Creativity Friday: FOR THE KING giveaway winner!

Drumroll please! Congratulations to DAKOTA—I’ll be sending you an e-mail shortly with information on how to claim your copy of Catherine Delors’ historical fiction book FOR THE KING.I hope you will enjoy it!

More posts coming soon! There is just so much going on here that I haven’t had a moment to spare:

1. The first draft of my novel THE LILY MAID has been turned in. I’m awaiting feedback from my agent any moment now….. (gnaws knuckles). in the meantime, I’m immersing myself in research for the next go ’round. My reading material includes biographies of two famous Pre-Raphaelite muses, Elizabeth Siddal and Jane Morris—my main character in THE LILY MAID becomes a muse to an influential artist during 1880s’ England.

2. We’re in the midst of designing and hanging a new show at the gallery which is being curated by my husband, anthropologist Thomas Ross Miller. It’s entitled ON THE ROAD OF BONES. This haunting art exhibit will feature native Siberian and American photographers documenting Russia’s Old Kolyma Highway, built by prisoners of Stalin’s infamous gulag.

3. I’m finalizing several e-books for the iPad. These include SACRED ANIMALS and an old picture book favorite, RAPUNZEL.

4. And so much more—and all before we leave on vacation in mid-August.

And how is your summer shaping up?

• Filed under The Novel, art and words, creativity, new projects, publications, publishing, studio and gallery, the art world | 2 Responses

Creativity Friday: School’s out….

… and Thea is now officially a kindergartener. The above photo was taken right after her preschool graduation celebration — look how pleased she looks! And now she is home until she begins summer camp in about two weeks. As for myself, my hours in the studio have been limited in the meantime. I’ve had to tie up a number of projects now that summer is upon me.

Here’s a quick overview of what’s what at this moment:

~ The first draft of The Novel (aka THE LILY MAID) is officially set aside for the next few weeks until my schedule frees up. The first draft is complete at 105,000 words — whew! That written, I still have a number of plot points and character arcs that require refining. I’m hoping that the time away will help me clarify my thinking as well as better judge what I have so far. Right now, I am careening between enthrallment and despair over all I’ve written. C’est normale, so I’ve been told. This is the longest manscript I’ve ever worked on — and fiction to boot! — so THE LILY MAID is brave new world territory for me.

~ I’m excited about e-books for the iPad. Toward that end, I’m moving forward on designing and producing THE BOOK OF GODDESSES e-book as well a a number of others: PERSEPHONE AND THE POMEGRANATE, SACRED ANIMALS, and more. So far, I’ve set up my publishing imprint with Apple’s iBooks, purchased my isbns, and am slowly mastering the finer points of the ePub digital format. (Apple’s iBooks only distributes ePubs, unlike Amazon’s Kindle which uses a proprietary format.) I’m finding ePub design to be a strange, slippery amalgam between website programming and book design. Much of what I’m learning as an e-book designer feels counterintuitive to me. But then again, it’s all new.

~ Related to above: I have a blog post on my experiences incubating about my discoveries and challenges designing for the ePub format so far. I hope to have that up once I have a chance to catch up in the studio, in a week or so. The short version is that my intention is to create the most beautiful, inspiring, and user-friendly e-books available despite the constraints of the medium. Here’s a peek at my e-book imprint logo, which will go within the front matter for each digital publication.

~ I’m considering making some of my more text-heavy books available for Kindle, such as THE BOOK OF GODDESSES. It seems as though people are wedded to one format or the other, based on what e-book device they own. For example, I’m amazed at how many people downloaded DOOMED QUEENS on their Kindles. However, I’m wondering if this is worth my effort, since the Kindle only handles black and white books at this time. I’d include all the art from my books, but obviously they’d be reproduced in black and white. Opinions? Thoughts?

~ We also have a new exhibit planned for next month at the gallery. I’m very excited about it since it will be curated by my husband, anthropologist Thomas Ross Miller. ON THE ROAD OF BONES will feature native Siberian and American photographers documenting Russia’s Old Kolyma Highway, built by prisoners of Stalin’s infamous gulag.

~ Next Friday (June 25) is our monthly tarot salon. Live in the NYC area? I hope you’ll stop by for a glass of wine, some chocolate and a reading. More information here.

And how is your summer shaping up so far?

• Filed under The Novel, be-mused, creativity, goddesses, new projects, publishing, the world around me | 2 Responses

Creativity Friday: Inspiring a Novel*, part 2 ~ and book giveaway winner!

First off, congratulations to Jana! You’ve won the DAUGHTERS OF THE WITCHING HILL book giveaway. I know you’ll enjoy this wonderful novel by Mary Sharratt — I adored it. I’ve contacted you by e-mail with instructions on how to claim it. If you don’t receive the e-mail, please leave me a comment on this post.

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It’s been about a month since my last The Novel update. Right now, I’m up to just past 90,000 words. That sounds like a lot, but only about 65,000 of them are “set”, meaning that they actually make sense within the context of the book; the other 25,000 are akin to loose sketches for scenes that may or may not end up included. To be honest, I’m not sure how The Novel may end — I ratchet back and forth between two endings, uncertain which fate feels more satisfying or appropriate for my heroine. It’s also become complicated since my characters have taken on a mind of their own. But, on a more definitive note, I finally have a title that I’m happy with which I’ll reveal in my next newsletter.

Previously I had written about two inspirations which have found their way into The Novel. The first was the paintings of John William Waterhouse— one character is based very loosely on Waterhouse and Whistler. My second inspiration post was about Schubert’s last string quintet, D. 956 which is performed during an important scene.

Here’s a third inspiration:

This drawing of the Lady of Shalott is a woodcut from the Moxon Tennyson, which featured the work of several prominent PreRaphaelite artists including Holman Hunt (above), Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Millais. The history of the Moxon Tennyson is an interesting one. Tennyson was reluctant to allow his poems to be published with illustrations. However, publisher Edward Moxon won the poet over by enlisting the talents of the PreRaphaelites for this uber-deluxe and expensive edition. He also arranged for the book’s illustrations to be prepared for publication by the Dalziel Brothers, perhaps the best engravers of their day.

Regardless, the book was a financial failure, though it’s now considered one of the most important illustrated books of the Victorian era. An English friend informed me that sometimes you can find illustrated pages from the Moxon Tennyson for sale in used book and print stores. He was kind enough to gift me with two of them, one which is of Rossetti’s version of the Lady of Shalott. I treasure them both.

Here’s my description of the Moxon Tennyson from The Novel:

I picked up the Moxon, opened to the Holman Hunt — a slice of paper fell out to indicate the illustration, annotated in pencil. “Note the supernatural elements,” he wrote.

The woodcut was a strange fey thing… Imagine, if you will, a tall woman standing as bent over as a Celtic tree, with huge piles of her dark hair floating above her, as if her tresses were held aloft by a hurricane force wind. Though she could be called beautiful, the gaze on her determined face was both intense and frightening. She stood inside a circle-shaped loom, which was set ankle-height — even I knew it was impractically close to the floor for any real weaver to use. The loom looked as though it had been transformed into a web, within which the Lady of Shalott was trapped like a fly.”

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* This is part of an ongoing occasional series of posts about inspiration for the two books I’m working on right now. The first is a novel set in Victorian England during the Aesthetics Movement. The second book is a follow up to DOOMED QUEENS.

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Creativity Friday: Inspiring a Novel*

As I work on The Novel these days (which is just about up to 71,000 words, hooray!), I’m finding inspiration in more places than I can keep track of. I know I’ve mentioned my semi-recent trip to Montreal to view the Waterhouse exhibit, which has several paintings that figure prominently within it. While art seems an obvious inspiration to someone such as myself, I’ve also been finding inspiration in music. In particular, Schubert’s last string quintet, D. 956.

Never heard of it? Even for hard core classical music fans, it’s wouldn’t be surprising if you hadn’t. It’s not one of the composer’s heavy hitters, like his oft-performed Trout quintet or Death and the Maiden quartet (which also makes a cameo appearance in the novel). But there’s something so transcendent about this quintet that I decided that it had to play a part during an important scene for my main character, which takes place at a concert.

Aside from the gorgeous music, the history of this quintet is touching. First off, it was one of the last compositions Franz Schubert wrote before he died in 1828 at the age of 31. Maybe I’m reading into it, but while listening to this quintet I get a sense of the composer railing against the limitations of life, especially in the exquisite second movement adagio — there’s a slightly schizophrenic quality in the way the music ricochets between sweet melody and over-the-top all hell breaking loose. Another interesting fact about this quintet: Instead of the usual two violas and one cello, this string quintet features one viola and two cellos, which gives the music a dark verocity. Also, the quintet wasn’t performed in public until 1884 — just three years before when my novel is placed. This made me consider how my fictional characters might respond to hearing it for the first time.

The quintet is such an intense piece of music that it reminds me of a scene from E. M. Foster’s ROOM WITH A VIEW (the book, though it’s also referenced in the Helena Bonham Carter movie). I’m paraphrasing here, but someone comments that playing Beethoven stirs the heroine Lucy Honeychurch up too much — ie: bad Victorian lady.

You can listen to a recording of Schubert’s string quintet, D. 956 here, courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (another radiant place of inspiration). Warning: the quintet is a good 45 minutes long, but you download it to listen at your convenience.

Here’s an excerpt describing it from The Novel:

The quintet began with several chords which promised tranquility. Alas, this was not to be — the instruments lurched into a passionate declaration of purpose that took my breath away. The double cellos offered a primal roughness. As soon as I’d girded myself for more of the same, the violins emerged from this chaos with a Viennese waltz-like song that suggested pure water burbling along a twisting stream. This theme continued for some time, interrupted periodically by chords that teased with the intensity of the opening, before dissolving back into a sharp fugue…. The fugue now built to such a climax of such intensity and speed that I could hardly stand it….

Next up was a plaintively slow adagio, to contrast against the previous movement. This music spoke of regret, of lost opportunities. Yet there was acceptance within it; as if it affirmed, Yes, life is finite. But it is worthy. This musical theme was reinforced by slow pizzacato plucking against long, low somber tones. It sounded like someone being comforted as they wept.”

I hope this music carries you away, dear reader!

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* This is part of an ongoing occasional series of posts about inspiration for the two books I’m working on right now. The first is a novel set in Victorian England during the Aesthetics Movement. The second book is a follow up to DOOMED QUEENS.

• Filed under The Novel, be-mused, creativity, events, new projects | 3 Responses

An A-Musing Journey

Forgive me the punning headline – I simple couldn’t resist. But this is the only way to describe my recent trip to Montreal to view the John Williams Waterhouse exhibit at Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal. As readers of my last blog entry know, I’ve been in need of serious muse time for my new books-under-way. So I took what Artist’s Way author Julia Cameron would call “an artist’s date”.

This was the first major exhibition of this late Pre-Raphaelite artist, as well as its only North American presentation. And a plot point in my new novel is oriented around the Lady of Shalott. And Montreal is one of my favorite cities. How could I resist?

So I took a weekend alone — my first away from my daughter since her birth — to travel up to Montreal in the dead of winter. Though I considered inviting a friend along, I decided that inspiration might strike more cleanly if I was traveling solo. To facilitate it, I even brought my laptop with me, so I could write during the eleven-plus hour train trip from New York. And I did.

I had forgotten that Waterhouse had created three versions of the Lady of Shalott. I was greeted by one of them as I walked past the museum gift shop.

And there was this behemoth draped over the entryway. Plus lots of displays inside. Alas, no photography allowed within the exhibit itself.

Inside the museum, all three versions were shown together for the first time, set within the centerpiece room of the exhibit. Nearby, Waterhouse’s personal copy of Tennyson’s poems was displayed. He’d drawn on every page, probably to record inspiration before it flitted away. Some of these intimate pencil sketches eventually were transformed into the magnificent paintings on view.

I was fortunately in time for the guided tour, which offered much that I did not know about Waterhouse. For example, he was the son of painters; his wife was also a flower painter. Alas, none of his journals or letters survived his death — the tour guide conjectured that his wife destroyed them — so not much is known about him.

Here’s more information, courtesy of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts:

In his search to rediscover the beauty of the medieval world, Waterhouse also found inspiration in classical literature and mythology. Often associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, who aimed to recapture the beauty and simplicity of the medieval world, Waterhouse was also a classical painter. The exhibition will show how Waterhouse’s paintings reflect his engagement with contemporary themes like medievalism, classical heritage, spiritualism and the femme fatale. Born the year the Pre-Raphaelites first exhibited at the Royal Academy, he inherited their taste for Alfred Tennyson, John Keats and William Shakespeare and was fascinated by beauty, the underworld and myths of enchantresses. His paintings reveal a romantic fascination for female passions: among his subjects are the Lady of Shalott, Cleopatra, Circe, Lamia, the Sirens tormenting Ulysses, and Mariamne condemned to death. Inspired by Romantic literature, he also drew from classical myth as interpreted by Homer and Ovid.”

With little else to go on, we’re forced to learn about Waterhouse through his art, rather than through his biography. (In a way, isn’t that the way it should be?) Once the tour was over, I spent several hours in the exhibit, going through it in detail. The overall impression I was left with was of a man who was passionate about mythology, beauty, and women. He was also fond of scattering numerous mystical symbols in his paintings. For example, he often used circles within overlapping circles; objects often number seven (as in seven crows or seven sirens). From this evidence, some believe that Waterhouse may have been involved with the popular spiritualist movement, one reason his wife may have destroyed his letters.

Alas, the exhibit closes this weekend. All the Ladies of Shalotts will depart back to their respective homes, probably never to meet again in one room — at least in my lifetime.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have had my encounter with them.

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On a somewhat unrelated note, it’s now February — and Valentine’s Day is just around the corner! With the help of my friend and publicity assistant Diane Saarinen, I’ve put together an amazing week of what I think is our most romantic content yet. Just call it the most romantic week on the blogosphere!

From February 8th through 12th, I’ll be joined on this blog by the beloved best-selling author Sandra Gulland (Mistress of the Sun), urban shaman Donna Henes (Queen of My Self), tarotist extraordinaire Ruth Ann Amberstone (The Secret Language of  Tarot), and acclaimed historian Holly Tucker (Wonders and Marvels, Blood Work) for a week of love-themed posts and special giveaways. The daily giveaways will include autographed romance-inspiring books, Amor art prints, and free downloads of the Love Tarot app. To be entered to win, all you have to do is comment. Easy-peasy.

Also on tap: A Valentine’s edition of our popular Tarot Salon. This takes place on February 12 starting at 7:30 pm at my studio-gallery; this month I’ll be joined by Donna Henes, Golda Poretsky, and Fran Dunston. For more information and to view other events and workshops, click here for our events page.

So I hope to see you here — and/or there!

• Filed under be-mused, creativity, giveaways and raffles, iPhone apps, lover's path, new projects, the art world, the world around me, travels | 6 Responses