Specificity, Magic, and Getting Lost in Cover Art

Talking with Colin Smith recently at his blog got me thinking about the subjective effects of good illustration. We were discussing those pieces of art inside a number of books, but I'm struck time and again by the impact a photo cover has on me versus good old fashioned paintings and drawings. Even a photo of a sculpture is not the same.

When I was a kid, you still saw matte painting in movies and television. Science texts sometimes employed artists for renderings of various objects of study - space, in particular, was fertile ground (so to speak ...) for magnificent paintings of detailed scenes, worlds away from our own, exciting phenomena rendered in bold colors and evoking intensity, heat, movement - danger! - beauty ...

For over a century and a half, there has been a lament that photography destroys art, that it is soulless, that it is unworthy of contemplation. Of course, this is untrue.

And yet, there is something about a photograph - not least the limited and terrifyingly recycled library of stock images used these days in book cover design - that lacks, in comparison with the inspiration of a drawn or painted image.

For one, there is the specificity. As a reader, I dislike being instructed by a book's cover with quite the concreteness a photo provides.

Colin and I talked of the ability to get lost in a simple oil pastel drawing or watercolor, and I remembered the million worlds of Richard Scarry as absorbing adventures that could hold me for hours.

There is also the charm of style. There are covers of books I read growing up I still remember. In histfic, ersatz portraits that took real-life inspiration and transformed old paintings into compositions and costumes that ended up more 60s or 70s in their vibe. Historical figures' new pictures paying homage to known portraiture, but presenting attitudes perhaps less formalized than such images. (Seriously, click on the link, Robert Dudley is kind of perfectly conceived - and not even headless!)

Then there are the comparative studies - the 80s cover whose male model I crushed on, versus the 60s extravaganza of Historical Epicness. Even the 80s one isn't just a straight photograph; its sky is a painted vista, its background a world like so many of those matte paintings I knew from Star Trek as a wee little nard.

Even the most specific, detailed painting or drawing is still in some way subjective, and therefore invites inspiration over being a dictation.

Photo book covers, for me, have all the appeal of an over-sentimental film score. Bad scores are didactic - telling me how I must feel, taking away from me the opportunity to come to an emotion on my own with a character or characters.

I believe in the transportive beauty of photography, but I literally cannot THINK of a photographic book cover that has ever taken me to a new world the way other graphic forms can.

And, again, there is the issue of the strangely limited stock of images publishers seem to use. There are websites and fora all over Teh Intarwebs sharing "oh look, this pic again" images of cover after cover after cover - following the extremes of recycling costumes or particular photo shoots, or even single images, again and again and again and again. Some of the costumes used forty years ago in Elizabeth R have had almost embarrassingly over-recycled afterlife in modeling sessions for cover photos for historicals.

Even if you don't know the provenance, where an image has been used but differently cropped or tinted a hundred times before, a photo (so often of the old headless-woman) has only so much power to invite exploration. It feels like photo design covers are by far more prone to anachronism and even inappropriateness. Amongst all those discussions of "this one again" covers online, there are many conversations about how inauthentic design choices are.

A particular floppy red velvet ruff bearing no resemblance to any actual piece of clothing from any period of history ever is notorious, having graced every kind of novel from the Plantagenet to Victorian and back again. Novels taking place in one century sport covers evoking another, or one culture in the world is plundered just to decorate another. Female models wearing makeup abound; everyone must be pretty, after all.

And, not that the covers I've linked are not cosmetically enhanced in their own ways, but at least the living and breathing reality of a girl tottering about in a bad costume and pouting her strong lipstick isn't slamming me out of a story with all the power of ... well, that book I've been reading in which yards and yards of lace have appeared in a time three hundred years before its existence ...

This may be the power of the subjective graphic forms. They don't look entirely "real" to begin with, so their deviations from authenticity are less concrete, less jarring than a photograph's quantified, concrete, recorded verity. There is something banal in the carelessness of recorded anachronism or inappropriateness.

And I know I've couched a lot of my blather in historical fiction, but it is, honestly, in historicals that photography grates *me at least* the most. Because the medium is modern, it feels wrong right at the start, and because so many of the photographs chosen currently seem to have little depth (never mind being threadbare from frequent use), there is no allure.

Like any human attraction, specificity can both amplify and kill it. Specificity - that adorable mole just in front of a lover's ear, or the way they breathe when they first see your face - is magic. But it is also murder - the zipper you can see on the Elizabethan gown, or the Elizabethan gown fitting poorly on the headless model for a Regency romp ...

Collection

I am late to post this, but please enjoy the book trailer for Elizabeth Chadwick's The Summer Queen.

Gary Corby hosts a post by Stephanie Thornton on the women of ancient Egypt.  And he has a note about one of his own old posts as well ... which leads me to say:  YIPES!

Donna Everhart has some of the best spam.  I have had ones like this, but for me the volume (given the relative traffic here!) is far lower!  I think the spelling one might be my favorite ...

So as to not load up this page with vids for you to load - AND to give credit where it is due (I have not linked Unleaded and/or Day Al-Mohamed for far too long), please take a click here and listen to the wisdom of Stan Lee on how to build a story ...  "You just have to keep interesting yourself while you're writing it."  Too true!

The Passion of Former Days strikes again (... and again?) with a visually arresting series of double-exposed vintage images.  Some of these are metaphorical, some are just interesting juxtapositions.  Enjoy!

And finally, for this lovely evening ... and for those Extra Special nights, when nothing else will do but to smell like a Viking ... Now you can! Yep, this is a thing now.  For reasons.

Building Castles in the Mind

Speaking as an author who's made up an unrecorded building or two in my world-building:  it's a pleasure to know there *are* buildings in the world (even quite large ones) which have gone unrecorded.  I give you the previously unknown Gallo-Roman edifice at Oise.

Okay, actually the BBC and connexionfrance.com do, but still.

Scholarship, Authorship

Like many people, I fancy myself a history buff - but, for me, there is a distinct and a clear dividing line between my interest (scattershot, variable, and personal as it is) and An Historian.  It is likely I know more than any layperson needs to about pattern welding, horse breeding in Late Antiquity Northern Europe, grave goods, grave goods, grave goods, and grave goods - yet what I know is both ephemeral (once I've used it to my storytelling ends, I let it go) and deeply, utterly unprofessional.  I will never be the person to whom *anyone* should ever turn with actual substantive questions about the history of my periods and places - and I do not want to be.

There are history nerds and historical fiction authors all over, who would consider themselves competent to expound on the points of their personal interest in our past.  I am not one of these people.

For one, even years into the writing, I still must turn to a spot of research now and then, to reassure myself I've done something right (or that, in revising it, I won't do something wrong).  For two, I still occasionally find sources I did not find when work was in full force, and new ways of looking at the way I've treated the story myself.

And STORY is the ultimate key word.  Not history.

I came to Late Antiquity Gaul for a *reason* - I used it - I have spun out of it something both history and fiction ... and there is no soul less likely in this world than I, to tell you that historical fiction is remotely like the science of *history*.  I want only to tell a story.  It'd be nice for me, to keep all those guitarists off my back, to feel I've told it without too much glaring stupidity.  But, at the end of the day:  I am not rigorous.  I am not disciplined.  I am not a good source.

Gossamer the Editor Cat sez:
"I do not play guitar."

I have written nothing resembling the product of work and dedication and critical thinking which we like to think of as actual history.

I thought critically about what would make for a good novel.

I was dedicated to my writing.

I have worked, now for enough years I don't even want to tot the full duration up for you right now.  The next novels will not take so long.  I won't be educating myself how to write one (at an advancing age).  I won't be educating myself how to get the thing published.  But it's a lot of years ...


MY critical thinking and my work and my dedication - even my enthusiasm and confidence and - yes, I'll use the word - passion for The Ax and the Vase, are in no way the same thing as the scholarship and the work of a professional.  Not a professional historian, anyway - one hopes we'll be able to call it the work of a paid, published, and agented author.

If someone ever asked me about the costume of my period - the gender roles - the religions and the laws - I would hope I could at least provide some response.  But I would hope, simultaneously, that anyone asking me about that was doing so in the context of knowing my work - not as a student, nor expecting worthwhile instruction.  Conversations and considerations of history are fascinating and exciting.  But I will never be a resource for study.

It seems to me unlikely in the extreme that anyone will ever look to Diane Major as an authority of any kind.  Yet there are authors who like very well to participate in documentaries and studies of history.  I admire *their* confidence - and I know authors who do have the chops to expound (Elizabeth Chadwick, I'm looking at you).

Me, I fear the very idea of anyone trusting me that far.  I took what I needed, built with and built ON it.  If Ax feels authentic at all, that was the aim and intention.  That and my own fascination with the time, the place, the people.

But my tools are blunted, now the building is up.  They're no good for anyone else's use.

The tour through the edifice is all I care about now - people seeing what's inside, exploring, enjoying what I've built.  Not looking to me as a true architect.

Writing for a Very Specific Audience - and Other New Stories ...

Caroline Lawrence has a post at The History Girls today, about her work on writing for dyslexic (or reluctant) readers.  I find this a fascinating process *and* product.  A fresh and experienced eye is always good to have, but finding someone with the very particular type of wisdom one must have to produce works for audiences beyond the mainstream must be both invaluable - and very hard to find, if this is the sort of project you wish to work on.

There are probably guitarists who'd have a lovely good sneer about rewriting something like The Aeneid - and would faint dead away, clutching their pearls all the way down, about doing so in the spirit of Sunset Boulevard - but like the feel and the urgency of the passage Lawrence provides.  I can see how it would work - because it works on me - and isn't that the point, with *any* writing?

Honestly, I'd love to be able to find the editors she mentions, Ruth and Mairi - what interview subjects they would make, particularly Mairi, for the peculiar needs of a dyslexic revision.  The Night Raid will be released May 12 (though this is Amazon.UK, so our mileage MAY vary, on this side of the pond - see also, issues I'm having with the purchase of Tom Williams' His Majesty's Confidential Agent).  I may have to nab that one ... woe betide my TBR pile.

The 85k Time Suck

... no, this is not a new game show - but it's just as bad for your time management (if not worse, by several orders of magnitude).  British Pathe' has released over eighty thousand clips on YouTube, y'all.  Don't spend all your time on one category.

I'm struck, when libraries and archives release masses of information (this has got to be one of the largest I've ever heard of), first by what an incredible boon it is for research and learning and those of us writing historicals.  In my case, of course, less so - there are so darn few primary vids on Clovis I, resolution in the years 486-511 was such crap - but there is more to be had, of course, than snowball fights in gigot sleeves and poems.  Second, though, I tend to go to the guitarist at the back of the bar, and how much harder it's going to be for so many to get away with some of the *fiction* of historical fiction.

Breaking the Rules

In The Ax and the Vase, Clovis occasionally refers to his wife and queen Clotilde as “Cloti.”  Linguistically, there is zero defense for this – not least as “Clotilde” itself is a Romanization of a name pronounced with very little relationship indeed to the adaptation.  I’ve discussed Clovis’ own name (given to him, not by his father, King Childeric, but by his mother, Basina).  His own Romanized epithet takes us from a name more like “Hludo-vechus” to something more familiar to the modern eye, raised on two thousand years of Romance language and an affinity for clipped phonics.

As do many in the family and the dynasty as a whole—Chlodomer, Clotaire, Chrotilda, and so on—Clotilde herself shares the primary root of her bigeminal name with Clovis.  The Clo- root word derives from “hlud” – a cognate for fame, and most often translated thus – but it also is a cognate and shares kinship with the modern word “loud”.  This informs, in a way, much of the plot of Ax.  Clovis spends a great deal of energy on what we could call propaganda; he not only makes his own myth, but he tells a particular sort of story—a spectacular sort of story—in acts calculated for maximum shock-value and impact.

In Clotilde’s case, the root is, interestingly, most often translated as “bright” rather than “famed” – and that may be a gender bias dating back centuries which continues to be regurgitated, a feminine interpretation of a root used both for men and for women alike.  Where Clovis’ name is said to mean “famed warrior”, hers is given as “bright battle” (the latter root of which tends to beg the question, what is “girly” anyway, in the context of Germanic naming?).  I can’t cite hard data that this is a gender bias, but the consistency of the different meanings given for the same root for Clovis and Clotilde is striking.

Anyway.  To the point (yes, there is one).


And so I have an early Frankish king being cutesy and calling his wife either bright or loud, depending on how we look at it linguistically … and the point is that linguistics went absolutely by the wayside in this conceit.

I felt it necessary to evoke perhaps the solitary area of tenderness in Clovis’ life and heart, by expressing it in his words to his wife.  Humans are creatures of nicknames – but how an ancient Germanic reiks might nickname his wife, his queen, is frankly beyond my ken.

And so, without justification and I am sure without the slightest reality, I created a diminutization with abbreviation.

As false as it is by the rules, it’s authentic in terms of human behavior.  Today, name-shortening is the way we most commonly create pet names (and have for centuries … even if not the centuries in which Clovis and Clotilde lived).  It’s also a deliniation of how close an orbit is between two people:  there aren’t many people who get away with calling me Di, but those who do are VERY close to me indeed.  There is a brevity in affection which creates intimacy between us – if someone in my office calls me Di, they’re likely to get an eyebrow-raising wry smile.  But when X uses it, it is a sort of bond – he’s known me for so long, and he has earned the right to choose a name for me.  Oddly enough, a former coworker almost created a bond with me by calling me Lady Di – which bugged me so much I finally told him to stop it, and his utterly priceless response (you really had to know the guy to see how this could be endearing) was, “But I like it!”  He stopped it outright – and, in the end, I found I missed him calling me that.  And I still have affectionate memories of him to this day.

Nicknaming is a bilateral sort of leveling, a mutual sharing – and so, when Clovis speaks with his “Cloti”, it is a signpost of their unique rights to each other.  No other person would nor could even think of such a name for the queen.  And no other person would have the right to use it, either.  I gave him no nickname from her, but people sometimes share a thing only one of them actually wears, so to speak.

It is in things like this historical fiction finds its little freedoms.  There will be guitarists at the back of the bar of course, who scoff at such apalling license.  I’m not writing for those purists, apparently.

Every word I put down is translated through a modern mind which can never honestly nor completely capture the character, the period, the etiquette and protocol.  I can evoke them and study – but, being the product of the world I’ve lived in, forty-six years of hopeless modernity will inform the set construction.  On occasion, such as in this little license, I’ll use a screw, if it holds better than a nail – even if that’s not authentic.  If the wall stays up, and holds its own corner of the story, that is authenticity enough.  I want the story to stand.

I won’t write a feminist Mary Sue character, whose presence would outright tear the story and its setting down; but I’m not above allowing myself a bit of “modern technology” to get a point across.  If the ancient nails are rusted away, and there’s a Philips head and a screwdriver to be had … I’ll call my Queen-Saint “Cloti” in the bedchamber with her king, and apologize to nobody for it.

When looking in a Saint’s bedchamber, there is some license you can take … and some, of course, you really can’t.  All things considered, I hope I chose the right infraction!

Collection

Dutch photographer Niki Feijen captures ... home, ossified home ...  The eerie beauty of abandonment.

It's all about the story, with Ben Kane.

Write what you *long* for, with Stephanie Cowell.  What I said!

Gamers, Picts, and slabs.  Who could ask for anything more?

Exposing Young Readers to ... WORDS ...

Katherine Langrish has an EXCELLENT post today at The History Girls, starting off with "tushery" (I love that story) and concluding with what happens when you drop a new (or very very old indeed) word into something a kid might read.  Horrors, as you might be wise enough to imagine, do not ensue.

(I was a "B" kid myself, with the occasional resort to "D"-ing my mom or dad.)

Collection

Are you interested in the castles-and-nobles aspect of history or historical fiction?  Enjoy a nicely fleshed out summation of the history of Stafford Castle in the UK, by Nancy Bilyeau.

Yesterday, I spent a great deal of my day shoving furniture around and toting tables up and down to/from the basement, because watching HGTV as you're just starting with the weekly housecleaning is a bad idea.  One of the best parts of that network is the truly BAD decorating ideas they come up with.  But I think keeping a living hermit on your premises for the fashion of it takes even Marie Antoinette's cake (though Le Petit Trianon hits much the same mark).  Hard not to wonder how professional hermiting stacks up to working as a WalMart greeter, as retirement jobs go.  ...  The final sentence is an intriguing plot-bunny-hopping idea.

Adrian Goldsworthy discusses first person perspective and the various ways it can be done or used in combination with other options.

As the British hold onto their own artifacts - it's nice to know there is also repatriation across the globe.  On a silver gryphon going home from here in the U. S. to Iran - and it is a gorgeous object, too.

Collection

First and foremost, a story about how human tampering in the land doesn't have to be irrevocable.  It's not just the salmon who'll be restored in this project - and the whole thing under quarter of a mil.  What a human investment in the habitat we seem to forget we are a part of.  "We're pretty mellow about the project."  Beautiful.  If you are exceptionally clever, you will know why I love the bit about the fountain.

Leila Gaskin and Arthur C. Clarke on immutable laws, elderly scientists, the impossible, and exploding bowling ball frogs.  Love!

Jeff Sypek and Renn Faires in the American counterculture.  Anyone who's wondering what to get me for Christmas, here's an idea!

Zoe Saadia proves to my narrow, creaking mind once again that "history" does not equal "European kings during the Common Era" - and I'm grateful for the reminder!  On Aztecs and the Five Nations.

Linguistics across the millennia.  This is a true piece of gee-whiz theoretical science, complete with an ancient story, dramatic reading, and wonderful sleuthing through prehistory.  I know I use this word too much, but:  fascinating!

Richard III stories:  a part of his battle standard is about to go on auction, and the proposed design of his tomb is contentious and money-tangling.  Make no mistake - dead for over half  millennium, Dickie is a going concern.

Something of a gruesome story, this one - George Orwell's bloody anti-fascist neckwear going on auction.

The White Queen:  this one is for Cute Shoes - and anyone else who might be interested in Elizabeth Woodville.  Interested in vacationing in her digs?  They're winning architectural awards.  Ahh, the vacations I'd plan if I were stupidly well-off.  Some of these rooms do look beautiful to me.

DaVinci's Codex.  I love the History Blog.

Speaks for Itself

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Y'all don't think I forgot that Star Trek's birthday was Sunday, did you?  Nope.  Just late.  Also:  I agree - the animated series is fanfoogootastic.  "(W)e've got tribbles on the ship, quinotrintacali (sp?) in the corridors, Klingons in the quadrant--it can ruin your whole day, sir!"  Plus, Doohan as Koloth!

Crazy old cat lady?  Crazy like a healthy fox.  Or something.

From Trek to Aristotle - how accurate do we really need to be in histfic?  Opinions - obviously - vary on this point.  Consider historical paintings throughout the centuries, depicting biblical figures in dress and settings contemporary and local to the artists who created them.  Here's what Aristotle says, courtesy of David J. Cord.  Do you write or read poetry, or history ... ?  (My take is here.)

I failed to get to this when Mojourner told me about this over the weekend - and now I'm wracking my brain to remember the OTHER cool thing he told me about.  Well, here's one:  more parasites in archaeology - ahh, the history of gastrointestinal distress and disease is such fun.  Richard III had roundworms.  Yum!  Not bad reading if you want to skip a meal ...

Oh, but wait - there's more Dickie to enjoy!  How about a 3D model of his skeleton?  He had such an INTERESTING skeleton, after all.  I'm trying to be nice by not linking directly to the full PDF article, but don't think for a second that won't be my leisure reading when I can scrape up the time.

More from the History blog (of course) - this time, pre-Reformation tombs in England.  By pre-Reformation we seem largely to be focused on Tudors, but hey, Tudors are always popular!

Elizabeth Chadwick giveaway, y'all!  I may have linked this a few days back, but am too lazy to check and it belongs in a collection post anyway.

Vintage shoes at American Duchess - or - reasons I'm so glad 1930s inspired styles are so popular right now.  I have about five pair of shoes harking back to these shoes, and at least a few 50s type styles as well.

And, finally:  one of the most fascinating (and, apparently, wildly successful) ad campaigns ever conceived.  Courtesy the intriguing blog of Jeff Sypek, I give you:  medieval maiden Maidenform.  If you don't click on this one, you truly are missing out.

Love and Market Boundaries

Tom Williams is sadly correct in a brief surmise about the limits of the market, as a reflection of the limits of our minds and hearts as consumers.  The bit about "Splash" is particularly depressing - but it is a worthwhile read.  So go read it, it'll only take a couple minutes.  I finally bought Cawnpore just to snub the damned market (and because I *am* interested - no matter how huge the TBR pile is!).

Entertainment for the Mood

Entirely consciously, thanks to the offense I was nurturing earlier today, I finally gave a long-lurking film on my Netflix queue a chance this evening.  And so I'm watching The Trojan Women, with Genevieve Bujold, Katherine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Blessed (I love Brian Blessed!) and Irene Papas ('71).

I'm just old enough that being able to simply pull up programming like this on my TV is almost like living in futuristic sci-fi, and I'm grateful that 'flix bothers with productions like this and many of the classic BBC series I grew up with on this side of the Pond in Masterpiece Theater.

This production is the best sort of cinema that came out of the 1970s - realistic looking by dint of being a bit bare-bones (the production design doesn't dominate nor overwhelm, and in some ways even evokes live theater), a little self-conscious in a way I don't really think we see anymore (slow, arty monologues), and both faithful to its source and innovative.  It can take some patience if arch readings and intentional theatricality aren't your bag (to use as seventies a term as I can think of), and Bujold's performance is exhausting precisely because it's good.  Hepburn is as stripped-down as she ever was, one of those rare actors who could shed stardom and still do justice to a role even as you never forget for a second who she is - which, in this case, does serve the story in the end.  What director could object to an oak tree for Hecuba?

Of course, the cast, even extras, though the production was filmed in Spain, tend pretty heavily toward a white-girl sort of homogeneity (Papas is a glittering exception - the personification of that legendary beauty, Helen - and it's a pleasure to get to watch her in a role of some substance).  Her introduction is astounding and compelling (one easily believes this woman launched a thousand ships - even with only a glimpse of her, part by part, starting with penetrating eyes).  This role is the introduced as the villainess, so perhaps it is a pity it's also the only one not cast pretty much lily-white, but Irene Papas is to powerful in herself to suffer much by being the token accent.  More to the point, Helen here is vulnerable, and even (... perhaps? ...) a rape victim.  Then again, Hepburn gives the villainess, as she sees Helen, a tongue lashing as only Hepburn could, and it is joyous viewing, her best moment among a lot of good ones.  And through it, Papas' confidence and irony are exquisite.  Her exit is just as fabulous as her entrance; if I were a man, I'd despair of ever finding a woman like Irene Papas - *or* her Helen.
As an aside, Papas and Bujold also both participated in "Anne of the Thousand Days" a few years later, as Katherine of Aragon and Ann Boleyn respectively.  From Helen to Aragon, an interesting pair of roles so close to each other.

There is a great deal of beauty on display, especially including the arty line-by-line speeches delivered straight to camera by many women - and it's nice to see as much beauty in real women as in luminous girls.  The seventies was a decade between the airbrushed and candy-coated prettiness of the Classic Screen Siren age and the mass-produced pneumatism and narrow confines of the 80s and into today.  Sure, directors still required having a pretty, pretty Regrave around, but at least her looks have the appearance of being her own.  She isn't the processed, vetted, and fully packaged focus-grouped image of beauty that's put paid to any hope of another Streisand making a movie career.

The film manages that wonderful balance of bringing an ancient play closer to accessibility by making it immediate and excruciating (in a "good" way, for a movie about the bitterness of war) and keeping it stylized and very much of its period.  As arch as the readings may seem, one never quite feels removed from the period we're meant to  be set in.  As howling an outrage as the statements of the film's, and play's, themes are, they never feel like modern sentiment applied to ancient Greeks inappropriately.

Some of the emotional conclusions, brutal to a contemporary mindset, are played as they should be - dramatically, yes, but with faith to the expectations of honor and sacrifice which would have prevailed in their time.  "You little thing" is a devastating moment, even as it is inevitable and tragic.

One of those things we don't seem to have in movies nor television currently is the dramatic cruelty of shame on honor.  This film lays it out pitilessly.  Redgrave cannot be faulted for failing in this scene.  Nor Blessed - who performs it deadly quietly.

The print is not bad, though it is cropped for pan-and-scan, and the sound quality is at times typically tricky.  Particularly with Blessed, the Loudest Actor in the World (G-d bless him, seriously), it's easy, at least for an old broad with much-abused hearing, to lose lines here and there.  That's a fairly major failing in a production like this - it is a wordy, talky play - but one imagines that with ever-improving accessibility and tech, they may iron out these issues at some point.

As historical fiction, of course it transcends the period of its setting without ever leaving it.  As legend - and starring modern celebrity legends - it satisfies and surprises.

Collection

I've been meaning to link to this interview with Mark Patton for ages, but as most regulars know my posting has been less steady of late.  His novel, An Accidental King, shares some elements in common with The Ax and the Vase, and it'll top my electronic TBR pile as soon as I finish Adams' The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.  Looking forward to some meaty lunchtime reading!

German badgers, not content to let young boys and carparks in Britain have all the fun, have gotten into the archaeology business (be sure to click through to see how Hadrian's moles did last year).  It's hard not to admire the time the badger took - a five year dig.  One hopes he screened everything properly ...

Anne Westrick

Between Leila and Anne Westrick, I know two authors debuting within the next few weeks!  Anne is beginning to pull in great reviews for her novel, "Brotherhood":

"... an impressive debut ..." Publishers Weekly
"The constant sense of danger evoked will keep readers interested." Kirkus
"Great historical fiction always feels like a gift... All the characters, dialogue, and action support each other deftly and with no filler." VOYA Magazine

Book Launch Party

BROTHERHOOD by A. B. Westrick

From:  Viking (Penguin Young Readers)

Thursday, September 12  ...  5:30 - 7:30 pm

The Library of Virginia

wine & cheese, book talk, sales & signings

Oh, and - the worthwhile small print:  The Library of Virginia loves educators!  All educators who show a current school badge/I.D. will receive a 20% discount off the purchase price of BROTHERHOOD.

Small Collection

Eighteenth century women shipwrights.  Fascinating history I had never heard of before.

Intriguing possible TBR fodder - the cover design is beautiful.  Hard, as a costume/period snob, not to take a little exception to the glamour model and her fake eyelashes, in the trailer, but the subject matter is exotically interesting.  If it's done without exotiCIZing the female characters, could be good stuff.  Given that it's written by a woman of color (which is, sadly, almost surprising in this genre - though I have become a bit acquainted with Lisa Yarde's work online), hopes are high.  Certainly the review is promising.  And the research looks delicious.

Finally, an exploration of sibling marriage in history including a great look at the Ptolemies, in service of Nyki Blatchley's new fantasy, The Triarchy's Emissary.

Healthful Histfic

I read a discussion recently about the state of health of people in past centuries, and it got me thinking once again about a certain cut I made in The Ax and the Vase.  As people in historicals (novel or film) have a tendency to either be far too clean or dirty in the extreme, so they also often appear throughout an entire story to go through their lives in apparent good health.  Like the ubiquity of royalty in the genre, the curious absence of any infirmity, deformity, or disease not archly relating to a plot point has sometimes bugged me ... and, of course, is a tendency I have now perpetuated.

It turns out, there is a pretty good reason for this situation, and it is:  economy.

In its original draft form, Ax included a subplot in which Clovis suffers from trichinosis (the disease is unnamed, but I researched and used its symptoms) after getting some bad meat.  For the rest of his life, he has problems with meat, which is an issue for a monarch so concerned with status.  Meat was a status symbol, beef most of all, and for a powerful king interested in propagandizing his reign and displaying his wealth and power - to be unable to indulge in the finest would have been humiliating.

More than that - it's just realistic.  It's clear that among the most common ailments across time are gastro and digestive issues.

So why is it that we so often read the rich results of an author's research on the food a character ate ... yet we so seldom see "results" issuing from the sanitary and other elements of that food's making?  It can be as cosmetic an issue as writing every character as a brilliant intellect and stunning beauty.  In my case, though, it was mechanical:  there is only so much you can - or should - include.

Editing a novel is like editing a film; if a scene or subplot does not move the plot forward, it is unnecessary.  And so, when we do see any indication of a character's health, it almost certainly bears on their arc in some way - the young woman who feels nauseous is pregnant; the person who coughs is going to die of consumption - and we end up with cliches, because a character's health or lack of it almost invariably becomes a mechanism.  I justified Clovis' trichinosis as realistic and supporting the theme of his concern for status and display, but in the end it was a thread that added nothing but a bit of contrived/would-be "grit" that sat there sort of by itself like an introvert at a party.

It had to go.

In The Ax and the Vase, we still see some hints of the medical state of our friends in Late Antiquity.  The mother of Clovis' first son dies after childbirth, there are war wounds and deaths - Queen Saint Clotilde herself, after a difficult delivery, actually chooses to deprive herself physically for reasons of her faith.  But nothing sits around outside the plot, having nothing to do.

I cut the trichinosis story for the same reason I cut a bodyguard named Wilichar and, indeed, any presence at all of Clovis' father, Childeric (who, however, is so fascinating a character I have a very minor side project touching on his history).  The manuscript was bloated, and clearance was required.

So, sometimes, the cliches we end up with in historicals (or any writing, come to think of it) are born of the economies of storytelling.  Done well, it can still produce a worthwhile story, even if the portrait of a period remains focused and misses a more complete picture.  Read Ax when I get it out there - and tell me whether you agree ...

YA Reading ... and Reading ... and Reading

Sixteen years ago next week, apparently, was the debut of the first book in the Harry Potter series.  I remember the first time I heard of it, from a friend of mine with an advanced degree and a penchant for guilty pleasures in the Melrose Place, Buffy, and - obviously - Potter vein.  I remember, too, hearing Diane Sawyer tell the world that reading was in again thanks to the boy wizard.  The book was a phenomenon many of its target audience may not now remember, nor have comprehended at the time.

I remember, more than anything else, being a bit bewildered as to why what I categorized in my mind as a "children's book" (the label YA was not yet the hot trend it's been ever since; many of us were barely aware that such a genre/category as "young adult" lit existed) was such a sensation.  Having had it recommended to me was a little bemusing as well; there's really nothing in my character that points to much interest in preteen boys' adventures in magic-land.  I wasn't offended, merely perplexed at the idea.

It's not something one discusses these days, YA having become the market maker that it is ... but I've never "gotten" why it has come to dominate the market as it now does.  Intellectually, sure, I can easily see that YA is easy reading, and the genre is well suited to the trends of urban fantasy and the genres selling the most right now.  Its accessibility is key, and I've also been told by more than one person that it's nice to get a break from sex in books.

This last bit perplexes me, too, admittedly.

After the death of Parke Godwin this week, I spent a little while after work today perusing his works at Amazon (it's an easy tool, even if Amazon is a terrifying market behemoth) and then took a look at Donald Harington as well.  What struck me was that, in Harington's reviews in particular, the negatives had a very strong tendency to judge his books badly because of the sex.

Harington takes hillbilly stereotypes and turns them into storytelling and characters.  So one finds an awful lot of incest - consensual and non - a good deal of very youthful canoodling, and not an incidental amount of rape.  Of course (and there's a whole screed in this problem, but I will leave it unsaid for now) rape scenes are called "sex" scenes by reviewers nursed on our seriously deranged culture.

But what interested me is how viscerally people were responding to the sex.

When Fifty Shades is the other bestseller of the moment (and is written, as far as I can tell, with a good deal *less* sophistication than the YA series leading the rest of the market these days).

We have ... an interesting interplay, in the US market anyway, right now where Terrifying yet Titillating sex is concerned.  People seem to hate it, react against it powerfully, find an entire book ruined by it - when it's rarely the whole point.  And then books whose whole points *are* the sex scenes (again, I've never heard anyone accusing the Fifties of being good literature) sell like steaming hotcakes all over the place.


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NPR, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

The upshot of all this is that even the adult novels selling right now seem to have become less sophisticated.

Which actually brings me (you thought this was post enough? I'm just getting started) to the thesis of this post, which is that readership nationally has devolved.  In schools, "the classics" (again, deconstructing this is another post, but don't take it as read I think this generic label is necessarily a be-all) have steadily given ground for about 25 years to more accessible, and less complex, reading.

As with everything else we do these days, Americans don't go in much for balance in the written word.  There is a quote in the NPR story linked here:  "Every single person in the class said, 'I don't like realism, I don't like historical fiction. What I like is fantasy, science fiction, horror and fairy tales.'"

Now, most of us know that all of the latter genres mentioned as likable are represented in some of the most sophisticated echelons of our literary heritage.  But the current market has a tendency to gravitate to these genres in YA, and the market has for all of the sixteen years since Potter been stalking YA properties for the Next Big Potter (or Twilight, or Hunger Games, and so on).

In a sense ... the bestseller lists are not much about readers and books, but about product and profit.  We all know this, too, but we don't think a lot about its ramifications.  And the YA-ification of our reading habits is beginning to tell on us, apparently.

I may not be able to lead a literature symposium, but I can at least, thanks to the education I was fortunate to partake of, competently participate in a discussion of Hemingway, Shakespeare, the greater themes and plots through the history of literature, and even manage to avoid appearing an utter dunderhead when it comes to literature beyond (gasp) those Great Classics of Western lit.  I have a little exposure to ancient storytelling beyond my heritage, I have enormous respect for Asian storytelling I adore but would be terrified to try to actually take on.  I can function intellectually precisely because, while we did get to read "accessible" literature when I was young (which I think is an extremely good thing) it was often in the form of a kind of dessert, toward the end of a term or a school year, when we'd been working pretty hard on the sorts of reading which presents greater challenges.

Reading is entertainment, but its value as a literal exercise, a mental challenge, seems to have gone out of vogue.

Again, I have been biting my lip for the past decade and a half - and particularly since trying to make an "author platform" out of this blog - about what I must admit to be a contrarianism about YA.  It isn't politic, if one wants to be a published author (even if not in the Hot Genre du jour) to go around dissing what *is* hot.  It isn't clever to sneer at what's popular, nor at particular authors/works, either.  And it isn't smart to go to a cocktail party and give everybody the finger.  What if I queried an agent who loves YA but also does happen to do straight historical fiction?

It also just isn't nice to be nasty about something just because you don't get it, and don't want to.  Okay, I can't find any part of myself that can understand the fascination for a kid in a magic school.  (Yes, I know that is incredibly reductive - our first impulses on buying/reading anything tend to be so.)  I also don't begrudge my PhD pal for loving the kid, nor anyone else out of the millions of readers.  Reading is entertainment.

I just wonder whether this sixteen year trend will ever turn again.  I'm old enough to be skeptical any market maker is forever.

Whatever the trends - and I don't think I ever will write to them - books like The Ax and the Vase still have a place.  They have, as long as literature and publishing have been in anything like the forms we recognize today, since Walter Scott's romantic adventures in historical fiction, and there are plentiful authors keeping histfic not merely alive, but fascinating.  To intellectually mature readers of whatever age.

The fantasy I have about Ax's "place" in this world remains the same.  It is:  on that shelf at some old relative's house, where a kid, thirty years from now, is going to find it and pull it down, some boring summer day.  And they will love it for the rest of their life.


I've been that kid.  I know that kid's still alive.  I know that kid doesn't need to be talked down to, that the story of Clovis will be enough.

I can't wait for that kid to stumble across him, and dog-ear him to death, till something is on fire inside.