Series vs Standalone

Tags

A Triple Knot, A Twisted Vengeance, the Kate Clifford series, The King's Mistress, the Margaret Kerr series, the Owen Archer series, The Service of the Dead, The Writing Life

As a reader, if you asked whether I favor books in series or standalone books I’d say I have no preference. However, as a writer I much prefer working on books in series. The following is a glimpse into what I’ve learned about myself in this regard.*

The Pleasures of Writing a Series

Working on a novel is a long process, consuming my days and nights for months of work and worry. I live with the characters, coax them, argue with them. They wake me in the night with suggestions for plot twists, secrets about their pasts, reminders of threads I’ve dropped. On long walks I eavesdrop on arguments among them. And then, one day, the book is ready to send off to my editor. Such a rush of relief—I’ve done it again! I’ve completed another novel.

And then… I don’t know what to do with myself. I could tackle all the things that fell through the cracks while I rushed toward the deadline, but busywork isn’t satisfying. I’m lonely. I miss the characters.

The only cure is to dive into the next book, which is easy when writing a series. I go for a walk or go out to work in the garden while imagining what might be going on in Owen’s, Maggie’s, or Kate’s life, continuing a thread that began in an earlier book, something not quite tied up. It might be a blooming relationship, a potential conflict, a long-awaited opportunity, the unexpected return of a character from an earlier episode. This might not necessarily be the central plotline, but it primes the pump, puts my characters in play.

I lost this continuity when I stepped away from writing mysteries to work on two standalones (The King’s Mistress and A Triple Knot, by “Emma Campion”). Once completed, I had no easy entrance into the next story. With these, once each book was finished,  that was that. There was no “and then” to play with.

Only by stepping away did I appreciate how much I enjoy writing crime series. In a standalone, everything is wrapped up in one book. In a series, my characters are on stage across a variety of adventures and through time. In the Kate Clifford series, I’ve burdened my main character with her late husband’s debts, his bastard children, an unfriendly clause in his will, a violent past, and a difficult mother. Kate’s issues are presented in book 1, The Service of the Dead, but, as in life, not all are resolved by the end of the first episode. Kate will cope with the hand I’ve dealt her over time, while investigating the crime that propels each book.

Having the leisure of following all the recurring characters over time is a perk of writing a series. Their characters deepen as they face new challenges. In The Service of the Dead, Kate’s uncle Richard Clifford, dean of York Minster, is someone whom she trusts, someone who is there for her when she needs a safe place for her ward, Phillip. But in A Twisted Vengeance he steps back, looking to his own interests as the conflict between the royal cousins, King Richard and Henry Bolingbroke, the heir to the duchy of Lancaster, comes to a head. Because I’ve already established the warm niece/uncle relationship in book 1, this estrangement is all the more disturbing and disappointing—and signals just how dangerous the politics have become.

Or take Kate’s mother, Eleanor Clifford, who arrives at the end of Service, giving Kate an outlet for her pent up anger. In book 2, A Twisted Vengeance, Kate realizes that her mother holds a secret that is endangering her own and Kate’s households. The challenge for Kate is to put her resentment aside and find a way to break down the barriers between them.

The children in Kate’s household are certain to change the most through the series, as they move from childhood to adolescence and beyond. I look forward to exploring how Kate’s headstrong ward, Marie, will adjust to the new member of the household, Petra. And it will be fun to show Marie’s brother, Phillip, finding his way as an apprentice stonemason in the minster yard.

And what of Kate’s heart? She has two intriguing men in her life, Berend (her cook, a former assassin), and Sir Elric, a knight in the service of Ralph Neville, the Earl of Westmoreland. With the country split apart by the warring royal cousins, the two men might very well find themselves on opposite sides. What of Kate? Whose side will she favor?

Stay tuned!

*I am aware that many of you who read this blog don’t follow along on blog tours, so in the next few weeks I’ll share the posts I wrote for my recent tour. This is the first, which appeared at http://booksofallkinds.weebly.com/:

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Embodying Medieval Women

Tags

A Triple Knot, A Vigil of Spies, Alice Perrers, Joan of Kent, The Apothecary Rose, The King's Bishop, The King's Mistress, The Lady Chapel, Women's Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon

I think you will enjoy a post I wrote for the Women’s Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon network, an international network funded by the Leverhulme Trust and centered at the University of Surrey. I feel it a great honor to be invited to contribute to their blog. My post is about how I embody my characters. You can read it here.

 

The Magic of Lists

Tags

Ian Mortimer, King Henry IV, lists, medieval herbal remedies, Richard Lyons, The King's Mistress, Umberto Eco

A few weeks ago I sat down at the end of a tiring day and picked up a biography of King Henry IV of England I’d been reading. It was that time of the evening when my mind skitters about for a while before settling on the printed page before me—stray thoughts about the day arise, reminders to add something to my calendar, or my to do list. Lists. At any point in time I have so many lists, particularly about the book in progress and future books. Yes, I am a list maker. There is something about adding an idea to a list that eases me, helps me let it go for the moment. And that evening what finally focused my mind was an amusing, fascinating list of some of the items Henry Bolingbroke, heir to the duchy of Lancaster, collected to take with him on crusade in Lithuania (from The Fears of Henry IV, Ian Mortimer, Vintage Books 2007):

7 lb. of ginger
11 lb. of quince jam
4 lb. of a conserve of pine nuts
2 lb. of caraway seeds
2 lb. of ginger sweets
2 lb. of preserved cloves
3 lb. of citronade
2 lb. of “royal sweets”
4 lb. of red and white “flat sugars”
6 lb. of “sugar candy”
3 lb. of “royal paste”
2 lb. of aniseed sweets
2 lb. of sunflower seeds
2 lb. of mapled ginger
2 lb. of barley sugar
2 lb. of digestive sweetmeats
1 lb. of nutmeg
2 lb. of red wax
and 2 quires of paper.

What a sweet tooth! In addition,
506 lb. of almonds
112 lb. of rice
14 lb. of cinnamon
10 lb. of sugar syrup
a huge amount of ale (960 pints arriving in 24 gallon barrels)
10 flitches of bacon
40 sheep
and he bought copious amounts of fish of all sorts along the way.

On crusade?! Reading the list lit up my imagination. All these items—I could see them, I imagined the shops, the haggling. I wondered about how they transported all this. This is how nobility traveled, even on crusade.

What is it about lists? From a New Yorker article:

“…lists tap into our preferred way of receiving and organizing information at a subconscious level; from an information-processing standpoint, they often hit our attentional sweet spot. When we process information, we do so spatially. For instance, it’s hard to memorize through brute force the groceries we need to buy. It’s easier to remember everything if we write it down in bulleted, or numbered, points. Then, even if we forget the paper at home, it is easier for us to recall what was on it because we can think back to the location of the words themselves. Lists also appeal to our general tendency to categorize things—in fact, it’s hard for us not to categorize something the moment we see it—since they chunk information into short, distinct components. This type of organization facilitates both immediate understanding and later recall, as the neuroscientist Walter Kintsch pointed out back in 1968. Because we can process information more easily when it’s in a list than when it’s clustered and undifferentiated, like in standard paragraphs, a list feels more intuitive. In other words, lists simply feel better.” (“A List of Reason Why Our Brains Love Lists” by Maria Konnikova, The New Yorker 2 Dec 2013)

The merchant Richard Lyons plays a prominent role in my novel The King’s Mistress. When I was still deep in research, a friend urged me to read the inventory of goods owned by Richard Lyons drawn up by the sheriffs of London at the time of the seizure of his property in 1376. “The spoons!” he said. “The cushions! You won’t believe it.” Reading it gave me such a strong impression of the man, how carefully he presented himself, how he valued presentation (“The Wealth of Richard Lyons”, A.R. Myers, in Essays in Medieval History Presented to Bertie Wilkinson, ed. T.A. Sandquist and M.R. Powicke)

My files are full of lists of medieval herbal remedies. Here’s a collection from various sources for dog bites:
Betony for the bite of a mad dog—pound it very small, and lay it on the wound.
Plantain—If a mad dog bites a person, pound it fine, and apply it; it will quickly heal.
Vervain—for the bite of a mad dog, take it and whole gains of wheat. Lay them on the bite so that the grains are softened by the moisture and become swollen; then take the grains and throw them to some chickens. If they refuse to eat them, then take other grains and mix with the plant in the same way as you did earlier and lay this on the bite until you feel that the danger is gone and drawn out.
Burdock—for the bite of a mad dog, take the roots of this same plant, pound them with coarse salt, and lay this on the bite.
Cockspur—pound with grease and bake in bread—but takes far too long.
Yarrow—grind it with wheat seeds and put on wound.
Calendula—for the bite of a mad dog, pounds it into a powder, then take a spoonful and give it to drink in warm water, and the person will recover.
Black horehound—for dog bite, take the leaves of this plant pounded with salt. Lay this on the wound, and it will heal in a wonderful manner.
Bulbus (tassel hyacinth)—Mixed with honey it cures dog bites.

Your imagination lit up as you read those, didn’t it? Are you a list maker? Or a collector of lists? We’re not alone. Umberto Eco called the list “the origin of culture” in this article: http://bit.ly/1d5oIUr

I have more articles about lists—a long list of them! But I’ll stop here.

Shoptalk: Use the Energy That’s Present

Tags

Biographile, Buddhism, The King's Mistress

Welcome to a new year on A Writer’s Retreat!

I’ll be back with a longer post later this week, but do check out my essay published in Biographile’s “Write Start” series. I was fortunate to meet a wise,  perceptive dharma teacher as I was tackling the first draft of The King’s Mistress, a project I’d been stalling over for a long while. In this essay I share her simple advice that turned fear into joyous engagement.

http://bit.ly/1u2RwdK

Alice Perrers’s Pearls

Tags

Alice Perrers, King Edward III, medieval clothing, pearls, The King's Mistress

Pearls. Beauty formed as protection for oysters and mussels from tiny stones or grains of sand. Layers and layers of a lustrous substance, nacre. Light reflected from the overlapping layers gives pearls their iridescent luster.

I’ll be talking about The King’s Mistress at a book club tomorrow evening. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been thinking about Alice Perrers and her pearls.

In my novel, pearls encrust Alice’s gowns, powder her hair, adorn her hats, her gloves, her neck—most of them gifts from her lover, King Edward. I took artistic license in imagining the occasion of these gifts, but that she had a remarkable collection of pearls is a fact, at least according to the records of the Exchequer: “When the pearls of Alice Ferrers [sic], the mistress of Edward III of England, were confiscated by his successor Richard II, they were appraised in May 1379 as 600 pearls worth 20d each (£50); 1700 pearls worth 10d each (£70 16s 8d); 5940 pearls, worth 5d each (£123 15s); 1800 pearls, worth 4d each (£30); 2000 pearls, each also worth 4d (50 marks); 1380 pearls, each worth 6d (£34 10s); 500 pearls, worth 2d each (£4 3s 4d); 3948 pearls, worth 3d each (£49 7s); 2000 pearls, worth 1 ½ d each (£25); and 30 ounces of pearls valued at £50 gross. Their total value was the huge sum [at that time] of £469 18s 8d.” (Mediaeval European Jewellery, R. W. Lightbown, V&A 1992, p. 30, attributed to  F. Devon, Issues of the Exchequer, London 1837)

That’s 19868 pearls, plus however many were in the 30 oz (I imagine these might have been tiny seed pearls too small to count). So many pearls.

The pearl is not the gem I would have chosen to represent Alice as it was a symbol of purity, and came to be used in medieval literature as a symbol of maidens and maidenhood. Aldhelm describes holy maidens as Christi margaritae, paradisi gemmae  (Pearl, E.V. Gordon, ed., Oxford 1953, p. xxvii).

But as I dressed Alice in pearls I imagined how subtly they catch the light, and how the beloved glows from within, how as she and Edward came to know each other they discovered layers upon layers of complexity, and it became for me a fitting gemstone for the story.

In one of my favorite scenes, Alice tells Edward about meeting a pearl merchant as a child. The inspiration from this story comes from Lightbown’s book: “The technique of piercing pearls was already well-known in the West in the early twelfth century: Theophilus recommends the use of a slender steel drill, turned on a lead wheel attached to a shaft of wood and worked by a strap, to make a hole, and for enlarging it a wire and a little fine sand. Oriental pearls often arrived in Europe already pierced, so producing a general belief in the West, in spite of Theophilus and his recipes, that these holes were natural, as Albertus Magnus … records. It was only in the fourteenth century that this legend was finally overset.” (30)

“Scotch pearls” were found in rivers in Wales, Ireland, Cumberland, and particularly Scotland. They were considered inferior to those from the “orient,” but richly encrusting a jacket or gown they must have made a gorgeous display.

Some additional pearl lore: Pearls are thought to give wisdom through experience, to quicken the laws of karma and to cement engagements and love relationships. They are thought to keep children safe. Early Chinese myths told of pearls falling from the sky when dragons fought. Ancient legend says that pearls were thought to be the tears of the gods and the Greeks believed that wearing pearls would promote marital bliss and prevent newlywed women from crying. (from bernardine.com)

In Hindu culture, pearls were associated with the Moon and were symbols of love and purity. Hindu texts say that Krishna discovered the first pearl, which he presented to his daughter on her wedding day. Islamic tradition holds pearls in even higher regard. The Koran speaks of pearls as one of the great rewards found in Paradise, and the gem itself has become a symbol of perfection. (from pearl-guide.com)

English Cathedrals and Monasteries–A New DVD-ROM

Tags

A Triple Knot, Barking Abbey, Joan of Kent, Micklegate Priory, The King's Mistress, Westminster Abbey, York Minster

I have just received the new DVD-ROM published by the Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture, English Cathedrals and Monasteries. For several hours I’ve been happily exploring case studies of individual abbeys and monasteries (including Barking Abbey, featured in both The King’s Mistress and A Triple Knot), a 3D film of a monastic day in Micklegate Priory in York (see how dark the priory church was at Matins in the early morning when there were no electric lights), a tour of Durham Cathedral, an excellent section on the religious houses of York, and sections on York Minster and Westminster Abbey (where Joan of Kent took her marriage vows–several times). Enough for one day–there is so much more, and I intend to take my time and relish it all.

The Centre’s  purpose is “to provide background for people interested in “the rich cultural heritage to be discovered in art, literature, music and historic buildings [of England]. However the fact that so much of this heritage has been substantially shaped by Christian belief and practice can pose a major problem of access and understanding for those who lack familiarity with Christian concepts or biblical themes.” You’ll see on their website that this DVD-ROM is one of several: http://christianityandculture.org.uk/  If you teach English literature or history, medieval literature or culture or history, these resources are invaluable for the classroom. And those of you who read historical fiction set in the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval periods–or write it–will find these useful. I highly recommend all of them (I have them all!).

Appreciations

Tags

A Triple Knot, A Vigil of Spies, books, Days In the HIstory of Silence, Owen Archer, Piemme, The King's Mistress

I did a dangerous thing yesterday–I peeked at my reviews on amazon. What drew my attention was A Vigil of Spies, never published in the US, but with ten reviews on amazon dot com–and discovered they are all 5-star reviews. My dear fans. What can I say? My steadfast fans. Seeking out the two books in the series never published in the US and paying the higher import price, then letting me know how much you enjoyed them in such a public way. Thank you. You are the wind in my sails. Believe it. A perfect discovery as I dive into the 11th Owen Archer.

     

And while I’m on the topic of appreciation, I want to say how much I love my Italian publisher, Piemme. They give me exquisite covers, and for The King’s Mistress paid me the compliment of insisting that my own name appear on the cover, not Emma’s. I had to laugh–they even remembered to remove the joke in the acknowledgments where Emma thanks Candace for sharing her (my) research. I can’t say enough wonderful things about Piemme–they treat me so well, and they are courteous in a time when that’s so rare–when cutting a bit more of the manuscript of The King’s Mistress they sent me a detailed list with page references and asked that I approve each cut. And they did exactly as I asked. They have published all my books–10 Owen Archers, 3 Margaret Kerrs, The King’s Mistress, and they’ve patiently asked each year about A Triple Knot–this month I sent the pre-copyedit ms to my agent to pass on to them at their request.

Writing is quite a solitary occupation, and the publishing business is in such turmoil it can be easy to wonder whether anyone cares. You do, and I am so grateful.

Thinking about this, I took the time to post a (very brief) review of a book I’d just read and enjoyed on goodreads. Actually Emma did; Candace doesn’t yet have a goodreads account. The book is Days in the History of Silence by Merethe Lindstrom. Emma’s brief review: “A quietly chilling, powerful study of a marriage damaged by secrets.” A friend had loaned it to me, warning me that although she loved it, her book club had hated it and the discussion had fizzled. She was frustrated and hoped that as a writer I’d have more to say. My stream of consciousness report to her yesterday has sent her back to the book to see all that I saw. It seems a simple book, but it’s not. Not at all.

And now to quit this loosely themed post and return to York!

The Writing Life: Music as Muse

Tags

A Triple Knot, Alice Perrers, Concierto de Aranjuez, Joan of Kent, Rodrigo, The King's Mistress, writing

A warm, golden summer evening, caught in traffic, luckily in the shade of huge old trees bordering the university, but anxious about being late. I knew it was no use obsessing, it was a gorgeous evening and the bridge was up for boaters. It would come down, and I would move on, and there was nothing I could do to hurry it. To distract myself I turned on the classical station.

In a heartbeat I was out of the traffic, standing on the battlements of a  great castle, soaring with the emotional power of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. I was Alice Perrers, watching her beloved Edward riding off on the hunt, holding the morning’s pearl in one hand, the other lifted in salute in case he looked back. I was Joan of Kent, looking down on the troops riding out, banners snapping as the wind caught them up in its dance, hoping for one last glimpse of her beloved amongst the knights heading for war. As the guitar soloist (Julian Bream) was joined by the orchestra she caught her breath. There he was, armor shining. He turned, she lifted her arm in farewell…. God speed you back to me, my love.

What a gift. I’ve been hunched over the manuscript of A Triple Knot for days, deepening the emotion in a scene here, tweaking some words for clarity there. It’s easy to get lost in the mundane and forget the passion. This morning, thanks to Rodrigo, the passion is here and I’ve fallen in love with my characters all over again.

But more than that, two characters stayed as I shifted into gear and drove through a woodsy neighborhood, two Gascons with dark eyes and enigmatic smiles. What tales they told me!

And then the music ended. I was left with a sense of wonder and delight. And thankful for the traffic jam.

Shop Talk: Uses of History in a Novel

Tags

A Vigil of Spies, Alice Perrers, Black Prince, historical novels, Joan of Kent, King Edward III, Margaret Kerr, Owen Archer, revising a manuscript, Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, The Hero's Wife, The King's Mistress, writing

I’ve been thinking about the various ways I use history in novels. In the Owen Archer novels, I (as Candace) make use of the history to create the motivation for the crime and the circumstances–political, cultural, local–that led to it and that create obstacles during the investigation–including whether, in the end, justice is served. In the Margaret Kerr novels the history is even more to the forefront, informing everything. The conflict between Scotland and England is the occasion for the upheaval in Margaret’s life. In The King’s Mistress, my focus is on the history of a specific woman, exploring a plausible scenario for Alice Perrer’s rise in status from the daughter of a merchant to the notorious mistress of the king. So the larger historical backdrop is significant as it pertains to Alice.

I am thinking about this as I rewrite this first novel about Joan of Kent*,  A Triple Knot, chronicling Joan’s marriage complications, caused in part by King Edward III’s determination to wage a costly war with France. I touched briefly on her “scandalous” history in A Vigil of Spies, then again, in a bit more depth, in The King’s Mistress. But I didn’t realize then the extent to which Edward’s war was one of the catalysts for the mess. The war is an antagonist in this story, as it is in the Margaret Kerr books.

Poor Joan. I keep thinking about what Guildenstern says toward the end of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead:  “There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said—no. But somehow we missed it.” For Joan it isn’t so much that she misses her chance at no, but that she impulsively chooses a way out that leads to–well, in the long run the War of the Roses. I certainly wouldn’t want that on my conscience. Even so, it’s a beautiful love story.

You’ll see what I mean.

*The Hero’s Wife is the title of the follow-on book, covering Joan of Kent’s life after her marriage to the Black Prince. As publishers seek leaner novels, I split Joan’s story in two in order to do it justice. And I know, I know, I’ve been writing this book forever.

The King’s Mistress–part of a lovely review

Tags

Alice Perrers, Cecelia Holland, Joan of Kent, language, medieval clothing, The King's Mistress, Ursula LeGuin, writing, writing books

I discovered a lovely review of The King’s Mistress on Aimee Krenz’s blog Naked Pages (http://nakedpagereviews.blogspot.com) last week. Of course I love it because it’s so positive, but even better she spoke to the heart of some of the aspects I hold most dear, and that I’m working with as I revise the current manuscript. So with Aimee’s permission I’m quoting part of the review so that I can comment–but do go to her blog and read the entire!

 One of the things I love most about this author is that she lets the country serve as a background for her tale without allowing it to overpower the story. The relationships created in ‘The King’s Mistress’ had purpose, which I also enjoyed.  I pride myself on being able to see a storyline coming before it actually appears, and I was pleasantly surprised that the intrigue of the connections with each new character were not immediately apparent. 

—

We can’t avoid the times in which we live, and with Alice it was clear to me from the beginning that her story had everything to do with the political atmosphere–the war with France, the tension among London merchants, the plague…. But I also had to restrain myself–Alice was such an outsider she came to understand the politics gradually, and to a dangerous extent too late, particularly the politics of those in power around the king. It was maddening at times to limit the number of historical figures I included to those crucial to Alice’s story. I left out some fascinating scoundrels.

It’s been quite a contrast working with Joan of Kent who was right in the middle of the royal household all her life and had increasing influence.  And again I’ve had to eliminate enticing characters.

It’s so lovely to hear that a reader likes the political background–thanks, Aimee! A fan once told me (er, Candace) that her daughters rush past the historical bits in the Owen Archer mysteries to get to the real story. Ouch! But she meant it as a compliment, that my books can be read strictly for the human interest.

In truth, I will likely have to re-read the book, mostly because I enjoyed the depth of the characters, the mystery that surrounded them, and the author’s style of writing.  Many historical novelists tend to lose their readers because they try too hard to write as if they were from that time period, which leaves the reader checking dictionaries or Wikipedia to figure out what it is they’ve just read.  This is not the case with Emma Campion’s style, which reads like the time period without making me scratch my head. 

—

Two writers who greatly influenced me before I even began to write historical fiction were/are Cecelia Holland and Ursula LeGuin. I’ve just finished rereading Holland’s Great Maria and still find it a joy to read. Her language is direct and clear, her characters’ dialogue in keeping with their characters, but in modern English.  I attribute my avoidance of archaic words (except for a few salted in dialogue) to a workshop with Ursula LeGuin years ago in which she impressed upon us how annoying and cutesy “olden-day” style and language are, how they halt the reader and throw them right out of the story, as Aimee suggests in her review. What I learned from closely reading Holland and experimenting on my own was how to remind my readers with the use of more traditional syntax and a vocabulary that’s fairly restricted to modern words that showed up by the 17th century, that this is not a contemporary character speaking. I want my readers to become absorbed in the story–I don’t want them to admire my stylistic flourishes.  In describing clothing I did enjoy using some medieval terms, but that felt natural to me.

Thanks for the conversation, Aimee.

—

A few more comments about Cecelia Holland’s Great Maria:   Her descriptions pull me right in, yet they don’t go on and on. To give just one example, the tapestries Maria works on throughout the book are described now and then, but only in progress, as she discusses choices of theme or color, or simply picks a new thread out of her basket. Yet in one brief scene Holland communicates to us through a conversation between Maria and Eleanor, as they work on a tapestry, the contrast between the two women–Maria loves dancing so she picks out a dancing couple in red to draw the eye to them, while Eleanor expresses her disapproval because of the couple’s enjoyment of the dance and because they appear to be nude. A lovely showing. I was also struck by how cryptic the emotions of her main characters often are, suggested primarily by what they do–and despite it’s being first person, which I hadn’t remembered, the reader is often in the dark about just what Maria intends, or how precisely she’s feeling, reflecting Maria’s ambivalence.  My Alice is more self-aware than Maria, and has a purpose in composing her story–to explain her life to her daughters, so I did use more introspection.

—

As I work through revisions this month I intend to post about the experience–I love this part of a book, when I have the “plot” down, I’ve discovered what it’s all about (for the most part), and now I’m smoothing it all out, filling in connections, rearranging, polishing, plumping up some characters. Check back!