Tag Archives: writers

52 Week Blog Challenge, Interviews

Meet My BFF: Courtney Marquez

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Photo credit: Eli Marquez

Photo credit: Eli Marquez

The blog challenge for this week is “Meet My Best Friend.” That would be fellow writer Courtney Marquez. We actually met through our day job (we work for the same company, but in different states), but quickly found out we share a love of all things books and writing. That was in 2009 and we’ve been friends ever since. We’re even planning on writing a book together. (I think that’s on the schedule for 2019.)

What’s one thing you’d like all our readers to know about you?
I’m going to tell you one thing which will give you some context for my answers to the other questions. I’m a pretty curious, nosy if I’m honest, person. I tend to have wide and varying interests. I like everything from R&B to bluegrass. Romantic comedy to foreign films. Classic literature to popular fiction. So, just keep that in mind as I answer!

Favorites:

  • Book
    It’s like picking which child is my favorite! I guess I’ll go with the book which has had staying power with me. L.M. Montgomery’s Anne series has been a long time favorite. Each book has been more meaningful at different times in my life. However, as a young girl, Anne proved I wasn’t as odd as some may have led me to believe.
  • Author
    Hmmm. I have a few authors where I pre-order their next book as soon as I hear about it. Like, I squeal when I find out the next book has a publication date and an Amazon page where I can go and say “take all my money!” Sooooo, I guess right now I’d say C.S. Harris is at the top of my list. Or maybe Deana Raybourn? But, who can forget Michelle Moran? Okay, I’m totally cheating and we all know it. C.S. Harris it is. And, just for your edification, her next book in the St. Cyr series comes out in March. Oh, I forgot about Margaret George…
  • TV show
    Honestly, I don’t get a whole lot of time for the TV. But, when I want comfort TV, I always go back to Friends. My family can quote them line and episode.
  • Movie
    I’m going with staying power on this one as well. Time is limited with kids and a busy life, so keeping up with movies is tough. I think I’d have to say Die Hard with a Vengeance. It’s Jeremy Irons, what can I say?
  • Color
    Rainbow! I love all colors. They all represent different emotions and memories for me. I gravitate toward blues and greens though.
  • Flower
    Gerber daisies for sure. They are so happy!
  • Food
    We have a saying in my family. “Do I look picky?” We love food! However, I think my favorite is probably this mustard cream sauce over chicken that I make. It’s amazing and only takes 20 minutes to make.

Tell us about your family.
I come from a pretty tight knit nuclear family. My mom, dad, younger sister and I moved a lot due to my dad’s job in the Air Force. When you move every four years and the only constant are those people, it really makes a bond. I have since moved to my parent’s hometown and get to live near a fairly large extended family. I’m married to a wonderful partner. We have two children. Kailen who will be 18 this year and graduates high school in May. And Eli who is 9, going on 25.

What do you do now and what do you want to be when you grow up?
I am currently a brand manager for a fairly large health care organization. When I was little, I had no idea what any of that even meant! For a few years, I wanted to be a marine biologist who studied sharks. Then it dawned on me that I wasn’t great at the STEM subjects. I have always loved to read, so I majored in English Literature. “Maybe a professor,” I thought. I may still be deciding what I want to be when I grow up! Ha!

What are your hobbies?
Reading and reading. I also listen to a lot of podcasts while I do housework or computer work. I’m going to add my kids to this list as well. It’s where I am in life right now.

I know you’ve traveled all over the place. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Visiting is one thing. Living is whole other deal. I think living someplace really gives you a chance to understand a culture and the people. I LOVED living in Cairo in college. LOVED it. I’d go back there in a heartbeat. I loved the people. I loved the crazy activity of that huge city. I loved the mixture of modern and ancient.

What’s your guilty pleasure?
Since we’re all friends here, I guess I’ll tell you. I love stroopwafels. They are this amazing little caramel treat from the Netherlands. You can sit the cookie-like creation on the top of your mug of tea or coffee and the caramel inside gets all soft.

If you could only read one genre of books for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
This might actually kill me. Go back to the first question for a reminder about why. I’m sitting here looking at my bookshelves and it’s so hard to decide. I guess I’d probably have to say historical fiction. Ugh. So hard.

What first attracted you to me? Or what do you remember about the day we met?
We sat next to each other at a large meeting. We had to do one of those awkward ice breakers to get to know everyone at the table. You said you were writing a book. That cinched it for me. You were too cool for school.

What do you think has kept us friends? (Read: How in the world do you put up with me?)
I’m always on the lookout for people who will challenge me or look at the world differently. We have some key similarities, but we’re very different. I think that keeps the friendship fresh and interesting. We challenge each other, but in an encouraging way.

Thank you, my dear! Be sure to check out Courtney’s blog and say hi in the comments below.

Women's History Month

March 4 – Literature: Ann Petry

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First black woman writer with book sales topping a million copiesAnn Petry wanted to be a novelist from the moment a teacher praised her writing in high school, but as happens to so many of us, her parents wanted her to do something more practical. So she studied pharmacy (her father’s profession) and worked in the family business for many years. But she wrote and published short stories on the side.

While working in an after-school program in Harlem, Ann saw for the first time how sheltered her life had been and what most African Americans in the early 20th century had to go through. This inspired her to write The Street, her first novel, which was so wildly popular she became the first black woman writer with book sales topping a million copies. She went on to write several additional novels.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Petry

Everything else

Meeting Elizabeth Gilbert: a Joy and an Inspiration

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Elizabeth Gilbert (left) and a very excited me

Elizabeth Gilbert (left) and a very excited me

I’m popping my head out of the research cave to share with you an amazing opportunity I got this past week. Last Tuesday, I had the good fortune to meet author Elizabeth Gilbert as part of her book tour for The Signature of All Things. (If you haven’t read it yet, go, go, go! It’s historical fiction that is so lush, you really feel like you’re there with the characters. Plus, it’s unique to all the other nineteenth century novels out there – I promise you’ve never seen these characters or settings before.)

I first encountered Elizabeth like so many of us, with Eat Pray Love, which had a profound effect on my life, albeit one I can’t really put into words. But how I really came to love her was through her TED talks on creativity. (Here’s are the first on creative genius and the second on success, failure and the drive to keep writing). Both of them made me cry, in a good way, out of pure joy at encountering someone who spoke directly to my artistic soul. Then I read The Signature of All Things (I’m about ¾ of the way through – had to give it back to the library, but now I own it!) and knew she was an author I’d stick with long into the future.

Elizabeth is no less wonderful in person than she is on the Internet. She has the rare gift of being both a fantastic writer and an inspiring, engaging and entertaining speaker. And she’s so human.  I found myself in tears (it had been a very trying day anyway) several times while she spoke, nodding my head, thinking, “Yes, yes. This confirms that I’m meant to be a writer.” I’ve included below a recording of her opening remarks and reading from The Signature of All Things. (Not sure why it didn’t give me a proper thumbnail. The video really is there, I promise. Sorry if the sound is low. This is the best I could do.)

 

Even if you don’t watch that, you may want to see her answer to a fan’s question about where she gets her inspiration. I missed the beginning of her answer, but she started with “Are you ready to get freaky?” and proceeded to explain how she believes ideas are always floating around looking for a home (which is my theory as well. I believe our stories choose us, not the other way around):

Other highlights of her talk/Q&A:

  • Even though Eat Pray Love was such a huge success, she was not an overnight phenomenon. She was three books into her career before she quit her day job.
  • She recommends writing every day and using a kitchen timer for whatever time you can allot yourself, even if it’s only 15 or 30 minutes. She doesn’t work based on word count because “you might right one word one day that’s a really important word, but a thousand the next and end up having to delete them all.”
  • She will be continuing in historical fiction (yay!). Her next book is set in the theatre world of 1940s New York. (Love that already!)
  • She is still in touch with everyone mentioned in Eat Pray Love, except for Richard from Texas, who passed away three years ago. But they were close friends to the end and she spoke at his funeral.
  • She talked about the word focus and that it comes from the Latin word for “fire.” The idea is that when people sit around a fire, they inevitably end up all staring into the fire. She emphasized the importance of making sure you have a fire at the center of your narrative to keep your reader’s attention.
  • Her biggest tip for anyone is to follow a path of curiosity, because that spark of questioning will lead you to your passion in life.
  • She also talked about how you can tell more truth in fiction than in memoir and many times you end up doing it without even realizing it. She said that while memoirs are true, they are a matter of “making a piece of art out of what happened,” rather than showing you a raw diary. They are by necessity, very polished versions of the truth. In fiction, you can let the more raw versions of yourself out.
  • Her sister is MG/YA author Catherine Gilbert Murdock.

IMG_0712When she was finished speaking, Elizabeth was kind enough to personalize the already autographed books and sign copies of other books people brought along. I had her sign my copy of Eat Pray Love as well. While she was doing that, I got to talk to her a bit about being a writer and she noticed my tattoos and wanted to see what they said. When it was my turn to get a picture taken, she put her arm around me and said, “oh, you!” in a favorite aunt sort of way. It was a wonderful, uplifting experience that went a long way toward refreshing my well of creativity and hope, which was running a bit dry.

I’m really amazed by the kindness and graciousness of the three authors I’ve been fortunate to meet so far (Alyson Noel, Deb Harkness and Elizabeth). They strong women in their own right and wonderful examples of how to interact with your fans. I hope that I’ve internalized what I’ve learned from them and will be just as pleasant to my fans someday as they are.

If nothing else, they’ve all taught me some important lessons: 1) success is possible, 2) don’t ever give up, 3) it may take time, but it will happen.

Have you ever gotten to meet a famous author? If so, who? What was it like? If not, who do you want to meet?

Everything else, Writing process

Midnight in Paris: A Movie for Writers

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Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is a movie all writers should see. No matter what you write, you’ll find something to appreciate in this film. But what surprised me the most when I saw it last weekend was how much it moved me as a historical fiction writer.

I don’t intend this to be a review, so I’ll just touch on the high points of the plot, as they apply to this post. The movie is about Gil (played by Owen Wilson), a successful Hollywood screenwriter turned aspiring novelist who regrets never living and writing literature in Paris. On a trip there with his fiance and her family, he finds that every night at midnight he can travel back in time to the 1920s, a time he yearns for as an ideal age. After various adventures with the literary and artistic elite of the time, including his idols F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, Picasso and many others, Gil realizes that everyone finds the present boring and longs for another time.

I’ll admit, I’m a little jealous of Gil being able to have his work reviewed by one of his historical idols (who wouldn’t be?!) And real-life quotes like Hemingway’s “No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure,” and “If you’re a writer, declare yourself the best writer,” make the movie relatable on a personal level.

But what makes it truly great is a strong theme of living in the past. Anyone who writes historical fiction can no doubt relate to this exchange:

One of the two over-the-top antagonists (I wish Allen had been a little more trusting of his audience and more subtle in their characterization) has one of the most poignant lines in the film, “Nostalgia is denial – denial of the painful present… the name for this denial is golden age thinking – the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in – it’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.”

Is he right? Yes and no. I agree that yearning for the past is a way of dealing with a difficult present (if we didn’t have difficulties, what would we write about?), but I don’t think it’s a flaw. For some of us, it’s just the way our brains work. If wasn’t, there would be no historians and no record (romantic or otherwise) of what came before. I disagree that nostalgia is denial. It’s recognition that something in the past resonates with us more than the present. We can find ways of mining our love of the past to improve our present by incorporating the values or ways of life we feel our society has lost or is losing, or at the very least, capture them in our writing for future generations.

Historical fiction serves a great purpose. It not only entertains and provides a means of escape, it educates about a bygone time in relatable ways history textbooks never can. Until time travel becomes more than fantasy, it’s the closest thing we’ve got.  We’re fortunate that history gives us such a rich tableau from which to draw in our writing.

By far my favorite scene is this one (I wish I could find a video clip for you):

Adriana: Let’s never go back to the ’20s!
Gil: What are you talking about?
Adriana: We should stay here. It’s the start of La Belle Époque! It’s the greatest, most beautiful era Paris has ever known.
Gil: Yeah, but about the ’20s, and the Charleston, and the Fitzgeralds, and the Hemingways? I mean, I love those guys.
Adriana: But it’s the present. It’s dull.
Gil: Dull? It’s not my present. I’m from 2010.
Adriana: What do you mean?
Gil: I dropped in on you the same way we’re dropping in on the 1890s.
Adriana: You did?
Gil: I was trying to escape my present the same way you’re trying to escape yours, to a golden age.
Adriana: Surely you don’t think the ’20s are a golden age!
Gil: Well, yeah. To me they are.
Adriana: But I’m from the ’20s, and I’m telling you the golden age is La Belle Époque.
Gil: And look at these guys. I mean, to them, their golden age was the Renaissance. You know, they’d trade Belle Époque to be painting alongside Titian and Michelangelo. And those guys probably imagined life was a lot better when Kublai Khan was around.
Adriana:  What are you talking about?
Gil: Adriana, if you stay here, and this becomes your present, then, pretty soon, you’ll start imagining another time was really your, you know, was really the golden time. That’s what the present is. That it’s a little unsatisfying, because life’s a little unsatisfying.

The key point here? No one is ever satisfied with the time in which they live. It’s possible to view the past through rose-colored glasses, but the present is seen with painful clarity. That’s exactly why historical fiction has a market. Everyone has a different point in time that is their escape.  Like Gil says about living in the past, if you read (or write) too much of one time period, you get comfortable with it and it gets boring, so you move on to another, seeking to fill a void created by the present. But for historical fiction writers, the past is the present, and that’s what sets us apart from other writers.

So what do you think? Have you seen Midnight in Paris? Did you like it? Can you relate to what I’ve said or do you think I’m totally crazy? Do you think living in the past is pointless or do you see some value in it?