Susanna Calkins, Author
  • Home
  • Lucy Campion Mysteries
    • A Murder at Rosamund's Gate
    • From the Charred Remains
    • The Masque of a Murderer
    • A Death Along the River Fleet
    • The Sign of the Gallows
    • The Cry of the Hangman
    • Death Among the Ruins
  • The Speakeasy Murders
    • Murder Knocks Twice
    • The Fate of a Flapper
  • Short Stories
  • Blog
  • News & Events
    • Event Photos
    • Archived Guest Posts & Interviews
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • 17th c. England
  • Writing Resources
  • Nonfiction
  • New Page

Imaging the past...who would you have been?

6/28/2012

9 Comments

 
Picture
who are these people anyway
One of my favorite past-times is to imagine back stories for the people I see at coffee shops, parks, airports, you name it.  I'm always speculating about their personal lives, the secrets they keep, their ambitions--either thwarted or realized. 

I also like to imagine people in completely different historical contexts.  I never make them actual known historical figures, but I might connect them with someone famous. For example, I often look at my eighteen-year old students as World War I soldiers, or the people sipping wine as Macedonians, or the woman strolling down the street as a Druid priestess (not really sure what that looks like though) or the person who cut me off a French aristocrat (sorry about your impending beheading...) 

One of my friends for sure would be a disguised Han warrior, making tea for her family, then sneaking off to fight the Huns. (Or am I thinking of Mulan?) Another friend would have been an early suffragette, and still another, a village chieftain.  A professor I know would have been an Abbott, living a scholarly life in a monastery. And so on. I always imagine my husband as a Viking ship-maker or one of Charlemagne's armor-makers.  I wouldn't have met him, unfortunately,  as I'd have been a servant in some great English manor or maybe teaching in a one-room schoolhouse on the prairie. Or taking bribes as a Chicago gumshoe. Something like that. A girl can dream.

It's fun to speculate what we might have been like 50, 100, 1000, 2000, 10000 years ago! (Cave-man anyone?)  Or for that matter, if we lived 5000 years in the future.

What about you? How would you imagine yourself in a different time period?

9 Comments

Filling in the gaps of a long-ago murder...

6/27/2012

1 Comment

 
Picture
the murder may have happened here
I had the opportunity the other day to contribute to a great blog, A Bloody Good Read: Where writers and readers of historical thrillers talk shop.   There, I talked a little about a long ago murder and how a writer can fill in where historians fear to tread. Inspiration can be found in many places, I guess!

Picture
If you have a few minutes, check out the great entries by my colleagues: Nancy Bilyeau, author of  The Crown (Touchstone, 2012) (she's also  worked for all kinds of publications like Rolling Stone, In Style magazine,  and Entertainment Weekly)...

Picture

...and Sam Thomas, an early modern historian specializing in midwifery. Sam's first novel, A Midwife's Tale (Minotaur/St. Martin's) is due out in early 2013.

1 Comment

Who else is writing a novel?

6/25/2012

16 Comments

 
Picture
The biggest secret I ever kept from my husband was that I was writing a novel.  We've been together close to 15 years and I'm sure from time to time I'd murmur something about 'having done some writing today' but I never talked much about the content.

I guess at some point he knew I was working on a mystery of sorts, and maybe that it was set in seventeenth-century England, but really, that was about it, until a few years ago when I began to write in earnest.

I didn't set out to keep my novel-writing a secret.  The truth is, I wasn't writing every day (I do have two young children and well, a whole other career), but I also didn't view myself as a writer, let alone as an author.
Sure, I "author" academic publications, but to call myself a "writer" felt somehow pretentious, even precious. 

I also felt that if I talked about my story, I would somehow lose it, that it would slip into the ether.  And  I still feel that way! (Case in point: my husband has now read the second book in the series, From the Charred Remains--the only person who's done so-- but he's yet to read the entire other novel I wrote while A Murder at Rosamund's Gate was out on submission to agents).

So when I was writing Rosamund's Gate, I never really knew any other writers...or so I thought. I wasn't taking writing classes; I'd never participated in a critique group; and I hadn't yet encountered the vibrant online writing community that I now know about.

So I've been pleased and surprised to discover, when I finally started telling people that I had written a book, how many other people were thinking about--or were actively engaged in--writing novels too. Childhood friends, neighbors, family members, colleagues, parents of my kids' friends, random acquaintances at the coffee shop--sometimes I wonder who's NOT writing a book.


So what's YOUR book about? And I'm just so curious--what stage are you at?  Brainstorming, dreaming, plotting, most of a draft done...or even further? I'd love to know!

16 Comments

The proof is in the proofs...

6/17/2012

9 Comments

 
Picture
The other day, I experienced one of my odder moments as a writer. When I came home from work, I found a much anticipated package containing the page proofs for A Murder at Rosamund's Gate (that's not the odd part, that's the extremely thrilling part).

Picture
the inside cover page
At this point, I can only make very minor edits. A word here and there, typos, minor grammatical changes--that's about it.  The book is nearly ready--all 340 pages of it. A heady and strange mixture of emotions regularly accompany this realization.

But the odd thing? Later that same evening, I happened to be poking through some old files and I came across the very first handwritten draft of this novel, which I began in 2003.  All scratched up, full of non sequiturs and dangling thoughts, somehow this mess became an actual novel. Holding that handwritten draft alongside my proofs was definitely a surreal moment, and it was hard not to compare the original version with the final.

To be sure, some things were different.  My heroine was originally named Abigail, although somewhere along the way, she became Lucy. Another main character saw his name changed several times too, from Thornton to William to Adam.  I also had a prologue then (which I've since eliminated, as I've mentioned before), and even more interestingly--I had an entirely different adversary than the one who crept into the pages later. In fact, the main crime was different, although I had written emphatic notes to myself--'Must take place during seventeenth-century plague and Great Fire of London.'  So the setting never changed, nor did my original inspiration.

The book took me ten years to write. Honestly, I never thought when I began this story that I would even finish it, let alone that it would be out in the world.  But the proof, I guess, is in the proofs.


9 Comments

a matter of perspective...

6/14/2012

2 Comments

 
PictureThe wall through Qalquilya
The first time I read Faulkner's As I Lay Dying I was fascinated by the fifteen or so perspectives on the same event: the death of Addie, the sickly matriarch of a poor Southern family. 

There's a challenge, however, to acknowledging multiple perspectives of an event, to recognizing the value of competing narratives, even when multiple points of view can do much to advance a story.

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about competing narratives, as I've traveled throughout Palestine and Israel as part of a higher education-related initiative I've been involved with through my "day" job.

Last year, on my first trip to this highly-fraught region, my team was invited by several of our new colleagues--professors from a large Palestinian university-- to visit their communities.  We found their families and neighbors to be warm, friendly--and extremely welcoming to strangers who could barely speak ten words of Arabic altogether.

On one occasion,  we visited Qalquilya, one of the communities divided by the Wall ("security fence"), and a town at the forefront of the troubles in the West Bank.   Designed to separate the Palestinians in the West Bank from the rest of Israel, the Wall certainly now stands as a palpable symbol of the overwhelming distrust, fear, anger and sadness that has kept these peoples apart.

Our colleague showed us around this town where she'd grown up, pointing out the small plot of land where her family still managed to grow vegetables.  Under the hot sun, we sat beside the Wall, sipping mint lemonade, watching her neighbors shear sheep and her little niece kick a ball among the trash and compost.  I remember this little girl asking me "What was it like, beyond the Wall?" As a Palestinian, she had no ready means for a visa that would allow her to see what was beyond the Wall for herself.

Last week, on my follow-up visit, my group was able to take a trip to Haifa-- a city on the Mediterranean decidedly not within the West Bank. (The irony of being a foreigner--we could travel anywhere we wanted).  Along the way, as we drove along the well-maintained Israeli highway, many tour buses passed us. I could see the tourists inside taking pictures of the Wall which, from our current vantage point, looked exactly like the walls you might see around a maximum security prison.  I have no doubt the Wall looked scary and ominous.  (Indeed, I met an American on the plane ride home who whispered to me how he had seen the Wall,  with the air of someone who had braved something unimaginable.) 


The next moment, though, our tour guide mentioned that we had just passed Qalquilya--I was shocked. And profoundly disturbed. We could see the Wall, but nothing of the humanity within.   Somewhere in there, my colleagues' little niece was playing. Or maybe she was staring at the Wall, still wondering who was out there, and why she was locked inside. 

I won't pretend to understand the complexities of Israeli-Palestinian relations. But clearly, there is more than one "true" narrative.  I believe that writers of all types, whether of fiction or non-fiction, would do well to consider an event from more than one perspective. Few writers wield Faulkner's skill of course, to imagine the same event from 15 separate angles. And I'm not sure I've been brave enough to try.   But questioning what is known,  questioning one's beliefs, and seeking different takes on a subject, is crucial--for writers, and certainly for critically-thinking human beings.


What do you think?  Have you seen instances where using multiple perspectives has worked well?  How?

 


2 Comments

    Susanna Calkins

    Historian. Mystery writer. Researcher. Teacher.  Occasional blogger.

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    1660s
    16th Century
    17th Century
    18th Century
    1910s
    1920s
    19th C.
    20th Century
    21st Century
    A Death Along The River Fleet
    Advertisements
    Alcohol
    Alpha Reader
    Amazon Pre Order
    Amazon Pre-order
    A Murder At Rosamund's Gate
    Anagrams
    Anne Perry
    Anthology
    Art
    Authorship
    Award
    Awards
    Blogger's Block
    Blogging
    Blog Hop
    Blog Tour
    Bloody Good Read
    Bombings
    Book Events
    Book Giveaway
    Booksellers
    Book Trade
    Bouchercon
    Calendars
    Card Playing
    Caricature
    Cats
    Chambermaid
    Characters
    Charles I
    Charles Ii
    Charles Todd
    Chicago
    Chocolate
    Christmas
    Cia
    Cockney Slang
    Cocktails
    Coffee
    Coincidence
    Contemporary
    Cover Design
    Covers
    Creativity
    Crime
    Criminals
    Critical Thinking
    Cromwell
    Crossroads
    Csikszentmihalyi
    Cuckold
    Curiosities
    Defoe
    Detectives
    Detectives Oath
    Disease
    Dogs
    Early Modern
    Easter
    Editing
    Edwardian England
    Etymology
    Examples
    Excerpt Marg
    Excerpts
    Fairs
    Fate Of A Flapper
    Feedback
    Female Protagonists
    Female Sleuths
    Fire Of London
    Flow
    Food
    Forensics
    Forms Of Address
    French History
    From The Charred Remains
    Ftcr
    Future
    Games
    Gangs
    Giveaways
    Golden Hind
    Great Fire
    Great War
    Grit
    Guest Blogs
    Guest Interviews
    Guest Post
    Guest Posts
    Guilds
    Hanging
    Historical Fiction
    Historical Mysteries
    History
    Imagination
    Inspiration
    Interviews
    Ireland
    ITW Authors
    Jests
    Jewelry
    Language
    Last Dying Speeches
    Leisure
    Libraries
    London Bridge
    Lucy Campion
    Macavity
    Magistrate
    Malice Domestic
    Maps
    MARG
    Markets
    Masque Of A Murderer
    Matg
    Medicine
    Medieval
    Medieval Period
    Memory
    Merriments
    Merry-making
    Methodists
    Midwives
    Mindset
    Miscellany
    Monsters
    Moonstone
    Motivation
    Murder
    Murder At Rosamund's Gate
    Murder Ballad
    Murder Knocks Twice
    Mysteries
    Mystery
    Mystery Tv Shows
    Newgate
    Newspapers
    New Woman
    Nietzsche
    Nursery Rhymes
    Opera
    Orwell
    Persistence
    Pets
    Philadelphia
    Piracy
    Pirates
    Plagiarism
    Plague
    Poison
    Popular Film
    Popular Press
    Potions
    Printers Row Lit Fest
    Printing
    Private Investigators
    Proactive Interference
    Procrastination
    Prohibition
    Promoting Books
    Pseudonyms
    Psychology
    Publication
    Public Executions
    Publishing
    Punishments
    Puritans
    Puzzles
    Quakers
    Radio Shows
    Reader Questions
    Reading
    Receipts
    Reformation
    Rejection
    Religion
    Research
    Restoration
    Riddles
    River Fleet
    Samuel Pepys
    Scene Development
    Science Fiction
    Scold's Bridle
    Secret London
    Setting
    Seven Things
    Shakespeare
    Short Story
    Sign Of The Gallows
    Sleuths In Time
    Smithfield
    Speakeasy Mysteries
    Speech
    Spying
    Strange Things
    Teaching
    Thank You
    The 1640s
    The 1650s
    The 1660s
    Theater
    Thief-taker
    Timeline
    Titles
    Travel
    True Crime
    Tyburn Tree
    Valentine
    Wilkie Collins
    Winchester Palace
    Witches
    Women
    World-building
    Writier's Life
    Writing
    Writing Prompts
    Young Adult

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2020
    December 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    September 2018
    November 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • Lucy Campion Mysteries
    • A Murder at Rosamund's Gate
    • From the Charred Remains
    • The Masque of a Murderer
    • A Death Along the River Fleet
    • The Sign of the Gallows
    • The Cry of the Hangman
    • Death Among the Ruins
  • The Speakeasy Murders
    • Murder Knocks Twice
    • The Fate of a Flapper
  • Short Stories
  • Blog
  • News & Events
    • Event Photos
    • Archived Guest Posts & Interviews
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • 17th c. England
  • Writing Resources
  • Nonfiction
  • New Page