Karen Essex http://karenessex.com/blog/ en-us Nucleus CMS v3.24 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://karenessex.com/blog//nucleus/nucleus2.gif Karen Essex http://karenessex.com/blog/ On Auto Wrecks and Adultery: Karen Essex chats with Penny Vincenzi and Christina Baker Kline about their new novels. http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=23 KE: The film producer Lynda Obst once told me that she came up with the idea for the George Clooney/Michelle Pfeiffer romantic comedy One Fine Day, when she—overworked, exhausted—was lying on a massage table thinking that to meet a man she would have to literally crash into one with her car. Andrew Davidson, who I chatted with recently on the blog, opened his bestseller, The Gargolye, with a car accident that transforms his character, body and soul. And I have always been a fan of the late painter Carlos Almaraz’s oils depicting cars in flames. What is it about art and car wrecks?

Now, I find that two very fine authors, who also happen to be friends of mine, have each opened their new novels with car accidents. Penny Vincenzi, the No. 1 bestselling British novelist, whose books are addictive and virtually impossible to put down (she’s doing this chat because she owes me for so many nights of lost sleep), uses a car crash in the beginning of The Best of Times as a device by which the characters become entangled in one another’s lives.


Christina Baker Kline, Fordham University’s Writer in Residence, opens her acclaimed fourth novel, Bird in Hand, with a car accident that brings out the hidden alienation festering below the surface of existing friendships and marriages. I found the book impossible to put down and read it one night in lieu of sleeping.


Ladies, could you please tell us what inspired you to open your novels with car crashes? Did the idea of opening a book with an accident inspire the novels, or did you have relationships in mind that you wanted to explore, and retrospectively decided to use the car crashes as the catalyst? In other words, was it the chicken first, or the egg?

PV: It was a real-life accident that inspired me to write The Best of Times. Well, two actually. The first was an accident that actually took place on the motorway I use all the time as I travel from our cottage in Wales to our house in London—or on this particular occasion to my publishers. I was nowhere near the accident itself; but stuck in the consequential tailback for almost three hours.

It is complete impotence; you can’t go on, you can’t go back, you are held suspended in time and place by Fate. I was lucky—not merely because I hadn’t been nearer the front of the crash, but also because my meeting was hardly crucial. What I had to endure was annoying, and made life a little more awkward, but no more than that. Around me were people more seriously affected: one young man said if he didn’t get to London in time to sign some documents at his bank by close of play, his business would go under. A couple were desperate to get to the airport—not just for a holiday trip, but to attend their daughter’s wedding next day in Spain. An elderly gentleman was on his way, driven by his daughter, to an important medical appointment he had waited three months’ for. All around me were seriously distressed people. Less serious were thirsty dogs, fractious hungry children, and lots of people in need of a loo.

And you know what? I thought: this is a book. About all sorts of people in all sorts of people, being taken into captivity by fate: and what would happen to their consequent lives. Like a husband perhaps, helplessly trapped with his mistress, in a place where he had no business to be, not at all where he had said he would be; like a bridegreoom, hurrying to his wedding; like an actress, desperate to get to a last-chance audition. Oh, my goodness!-- as always, when this sort of thing happens to me, I guiltily stopped worrying about other people and started making notes….

KE: Penny, I am reminded of the story of the man who worked in the Twin Towers whose wife was calling his cellphone all morning on 9/11 to see if he was alive. He was, but was with a mistress at a hotel and knew nothing of the tragedy. When he finally returned her call, she asked where he’d been all morning, and he blithely replied that he was at the office!

PV: Oh and then the second accident was domestic; my daughter and her boyfriend had come to spend the night with us, so that he could be at an interview, an important interview-- in London early in the morning. He was wearing his best suit as he sat at the kitchen table, having a late night glass of wine with us and showing us his carefully prepared CV—pages of it. .

And then—my daughter passing the table, knocked her father’s arm, as he lifted the bottle to pour a second glass of wine. Red wine. Which went all over the best suit. A light grey suit.

We sat and stared at it in horror; everything in that instant changed, from order to chaos. All our plans were scuppered—or so it seemed; the early, and therefore calm, start; the immaculate appearance, the beautiful presentation. And—possibly, or even probably—his chances of getting the job. All for the jog of an arm. Terrifying.

(I would like to reassure you that we managed; plunged the jacket into cold water—risky, but better than nothing—oh the wonders of the man-made fibre. We transferred his notes to my computer, admittedly with a sweatily difficult juggling of emails and attachments--oh, the wonders of technology--and printed them afresh. It was summer and we hung the jacket by an open window and my daughter completed its drying in the morning with a hairdryer. He wore a shirt of my husband’s –a little large, but we decided it didn’t matter; and he got the job.) But—what a jog of an arm can do. What an accident, a moment’s chance, can do.

CBK: When I first moved to the suburbs of NYC after years of living on the Upper West Side, with my husband and two young children, one of our first purchases was a minivan. I hadn’t driven in years, much less an unwieldy, seven-seat bus, and I was filled with anxiety. New Jersey traffic can be fast and unforgiving; caught in the maze of unfamiliar roads, I was constantly losing my bearings. My children’s lives were in my hands – my white-knuckled hands, that is, gripping the steering wheel. I was terrified of getting in a car crash that was my own fault and being responsible for maiming, or killing, my child or – god forbid – someone else’s.

Around this same time, I began writing Bird in Hand. The central character, a mother, gets into an accident in which a child dies, and this accident changes the (interconnected) lives of four people. Somewhere along the way I realized that I was writing this book as a way of exploring my deepest fears around this subject – and that those fears were too close. It was like staring directly into the sun; I had to squint and turn away. I put the manuscript in a drawer and only came back to it after several years, when my children were older and my worries had subsided. (For one thing, I’d become a fairly competent driver.) And I broadened the scope of the novel: the accident became a catalyst for the larger story rather than the story itself.

KE: I also happen to know that both of these authors are writing about infidelity from within stable long-term marriages that have produced many offspring. Penny has four grown daughters, and Christina has three young sons, and neither has traded in her husband for a new model! Bird in Hand puts marital infidelity under a brutally strong microscope, and yet the vision is not without compassion. The Best of Times also has married folk sneaking around. Penny has written about marital infidelity in her many books—enough, some might say, to place her in an Unfaithfully Yours Literary Hall of Fame. But she, too, writes with compassion for all parties, faithful and faithless alike.

Is it tricky to explore these waters from within a marriage (that one wishes to keep!)? Do your husbands eye you with suspicion? Have their friends warned them that you two know a little bit too much about this subject? Or does a solid marriage and domestic scene give you a secure base from which to explore the opposite scenario?

PV: Well, yes. Three things here.

1. I may have been long and happily married, but I have come across many many stories of people who have not. I have never, ever written directly, or even indirectly about anything real-life, but the bones of those stories stay with me, to be filled out with some quite different flesh. And you know what? To paraphrase Tolstoy, every unhappy marriage is unhappy in a different way.

2. I do have an imagination.

3. The escape into fantasy is a wonderful antidote to real life. Writing a book you can be beautiful, thin, witty, rich. You can meet incredible people and particularly incredible men. Who you can flirt with, lunch with, fall in love with, have passionate affairs with; all from the absolute safety and security of your study. Many is the time I have risen from a rumpled double bed in some luxurious hotel suite, a jeroboam of champagne at its side—shut the door behind me and gone downstairs with the dog—my only real-life companion in these adventures--to cook the stew for family
supper, feeling—I’ll admit-- just mildly titillated, but absolutely virtuous.

CBK: In real life, I am something of a romantic – and happily married! But I also know that marriage can be hard at times, even under the best of circumstances. While I was writing this novel my husband, David, and I were, like many of our friends, adjusting to profound life changes: a new house, a new lifestyle, two small children, loss of autonomy for both of us, some loss of identity for me, a stressful job for him, a commute into the city. Some couples we knew, close friends, did not weather these storms intact. Why and how did these marriages end? The answers to these kinds of questions are always complicated.

At one point in my book a character wonders, “Who breaks the thread, the one who pulls or the one who hangs on?” In Bird in Hand I wanted to write about the complexities many couples deal with at this stage of their lives, whether or not they come through together. I wanted to show what’s hard about marriage and what happens when people can’t figure out how to communicate with each other. I wanted to follow my characters to all the dark and elusive places. Most of all, I wanted to talk about the nature of love and desire.

Though my husband read bits and pieces along the way, this is the first of my novels that he has not yet finished. (It’s on his nightstand still.) It isn’t autobiographical, but I think it’s still a bit hard to read. As you well know, novelists are like magpies – opportunistic scavengers who feather our nests with whatever we find lying around. I used my own life in many ways in Bird in Hand. I think that these four characters are all me, and they’re all my husband. They’re also lots of other people I’ve met. And no one at all. I felt like an actor (or perhaps several actors) writing this book: I truly inhabited these characters. I became them as I wrote.

KE: It is always fascinating for me to learn the genesis of a novel. The threads of a novel’s fabric are gathered from so many sources and the weaving process is such a complex balance of artistry, craft, and surrender to the unconscious, that it makes it challenging to try to explain. Yet the discussion is always illuminating.
Thank you, my friends, for participating.
]]> General http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=23 Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:26:15 -0500 A Roundtable Discussion of Gender and the Art of Historical Fiction with Margaret George, C. W. Gortner, and Karen Essex http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=22
At the HNS Conference, C. W. Gortner and I caught the great Margaret George red-handed in the bookstore buying our books. We were so thrilled that we had to have the incident preserved for posterity!

KE: At the Historical Novel Society Conference this summer, Margaret George, C. W. (Christopher) Gortner and I answered questions about gender and the art—and marketing—of historical fiction. Margaret’s novel, The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers (1998), is now a beloved classic, and it was written in the voice of a man, about another man, but by a female author (I sound like I’m pitching Victor/Victoria!). Christopher’s new novel, The Last Queen, has received much acclaim, and it is written in the voice Juana “la Loca.” I have written in the male voice, and I feel that two of the most authentic and inspired character portraits I have ever written were Julius Caesar and the eunuch Meleager, both from my Kleopatra series.

I think it’s fair to say that all three of us challenge the notion that one can only write with authenticity in the voice of one’s own sex. If you don’t think that idea is prevalent, you should sit in on classes in academia where these discussions do go on, or in meetings at publishing houses, where suddenly, historical fiction has become bifurcated by sex: men write historical adventure, and women write female driven personal drama. The glory days of Mary Renault and Marguerite Yourcenar, who I daresay influenced all of us, are long behind us!

KE: Chris, Margaret, do you think that this idea of writing according to one’s own sex is reader-driven or publisher-driven? And do you think that this “branding” is constructive in either the marketing sense or the creative sense, or does it limit our creativity? Have you gotten feedback from your readers on these issues?

MG: I think the publishers are responding to what they imagine readers think. This recent distrust of having a narrator who isn’t a member of the group he/she is speaking for may have started with the academic ‘gender studies’ programs that were so fiercely defensive about turf. Women’s Studies in particular seemed angry that men had written in the female voice. They seemed to feel it was another example of being taken over by men, silenced by them, exploited by them. From there it spread out into the idea that no one except a woman had a right to write as a woman. Earlier it had been blacks and whites, gays and straights, and also actors portraying anyone other than their own group that were frowned upon. I was told I couldn’t write about Alexander the Great because I wasn’t gay, but at the time no one objected to my writing as a man, only as a gay man.

KE: I remember having a fierce argument in graduate school with a lecturer who put forth the politically correct argument that one could only write accurately from one’s own gender/race point of view. I stood up and said that I thought that Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary were pretty good portraits of women, though written by men. She actually disagreed. And yet I must say that the lack of women’s stories written in women’s voices throughout history has been a motivating factor in my writing. Margaret, I think we may be two of the only women who have told K(C)leopatra’s story from the female point of view! And that’s in the scope of 2000 years. And our portraits of her definitely rescue her from the old “she was nothing but a seductress” stereotype. So we have to give some validation to the idea of women telling women’s stories (finally!). And yet I would hate to see literature become limited to that construct.

MG: Until recently, the [publishing] industry seemed less defensive about a woman writing as a man, perhaps because men didn’t complain about it. People were more puzzled than anything else that I would want to write as Henry VIII, because they didn’t think we had anything in common. As if being human with human appetites and failings isn’t having something in common! Men have told me they did not have trouble accepting the voice as a man’s, and as Henry’s. I figure, a man would know if I didn’t sound like a man, right?

It certainly isn’t constructive in the creative sense (“stick with your own kind” is pretty restrictive) and it’s a lazy sort of marketing device. But people like brands and want to identify an author with a certain sort of product. I remember when John le Carre wrote a love story. But the readers didn’t want love from le Carre, they wanted spies! And Anne Rice switching from vampires to Jesus…well, it’s unsettling for readers. She probably lost most of her old regulars and picked up a new crowd. I think, compared to switching genres, switching genders (pun unintentional) is a lesser sin in the publishing world.

CWG: I think to a certain extent that both [publishers and readers] are driving the trend. Publishers provide what readers buy, and I have heard throughout the years that some readers prefer books written by their own gender. I think gender interests come into play, as well: men tend to gravitate to the fast-paced thriller / adventure stories and women tend to prefer personalized dramas. However, it is totally without merit to even suggest that this is always true. On the contrary, I think many readers cross over into different genres and often don't care about the author's gender as long as the story is well told. However, with the ongoing success of the first-person female POV in historical fiction, now I believe we're starting to see an emphasis on this POV being required. I think "branding" in this fashion can be very limiting, in that it does curtail the breadth of stories we might want to tell. It basically cancels out the perspective of half the population if you cannot tell a story from, say, the male POV.

KE: I know! The only objection I have to my book covers is that they are so darned “pretty” and so strongly marketed to women that no man would be caught dead carrying one up to the cashier at a bookstore. And yet men always like my books because they are full of two things that men generally like—sex and history!

CWG: I recently had this discussion with another author; I mentioned a book I wanted to write about feuding medieval kings who were half-brothers and the immediate response was: "Do you have a female POV to tell it through?" It's becoming the rule, rather than the method you as the author arrive at as the best way to tell your story. I believe that the story should dictate the POV or gender in which you choose to write. As writers we should be invisible; that's one of the marvels of our craft: to become our characters and lose ourselves. Even more so than actors, as we can, by writing, be of another gender or even a different species. Sharon Penman, one of my new writer friends and an amazing talent, summed it up quite nicely this way: Imagine if editors had told Richard Adams, "But you're not a rabbit! How can you write from an animal's perspective?" We would never have had WATERSHIP DOWN.

What I mostly get as feedback from my readers is praise that they couldn't tell a man had written THE LAST QUEEN. I've also had a few tell me they knew at once and I got it all wrong, but that's to be expected. You can't please everyone.

KE: Well having read your book, I can tell you that you didn’t get anything “wrong!” It was amazing, and it haunted me for weeks. When I am writing in the male voice, I do try to put on a man’s thinking cap. I’ve spent so much of my life trying to understand men that I feel I have a right to write from their points of view! And I do try to apply what I have learned. Men are much more direct than women, and they do tend to literally mean what they say (exception: when trying to get a woman into bed). Women tend to be more indirect and begin sentences with “I think” and “Maybe.” We are also more cunning. So that when I write male and female dialogue, I am coming from different perspectives. Do either of you have special techniques that you use, or things that you keep in mind, or do special research when you write in a voice that is the “other” gender?

MG: I try to really get inside their heads and think as they think; their slant due to their gender is part of that. If I know their actions then sometimes they fit into a pattern common to that gender, sometimes not. For example, I’m not sure about the ‘never asking for directions’ earmark of being male. Henry VIII didn’t seem to mind asking for directions, but then he didn’t feel obligated to follow them. Was that a ‘male’ trait, or was it a ‘royal’ trait? In his case it was often hard to tell. And of course all these characters have their own idiosyncrasies that may vary from the regular sex stereotypes. Henry really liked to dress up; he was totally into clothes. (Female?) On the other hand, he was also into technology. (Male?)

CWG: I employ basic acting techniques in which I focus on divesting myself of my conscious self, my ego, in order to "inhabit" my character. It can take time, and several drafts, before I find that space or voice; but I have found that with effort I can usually "become" the character I'm writing and see the world through her eyes. What I'm always very careful about is not to inject my personal sensibilities or reactions into my character, but rather allow her to react as she should, according to who she is. There were instances, for example, in THE LAST QUEEN when I didn't necessarily agree with the way Juana handled herself; nevertheless, she did behave as she was envisioned as a character. It sounds complicated when I try to explain it, but in truth the process itself can be very organic and natural to me as a writer.

KE: I think that’s a very important point. So often we, the authors, do not approve of what a character is doing or wants to do, but if we impose our own value system on them, they cease to be who they are and just become less interesting mini-me’s.I’m dealing now with a protagonist who insisted on starting out much more conservative than I wanted her to be. What can you do but listen to them?

CWG: As far as special research goes, there are certain aspects of being a woman I did have to talk to girlfriends about: the feeling of being pregnant, for one, as well as the sensations of giving birth. I also, for THE LAST QUEEN, did some "field research:' I borrowed a Renaissance gown from a friend who performs re-enactment and tried it on for an hour or so, to get a feel for its weight and how the body feels when covered by such heavy layers of fabric. I discovered your movements become more slow and cautious, thereby revealing the vaunted elegance of Renaissance women, which was something I wouldn't have necessarily known had I not worn the dress.

KE: While we are talking about limits, can we also talk about locale? Many writers of historical fiction get branded not only by gender, but by period and location. Writers are advised to stick with one period and one country. Is this marketing, or is this because readers have very specific interests and obsessions?

MG: I would say “both.” After Henry VIII, I had wanted to do Cleopatra and was told by a publisher, “Oh no, that’s not your period!” That struck me as odd because I had only written one book. They went on to warn me that writing about different periods or settings would dilute my ‘brand’ and if I wrote about too many of them, I’d have no ‘brand’ at all.

After six books, written in two time periods, (ancient and Tudor) I’d say that you can do two and maybe three, but if you try to do more you will be perceived as not having much expertise in any of them, more like a journalist who flits from the Kennedys to the Great Wall of China to the Inquisition without much depth. The faster the books are written, and the closer together they are published, the stronger this impression will be, for it takes time to master material in any meaningful way.

I was also warned that you don’t necessarily carry your readers with you when you change time periods. I think that’s true to some extent. There are readers who are loyal to one time period but don’t have much interest in others. At the same time it’s fun to meet a new population of readers. The “Helen of Troy” crowd was different from the “Henry VIII” crowd, although there was some overlap.

CWG: I think in the US in particular there is a significant emphasis on England and the Tudor / Plantagenet eras. I think marketing does come into play: readers get excited to discover a certain time period through a particular author and will want to read more, explore more deeply, along with that writer. However, certain time periods can become oversaturated (see "Tudors") and while I understand there is tremendous interest in the era, I for one start to get impatient if that is all that's being offered to me as a reader. I'm by nature very interested in world history and there are so many fantastic places and characters to write about, I just can't see myself being limited to one. For now, my focus is on the later medieval and renaissance periods, but I want to be able to wander if I find a story that compels me. Certain writers "branded" themselves in one era, and do it splendidly, book after book. Personally, I would find it confining as a writer, though from the publishing perspective I can see how this branding can help build a career.

KE: I, too, would find it confining. I know that as an author, it is equally important to keep myself entertained as it is to entertain the reader. I practically get a Ph.D in every period I write about, but that is because the research is truly edifying for me. On some days I wish I could be the sort who takes one period and writes 25 books about it. Oh, how much easier my life would be! On the other hand, I think we have to follow our own creative drives and desires or what we produce will not be exciting to either us or to the readers.

KE: Margaret, you pioneered the Tudor craze in historical fiction with your book about Henry and Mary Queen of Scotland & The Isles (1997). Now it’s the most popular period for readers of historical fiction. After digressing to Egypt, Israel, and Troy, you are returning to it with your new book about Elizabeth I, which you’ve just finished. What made you return to the Tudors?

MG: Elizabeth was always ‘the elephant in the room’ in my mind, the remaining legendary Tudor who needed to join the others on my bookshelf. But---hence the elephant analogy---she was so big. Not actually, but historically. She was such an icon, in some ways appearing not even human, with her gigantic ruffs and stiff, galleon-like bejeweled costumes that transformed her into an idol for public appearances. She reigned for so long---44 years---and so much happened during her reign. I just didn’t see how it was possible to encompass all that within a book that didn’t need a wheelbarrow to carry. Publishers are more and more concerned about length, and readers want shorter books as well. That seemed a contradiction in terms with Elizabeth.

Finally I realized that I had already covered her childhood in The Autobiography of Henry VIII and her middle years in Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles. So I could start after that, in 1587, and go forward. This still made for a regular-sized book. The later part of her life is what we think of when we hear the word “Elizabethan”: the Armada, the Tilbury Speech (“ I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England, too”), Shakespeare, the Earl of Essex, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Ralegh’s Virginia colony, and so on.

KE: I know that for myself, when I get an idea for a novel, it starts to literally heat up inside me like some kind of electricity. It’s a force and an energy that I couldn’t stop if I wanted to because its locale isn’t my “brand.” I’m leaping into the late Victorian period and into the gothic and the occult for my next book, but it’s because I literally couldn’t stop myself from writing the story. It’s in a female voice and it’s an historical novel, but still, it’s a departure for me. Luckily, I have an amazing publisher who says, “you go, girl.” And I hope that readers will follow. I think that every artist throughout time has had to balance creative instincts with the marketplace. It’s nothing new!

KE: Christopher, you are half-Spanish and completely bi-lingual, not to mention schooled in Spanish history. But your next novel is about Catherine de Medici. Tell us a little bit about your leap to another country, and also, if you are planning to return to telling a Spain-based story any time soon?

CWG: As I said before, I do like to wander. After 16th century France and Catherine de Medici, I'm hoping to write about a woman in early 15th century Italy during the rise of the Borgias, then, if I'm lucky, I'd like to return to Spain, but in the latter-half of the 16th century Spain, in the court of Philip II. After that, who knows? I've always had a hankering for ancient Egypt . . .

KE: Which brings you around to turf that Margaret and I have already trodden upon, so that seems a great full-circle sort of place to end our discussion. Thanks a million to both of you for joining in.
]]> General http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=22 Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:34:10 -0400 Candid and Uncensored with Andrew Davidson and Karen Essex http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=21 here to check out their site.

In their respective novels The Gargoyle and Stealing Athena, Andrew Davidson and Karen Essex both tell parallel stories that take place in two different time periods, intertwining the lives of people separated by centuries. The books also explore common themes of the mystical, the mythic, karmic debt, the creation of art, and romantic love. In a candid and uncensored phone conversation, the authors compare their writing processes and talk about the sometimes numinous, sometimes laborious procedure by which they create stories and bring their characters to life.

(Click here to listen to entire conversation: )




KE: Hi Andrew. When I wrote to you I said that Doubleday had sent me a galley of The Gargoyle before it was published and I read it…

AD: Right.

KE: … and I really enjoyed it…

AD: Ah, thank you.

KE: When Anchor asked me to participate in this dialogue, even though I am on a deadline, and I am rather far behind at this point, I was going to skim The Gargoyle again, but the truth is that I have now re-read every word of it, because I was just enjoying it way too much.

AD: Well, I apologize.

KE: So if I’m late on my deadline, I’m just going to say call Andrew Davidson, it’s all his fault.

AD: I think that’s a very wise… blame me, that’s the way to go.

KE: Uh huh, I will.

AD: Okay, good. Before we get into the question, what’s the deadline? Do you have another novel coming out? Or is it an article of some sort?

KE: I’m here in London, writing my next novel, which is a Victorian gothic novel, and it’s due in November.

AD: Okay, we’re going to come back to the question that you’re just about to get to, but my question to you before we get to that question is: how are you so unbelievably prolific? Because I just finished reading Stealing Athena, which was great, by the way…


KE: Thank you.

AD: … and there’s a lot of words in it. How did you get another book out of your body so quickly?

KE: I am remarkably unblocked in most situations, though Stealing Athena was the hardest thing I ever wrote.

AD: Why was that?

KE: Well, it was because of the enormous amount of historical research that I had to assimilate, and then spit out into a narrative that didn’t sound like a history lesson.

AD: But still, Stealing Athena was only two years after the book that came before it, is that correct?

KE: Right.

AD: Wow. I’m sorry to get on this….

KE: Quite all right.

AD: But seriously I am in awe. I just don’t know how you can write that much.

KE: I’m not sure how to answer that question, because people always ask me what my process is, and I always say my method is the obsessive-compulsive method of writing. Which is, that once I get going on something, I almost don’t let it go. In a weird way. Someone once asked me if I took weekends off, and I just laughed, and I said, “I take my work with me to the bathroom.”

AD: Right.

KE: And I wasn’t kidding. I’m trying to correct these measures now, but….

AD: The interesting thing is that I write, I think, by that obsessive-compulsive method a bit as well, but what it ends up doing for me is dragging me off down alleyways that are incredibly fascinating, and I write twenty or thirty pages about, but I discover that it ends up being one paragraph in the finished work.

KE: Right. Well, The Gargoyle was your first novel. Correct?

AD: That’s right. Yes.

KE: And you wrote it without a deadline.

AD: Without any deadline whatsoever.

KE: Right. So I had the same experience. My first novel was Kleopatra, it took me about… it took me seven years from the time I thought about it and began to research it to the day I sold it, to what was then Warner Books. So… and I did a lot of research that took me down fascinating alleyways, which had nothing to do, in the end, with the finished book. But I’m here to inform you that now that you’re a big success…

AD: Yeahhh….

KE: … you’re going to have to learn to write faster. And you will.

AD: Okay.

KE: My experience has been that you now have a readership, and your readership is waiting for you.

AD: Right. But….

KE: So….

AD: …my feeling in my case is that, umm, I mean I’m certain that I could put something out in two years, but I don’t know if my readership would be happy with it, because I know I wouldn’t be.

KE: Right.

AD: Yeah.

KE: Yeah, this is… I think this is one of the issues that we novelists deal with, and I… This is what separates what I would call, for lack of a better word, a “career novelist”…

AD: Right.

KE: … you know, from someone who has a story or two in them. I think that it takes a brain-shift, almost, to transform oneself into a person who can write to satisfy a readership. And I don’t mean that that’s the primary goal, that we should be feeding product to our readers, but I look at people who are writing thick, idea-driven books like Philip Roth, and John Updike, and the late Iris Murdoch—these are all incredibly prolific people.

AD: Really, really are.

KE: So at some point I think they made that shift. And I think that you’re at the beginning now, so I bet you that if we had this conversation in five years into the future, you wouldn’t be so concerned about it.

AD: Well, you know, I think it’s interesting. Because I don’t think it’s necessarily—I completely understand what you’re saying, first of all—but I don’t necessarily know that it’s exactly what you’re talking about, as much as it’s just the different ways that people create. For example, I mean, in music, you’ve got, say, Leonard Cohen versus Bob Dylan. And at some point Bob Dylan was putting out an album every fifteen minutes, and Leonard Cohen puts one out every four years if we’re lucky.

KE: Um hmm.

AD: And that’s just how they approach it. And… recently, I’ve been going through the work of John Fowles. And I…

KE: Oh yes!
AD: … and I’m absolutely loving his writing, and the books are so different, and he, I think, produced only seven novels in his life. Well, I mean clearly, here’s a “career novelist” who is just not somebody who writes in quite that quick way. And it’s not better or worse, obviously. The one thing I’ve discovered in
this last year and a half, where I’ve actually been meeting professional writers, because I didn’t know anybody before that, is just that everybody works in ways that absolutely surprise me. When I talk to other writers and they say, “Well, this is my method, this is my process,” sometimes it’s all I can do to keep from blurting out: “REALLY? That works for you?”


KE: I think my favorite weird process story is that of Graham Greene, who got up early every morning, put on a beautiful suit, wrote exactly five hundred words, would stop mid-sentence, once he had reached his five hundred words, was often done by breakfast time, and then would go sort of be a social butterfly, go and hang out with his wealthy friends on yachts in the Mediterranean.

AD: Which is not a bad process at all.

KE: No. Why can’t I learn that one?

AD: Yeah.

KE: I don’t really see it forthcoming, but that’s the process I would most like to learn.

AD: And why can’t I learn it, either? Interestingly, in Stealing Athena, there’s—you talk about the “daimon,” the indwelling spirit inside people…

KE: Uh huh….

AD: At one point during the writing The Gargoyle, I wrote a five-page tangent on the history of the word “daimon,” which obviously never made it in. In the finished version of The Gargoyle, the word gets referenced once. I needed to write my way through those five pages to know that it didn’t belong in the book at all.

KE: Um hmm. No, I can see that, and I—but I do think that the more that you experience the form of the novel, the more proficient you will be at not needing to go down those roads.

AD: Well, you know, we’ll have to have a conversation in five years and see if I’ve learned anything. (Both laugh.) All right, so let’s go back, I think I interrupted you mid-question, about five and half minutes ago, maybe a little more….

KE: Yes. Well, now that you’ve said that you don’t want to talk about personal things, I’m going to just pretend you didn’t say that and I’m going to ask you, if—because your book is so vivid—I’m going to ask you if you were ever, like your character, either a pornographer, or a burn victim, or a substance abuser.

AD: No, no, and no. All imagination and research. Not a substance abuser as far as drugs. When I was younger I drank far too much, and I haven’t had a drink in, I don’t know, seventeen years, at this point. Which was a very good choice for me to make, but no I was never a drug addict. It was just a matter of following what I needed to know for these characters, and I—it’s funny, because I do get people who are surprised when they meet me and find out that I’m not burned. Which is interesting.

KE: I asked the question, but I would have certainly guessed that that was the least likely. I would have thought you were a pornographer, frankly, more than a burn victim. Because your—I could just tell—your research on burn victims was so amazing. And frankly, I’m not sure that a person could live through that and want to write about it in as vivid a way that you wrote about it. I think sometimes that our personal experiences are—I know that I write about the long-dead, so it’s hard for people to confuse me with my characters.

AD: You’re not Pericles? Because I was wondering.

KE: Well, no, I’ll tell you a little joke, and I’m sure that at this point you’ve gotten your share of strange readers. People always think that—there’s a certain breed of reader that imagines that I was Kleopatra in another lifetime, and so I’m always being asked this question: “Were you Kleopatra in another lifetime?” and I always laugh and say that I certainly wasn’t, but I’m pretty sure that I was Julius Caesar.

AD: Okay.

KE: Which leads me to my next question. Because you have said that the genesis of your book was that Marianne Engel started to talk to you.

AD: And you wrote back to me that Julius Caesar spoke to you.

KE: Is Marianne Engel an historical figure?

AD: No, absolutely not. When I go back to medieval Germany, and spend time in Engelthal monastery, she is one of the only characters who I didn’t have at least some indication existed. Ah, now I mean, you know from writing historical fiction and taking characters who exist, like, sometimes you’re only given a grain, a nugget, and then you just go a little bit crazy with what you say about it. I mean, for example, Christina Ebner who is one of the characters in medieval Germany, in the monastery… I have no idea what she actually looked like. None whatsoever, but I’ve got to describe her so you just kind of make stuff up and hope that she doesn’t come back from the dead to exact her revenge.

KE: So you’re—did you—let me ask you this: Did you know about the monastery before this character began to talk to you, or did you start doing research about thirteenth century Germany and then this character began to emerge?

AD: Neither. What actually happened in this case is I had—Marianne Engel came, started speaking to me, and essentially what happened is that she… I mean, she looked like she does in the book, and she was talking to me and she sounded somewhat mentally unbalanced, but I was pretty sure that she wasn’t. And there was a real religious aspect to the way that she spoke, and I found something old-fashioned about it, as well. And at one point when I put her in a room with the narrator of the book, the burn victim, she said, “We’ve known each other for seven hundred years,” but I really—at this point, I had no idea what she was talking about. And I had been working on the book for at least a year before I came across Engelthal monastery in completely unrelated pleasure reading, and I followed that line just because it interested me. I mean, in this case it was as simple as going “Well, her name is Marianne Engel and the name of this monastery is Engelthal”—Valley of the Angels—and I just wanted to see if there might be some connection, and there absolutely was, and when I went back and spoke to my character—because I do speak to my characters—I said, “When you were talking about living in the past, were you at Engelthal?” And she said yes. Is that…?

KE: That is fascinating.

AD: Okay, so that’s not just weird?

KE: It’s… it’s… super weird. (Both laugh.) It’s extraordinary, but I can follow it, and I do understand how these things happen. As I said, I was spoken to by this voice. I was writing, I had just begun to write my Kleopatra book, and the entire book was going to be third-person limited, so I was going to be writing in the third person, but always, always, in Kleopatra’s mind and voice, and from her point of view. And one day I was sitting at the computer and this very officious voice just started talking to me. And I couldn’t imagine what was happening, and he wouldn’t go away, and he wouldn’t go away, and what he was saying was very clever and I thought, well I better start writing some of this down, because this is so interesting. And I was, I don’t know, way into it—you know, way into it—when I realized this was the voice of Julius Caesar. And he was insisting that I give him the opportunity to talk about how he met Kleopatra, and write about her from his point of view. And I couldn’t stop it. I mean, it came to me as fully formed prose.

AD: Hm

KE: And you know it’s very, it’s very difficult to get fully formed prose. I don’t know if our readers understand how many drafts we go through, to get to something that they want to read.

AD: Literally—for anybody who is listening—literally, hundreds of drafts.

KE: Yes, for me too.

AD: Yeah.



KE: Hundreds. I mean, it’s extraordinary how many times that you can over a sentence, and find ways to make it better, or more specific, clearer, a better image comes to you. You realize that the grammar is all wrong, and then you realize you don’t need the sentence, and then you continue on, and then you realize that sentence is missing and you have to put it back, and reintegrate it. So it’s just—you know, it’s a very painstaking process.

AD: Yeah, absolutely. I’m just going to say—like, to give an example of what we’re talking about is when you and I were both approached about doing this interview originally it was supposed to be a written interview, right?

KE: Right.

AD: And I came back to you, and I said, “Well, listen, I just don’t think I’ve got a written interview in me.” And for me the reason was, because, man, when I speak I can speak and I can get it out of me, but writing takes forever. Recently I’ve just been doing reviews and I’ve got a review coming out in of another writer’s book in a newspaper and it took me at least 30 hours of writing to write 450 words.

KE: Oh, that’s painful.

AD: It is. And I don’t know any other way to do it, because my review was originally ten pages long.

KE: Um hmm.

AD: And it took me all that time—it’s like that old joke: “I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have time.” Like, that explains writing to me.

KE: Yes, but how do we explain—and now you and I are both faced with this responsibility—how do we explain these characters getting in touch with us, and talking to us? I was telling this man I’ve been dating over the weekend about this process and I realize I sound utterly mad.

AD: Hmmm.

KE: So…

AD: Is that maybe the explanation?

KE: That may be one explanation. Your character is of your imagination. You created her.

AD: I actually worry a lot of the time that she created me. But okay, we’ll go with your hypothesis.

KE: So, somehow you created each other. But in linear time, you came first.

AD: Okay.

KE: But we don’t know that, because she’s a voice from the thirteenth century…

AD: Man, it’s all so tricky, isn’t it? And when did Julius Caesar give birth to you, exactly?

KE: I think it was in 1995. But he—you know, I have to wonder sometimes—and at the risk of sounding even more like a freak—was Julius Caesar trying to contact me? I have a dear friend who is a spiritualist—she’s, you know, she talks to people’s angels for them. And she says, “Yes, absolutely, you know. Julius Caesar is trying to contact you, and speak through you.” And you know, I find that hard—I find that even though I’m a person open to the paranormal—I find that difficult to wrap my brain around. And yet, it’s hard to find another way to explain what happens to us in this process of writing.

AD: Hmm.

KE: And what’s interesting is you, you know, you describe the process that we go through, is very similar to the process that your character Marianne Engel went through to create her gargoyles.

AD: Start with a lot and remove until you find the form.

KE: Um hmm.

AD: Right.

KE: And she was being spoken to by three masters, who were also telling her what to do.

AD: And they were actual historical figures. And interestingly, you know, we were talking earlier about the sort of way that the connections are made, is that one of the other historical figures in the book—in English, he’s called Henry Suso; in German, he’s called Heinrich Seuse—was a mystic theologian of the time. He had three masters that spoke to him in his head. And that came from him, over to Marianne Engel. So, I’m willing to steal from anybody.

KE: Well, you know the expression, they always say: new writers imitate, but experienced writers steal.

AD: Right. And as I understand, I think that it was T.S. Eliot who said that, but if I’m not mistaken he stole it from Picasso.

KE: And Picasso was a notorious thief of all kinds of things, so who knows where he got it.

AD: He heard it in the bar. But it—I find it very interesting the way we do meet characters because not all of my characters come and start talking to me. This was a very specific experience with my character Marianne Engel. But sometimes it’s an entirely different path to meet a character and sometimes it’s torturous. There’s so much work you do before they’ll say anything to you.

KE: Um hmm. Well did your protagonist… you don’t ever give him a name. Correct?

AD: Because he never gave me a name. I kept asking him; he wouldn’t tell me.

KE: So he preferred to remain anonymous, and you have to respect that.

AD: And I tried to give him names. You know, I’m not even going to say which names I gave him, but I tried for about a year to call him by a name, and it just didn’t work. It didn’t stick.

KE: I love that. Because in retrospect, once things have manifested the way they’re going to manifest. So here we have your protagonist who has no name. You gave him no name because he would give you no name, and yet there’s a perfection to it. When I think of trying to call that character a name, I can’t do it.

AD: Right.

KE: And it’s really—you know, so there’s a perfection in the way it turned out.

AD: And one of the reasons too, is, that in the story, it happens over and over, that as people enter a new life, they leave behind the name that they had previously.

KE: Mmm. Oh, that’s very true, and that’s perfect, because it’s almost as if—he has lost so much of his identity, in being burned.

AD: And not always in a bad way

KE: No, certainly. I mean, he lost his physical beauty. But losing his physical beauty enabled him to start learning to love, so you can’t really qualify that as bad. Even he says it’s the best thing that ever happened to him. But so much of his identity was burned away, and then I think the evidence of who he was… like, his driver’s license would have been burned away, and he says he won’t have access to his bank accounts anymore….

AD: But he still has a bank account that is set up in a false name…

KE: In a false name.

AD: …that he can still access. That he was using to hide proceeds from his pornography business.

KE: Right. So he—that’s what I’m saying. There’s just a perfection in him not having a name, and he doesn’t—actually, he’s not even located geographically.

AD: Right. And again this was sort of a combination of, well, not really being told when I was asking the characters, but it also wasn’t important. And in fact, I thought it was important to not set it in an actual location.


KE: Hmm.
AD: Which is not something that, obviously, you can’t do in your books. You have very specific locations.
KE: If you’re going to write about Pericles, you know he’s in Athens.

AD: He’s not in downtown L.A.

KE: I don’t have to worry about those particular issues.

AD: Now, but do you find that constraining, or freeing? To have that information laid out for you?

KE: Both.

AD: Okay. Elaborate!

KE: It’s very interesting. I find it both constraining and freeing. It’s freeing because I don’t have to decide where Pericles lived, or where Aspasia, my other heroine, where she came from. In writing Stealing Athena, I was lucky enough to be able to read the letters of Lady Elgin, and so her personality came through loud and clear. And, you know, if it was 1799 and she was pregnant, well, she’s pregnant in 1799 in my book too. So it’s freeing in that it gives one less to invent, but then its also constraining in that it gives one less to invent.

AD: Right.

KE: And sometimes, you know, our lives don’t really unfold all the time in a way that is convenient for a narrative. So the challenge in writing historically based fiction is to take what really happened and without sacrificing history, and without just making things up, or ill-using history or historical characters, you have to figure out how to tell a story with a narrative out of a life that didn’t really unfold as one.

AD: Hmm.

KE: So that’s the challenging part.

AD: And how much license do you give yourself to make up details that you’re quite sure aren’t true, and do you worry about, for lack of a better word, “disrespecting” the life of the story, or the story of the life that you’re telling?

KE: I worry about that all the time and I don’t make up anything that I know isn’t true. I never do that. I did it once, in a very small way, and I got caught by a classical studies scholar who gave my second Kleopatra book, Pharaoh, an absolutely brilliant review, except she said: “She distorted the historical fact in this way, and it really bothered me.” And so I never did it again. I did it once, I knew I was doing it, I think I got tired of obeying my own rules, and so I broke my rule. But I don’t—if there is a truth available to me, I always use it. And then, if I’m inventing things, I make sure they are possible and hopefully probable.

AD: Okay.

KE: So I would never—so let’s say that Cicero was banished from Rome in 58 B.C., or whatever, I wouldn’t have him appearing in Rome in that year even if it was dramatically convenient for me.

AD: Hmm. Okay.

KE: So I don’t mess with the facts. And I have a great respect for these people who, ah, without knowing it have let me use their lives. I really do, I always try to—even in a case when they’re just absolute bastards like Lord Elgin, I always try to give a character his or her humanity and dignity.

AD: You know, I’ve got to say, talking about Lord Elgin, boy, did I have a reaction to that character. Boy, did I hate him. And I mean that in the best possible way. There is no greater compliment to a writer than to say I loved, or I hated, your character.

KE: Yes. And would you believe I worked hard to actually make him more human than he, I think, was.

AD: Really? Because every time a millimeter of his nose fell off, I was cheering and hoping that it would spread further throughout his body.

KE: He did terrible things, umm, certainly he did terrible things to his wife. But I didn’t want to write an out-and-out villain. Because, you know, I try not to make value judgments on my characters….

AD: Oh, you never can.

KE: People are always—people think that I manipulated that story to make Lord Elgin worse than he was so that I could make his wife some sort of martyr, but neither of those things is true at all.

AD: It’s interesting—I’m going to interrupt for a second—when you’re talking about not making value judgments on your characters, I mean, in writing that’s absolutely essential and I imagine that every time you’re writing something that Lord Elgin is doing, you’re looking at it from his side where he honestly believes he is doing the best possible thing.

KE: I certainly worked that way with him…

AD: Right.

KE: …and I hope that even though I fully exposed all the dastardly things that he did to his wife, and also the fact that he was certainly acting with the arrogance of empire in taking the Elgin marbles, and he was acting out of ego because he was directly competing with Napoleon…

AD: Right.

KE: …I also hope that I demonstrated that he did have the spirit of a preservationist…

AD: Right.

KE: … and that when he saw the degraded state of the Parthenon, it bothered him, and there was a part of him that thought: I am the man who can save this. I can save these beautiful treasures.

AD: And it’s worth saving, and if I get the credit, all the better.

KE: Yes.

AD: Right. And it’s interesting when you’re talking about Mary being a martyr, because, you know, I didn’t necessarily read it that way. At the same time that I’m hoping that more of Lord Elgin’s nose falls off, I’m also thinking, well, why does she keep putting up with this and how is she constantly tricked by him, why doesn’t she open her eyes and see what’s actually happening?

KE: She does see, but I think it’s so difficult for us in our twenty-first century perspective to understand what it was like to be a woman and a wife in the late 1700s, early 1800s. Women had no legal standing, and one simply did not just leave one’s husband. Mary thought that it was her job to do whatever it was she had to do to help make her husband the
great man that Destiny intended him to be.


AD: Right.

KE: And for a very long time, she loved him and she acted in that spirit, until it became completely intolerable. And then she rebelled. But then, even after she rebelled, she was still willing to stay with him. You know, it was Elgin who took the final steps to end the marriage.

AD: Right. I’m just thinking that if I was Mary and Elgin was locked away in France, I don’t know that I would have been crusading quite as hard as she was to get him out.

KE: I know. And look at—not only did he not reward her for it, he accused her falsely of doing terrible things, while she was doing nothing but trying to help him get out of prison. I don’t see her as a martyr, either, by the way, and I’m glad you didn’t read it that way. I think she was someone who—I admire the way that even after many terrible things happened to her, she still went on, and still lived a good life, and a fulfilling and productive life. And in many ways, a joyful life, and found meaning in her life. Even though he tried his best to utterly destroy her.

AD: Yeah, it really did seem to be a case of Lord Elgin’s punishment in life was having to live with the fact that he was Lord Elgin.

KE: Yeah, can you believe some poor woman came along afterwards and had eight more children with him?

AD: You know, when I read that in the afterward I was thinking: “What? Really?” But he must have been…

KE: I know, it’s shocking.

AD: …he must have been a very charming man when he put his mind to it.

KE: Yes, and I think there was something about that four-letter word “Lord” in front of his name, gave him a certain amount of privileges.

AD: Umm hmm.

KE: But you know, we still haven’t answered my question, and we may never answer my question, which is: how can we explain that figments of our own imagination rise up, and contact us, and have psyches that are separate from our own to the extent that they start bossing us around?

AD: I’m weak-willed. Is that the answer? I don’t know. Like, I mean, I suppose we could guess, or put out our hypothesis, but I don’t really have an answer. All I am is glad that it does happen, and happy to write it down when it is occurring.

KE: So you are a person—as am I—who is happy to accept the mystery of it?

AD: Yeah. It’s not always so mysterious to me. Marianne Engel did come to me in an entirely mysterious way, present herself more-or-less fully formed, and talked to me. But for me that’s the exception rather than the rule. I mean, a lot of time I do so much background research on a character—character sketches, diary entries, letters they wrote, umm, drawings of what they look like, decisions on what type of clothing they will wear—that eventually I coax a persona out of the research.

KE: What’s so interesting to me is we go through the exact same research process, but you’re researching a fictional character, so your facts are coming from research and really from your own mind, and I’m going through the same process but I’m researching the actual facts about an historical figure who existed.

AD: Right, so you’re reading…

KE: But we’re still going through…

AD: You’re reading the actual letters of Mary…

KE: Yes.

AD: …whereas I would read those letters, too, but I’d also have to write them.

KE: Right, right. Yeah, that is fascinating, and I think that’s an interesting point for readers. I know—I also write screenplays, and I do those same exercises when I’m working on screen characters, you know, I write biographies for them, and maybe will write a letter in their voice, and that sort of thing, and imagine what their school experiences were like. And that’s—those are just the nuts and bolts of creating a character, right?

AD: Right.

KE: I think people don’t really understand that, that there is this birthing process.

AD: I think that what would really surprise people is just the enormous amount of work and research that—even as we’re doing it—we just know it’s never going to make it into the final book. It’s what we have to know, it’s essential that we do it, we can’t create these characters without doing it, but you just know—the poetry that your character is writing is not going to make it into the book, for example.

KE: Hmm. So did you write the poems that he wrote to Marianne?

AD: Yeah, of course I did.

KE: Very interesting. I don’t know if I would have guessed that. That’s wonderful. Umm… so maybe someday you’ll publish them. Now I want to see them.

AD: Oh, but I think this is quite interesting as well. I will not publish them. I will burn that stuff before I leave this earth. I have no desire to leave behind the research materials or unfinished writing.

KE: Hmmm.

AD: For me, the only thing I want to see published is what I’ve signed off on. A book where I feel that every word is exactly the way that I want it to be.

KE: Well, Andrew, you’re going to have a lot of angry biographers after you’re gone.

AD: Well, yeah, okay, along this line, final question—well, maybe this is the final question, we’ve been talking for almost an hour now, you know…

KE: Oh wow. It flew by.

AD: …we had that bit before we actually hit the record button. Nabokov. The publication of The Original of Laura, his unfinished book, which he left behind and he instructed his wife to destroy his unfinished work. She couldn’t do it, and it was passed along to his kid and now, I think it’s after—oh, I don’t know, however many decades—it’s finally coming out. Umm… you know what I’m talking about?

KE: Yes, and are we Nabokov fans happy about that?

AD: Well, I’m a Nabokov fan. I’m incensed. Like, I am so unhappy that his wishes are being ignored…

KE: Right.

AD: …and that work he considered unfinished is being published. I mean, this is not a case of some writer where we don’t have enough work. I mean, he produced, what, a dozen? Thirteen novels, or something? Like I mean, this isn’t necessary for his legacy, as it is. This isn’t necessary to provide material from which to work. I find it to be a publication of stuff that he didn’t believe was ready to go. And where do you fall?

KE: You know, I think the problem with the Nabokov is that we’re too close to it. I think it would be fascinating to see an early draft of Jane Austen’s at this point. Because people would examine it from a purely scholarly point of view, without sort of passing judgment on the author. Certainly if someone had said to me, “Don’t release this,” I wouldn’t do it.

AD: Um hmm.

KE: I don’t know, I’m very torn, because there’s a scholarly part of me (that) thinks that at some point our work belongs to the world.

AD: Right.

KE: We belong to the world. But we are also—you know, in a way I think of us as I think of my characters. We belong to the world, but on the other hand while we’re alive in this world and our descendents are alive, we also have to function as private human beings, you know, who hold a sense of ourselves private and dear. So you know, I’m a little bit torn. I would love to see Nabokov’s work in a hundred years, but maybe not right now. I’m having the sort of opposite experience because my next book is a retelling of sorts of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. But from a female point of view. And I just recently read Bram Stoker’s handwritten notes for the book Dracula…

AD: Um hmm.

KE: And I have made use of them. Some of the things that he toyed with and characters that he toyed with, who didn’t make it into Dracula, I have decided, it just hit me, that it would be so much fun to include these characters in my book. So you know, I’m sort of directly involved in this process that you’re talking about. And funnily enough, Stoker’s widow didn’t—she sold his handwritten notes on Dracula for two pounds.

AD: Oh!

KE: To a library. So he mustn’t have left any instructions for them, and she certainly didn’t care about them whatsoever. So you know, but here I am, a hundred years later, kind of making personal use of them, so it’s an interesting and complicated question for me.

AD: Right. And it’s very interesting to hear you talk about your next book. You don’t worry about it flying away if you talk about it before it’s been published?

KE: Umm, I don’t worry about it because I know it won’t fly away, because, one, I’ve cast a spell on it, and, two, I work from a very extensive outline. So before I agreed with myself to sell this novel to Doubleday, I wrote a hundred-and-something page outline, convincing myself, that I would be able to deliver the book. So…

AD: Good Lord.

KE: … I know the book is solidly within me.

AD: How closely do you stick to that outline?

KE: Well, it’s very interesting, and you’ll appreciate this. It sort of goes along with what we’ve been talking about. About a week ago, a few of my characters decided that they were going to change a couple of plotlines.

AD: Which is a very, very good sign.

KE: Yes. And what can you do? You have to let them.

AD: They don’t like to be pushed around.

KE: They don’t. You have to give them their freedom. Because we know that they will tell us exactly what this is supposed to be. Now, I was so frustrated with the lack of speed with which they were filling me in on the details, that last Thursday I had a good long cry about it. I was so frustrated with them changing up everything behind my back that I literally sat on this sofa where I’m sitting now and I wept. So I think they took pity on me and they’ve been slowly divulging more of what they want.

AD: I see this as a natural ending point for our conversation, with you weeping for your art. I love that.



]]> General http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=21 Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:19:56 -0400 Who owns art? Who owns freedom? http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=19 From my blog at the Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-essex/who-owns-art-who-owns-dem_b_218161.html

After years of announcements and embarrassing delays, the New Acropolis Museum -- a $190 million spectacular building designed by Bernard Tschumi -- will finally have its official opening on June 20. Yet the dramatic glass gallery on the top floor overlooking the Acropolis and facing the Parthenon will remain empty.

Built specifically as a catalyst for the return of the Elgin Marbles or Parthenon Sculptures, those controversial treasures that were -- depending upon your point of view -- either rescued or stolen by Lord Elgin during the Napoleonic Wars, the gallery is a physical embodiment of the passionate argument that the Greek government and its many allies in the archeological, artistic, and legal circles have waged for two hundred years.

While it's easy to side with the Greeks and decry the British as post-imperial pigs, it's important to examine the complexity of the issue. In my novel, Stealing Athena, I chronicle the journey of these sculptures from their inception in the Age of Perikles through their placement 2300 years later in the British Museum. Being intimately acquainted with the story and having taken up residency recently in London -- and with apologies to all my Greek friends and readers -- I have had a difficult time deciding which argument to support.

In the early 1800s when Napoleon was pillaging the treasures of Italy and Egypt for the Louvre, Elgin, British ambassador to Constantinople, appealed -- through his wife's notorious female allure -- to the Ottoman Sultan, occupier of Athens, to remove about half of the Parthenon's
sculptural decorations. Yes, Elgin was acting with the arrogance of empire and trying to beat Napoleon at his own game, but he and his wife were also deeply disturbed at the horrific condition of the Parthenon. The Turkish occupiers were grinding up its priceless columns and statues to construct rude huts, as well as selling chunks of the building to tourists and collectors eager to own a piece of it. The Elgins believed that if they did not act quickly, the Parthenon's remaining sculptural wonders would soon be gone.

With permission in the form of a still-controversial firman, Elgin used his wife's money to remove the marbles and transport them back to England. After a series of disasters, including retrieving them from the bottom of the sea after a shipwreck, and following an exhaustive Parliamentary investigation to determine if Elgin had acted outside of the law, he sold the collection to the government.

In my opinion, the English have been excellent stewards of the marbles. The British Museum is free of charge and open every single day. Anyone who has tried to conduct research in or tour the museums of Athens, with their many strikes and irregular hours, will appreciate this predictability and functionality. The British have also argued that Greece was a notoriously unstable place; therefore, returning the marbles would put them in possible danger.

In recent years, as millions of tourists have poured into Athens, and Greece entered the European Union, this argument has seemed ridiculous. However, last December, riots broke out across Athens after police shot a teenager. The violence, which shut down parts of the city, went on for two weeks and was at times completely out of control, and tourists canceled their visits to Athens in droves.

By contrast, in London this spring when violence broke out between G20 Summit rioters and police, though one protestor died, the violence was rapidly contained, and life in the city went on.

The British are also concerned that returning the marbles will open a world-wide Pandora's box of demands upon museums worldwide to send back all artifacts to their countries of origin. As Americans, we must especially ask if we would welcome this. How would we feel if,
say, the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art were reduced to -- what? Some Navajo blankets and a few Edward Hopper paintings?

And yet, one must keep in mind the singular meaning and relevancy of the Parthenon Sculptures to the Greek people. Perikles convinced the Athenians to fund construction of the Parthenon to commemorate Athens' victory over the Persian invaders at the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians believed that despite being hugely outnumbered, they lost a mere 192 soldiers to the Persian casualties of 6400 because Athena fought on their side. Had Athens lost that battle in 490 B.C., the entire story of Western civilization might have taken a different turn. Democracy, then in its infancy, may have been crushed once and for all and remembered as an historical footnote similar to other failed utopian experiments.

In his famous Funeral Oration, Perikles laid out the tenants of democratic thinking and culture, stating that the Athenians did not need a Homer to tell their story; rather, "these imperishable
monuments" would speak for the greatness of their civilization, culture, and way of life.

In deciding the case of the Parthenon Sculptures we must ask not only the question of who owns art, but who owns democracy and freedom? It might be argued that the British have carried on these traditions through time with more efficacy and dedication than the Greeks.

On the other hand, the British people -- as opposed to the British Museum -- seem determined to see justice for the Greeks. A recent opinion poll revealed that out of 99,340 people polled, a massive 91,822 voted in favor of returning the marbles. Last year, Cambridge University hosted a debate on the issue, and the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures won with overwhelming numbers.

If the marbles are returned to Greece -- and it seems to me that eventually, this will happen -- it should not be done on the basis of returning "colonial booty," as Elgin's present-day detractors have labeled it. Nor should the return open the doors of museums worldwide and empty the galleries of non-native art. These sculptures are a unique and special case, symbols to the world of the greatness that may rise out of a society that values both art and freedom. The return should happen simply because it would be thrilling to see a now-divided architectural wonder made whole again.



]]> General http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=19 Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:24:15 -0400 “Mishap in Memphis” OR “Joys and Sorrows along the Book Tour Trail.” http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=18 I want to apologize profusely to anyone who came to Davis Kidd Bookstore in Memphis last month to see me. I’d spent the day doing local media to promote the event, and apparently, a nice group had arrived at 6pm. Too bad that I had been asked to arrive at 7pm! I was six minutes away in a hotel, yet no one called me. I could have been dead! Anyway, stuff happens, but a big mea culpa.

Still, Memphis is a great town! I walked along the Mississippi River and toured ever-gentrifying downtown with my good friend Andrea Woods who treated me to one of my favorite Southern delicacies, Shrimp and Grits. I stayed at the historic Peabody Hotel, where every day at 5pm, a red carpet unrolls, and the resident ducks promenade from the lobby fountain, where they live by day, to the Duck Penthouse, where they reside at night. It’s really something to see!


A few of the famous Peabody Ducks


I also did a fun interview with Marybeth Conley and Alex Coleman on WREG’s Live at Nine. These folks are so welcoming! (And they actually read the book!) Check out the segment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsAvkPJSiOA

IN KANSAS CITY, I had dinner with the Mother/Daughter/Daughter-in-Law Book Club that has been meeting regularly for over twenty years. Dinner was at the home of Bobbee Siemens overlooking the lush golf course of the Kansas City Country Club. We not only had wine and gourmet food, but a rousing discussion of STEALING ATHENA, literary matters, mothering, and all the topics women generally cover when we get together. Vivien Jennings, owner of Rainy Day Books—one of those rare and wonderful independent bookshops where the staff knows its inventory and hand-sells literature—arranged the event, with a reading following at the bookstore for a larger group. On behalf of all authors on tour, I would appeal to booksellers everywhere to consider arranging these sorts of events. They are such a pleasure for the author, and a special treat for the book clubs as well.


Kansas City’s Mother/Daughter/Daughter-in-Law Book Club. Vivien Jennings, owner of Rainy Day books in foreground on right.

From June 12-14th, I’ll be at the HISTORICAL NOVEL SOCIETY 2009 CONFERENCE in Schaumberg, Illinois. At 8:30 AM on Saturday the 13th (8:30 AM! Obviously scheduled by someone who has never met me), I’ll be doing a panel with my good friends C. W. (Christopher) Gortner (THE SECRET LION; THE LAST QUEEN) and Michelle Moran (NEFERTITI; THE HERETIC QUEEN). Both are great historical novelists and spectacular people, and the discussion promises to be lively.

Please also join me in IOWA CITY on June 15th at PRAIRIE LIGHTS BOOKS at 7pm, where I’ll be doing a reading as part of the Summer Writing Festival, an annual event in Iowa City.

In July, I’ll be back in London and once again in search of all things Victorian and Gothic.

‘Til then…
Karen
]]> General http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=18 Tue, 9 Jun 2009 17:16:10 -0400 Women: Liberated and Unhappier? http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=17
Readers, what do you think? Would love to hear your comments and perceptions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26douthat.html?th&emc=th]]> General http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=17 Sun, 7 Jun 2009 21:58:16 -0400 Also posted in the New York Times blog, MOTHERLODE. http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=16
We all know that the war against women is often waged by women, and even more often, takes place within the family itself. I have explored this theme in a Mother’s Day essay, which is featured today in MOTHERLODE, the popular NEW YORK TIMES blog that intelligently explores all aspects of parenting and family issues.

Please take a look. I’d love to hear readers’ comments, particularly from mothers and daughters.
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/mother-daughter-tension-on-mothers-day/

Have a Happy Mother’s Day, ladies. I think we’ve all earned it.

As ever,
Karen
]]> General http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=16 Fri, 8 May 2009 17:24:14 -0400 The paperback and a Bettie Page bonus http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=15 I’m pleased to announce that the paperback edition of Stealing Athena,(with a saucy new cover) will be available wherever books are sold on April 28th. I will be returning to the States from London to tour in May and June, so please check in with the website for the dates and locations, and please do come out and see me. If we’ve never met, please introduce yourself!

http://karenessex.com/lectures.html

I’m also booking phone chats (and dinners, if the locale is right) with book clubs so if your group is reading Stealing Athena (or one of my other novels, for that matter), please go to the website and sign up for a possible chat.

http://karenessex.com/bookclubs.html

Also, with the passing of Bettie Page in December, I received many inquiries as to where to find my original L. A. Weekly article, In Search of Bettie Page, that led to Bettie’s subsequent resurfacing and revival. To commemorate Bettie’s birthday, which just passed on April 22nd, I’ve posted the article in its original form on the website, so please read and enjoy, and send your loving thoughts to our late dark angel.

http://www.karenessex.com/bettiepage.html

Thanks to everyone who’s been following and commenting on the blog. I’ll continue to blog during the tour, and after, I’ll be back in London (and back inside my Gothic fantasy) and chronicling the process again.

Hope to see you soon on the road, or hear from you on the site.



As ever,

Karen
]]> General http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=15 Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:55:03 -0400 The Highgate Cemetery: in search of the Highgate Vampire http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=13
I was moved by the monument of the Victorian boxer Thomas Sayers, who wanted his faithful dog, Tim, commemorated as well. Though boxing was illegal in the 19th century, Sayers was enormously popular, and his funeral was attended by 10,000 people—a larger funeral than the Duke of Wellington's.

“The Victorians had very small weddings and very big funerals.”

Thus said our cheery guide by way of explaining the elaborate monuments of Highgate Cemetery, where I and my friend Caroline Kellett-Fraysse, fellow writer and journalist and connoisseur of all things esoteric, recently spent a sunny Tuesday afternoon. We had wanted to inspect this final resting place of Karl Marx, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and a host of other famous and infamous folks, and discovered that the older and more interesting part of the cemetery was only open by tour (unless one actually dies). Immaculately kept, it has a studied overgrown quality, the sort perfected by English gardeners over the centuries.

We specifically wanted to explore Highgate because it is the fictional resting place of Lucy Westenra, the vixen/victim of the vampire in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” though Stoker changed the name of the place to Kingstead. As we walked past the more ornate monuments like the Egyptian Hall, done in a style reminiscent of the Valley of the Kings, or the many-sided Circle of Lebanon, a many-vaulted tomb sitting dramatically beneath an ancient Cedar of Lebanon tree, I imagined poor Lucy buried within the vaults, only to be disentombed and subsequently slain and beheaded by the vampire hunters.

Another reason I wanted to come here was that Caroline had been telling me stories of the Highgate vampire, a 20th century vampire (?), ghost (?), and urban legend whose sightings have given rise to fresh vampire stories and rivalrous modern-day vampire slayers.

By the late 1960s, this beautiful Victorian cemetery had fallen into disrepair, not in the least because it had become a favorite meeting place of members of the counterculture experimenting with the occult (think “Easy Rider”). Around this time, a teenage girl claimed to have seen tombs opening and bodies rising from them. This attracted the attention of a vampire hunter who interviewed her, found her to be possessed, and performed an exorcism. Meanwhile, the ghostly figure of a man in a tall hat was spotted before he disappeared into a wall. Dead animals drained of blood began to appear in the neighborhood. Reminiscent of Lucy’s ordeal, a beautiful young woman turned up with punctures in her neck that she said she received while sleepwalking.

Then media got into the act. With television cameras present, the vampire slayer/exorcist entered the columbarium believed to house the creature, where they discovered three empty caskets. They then performed a Dr. Van Helsing-style with garlic, salt, and holy water. A boom was heard somewhere in the distance. The earth moved. And that was that.

But it wasn’t over. Soon thereafter, a headless corpse was discovered near the columbarium, and nearby, a coffin without a nameplate. Within it was a corpse that looked as if it was about three days dead, though no one had been buried in the cemetery in decades. The exorcist/vampire slayer reappeared and performed the necessary rituals, but he was not entirely successful. Signs of the vampire continued. The vampire slayer’s rival also appeared on the scene to perform a ritual vampire killing. But he was convicted on charges of desecrating a memorial when he tried to rid the grounds of the intruding undead.

More sightings happened. The original vampire slayer did some research and linked the mysterious creature back to a fiend who had fled Eastern Europe during a vampire epidemic. He discovered a house in North London once allegedly owned by this vampire, where he found the remains of black cats slaughtered in a ritual way. A menacing black specter ran him out of the house and harassed him the night long in his car. But at the break of day, he re-entered the house, found the vampire’s coffin, opened it, discovered a corpse, thrust a stake through its heart, and watched the creature turn to slime and dust before his eyes. Then he burned the slime and coffin in a funeral pyre on the front lawn. Whew!

While this story had many intriguing elements, what strikes me is that it was Bram Stoker who invented so many of the details of vampirism that real vampires seem to be acting out. Putting together a mishmash of old Romanian folklore, popular horror stories, and the Irish ghost and mythological stories he grew up hearing from his mother who was from County Sligo, he basically invented the creature we now think of as a vampire. I have had enough mysterious experiences myself to leave room in my belief system for absolutely everything. But I cannot help wonder if vampire mythology as laid out by Stoker has taken such hold in the popular imagination that these latter-day Lucys and Van Helsings are either creating the circumstances to reenact the events of Stoker’s novel, or if they are seeing vampiric evidence into phenomena that might be explained another way. That’s not to say that any perceived truck between the physical and metaphysical worlds inevitably has material explanations. But given the similarities between Stoker’s fiction and these real events, I do wonder if this particular case is not one of life imitating art.

Caroline quizzed our guide about the Highgate Vampire, but she claimed to have no knowledge of it.Oh, she’d heard rumors, but said that there were no specific tombs linked to the creature, and that it was probably all urban myth. We are certain that the facility is trying to prevent an onslaught of unwanted vampire and other curiosity seekers invading its pastoral gardens.

If you’d like to tour Highgate Cemetery, which is well worth doing even if you are not a vampire enthusiast, you must book a guided tour. Here is their official website:
http://highgate-cemetery.org/index.asp

If you want to find out more information about the Highgate Vampire, visit these websites that Caroline passed on to me:
http://vampires.monstrous.com/highgate_vampire.htm
http://www.timeout.com/london/features/4994/4.html
http://www.ghost-story.co.uk/stories/highgatevampire.html
2 pages of related background detail!
http://www.holygrail-church.fsnet.co.uk/Vampire%20Research%20Society.htm
Vampire Research Society

And if you do go to Highgate, end your tour as we did with tea on the patio at beautiful Waterlow Park, which is opposite the cemetery:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterlow_Park

Finally, I will leave you with this beautiful image from a cemetery monument, two hands shaking, meaning I will see you again on the other side.

]]> General http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=13 Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:23:16 -0400 Carlos Acosta, a Gothic fantasy, and the Swans http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=12
Friends and readers, you know how I like my swan themes. Readers often ask why I chose “Leonardo’s Swans” as the title to that book. I’ve always thought it was self-explanatory. Swans, like the heroines of the book, are creatures of immense grace, dignity, and power. In certain mythologies, swans represent the soul and one’s inner radiance. Swans are also associated with transformation. Zeus turned himself into a swan to seduce the mortal queen Leda. The misfit duckling of the fairy tale transformed into a beautiful swan. In “Swan Lake,” a princess and her retinue are condemned by an evil spirit to spend their days as swans until the pure love of a prince for the princess sets them free. Even though I’m now writing a Gothic novel, I am no less enamored with the myth and meaning of swans.

The other night at a dinner party, I had the pleasure of being seated next to ballet wonder and “Swan Lake” starCarlos Acosta. I had never seen him dance, though I’d heard all the comparisons to Nureyev and Baryshnikov, and that he was by far the dancer of his generation. Genial, down-to-earth, and hilariously funny, Carlos had us in hysterics as he told us behind the scene stories and acted out trying to catch a certain ballerina who had refused to rehearse. But my jaw dropped when he told me his personal story. No coddled prodigy, he was a break-dancer from Havana whose elderly father forced him to go to ballet lessons to get him off the streets.

That was when he was nine years old. By sixteen, he was on his way to an international career. It was like Billy Elliot in reverse (I must credit my friend Joe with this observation).

Carlos generously invited me to watch him perform before a sold out crowd in “Swan Lake” at the Royal Opera House on Saturday night where he was guest artist.I’ve been following ballet since I was a child, and I can honestly say that I don’t think there’s a male dancer performing today who can command the stage like Acosta. He has Nureyev’s lengthy elegance and grandeur, coupled with the muscular precision and strength of Baryshnikov. On top of that, his acting is passionate and moving. I also noticed that while he’s a star performer, he is a generous dance partner, giving the exquisite Tamara Rojo room to dazzle.

I ask you, friends—from Havana break-dancer to international ballet star—is it not the story of a swan? Carlos’ amazing journey has been published in his autobiography, “No Way Home. “ Check it out! Also, look him up on youtube.

http://www.amazon.com/No-Way-Home-Dancers-Journey/dp/141656716X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238361285&sr=1-2

Another unexpected pleasure of the ballet was that the second act set turned out to be a visual representation of my Gothic fantasy. With its sumptuous colors of aubergine, scarlet, black, and gold, and its immense mirrors and candelabras, and the appearance of the villain in modern Goth regalia, it was the perfect ominous setting for enchantment. The look of that set is what I want my novel to feel like—lush, romantic, fantastical, whimsical, mysterious, dangerous, and a place where anything, anything at all, might happen. An ambiance where the reader feels what the characters feel—both trepidation and thrall all at once. Translating this imagery to prose will be the challenge. But it’s nice to have exciting images to hold in my mind as I write.



On the Royal Opera House website, you can see more of these stunning sets and all sorts of behind the scene videos of getting a ballet on stage. It’s really fascinating:

http://www.rohedswanlake.org.uk/pgs/main/video_play.asp?id=5&Qid=238

Next blog: We walk through a Victorian cemetery. ]]> General http://karenessex.com/blog/index.php?itemid=12 Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:06:28 -0400