Last day in the bunker; looking forward, looking back, looking side-ways

Last day in the bunker; looking forward, looking back, looking side-ways

Today is my last day in “the bunker”—my lovely basement office in our Ontario home. I have another lovely office awaiting in Mexico, but this one (shown above) is my favourite, and I always feel a little sad leaving.

It’s said that “home is where your books are,” and that makes this place home: we’ve books everywhere here.

As soon as I finish this post, I will close the door on this office  until next spring. I’ve tidied it well this year.

On the 1st of November, a little jet-lagged and travel weary, I will unpack my lovely office in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

SMA office

As soon as I have my printer up and running, I will print out THE GAME OF HOPE (working title of The Next Novel). I’ve been thinking about it a lot and am ready to plunge into the next draft.


Other things going on:

I’ve enrolled in Witches, Plagues, and War, a free on-line course in Historical Fiction, offered through  amazing Coursera.org. There are over 15,000 enrolled worldwide. Mind-boggling.

But the main thing is the quality: the course is fantastic. I’m learning and loving it.

Check out all the other Coursera offerings: are they not amazing? I want to drop out and go to school! I want to work toward that long-ago impossible dream of getting a PhD in Comparative Lit!

Maybe when I’m 80 …

A lovely new novel from Salley Vickers, The Cleaner of Chartres, and foretelling the future with The Game of Hope

A lovely new novel from Salley Vickers, The Cleaner of Chartres, and foretelling the future with The Game of Hope

When I was asked by Penguin US if I would be interested in reading Salley Vickers’ new novel, The Cleaner of Chartres, of course I said yes. I’d read Miss Garnet’s Angel by her, and enjoyed it very much.

ChartresThe Cleaner of Chartres is more unusual, more challenging in structure, but has something of the same charmingly old-fashioned feel to it. (I kept thinking Balzac.) I both loved this novel and struggled with it, and in the end I adored it.

The novel unfolds in the present (in Chartres, France), and in various other French cities in the past (Evreux, Rouen, Le Mans), revealing by stages the life of one woman, Agnes, the cleaner of the title.

Agnes is an able if mysterious young woman with a talent for sorting and cleaning, a vocation that pulls her into the messy lives of a number of people—and, in the process, complicates her own.

There are mysteries throughout: I won’t spoil it for you by revealing what these are, but suffice it to say that in coming to Chartres, Agnes is trying to escape a troubling past.

This is a gentle novel, peopled with charming eccentrics. Vickers is a polished writer with a charming sense of humour: I love the texture of her prose. My one reservation (and the cause of the struggle mentioned above) is that since there are a number of different characters in each city, I had to keep notes on who was where. A cast of characters would have helped, and a map would have been a pleasant addition as well.

I was especially delighted with the Afterword, where Vickers explains what happened to some of her fictional characters. As if—and yes, I do believe it so—they all went on living. A lovely touch.

“Realism with a subtle fairytale quality,” said the Publishers Weekly reviewer, and that captures it perfectly. Vickers is a wonderful novelist.


Life update: I’m preparing for Canadian Thanksgiving—a big event here!—and for heading to our winter home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, not long after. (See my last blog post on what that entails.)

The last draft of the Hortense Young Adult is tucked away until early November. In the meantime, in the early creative hours, I’m giving some thought to the premise, tag and log lines, using the guidelines from a worthwhile 3-session on-line course on “Rapid Story Development,” using, among other things, Enneagrams, a method for analyzing character.*

enneagram

Enneagrams are complex, but intriguing: I do love learning systems. Simply framing a premise with the help of the class guidelines has helped me see how the story needs to be changed.

Another thing I’m studying right now is the Lenormand method of foretelling the future—a type of Tarot which is surprisingly popular.

LenormandMadame Lenormand was a contemporary of Josephine Bonaparte; in fact, she lived close to Josephine’s delightfully eccentric aunt Fanny. Lenormand was famous for her accurate predictions; she exploited and enhanced her fame by becoming a prodigious writer and publisher on matters occult, as well of a faux memoir of Josephine (a “memoir” that has always intrigued me).

Madame Lenormand is unlikely to be a character in my Hortense novels, but her card-fortunetelling method might well be. In any case, I’m enjoying exploring the cards.

cards*

At some point, “playing” the cards was called The Game of Hope, my current working title—and one I rather like.


The calligraphy image at the top is from the wonderful Bibliodyssey blog.

* The rapid story development course mentioned above is no longer online, but there is an excellent book on the subject now: Rapid Story Development: How to Use the Enneagram-Story Connection to Become a Master Storyteller by Jeff Lyons. Unfortunately, it’s extremely expensive, even in Kindle format. With luck, you should be able to get it through a library. If you use Amazon.com, you can rent the Kindle edition for under $10.

On author questionnaires, first pages, daily word count for my YA about Hortense, and a wonderful granddaughter, all at once

On author questionnaires, first pages, daily word count for my YA about Hortense, and a wonderful granddaughter, all at once

I’m working on the Author Questionnaire for Doubleday’s publication of The Shadow Queen, and that requires quite a bit of time mucking about in my promotional and publication history.

Any day now, I will see the first pass on the book cover: I’m excited. I’m already madly in love with the interior design.

Meanwhile, I’m cranking up the word count on the Young Adult novel about Hortense, going slowly at first. We will have the pleasure of our now 1-year-old granddaughter Kiki, our daughter Carrie and her mate Bruce this long weekend, so I’m only aiming for 50 words a day. Dipping a toe in—that’s all—but it’s important to do it every day. This morning I aimed for 50 and chalked up over 200. I’m very much enjoying exploring this youthful story.SaveSave

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It’s all about Jane …

It’s all about Jane …

As research for writing a YA about Hortense, I’m reading a lot about Jane Austen right now—or, at the least, I seem to be surrounded by books and blogs about her. Yes, I admit, I’m seeking her out.

For example, this wonderful website: What Jane Saw, an exhibit she actually went to see. Follow in her footsteps; look at the paintings she saw.

I’m reading—very, very slowly—the Harvard University Press annotated edition of Pride and Prejudice (shown above). This is a sumptuous book, a sumptuous series. (For a video on this book: click here.)

The Real

Another book I’m reading is The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne: delicious.

And another: A Dance with Jane Austen by Susannah Fullerton, which I discovered through the wonderful blog Jane Austen’s World. This is a wonderful book.

Dance

“Why Jane?” my son asks, and I have to tell him frankly that I don’t think she’d be his cup of tea. But then neither might be Dickens or Shakespeare, at least not in his fast-paced world. In a University course: certainly. And then, forced into another time and pace (the beauty of higher education), he might think, “Wow.” For she’s right up there with the greats of literature.

This in spite of the fact that she is so very subtle, so not showy. Who was it who said—I think it was Virginia Woolf—that it’s very hard to catch Jane Austen in an act of greatness.

Jane Austen page copy

She wrote during the day, and read what she’d written to her family in the evening. She did not have a desk of her own, much less a room.

It’s a mistake to think that her’s was a purer world. The worlds she created are pure, yet a man she and her sister admired, a nobleman, had a strange affection for drinking the blood of his servants. (Note that such details do not show in her novels.)

For Mother’s Day, my son suggested I pick a t-shirt from this wonderful site: Out of Print Clothing.

Which one did I pick? Well, of course: Pride and Prejudice:

t

I love it! (And no: this is not me.)

What’s your favourite Jane Austen? And why?

Madame Campan’s school

Madame Campan’s school

 

On July 31, 1794, Madame Campan opened her boarding school for girls on rue de Poissy in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a town not far from Paris.

In the spring of the following year, on May 25, she rented Hôtel de Rohan on 42, rue de l’Unité—now 42, rue des Ursulines—opening the school there on July 1, 1795.

Two months later, on September 1, Josephine de Beauharnais (soon to marry and become Josephine Bonaparte) enrolled her daughter Hortense and her niece Émilie. Her son Eugène was enrolled in a school for boys next door.

Images of the former Hôtel de Rohan

hotel-de-rohan-saint-germain-en-laye

The French government provides all sorts of information on historical sites. This one is a treasure of information and images:

Here is a map detail from the mid-18th century:

mid 18th-century plan

And another one from 1820:

1820 plan

 

The inner courtyard (mid-19th century):

Inner courtyard mid-19th century

The basin in the entry:

basin in the entry

You can see it filled with plants here:

the entry

And here’s a detail of the staircase:

Staircase, early 18th century

The “school” today

The former Hôtel de Rohan is now an apartment block. On a research trip in 2014, a former resident of the apartments was kind enough to show me in to see what remains of Madame Campan’s school.

Much of it is new, but there are some remnants of the former Hôtel de Rohan:

Campan

In the back garden, there was this intriguing bit of antiquity:

Campan mystery rock

A bit of the former chapel, perhaps? One can only guess.

Here is the layout of the apartment complex, “Le Parc des Ursulines.” The photo of the arches above are where the “I” is on this plan. The grotto is in the garden beyond.

IMG_1707

On the name of the school

How was Madame Campan’s school referred to at the time? Here are two possibilities:

L’Institut National des Jeunes Filles/National Institution for Young Women

I’ve also seen (but only in English): National Institution for the Education of Young Women.

l’Institut national de Saint-Germain/The National Institution of Saint-Germain

I have doubts about this last name because during the Revolution the name of Saint-Germain-en-Laye had been changed to Montagne-Bon-Air. It was changed back to Saint-Germain-en-Laye 28 février, 1795, but would Madame Campan have been so bold as to use the former aristocratic name immediately?

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Photo research diversion

I’ve been on-line quite a bit selecting illustrations for my e-book publications (coming up!).

It’s wonderfully easy to get lost in this process. Side-tracked, in fact. Here are some rather surprising discoveries, specifically having to do with the people in the life of Josephine’s daughter Hortense (the subject of my next novel).

I’ve always been fond of this portrait of Alexandre de Beauharnais, Josephine’s first husband, because he’s posed with his hand in his vest — exactly as her second husband Napoleon will be portrayed.

And her son Eugène, for that matter:

Coincidental? (I think not!)

The portrait that took me aback was this grim one of Alexandre, which I’d never seen before:

My suspicion has always been that Alexandre might have been bi-polar — something he might have passed onto Hortense, in fact. It’s only a hunch, but this portrait would certainly confirm that he was not a happy man.