Favorite Characters

Posted on by Julianne Ardian Lee
Dylan Matheson

Lately I’ve been asked several times who my favorite character is in Her Mother’s Daughter. Particularly, I’m asked about the fictional characters, because the historical figures are who they were and I must portray them as believably themselves.

But with the fictional folk I get to decide who they are, and even within the requirements of plot that leaves me a lot of room for creativity. Some of them end up being like people I’d want to know, and others not so much. But…favorite? Some may stand out more than others. Even the bad guys can hold a special place in my personal pecking order. A clearly imagined and well-crafted villain is as much a pleasure to read or write as the most stalwart yet Achilles-heeled hero.

For Her Mother’s Daughter there weren’t terribly many fictional characters. The story spans the entirety of Mary Tudor’s life, and that life was filled with well-known people. A few of the point-of-view characters are fictional, and among those I suppose the one who strikes me as most likeable is Niccolò Delarosa, the lute player.

In the story he first appears as a musician in Henry’s court, when Mary begins her rehabilitation to her father’s good graces after the death of Anne Boleyn. He’s an Italian of ordinary lineage, but his proficiency with his instrument and his ability to keep his head down and his mouth shut earn him a career in the royal court. And, to his great agony, he has a crush on the king’s daughter. Poor Niccolò spends the next two decades or so, in Henry’s court then in Mary’s, cherishing her. So near, and yet so far. She longing to be loved, and he wishing to oblige, but never able to say so or express his feelings in any way. Over the years he observes the failure of her marriage, and her unhappiness, unable to do anything about it.

I see him as an ordinary guy with a good heart. A solid citizen, good at his job, and loyal to his master and then his mistress. To me, he falls into the category of the sort of guy I’d like to know. The sort who are all too rare in real life. They exist—I’ve known some—and Niccolò is the essence of those good men I’ve known.

But by far the best of the good guys I’ve written was Dylan Matheson. In my first published novel the main character was a classic fish-out-of-water, ordinary-guy-in-extraordinary-circumstances, square-jawed hero. He was a joy. It amused me to hear about him from readers, for it seemed the women all wanted to meet Dylan and the men all thought they were just like Dylan. (I think we should get them all together!)

Son of the Sword is a time travel story in which a modern guy is swept back to 18th century Scotland and the Jacobite Rebellions. There he meets the love of his life, Caitrionagh, and heroism ensues with the aid of an irrepressible Irish faerie named Sinnan. He was with me for three novels, and when it was time to say goodbye in the fourth book, writing his death scene was like pulling teeth. I didn’t want to do it, but it was time.

Each time I end a book or a series I have to leave characters and move on to new ones. It’s tempting to continue the story past its true ending, but that doesn’t serve the narrative or the audience. Once Dylan’s story was done, he had to die.

Having written sixteen novels for publication, and twelve unsold manuscripts before that, I’ve said goodbye to dozens of characters. But Dylan is the one I remember most fondly.

 

Why I Workshop

Posted on by Julianne Ardian Lee

It was January of 1987 when I decided to make professional publication my goal. I’d completed one novel, which still has never sold (and shouldn’t ever see the light of day,) and on that dreary winter afternoon I began another. I also bought my first copy of Writers’ Digest at the Hendersonville Bookstore, which is now a nail salon.

Of course I was clueless. I’d been writing as a hobbyist since I was twelve, but didn’t have the faintest idea where to look for a chink in the battlement of professional publishing. I’d never heard the term “over the transom,” and the Internet at that point was limited to government employees, university students, small, isolated bulletin boards. and Usenet. I was five years away from buying my first computer, and spent my days typing out my early work on a $75 manual typewriter. A year later, having completed and polished my second novel, I took it down to the printing shop to photocopy it, and began sending it out.

Then I went to work on my third unsold manuscript.

I only ever sent my work to professional publishers (nowadays called “royalty” or “traditional” publishers), because back then self-publishing, or “vanity” publishing, cost far more money than I had just lying around, and I had no desire to become a book distributor. Print-on-demand didn’t exist. Ebooks were a distant dream that smacked of Star Trek. Traditional publishing was what we just called “publishing.” I wrote manuscripts and sent them to New York, and the machine I wrote them on did not have an electrical plug, never mind a monitor.

Four years and four unsold manuscripts later, frustration crept in and I began to realize I was getting nowhere. I’d subscribed to Writers’ Digest and read it every month, but it told me nothing that wasn’t known by every other yahoo with a typewriter looking for an editor or agent. One of those things it told us all was when and where there were workshops all over the country. Workshop. It rang in my ears like vacation. No interruptions, no distractions, no worries but to put one word next to another.

I found one in Louisville, KY, a week-long novels retreat in the dead of winter, when my husband was home and could run the household while I was gone. I took a Christmas job in the gift-wrapping department of Castner Knott, and earned enough cash to pay for the trip and tuition.

The Green River Writers’ first Novels In Progress Workshop in January 1991 was, for me, better than a vacation. It was a palpable step in the right direction. Each day I was there I only wrote, read books, and talked about writing and books. My mentor was Jim Wayne Miller, a noted Appalachian poet and award-winning novelist. Each evening students would hang out in the dorm lobby, chatting long into the night about the craft of writing. Some were poets just trying their hand at long form fiction. Some, like me, were committed novelists who rarely wrote short stories, much less poetry. In that one week I was steeped in the craft, then when the weekend came we all got to meet with editors and agents flown in from New York and North Carolina.

I had hives. I’d met rock stars without flinching, but I’d never before spoken to a genuine editor or agent and had no clue what to expect. Turned out these were very kind people, but weirdly none of them had any interest in fiction. Odd they should come to a novels workshop, but still I came away with a far better sense of the business than I’d had going in. It was experience I could use in future cover letters, and I did.

I attended the GRW NIPW for two more years as a student. Every year I learned something important. Each time I went, the support and camaraderie charged my batteries for the work of writing and submitting that work during the following year. I always went with the knowledge I was making good use of my time, and the conviction I was moving closer to publication. I figured if I kept improving as a writer, eventually they would have to publish my work.

My third year I had the most astonishing compliment from Jim Wayne Miller, who was again my mentor. I’d brought my guitar because I liked to play during breaks from the writing. One day I was alone in the dorm lobby, playing and singing “Darkness on the Edge of Town.” Jim Wayne arrived, and headed for his office, but he stopped to listen. When I finished, he asked, “Did you write that?”

I wish. I replied, “No, that’s Bruce Springsteen.”

He proceeded toward his door, but said as he went, “Oh. Sounds like you.”

I was flattered into little, bitty pieces and got scattered all over the floor. Yes, I’m bragging. For a writer, those moments are few and far between, and we must make the most of them.

In any case, I did make actual progress with my writing from the workshopping. My confidence improved, my actual skill improved so that, starting with my sixth unsold manuscript they began to become truly publishable.

It took another several years and an equal number of unsold manuscripts before I finally sold my thirteenth novel from an outline. For several years after that I taught at that same workshop. I learned as much by mentoring as I had as a student. This year I intend to go looking for a retreat for professionals, where I can spend a week or so doing nothing but writing, reading, and talking about writing and reading.

I feel like a vacation.

Role Model, Not Runway Model

Posted on by Julianne Ardian Lee

I’ve heard a great deal about the new movie, Wonder Woman, based on the old DC comic. All over Facebook, everywhere I look, people are kvelling over it, so I figured I’d better go see it before I heard so much there was was no longer any point in buying a ticket. Particularly since the buzz I was hearing was exactly the opposite of what I’d expected to hear.  In my lifetime, “strong female character” usually meant “scantily clad sex goddess.” Where breasts were freakishly oversized and impossibly perky, and waists were too narrow to pass a pea. I expected this Wonder Woman to be no different from the smattering of comic book heroines who had gone before, but now I was hearing, “Nay, nay, she’s not like those others!”

I was skeptical, even though these reports came from many I respect and trust on this. Esther Friesner. Jennifer Roberson, women who know from the Fantasy genre. But I’d been burned too many times before.

I take you back to 1966. Star Trek.  The much vaunted, ground-breaking, women-and-minorities-on-the-bridge show. The one that started out with Majel Barrett playing the second-in-command. But by the time the series was picked up and aired, she’d been swapped out for a man and relegated to the sidelines as a nurse with a crush on that man. Where all the women on that bridge wore mini skirts and cleavage as deep as the Snake River Canyon, and all had jobs socially acceptable for women in the mid-twentieth century. Three cheers for Nichelle Nichols, but Lieutenant Uhura was still a telephone operator, Nurse Chapel was, well, a nurse, and Yeoman Rand was a secretary trotting around with an enormous cleavage, fake eyelashes, blonde dye job, and steno notepad. Who had a crush on the Captain. I was twelve and unimpressed. Even worse was the final episode of the series, “Turnabout Intruder,” in which Captain Kirk’s body was taken over by a former lover who wanted to be a man. The moral of the story being the eternal question as posed by the captain, “Why can’t women just be happy as they are?” I adored Star Trek, and felt horribly betrayed by it. I wanted to be able to do things without being told that, “Nice girls don’t…” I’ve known my whole life I wasn’t a nice girl, and Star Trek went boldly nowhere for me.

In the decade following, 1976, I was excited to learn of a new adventure series about female investigators. I thrilled at the idea of women going out and doing things. Kicking butt and taking names. Fighting crime. Being applauded for using their brains and brawn.

Ha!

You know who I’m talking about. The night Charlie’s Angels first aired I eagerly planted myself in front of the TV, fully expecting to be vindicated at long last. But as the hour progressed, uneasiness crept in. It was like biting into a bright, red, polished apple and finding it mealy and full of worms. The women weren’t in charge. They were ordered around by a disembodied voice named Charlie. They weren’t all that smart; they were guided by a eunuch named Bosley. They kicked no butt, they took no names. Mostly they ran around with impossibly fluffy hair and absurdly big teeth. At the end of the episode, when a black-suited-and-helmeted figure was revealed to be the blonde one, and she removed her helmet with a flourish and a shake of her head to restore her coif, I was done.  Charlie’s Angels was not the breakthrough I’d dreamed of.

Neither was Kate Jackson’s next outing, The Scarecrow and Mrs. King, where every episode ended with a huge fistfight in which Ms. Jackson cowered in the corner, watching Bruce Boxleitner save the day. She made me want to smack her sideways.

That same decade, the Wonder Woman TV series did not attract my attention. Cleavage and hair, dancing not fighting, always for the boys not the girls. I never, ever wanted to be Lynda Carter, and didn’t watch even one episode.

Moving along, into the new era of live-action comic book movies that are all about the CGI, these days I’m old enough to get that these movies are for teenage boys who are looking for a poster to tack to the ceiling over the bed. I’ve spent the past forty years expecting little from female adventure characters. Not that I ever expected a female superhero to be real, I’ve given up hope of ever seeing one who could be credible and share the screen with an equally strong male character. So going into that theatre, I expected little from Gal Gadot.

(We interrupt this post for a spoiler alert for Wonder Woman. Proceed with caution.)

Oh.

My.

God.

From the beginning of this movie there is no sense of catering to teenage boys. The Amazon warriors all move like warriors, wearing their Greek-ish outfits similarly to the men in 300.  These women are athletic enough to make the CGI moves credible. They have muscles that look as if they could do the things they are shown to do. They are attractive, but not all boobs and flowing hair.

Ms. Gadot is a gorgeous young lady, and entirely credible in the role of a young goddess out to save humanity from itself. No smirky, sly, over-sexed bombshell. She is straightforward, has the courage of her convictions, is intelligent, brave, and utterly unaware of the condescension of men around her. She barrels through, full speed ahead, taking little notice of stuffy old men who think she should be at home sewing her trousseau.  Sometimes played for laughs, but not clumsily, and her earnestness remains consistent throughout.  Gal Gadot plays Diana as full immersion in a personality unaffected by the socialization of sexism. What a joy!

Also, I saw the thigh-jiggle I’d heard about. Yes, Wonder Woman’s thigh jiggled on landing, like a real woman’s would. Her breasts were normal: not flat, not enhanced, not crammed into a Wonder Bra. Her hair was normal. Pretty enough, but never impossibly fluffy and not once did she toss her head to make it flow. Sometimes it was even messy. I wanted to cheer.

Finally, Chris Pine (that fellow who redeemed the role of Captain Kirk) as Steve Trevor, provided a magnificent foil/love interest for Diana. Steve, though often at a loss to know what to say, is the kind of guy unfazed by a woman who is not afraid to do stuff and follow her own conscience. The kind of guy who can fight alongside her effectively as an equal without having to prove himself superior or in charge. Yes, they do exist, and they should be encouraged to reproduce.

Please, let’s have more adventure stories like this. It’s too late for me, but I’m certain there’s a generation of girls who will eat this up and go on to do great things.

My Favorite Books

Posted on by Julianne Ardian Lee

When I returned from Spokane, I brought with me my dad’s old copy of Mein Kampf, one of the few things he wanted me to have he hadn’t already given to me. I almost couldn’t find room for it, but eventually shoehorned it onto a shelf of European history. One more book for the TBR stack.

I love books. In my personal library I have nearly 5,000 of them, so picking out a favorite is just impossible. Sometimes I browse my shelves, which line most of the rooms in my house, just to remind myself of what I’ve got, what I’ve read and what I’ve not yet read. I like cheap books, and love to buy them when they’re available, to read “someday.” Most of the unread ones are among those my father passed along to me when he decided to downsize his library. So many arrived at once, in box after cardboard box, that I’ve been swamped for about eleven years. It took me until just a few years ago to organize them all, and catalog them in my database, so now I can search on the computer and not spend all day in front of the book shelves searching for a volume I just know must be here somewhere…

A great many of my books are mysteries, and some of my favorites are among them. My dad handed over some complete series of Anne Perry, Ellis Peters, and some others. I have all the Janet Evanovich Numbers books, not because they’re great mysteries but because they make me laugh and everyone needs to laugh once in a while.

Most of my very favorite books were written by Stephen King or Clive Barker. One of my treasures is a signed first edition copy of Weaveworld. Another is a signed first edition of “Bag of Bones.” I adore King, and think the most frightening book I’ve ever read was The Shining. Those  topiary animals scared the snot out of me, and since then I’ve read everything by King I could get my hands on. Several years after The Shining I read The Sun Dog by flashlight during a lightning storm. I sure know how to have a good time.

I wasn’t always into being frightened and grossed out. During the third grade I discovered Walter Farley and The Black Stallion. There was also The Island Stallion, but the Black was my dream. I must have read that book five or six times, and since I’m not a skimmer that’s saying something.

Later on, reading slowed because of life getting in the way and my habit of reading slowly, which turned out to be a light sensitivity that made it difficult to see the page properly. I avoided thick books until high school when I picked up Michener’s Hawaii and discovered I was capable of finishing a novel more than a thousand pages long. My parents wouldn’t let me go to R rated movies, but they would let me read the novels, so I read a lot of thick books which were mostly better than the movies based on them. The most fascinating of those was The Godfather, which I read several times and saw the movie. It was my first glimpse of a culture other than my own, and I boggled at the whole “family” thing. I believe it was that fascination that helped me to understand the Scottish clans I learned about and wrote about much later on.

Aside from Stephen King, I’m more a fan of individual books rather than authors. I do like Hemingway, and enjoyed For Whom the Bell Tolls. I adore Oscar Wilde’s plays, and especially his creepy novel A Picture of Dorian Gray. A more recent selection that impressed me was The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I love time travel stories. Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates is my bible for time travel, and I kept it well in mind when writing my own time travel books. Isaac Asimov’s I Robot is my favorite science fiction, and in fact the computer I’m writing this on is named “Speedy” after one of Asimov’s robots. And, speaking of needing to laugh, I’ve read M*A*S*H many times.

So many books, so little time. There is no way for me to name a favorite book, but in my own library those are the highlights.