-serve back in 1999 when I was first conceiving my own Guinevere books and I’m so thrilled to have connected with her once again!

DF-COVER-FRONT-FINAL1. Please tell us a little about Dawnflight.

Dawnflight is the first installment of The Dragon’s Dove Chronicles, a series that I hope will span at least eight volumes, including two which precede Dawnflight in terms of the characters’ chronology. Dawnflight features the romance of Gyanhumara (“Gyan”) and Arthur beginning in the aftermath of the first of Arthur’s twelve battles, in which he defeated her people and established the treaty clause that she must marry a nobleman from his side of the border.

Of course, treaties, like all other rules, are indeed meant to be broken. The trick lies in how to break them without creating calamity for all involved. Throw in an enemy invasion for good measure (battles two and three on Arthur’s list of twelve), and our heroes have quite the conundrum, indeed.

2. What inspired you to write it?

A combination of factors contributed.

When I was 7 (I’m dating myself, but I stopped caring about such things decades ago), my parents took me to see the movie Camelot in the theatre. The two images I liked best from that first viewing were Guinevere in her white fur wrap and the knights fighting on top of the Round Table and breaking it. Both foreshadowed the direction of my Arthurian fiction.

At age 9, I read a modern-English rendering of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur cover to cover and became hooked. I began devouring every Arthurian title I could lay my hands on. In those days, that meant editions such as The Boy’s King Arthur, a version of Malory illustrated by Howard Pyle, an umpteenth reprinting of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and an almost-umpteenth reprinting of The Once and Future King.

In high school, my parents gave me a first-edition copy of The Hollow Hills, which made me thirst after historical adaptations. The highest compliment any reviewer has paid my work to date is to give it a favorable comparison to Mary Stewart’s novels; she was my primary literary hero in those days. She still is, come to think of it.

High school was when I first started writing my own version of the Arthur-Guinevere relationship. I still have a couple of drafts of that—and read them recently, in fact. What a hoot! 100% teenage girl, no question about it.

Then Marion Zimmer Bradley came out with her iconic entry into the Legends (Mists of Avalon and, yes, I have a first edition of that, too), which concentrated on “rehabilitating” the reputation of Morgan le Fay.

Through all of this—and I include the works by Nancy McKenzie, Persia Woolley, Sharan Newman, and Helen Hollick—I couldn’t find a rendering of Guinevere that I well and truly liked. So, as the adage goes, “If you want something done right…” 😀

3. You are a woman after my own heart! What’s different about this new version from the award-winning one released in 1999?

Glad you asked!

The most obvious difference at first glance is the inclusion of my digital line-art renderings of images engraved on Pictish standing stones found throughout Scotland, plus some of my original artwork inspired by said stones. These drawings function throughout the text as clues to the reader of an imminent viewpoint shift: the doves represent Gyan, the dragons Arthur, and so forth. With more than ten viewpoint characters, I decided my readers could use a bit of help!

Linguistically—aside from tighter wording and hotter sex—I have expanded my characters’ vocabularies to include additional epithets, endearments, insults, and mythology in order to more richly define their world. I never would have dared to do this had I not decided to include a glossary. Since my work has truly epic scope, I also include an index of characters who appear or who are referenced in the book. This index defines each character’s function in the story and gives other pertinent details.

4. I’ve heard you say that yours is a Guinevere “people will actually like.” What do you mean by that? What makes her different?

She’s smart (and sometimes a smartass!), she’s strong willed, she has a fairly firm idea of who she is and what she wants from life—and from her life-partner—and yet all that strength forms a shell around a compassionate, vulnerable core. She wants to do the best thing for her people but sometimes doesn’t have the first clue how to accomplish it and seeks approval along the way. Consequently, she is mercilessly hard on herself when she perceives that she has failed to meet others’ expectations. In short, she is very much a woman that female readers can relate to despite the fact that most of us don’t rule clans or collect heads. I once described the book to a coworker as, “a female assertiveness training manual.” It’s not far from the truth. Male readers can simply sit back and enjoy the view, along with the battles and political intrigue and whatnot.

5. What made you choose Scotland as the location for your novel when England is the traditional setting?

Several research works I read in the 1980s—before Dawnflight first took shape upon the page—suggested to me that the Border Country was an ideal location for Arthur’s military operations. Plus, I was attracted to the cross-cultural aspect of having Arthur be a Romanized Celt and Gyan a Pict (or “ban-Caledonach,” as she would call herself in my newly invented Pictish terminology). In fact, the more I delve into Scottish Gaelic to create Pictish terms for place-names, the more I am convinced that southern Scotland/northern England was Arthur’s home turf, in spite of what others may insist. The wording, in comparison to traditional Arthurian place-names and battle sites that nobody can identify with anything approaching certainty, fits far too nicely to be mere coincidence.

And, yes, I firmly believe Arthur, his wife, and their associates existed. To do anything less would be a gross disservice to my writing and to my readers.

6. I’ve read that you purposefully stripped your tale of the magic usually associated with Arthurian legend to focus more on the history. Why?

Oh, the magic is there, trust me! But it is the magic of visions and prophecies, the magic of prayer, the magic of curses and blessings, the magic of herbal lore…and most of all, the magic that happens when two charismatic individuals unite to forge a better world for themselves, each other and their people.

7. The summary for your book puts forth an interesting premise: Gyan (Guinevere) marries someone other than Arthur. What made you choose such a bold departure from previous legend?

Good question! I think it may have been inspired by some obscure, ancient tale…after having studied the Arthurian Legends for more than four decades, it’s safe to say that I’ve forgotten far more than most people know about the subject.

Actually, to be fair—and this isn’t really a spoiler alert—Gyan is betrothed to Urien. After she and Arthur meet and become attracted to each other, they spend the rest of the book trying to figure out how she can extricate herself from the betrothal without making Urien start a civil war.

8. Dawnflight has a sequel, correct? What can you tell us about this book and when it will be available?

Morning’s Journey picks up the morning after Dawnflight leaves off and follows Gyan & Arthur through more battles and family changes and triumphs and tragedies. And it delves a little farther into the relationship of Gyan and Angusel (Lancelot). Morning’s Journey will be available as soon as I can get a cover commissioned & delivered, since my copyeditor has given me her input.

9. What else might readers like to know about Dawnflight?

If you choose to buy the print edition, email me (kimheadlee at earthlink dot net) or message me on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/kim.headlee) for instructions on how to obtain an autographed bookplate. If you buy the e-book edition, I can mail you a magnet… but I wouldn’t advise putting it anywhere near your device!

10. When and where can readers find your books?

Available now:
Amazon.com link to all available editions (this link format earns me a few extra pennies as an Amazon Affiliate): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00BLNN6XS/systemsupportser

Nook e-book edition:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dawnflight-kim-d-headlee/1003548584, which includes a link to a 30% discounted edition of the CreateSpace paperback.

Kobo link:
http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Dawnflight/book-5xY-C57ioUynofdXHy-4pw/page1.html

Also available in EPUB format via Smashwords, and it is now listed in their Premium catalog: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/289281

In other countries – all English-language versions:

Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00BLNN6XS

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BLNN6XS

Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B00BLNN6XS

France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B00BLNN6XS

Spain: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B00BLNN6XS

Italy: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B00BLNN6XS

Japan: http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00BLNN6XS

Brazil: https://www.amazon.com.br/dp/B00BLNN6XS

Apple, Sony and other distribution channels will be available as soon as possible.

11. How can people find out more about you?

Friend me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/kim.headlee. I like to share stuff about cats and Star Wars and writerly things and inspirational sentiments and, oh yeah, the occasional original thought. 😀

Thank you , Kim, for joining us here. I hope you find great success with Dawnflight, and best of luck on your future works!

If you have a comment for Kim, please leave it here. She will be monitoring this site periodically.