Creativity Friday: Interview and book giveaway with Sandra Gulland, author of Mistress of the Sun

This Creativity Friday, I am fortunate to have Sandra Gulland as my guest. Sandra is the internationally acclaimed author of the Joséphine B. trilogy, which has sold over a million copies worldwide and been translated into thirteen languages. Her new novel, Mistress of the Sun (Touchstone/Simon and Schuster) was just released in paperback and has already hit the Canadian bestseller lists; it is the focus for my interview today.

As I wrote in my review yesterday, Mistress of the Sun is an opulent treasure of a historical novel. Set in seventeenth century France, Mistress of the Sun is the story of Louise de la Vallière, nicknamed Petite, who is swept into a secret, decade-long affair with Sun King Louis XIV.

In this interview, Sandra generously shares with us her experience writing Mistress of the Sun—an intensive process that took her eight years of research, travel, writing, and editing. It’s an inspiring look inside a writer’s creative process—a real treasure trove for anyone who’s interested in what’s really involved in writing a novel set in a long-ago time. Not only that, but we’re giving away a copy of Mistress of the Sun to one lucky blog commentor. (Details at the end of this post. However, if you can’t wait, you can buy it here from Amazon.)

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Kris Waldherr: One of the things which struck me about Mistress of the Sun was that you pulled off a difficult balancing act: The novel is both impeccably researched and gorgeously written. (Usually historical novels strike me as being tipped one way or the other.) Of researching and writing, which do prefer? And why?

Sandra Gulland: Oh, a difficult question! I love research — love getting lost in it, either in a wandering way, like a child in a toy store, or in a obsessive, focused hunt for information. But I love the writing — the fictional re-creation — even more, I think. Were it simply the research, I could write non-fiction, but it’s “the bringing to life” part of writing a novel that’s the main focus for me, and the reason for my passion for research.

KW: Related question: What is your research process like? Do you research as you write your novel? Or do you do the bulk of it beforehand? How did your research affect your plot choices for Mistress of the Sun?

SG: I try to be systematic about my research, but invariably I fail. I search out books, and buy in great numbers. Right now, because my husband and I are in a city, I’m making exhaustive use of the library system; soon I’m going to be deluged with all the books I’ve requested. (Some of these, I’m sure, I will decide to buy, so that I can freely mark them up.)

I did a great deal of research before writing Mistress of the Sun, but I also researched during and between drafts. Often I don’t know what I need to know until I’m deeply into a novel.

I didn’t run into too many surprises researching Louise’s story: her biographers have done a respectable job, so I had a good foundation. (This was not the case with Josephine.) Often research provides the answer to a problem. I was disturbed by the way Louise’s good friend Nicole simply disappeared from her life, for example. Fiction requires a certain degree of “wrapping-up” and life doesn’t always comply. Therefore I was both astonished and pleased to discover, in a footnote in the Bastille Archives, that Nicole ended up in Louise’s convent. (Learn more about Sandra’s research methods here.)

KW: I read that you discovered Louise de la Valliere, the heroine of The Mistress of the Sun, while researching Josephine Bonaparte for your Josephine B. trilogy. Can you describe the “aha” moment that
introduced you to Louise?

It was an intense “aha” that led almost immediately to writing a feverish short story (a story that ultimately became Mistress of the Sun). What I remember most clearly was finishing that story: my husband’s company was having a sales conference, and, since we lived in the country, some of the reps were staying with us. I remember emerging from my office shaken, and in tears, having just come to the end of the story — and was quite taken aback to discover men in our kitchen sipping herbal tea. As if a murder hadn’t just happened!

KW: In Mistress of the Sun, I loved how you developed the character of Sun King Louis XIV, who becomes Louise’s lover. Louis is a tricky, complex man, with many personal contradictions. Though Mistress of the Sun is primarily the story of Louise’s life as this king’s mistress, it’s also a recounting of how Louis shaped his mythos, as it were, into becoming the larger-than-life Sun King we recognize from history, and how this affected his relations with those he loved. What was involved in writing his character arc? Did you find yourself falling in and out of love with Louis as you wrote about him?

SG: Louis is, at heart, a good person and a good king, but this combination can be challenging for any man. He was born and died on a stage, so he rarely let his emotions show, yet he was a very emotional man (he cried easily). This must have been difficult for him.

KW: I was fascinated to learn that you involved a book club during the eight years that you were writing Mistress of the Sun. What did they do specifically? Were there any dramatic rewrites which occurred after receiving their feedback?

Some of the changes I made were meaty: I cut one chapter, for example. Other changes were subtle. I dropped hints about the true character of a certain unmentionable person (no spoilers here!) so that what happens in the novel didn’t come as a complete surprise, for example, and, too, I allowed our Petite some vindication. These changes were significant, in my view.

KW: Mistress of the Sun is written in third person; your Josephine B. trilogy was written in first person. Which do you prefer? What was it like to switch to third person, after writing three books from Josephine’s point of view? How did writing in the third person free you? Or not?

SG: I find the third person point of view very challenging. It’s elastic and requires discipline (not my strong suit). I think the first person voice is much easier (if you can find that voice), both for the writer and the reader, but it was important to me as a writer to expand my pallet. Too, the voice had to be right for the story. It wouldn’t have worked in the first person.

KW: Your narrator’s “voice” in Mistress of the Sun is opulent, wise but also dryly witty. I found myself laughing out loud at some of your passages; for example, your descriptions of Louise’s new stepfather
are priceless. It seems to me that you’re using humor to pop any illusions the reader might have about the infallibility of royalty—they’re human like us, only more ridiculous at times. After writing four books in which the ruling classes are prominently featured, what’s your takeaway?

SG: I actually think of myself as a bit of a comic writer, in a Winnie-the-Pooh sort of way. I think I tend to poke fun at people of all classes (think of Clorine, Petite’s maid, for example), but I have to admit that it is delicious fun to aim at the royalty. They take themselves so seriously!

KW: I follow you on Twitter and also read your very inspiring writing blog. You’ve been mentioning outlining your new novel and submitting it to your agent. What’s involved with that? Any advice for aspiring novelists?

SG: Outlining my next novel has been an interesting experience for me. I’ve always had some kind of plan, but I’ve never thought it out in such detail before. (And too, I’ve always ignored the plan.) This time I’m sketching it out scene by scene, and thinking in scenes makes a big difference, I think. It remains to be seen if it helps.

KW: Finally, I’m very enticed by the hints you’ve posted about your new novel’s subject matter. Can you tell me more about what we can look forward to? Will this take another eight years to be published. (I hope not!)

SG: I hope not, too! (That’s one of the reasons I’m giving so much thought to the story before I begin to write.)

It’s a very exciting subject, but a challenging one to tackle. Claude des Oeillets, Madame de Montespan’s maid, is the heroine. That seems like a simple subject, does it not? Not so! She was raised by actors, and her mother was a dramatic star, mentored by the great playwright Pierre Corneille. So there’s all that wonderful theatrical world, which was so extremely rich at that time (Corneille, Molière, Racine). Claude was also the go-between between Madame de Montespan and Madame Voisin, the woman who was at the center of the Affair of the Poisons: again, a big subject. And too, she had a child by the King: another dramatic dimension.

A big story, for sure!

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As I mentioned above, Touchstone Books has generously given us a copy of Mistress of the Sun to raffle off here. To win it, simply leave a comment by midnight, May 21, 2009. For a bonus entry, include your answer to the following question:

Is there a king or queen from history you’d have an affair with? If so, who and why?

(As for myself, I know that I would not choose Henry VIII. Too dangerous! But Louis XIV might be a bit more appealing….)

Only one comment per person; book can only be shipped to U.S. mailing address. Winner will be chosen at random and announced here May 22 in our next Creativity Friday. Good luck to all!

• Filed under blogs we read, creativity, friends and colleagues, giveaways and raffles, interviews | 33 Responses

Tudors week: Interview and book giveaway with Alisa Libby, author of The King’s Rose

For this Creativity Friday, I thought it would be fun to interview another author about her work. Alisa Libby, author of the novel The King’s Rose, is my guest here today—perfect timing for Tudors week on this blog! Not only has she graciously agreed to answer all my questions, she’s also giving away a copy of The King’s Rose to one lucky commenter. (Details at the end of the interview.)

The King’s Rose is about teen queen Catherine Howard, the unfortunate fifth wife of Henry VIII. In most books about her, Catherine is usually described as a frivolous teenager with loose ways and a taste for shiny baubles. In Libby’s hands, Catherine takes on weight to become a thoughtful, tragic heroine caught between explosive familial expectations, romantic desires, and political plotting. An intense and haunting read.

Libby is also the author of The Blood Confession, a novel about Elizabeth Bathory. She lives in the Boston area with her husband. To learn more about The King’s Rose and Alisa Libby, visit her website.

BTW, if you’re just checking in now, earlier this week author Carlyn Beccia (The Raucous Royals) gave us a juicy guest post about Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. Yesterday, I wrote about Anne Boleyn, the king’s second wife who was incidentally a cousin of Catherine Howard; both women lost their heads and crowns for supposedly cuckolding the king. All of the queens mentioned during Tudors week are included in my book Doomed Queens.

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Kris Waldherr: In your first novel, The Blood Confession, you wrote about Elizabeth Bathory, the mad countess who murdered hundreds of young girls to bathe in their blood. In your second, you’ve written about Catherine Howard, an executed (some might even say murdered) young queen—sort of the flip side to Elizabeth. What inspired you to write about Catherine Howard? Are there any connections for you between these two historical figures?

Alisa Libby: I was drawn to both of these women because of their strange, illogical decisions. In spite of their differences, I had a similar reaction to reading about each of them: “What in the world was she thinking?” For Bathory, the question is for obvious reasons—she was a murderess with a very strange beauty regimen. As for Catherine, she was accused of having an affair with a groom of the king’s chamber during her marriage to King Henry. And this king had already beheaded a previous wife due to similar charges—her own cousin, Anne Boleyn. So, assuming that she was not framed for these crimes (making her that innocent would have made her less interesting to me) I wondered: what was she thinking? Was she deliberately cruel to King Henry, or overruled by passion and certain that her secret would be safe? I wrote both of my books to create a personal logic—though not always entirely logical—for each of my character’s seemingly inexplicable actions.

KW: One of the things which struck me the most about The King’s Rose was that your portrayal of Catherine Howard is compellingly sympathetic and very, very sad. Since you’ve written your novel in the first voice, it makes the young queen’s tragic choices very understandable; she’s clearly trapped by forces beyond her control. Was it difficult to come up with Catherine’s voice? How much did your own personality and life experiences influence the way you chose to present her?

AL: I found it very easy to believe that Catherine, being used as a pawn by her family, would have little choice in what happened to her. The fact that her life was controlled by others struck me as something teenagers may be able to relate to. I also had to imagine how Catherine’s early life would affect her character. She was shipped off to live with her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, at the age of ten, after her mother’s death. This was not out of the ordinary, but it helped me imagine a girl with a deep desire for attention and affection. The trysts with two young men while she lived in the Duchess’s establishment could, I thought, support this claim. Catherine was wooed, to some extent, by Henry’s affections and—more importantly—his lavish gifts. This all made her seem like a real person to me, and her voice developed out of these decisions.

KW: Compared to most biographies and novels of Henry VIII and his ill-fated queens, The King’s Rose is somewhat revisionist. In many of these other books, Catherine usually comes off as the Lydia Bennett of Henry’s wives—a teenager more concerned with dancing, flirting, and finery than her role in history. (I’m especially thinking of her portrayal in Phillippa Gregory’s The Boleyn Inheritance.) Do you consider your portrayal of Catherine Howard more historically accurate? If so, why?

AL: I’m perfectly comfortable with agreeing that this is a “revisionist” history. It is fiction, after all, and though I did a good deal of research to get the details right, at a certain point a writer has to choose the story they want to tell and fill in the gaps that those history texts leave behind. I can’t actually purport to know what Catherine was thinking, or what she spoke to her ladies about, or whether or not she felt fear. But it’s my job as an author to fill in those details in a way I found both believable and interesting.

That said, Catherine does enjoy a fair amount of dancing, flirting and finery, but I couldn’t allow her to be only that and nothing else. While the accounts don’t paint her as the greatest thinker, I had a hard time imagining that she wouldn’t have had any trepidation about marrying King Henry—especially if she was in love with someone else at the time.

KW: Parts of The King’s Rose reminded me of fairy tales: in particular, Cinderella and Bluebeard. I also read a review which mentioned that The Blood Confession contained folkloric motifs reminiscent of Snow White. How important are folklore and fairy tales to your work as a novelist?

AL: I have a deep love of fairy tales. These stories are so embedded in our subconscious and in our lives that the connections are so easy to make. Catherine’s story is very much a Cinderella story—a terrifying one, but the similarities are still there. And the connection between Countess Bathory and the wicked queen obsessed with being “the fairest of them all” (and willing to murder in order to remain the fairest) was so natural. This only makes these old tales more fascinating to me: though fabulous, they are intrinsically connected to the human experience.

KW: The character of Henry VIII is difficult to parse in The King’s Rose, since we’re seeing him through Catherine’s eyes. Though they are a married couple, there’s a sense that there’s not truly intimate; she really doesn’t know him at all. At times, Henry is indulgent and loving to Catherine; other times, he is mercurial and violent, especially when you describe his decision to execute Margaret Pole. What’s your take on Henry VIII?

AL: Henry was a mix of contradictions, especially at this point in his life. From the accounts I read, he was unpredictable, constantly changing his mind on important matters. It was said that the king’s mind could be different after dinner than it was before. Also, I think that the nature of being king and wielding that kind of power made true intimacy impossible—even with his own wife. All of his closest advisors had their own best interests at heart. The selection of his brides was done with political motivations moving behind the scenes, even if Henry didn’t see them clearly. Catherine was not the “rose without a thorn” that Henry believed her to be, but her family was sure to make him think that she was.

KW: I was fascinated to read that you traveled to England to research The King’s Rose, and even visited Catherine Howard’s grave. What was that like? Any interesting (possibly supernatural) experiences to share? I read that there’s a rumor her ghost still walks Hampton Court.

AL: It was at Hampton Court that Catherine was first arrested, and supposedly she fled from the guards down a particular hallway screaming Henry’s name. The guards caught up with her and dragged her back to her room. Catherine never did see the king again, and was never able to explain to him her actions or beg his forgiveness. According to legend, Catherine’s ghost traverses this gallery shouting “Henry! Henry!”

My husband and I did walk down this very hallway on a ghost tour of Hampton Court. It was all very beautiful, but I didn’t see any ghosts there. I generally don’t have much luck (or misfortune, depending on how you look at it) in communicating with ghosts. I did have this wild fantasy of getting some message from beyond the grave—or at least receiving Catherine’s blessing in telling my version of her life. She was a real person, after all. I kept thinking, “I’m here. If you have anything you want to tell me, please say it now.”

Though I didn’t see her ghost, I did feel a profound sense of gratitude when we went to visit her burial place in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London. Catherine doesn’t often get visitors (unlike her cousin Anne, buried right beside her) but we had come a long way just to see her. I like to think that she was grateful.

KW: Finally, do you think there’s any way Catherine could have outwitted fate to live happily ever after?

AL: If she had become pregnant and given birth to a healthy boy, that would have saved her life. I don’t think any of her opponents would have been able to touch her: the king wouldn’t have allowed anything to besmirch the line of succession if it included another boy. If she had managed to do this (which may or may not have been possible, considering Henry’s age and health) and had no affairs—or at least been more discreet about them—she could have been safe. The king died in 1547, less than seven years after they were wed. She would have been in her twenties and honored as a Dowager Queen. She may have even been able to marry her darling Culpeper, if her family saw fit to allow it.

KW: What are you working on next?

AL: I hope to work on another historical novel soon, but right now I need a break from all of that research! It’s a daunting process, [ed: totally agree with Alisa there!] and I need to embrace it whole-heartedly in order to write a book. Right now I’m working on some contemporary fiction—a bit of an experiment. I hope it turns into a book someday.

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As I mentioned above, Alisa is generously giving away an autographed copy of The King’s Rose to one lucky person. Thank you, Alisa!!! To enter the raffle, leave a comment on this post before Thursday, April 9 midnight EST. One winner will be chosen at random and announced the following day in my next Creativity Friday post.

Good luck to all!

• Filed under creativity, friends and colleagues, giveaways and raffles, interviews, queens | 41 Responses