The Epigraphs of Cassaforte

During the editorial process of The Glass Maker’s Daughter, my original editor at Flux had a vision of prefixing the chapters with little quotations from fictional sources. The epigraphs could illuminate the chapter at hand, he said, or simply give color to the world I’d created.

Although for two or three minutes my reaction was grumpy (more work?! Dangit!), I threw myself into the project with enthusiasm. I’m the child of two historians. I know my source materials. So it was easy and fun for me to make up all manner of pretend source materials with a renaissance flavor—travelogues, letters, secret documents, journals, guide books. When I carried on the tradition with the two sequels, I wove in all manner of other types of imaginary source materials. Nursery rhymes. Broadsides. Popular sayings. With the chapter quotations in The Buccaneer’s Apprentice I was able to explain Cassaforte’s unique theatrical traditions without interrupting the flow of the narrative, for example.

Theatre is important in the novel, because it’s Nick’s experience with Armand Arturo’s Theatre of Marvels that gives him the acting chops necessary to masquerade as a dread privateer. Staged performances in Cassaforte are similar to commedia dell’arte, but who wants to interrupt the nonstop action gripping pirate tale to explain what commedia dell’arte might be? Not I. A few brushstrokes at the beginning of a chapter, however, from a fully-imaginary expert, and there it is.

What I don’t think most people realize when they read the chapter epigraphs is that they really tell a story unto themselves. I didn’t make up trivial facts, or irrelevant material. The epigraphs of The Glass Maker’s Daughter introduce characters and countries that appear in The Buccaneer’s Apprentice and set up an arc of action that carries on into The Nascenza Conspiracy. There are letters from a spy known as Gustophe Werner, for example, who doesn’t feature in the first book of the series, but is quite prominent by the third; it’s a long-range form of foreshadowing. I intended to clue in the reader that Cassaforte is not merely a country unto itself, but part of a vast world. And it’s a world that might not be completely enamored with the Cassaforteans and their magical blessings.

The epigraphs of The Buccaneer’s Apprentice are similarly forward-looking, but not quite as much so. They’re a little more self-contained, and if one reads between the sea shanties, the theatrical reviews, and the travelogues, they provide a lot of information that might otherwise go unnoticed. There are hints at relationships between the characters—where they’ve been and where they might be going in the future. Sometimes the epigraphs are wry commentary on the action that follows, or has immediately preceded.

Every quotation is there for a reason, though. They shouldn’t be overlooked.

In the department of cool things, I received a mockup for the cover of The Nascenza Conspiracy this week.



It’s a nifty concept, and I like the fact that it’ll have both protagonists, Petro Divetri and Emilia Fossi, on the cover. I did ask that in the final realization, which like the first two covers will be done by the totally awesome Blake Morrow, that Emilia be given an outfit that was a little more military-like, given that she’s supposed to be a palace guard in the book. “She’s looking a little bit like she’s on the way to a Young Republicans meeting,” I told my editor.

He wrote back, puzzled. “Does that mean she’s not a Young Republican?”

The Buccaneer's Apprentice

I'm happy to announce that The Buccaneer's Apprentice, the second novel of the Cassaforte Chronicles, is available for your reading pleasure.

It's a tale of nautical intrigue. It's a story about crooked card games. And it's a novel about an acting company so bad that it can only get engagements in foreign countries that haven't heard how terrible they are.

But mostly it's the story of a cursed seventeen-year-old who bluffs his way from lowly apprentice to the pirate master of the Azure Sea, in the days when an enemy armada is sailing for the shores of Cassaforte with deadly intent.

Here are a couple of places to purchase the book online:

The Buccaneer's Apprentice at Amazon

The Buccaneer's Apprentice at Barnes & Noble

As always, I appreciate it when those of you who've read and enjoyed my books review them on Amazon or other sites.

One special note: I know some of you like to run down to your local bookstore, look for my novels, and then inform me that the bookstore doesn't have any copies left on their shelves. I'd like to gently remind my readers that I don't have control over the distribution of my novels. If your favorite bookstore doesn't have it in stock, ask them to restock and to order a copy for you from their warehouse. They'll be happy to help you, I'll be happy you bought a copy, and it'll arrive in a mere couple of days. Also, if your budget is low, don't be shy about asking your local public library to get a copy!

In Hartford, Hereford, & Hampshire, Hurricanes Hardly Happen

The British Empire is not dead. It has merely conquered Hollywood, with a vengeance.

Last night the Mont and I went out to see How to Train Your Dragon, which was all very well for a movie like that. The dragons were awfully cute, anyway. But it wasn’t more than two or three minutes into the proceedings when I realized that, oh gawrsh, this was going to be one of those movies in which the kids spoke with streetwise American cadences and the adults were all going to be growling out disapproval in the lilting tones of the British isles. Scotland, specifically. Never mind that in my head, ancient Vikings sound more like . . . I don’t know. More Scandanavian. Like ABBA. Hell, like the Muppets’ Swedish Chef.

One thing I know for certain, though is that Vikings very likely did not at all sound like weak imitations of Mike “I Know Only One Accent Other Than Canadian And You’re Going To Hear Me Do It Dammit” Myers doing Shrek.

Now, it’s not that I’m anti-British accents in films. In films like the Lord of the Rings trilogy when all the hobbitses are running around with hairy bare feet and talking to elves in Cockney, I’m fine. The original author was English. Ditto with the Narnia films. Harry Potter? The wizardly intonations of this updating of Tom Brown’s Schooldays is fine with me. I may even have harbored a few secret fantasies of Emma Watson’s Hermione telling me in a soft whisper that I was a very naughty lad who richly deserved a thrashing. And trust me, it’s all about the accent, in that particular scenario.

But that is neither here nor there. Those characters are rooted in the traditions of the Great Britain. Dragon-training Vikings are not. Nor, I would like to point out, is the pantheon of Greek gods. From what I saw in the Clash of the Titans trailer, the august collection of deities hanging around Mount Olympus could have been cast from the leftovers of some Merchant/Ivory period piece. And the female lead in the upcoming Prince of Persia? Wench sounds like Julie Andrews in Camelot.

It seems as if the movie industry uses patrician upper-class English aristo-modulations as shorthand for gods, wizards, nobility in any European non-English-speaking country, and other all-powerful creatures. The comic relief and the ogres get plucked from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and London’s East End. Ah well. I shouldn’t complain. At least the cliche keeps dozens of refugees from BBC Television employed, and lets a lot of people like Jake Gyllenhaal who shouldn’t be attempting accents, strut their stuff. But when the day comes that some barely-an-actor like Keanu Reeves is conscripted to adopt some plummy British accent so that audience are forced to sit through . . . oh. Sorry, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Dangerous Liaisons.

Forgot about you. Poor things.

Ninjas vs. Pirates!

In honor of the April release of my novel, The Buccaneer’s Apprentice, as well as Ed Briant’s Choppy Socky Blues, my publisher, Flux, is giving away copies of both books to one lucky entrant with social networking savvy.

All you have to do is visit their Facebook page answers the age-old question: when it comes to pirates vs. ninjas, who’ll be the winner? I’m partial to pirates, myself, but I have to admit. Ninjas are pretty awesome.

You can tweet a reply @fluxbooks on Twitter, too!

The day I was forgotten

April first is the anniversary of my mom’s death. The day always makes me mopey.

This year I was trying to sift through my brain and find a memory I could focus upon that would best honor her. The one that kept coming to mind seemed so negative that I kept pushing it aside. I’ve learned the hard way, though, that ignoring my bossy brain only causes me trouble later down the road, so here it is:

After the sex education scandal that caused the great Cathy Smiley carpool debacle early in the second grade, I started taking the bus home from school. My dad would drive me to Brook Hill Elementary in the mornings, but when school would let out I’d board the smelly yellow school bus and take the half-hour ride back to my neighborhood. The bus stop was a good walk from my house for someone with little legs. By myself I’d take the sidewalk south, turn the corner, and then travel a very very long half-block east until I was across the street from my house.

Now, I lived on a busy thoroughfare. It was stately and green and lined with trees and crepe myrtle, yes, but it was essentially a four-lane artery that cars and trucks would take to cut between major roads. In the middle lay a broad median covered with grass and more crepe myrtle. To a second-grader who was still only six years old, that street was intimidatingly broad. More to the point, I wasn’t allowed to cross it by myself.

When I reached the spot across the street from my house, afternoons, I was supposed to stand on the sidewalk and wait for my mother. She would have been watching from the front windows, waiting for me. When I’d appear between the banks of shrubbery, she’d dash out, cross the street, take my hand, and lead me home. Day after day we followed this routine without fail.

Until one day in winter, that is. It had been snowing, I remember. As was typical in Richmond, it wasn’t really enough snow to cause a problem, but enough to give the air a certain winter crispness. As I did every day, I followed the sidewalk, turned the corner, and walked the long half-block to the spot where I always stood. Then I waited.

And waited. And waited.

I don’t know exactly what it was that kept my mom that afternoon—whether she was reading a book and got wrapped up in the plot, or whether she’d become absorbed in a crossword puzzle or a phone call or some task around the house—but she simply forgot to look out for me. I stood on the sidewalk, getting colder by the minute, waiting and waiting, but she never came. I was too good a boy to disobey the parental command that I was never to cross the street by myself. So I stood there, more and more impatient by the second, waiting for her to emerge, while the cars and trucks roared by.

The snow continued to fall. To me it seemed to get colder and colder. I began to contemplate crossing the road by myself, but couldn’t bring myself to attempt it. There were rules to it I hadn’t learned. I remember wondering what would happen if no one ever remembered me. Would it get dark? Would anyone be able to see me in the dark? Would I have to stand there forever?

It’s at this point in the story that I can hear my mother’s voice, wry and annoyed, saying, Oh, great, you came up a story of my failure. Thanks very much. But I suppose that the reason my brain kept forcing this story up to the surface is because of what happened afterward.

By the time my mother finally remembered me, I’d been standing there for perhaps forty minutes (though it seemed like hours to me). Hot tears were streaming down my face. I had to pee. My mother, appalled at herself, rushed out of the front door in nothing more than her housecoat and slippers, dashed through the mild late-afternoon traffic, knelt down in the snow next to me, and gave me an enormous hug. Then, half-carrying and half-guiding me, she rushed me back across the parkway, up the sidewalk, and into the warm house. All the way she uttered reproaches to herself and comforting words for me. Once she’d unbundled me from my wet clothing, she began boiling water. When I returned from the bathroom, my bladder emptied, I had a steaming cup of Swiss Miss in front of me, studded with miniature marshmallows. The television was on to whatever show I liked watching in the afternoons, and she wrapped me in my grandmother’s crocheted afghan. While she dried my hair with a dish towel, she promised over and over that she’d never forget me again.

I remember clearly feeling more badly for my mother that afternoon than I really did for myself. I never truly believed that I would’ve been stranded across the street in the dark, much less forever. That specter had been created only by my dramatic brain in overdrive. For the first time ever, though, I’d seen my mother as a fallible creature instead of the all-powerful, eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head omniscience she’d always been. The new knowledge that she had her failings and oversights didn’t frighten me, or make me feel as if I had an upper hand. For a fearful six-year-old who was too acutely aware of his faults, it merely comforted me to know that my mother made her own missteps as well.

And the very next day, once I was safely home, she and I walked down to the nearest busy street corner so that I could learn how to cross the street on my own, if something similar ever happened again. She still came out to meet me for the rest of the school year, but by the end of the week, I could perform the drill of looking both ways and crossing at the light to her total satisfaction.

It was my first baby step toward independence. Though it came at the price of a few tears on a snowy day, I don’t think there are many better memories to honor my mother than that.

The big chop

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working intently on making some revisions my editor had requested to the third book in the Cassaforte Chronicles. (Its former title, A Traveler to Nascenza, has been shelved, by the way, in favor of The Nascenza Conspiracy.)

For those of you who read The Glass Maker’s Daughter, the third book in the series focuses on Petro Divetri, the younger brother of the first novel’s heroine. After spending four years of increased scrutiny and expectation thanks to his sister’s fame and connections to the the country’s ruler, Petro is tired of constant attention. When he’s selected to represent his insula on a religious pilgrimage, he and his best friend decide to play a practical joke by swapping places. Petro gets to be a nobody for the course of a couple of weeks, while his friend gets to enjoy all the imagined privileges of being the glass maker’s son. But then everything goes wrong when political insurrectionists wishing to put pressure on the crown kidnap the friend, believing he’s Petro Divetri, and Petro’s left alone in the wilderness to stop them.

The book’s really a play on a familiar theme these days, that of a political group utilizing tactics of terror in order to frighten a population away from a popular leader. It’s a story of the extremes to which a political minority will resort when their candidate doesn’t assume a nation’s control—though I don’t necessarily think any of the young adults reading the book might pick up on the Obama vs. the teabaggers parallels, any more than they picked up on the echoes of 9/11 in the first book.

My wise editor enjoyed the book immensely, but made the suggestion that moving the kidnapping forward in the narrative would benefit the book’s structure. I didn’t disagree. What it meant, however, was that a lot of material needed to be cut. As any author can tell you, cutting can hurt. The chunk of pages I wanted to remove represented not only days and days of work, but great conversations, vibrant minor characters, detailed descriptions, and all kinds of information that might have to be relocated to other places and woven back into the novel’s web. Cutting substantially is not just a matter of lopping off a number of unessential words and hoping it adds up. It means judging every sentence, every paragraph, and deciding what’s essential and what’s merely colorful.

It’s hard.

I did it, though. In the end I chopped about thirty pages from the first one hundred. The first chapter I left more or less intact save for a little streamlining. From the second chapter I chopped the second half. The third chapter that originally took place with Petro and some of his insula-mates became a much shorter episode that took place in the headmistress’ office, and all of Petro’s classmates vanished. (That was the loss that stung the most, probably—a couple of the kids were really nicely drawn.) The fourth chapter I left alone, but the fifth, detailing the pilgrims’ first night on the road, I excised completely.

Although on a certain level I was a little sad to lose my minor characters, mostly I thought it a great intellectual challenge to figure out how to accomplish it. It was like a big game of Jenga. I removed as many sticks as possible to lighten the tower, but not so many that it lost any of its integrity, much less had any chance of tumbling down.

It’s unwise for a writer to think of his novel as untouchable. There’s always something that can be improved or polished. Sometimes an editor is going to make a request that sounds difficult. Approaching it as a game, however, or as a particularly tricky puzzle to solve makes it less daunting. Even fun.

The hard questions

A little later today I’m giving a talk to college students enrolled in a course about writing fiction for young adults. I know. Why am I not teaching this thing? I’m not really convinced that writing is the sort of thing that can be learned by everyone enlisted in a semester-long three-credit course, personally, but the good thing about a seminar is that the very presence of academic structure gives students every chance to succeed. The regular checkpoints, the guide markers along the way, the evaluations—they all give aspiring writers a solid pace to follow, and a sense of achievement by semester’s end when they’ve produced their three short stories or their workshop-vetted novella.

I’m not being asked to talk about the actual crafting of novels, at any rate. I got called in to talk about having a career as a published author. And this year, when I was looking over my standard outline of what I call The Fabulous Author Speech, I found myself scrubbing out roughly half of the old talk and adding a completely new section titled, Are you really sure you want to seek publication?

Much of my talks in the past, you see, have assumed that everyone listening to me blathering on naturally wants their volumes to appear on the shelves of Barnes & Noble. It’s the dream that aspiring authors confess when they approach me shyly. I know it’s the goal of many fine writers of my personal acquaintance. As an achievement it’s all well and good, but I know perfectly well that not everyone wants to go through the rigors of seeking publication, nor the exposure, nor the mental gymnastics it requires. The publishing business, as I stress in my talk, is not the ultimate reward for the most deserving; it’s merely a delivery system for writing that has a market and is at least competent.

So today I plan to give these students a few hard questions to ask themselves. What are your work habits? is the first. If you’re being completely honest with yourself, I plan to inquire, can you look at your past writing history and affirm that you’ll be able to finish a three-hundred-page book without stalling out after the first three chapters? Will you be able to finish it on a deadline? During the Christmas holidays when everyone wants you to be social and fun and keep the house clean? Will you be able to sit at the computer from eight in the morning until midnight when you know that deadline is approaching and you’re scared pantsless than you won’t be able to finish?

Do you have the financial resources and the time to write? I worked full-time when the first twelve of my books came out, drudging at my day job from nine to five and then writing from six-thirty to midnight all week. Sometimes I wrote four novels a year. One’s first (or second, or third) book is not going to make one financially independent overnight, and it could be several years before that first manuscript makes any money for you at all.

Are you able to write more than one novel? Because publishers don’t like one-trick ponies unless their names are Harper and Lee. And I’m pretty sure Lippincott would’ve loved a Mockingbird follow-up. It’s common for people to stall after writing one manuscript, but for the vast majority of writers one single completed product does not a career make.

Are you willing to be flexible? I’ve had an editor tell me, “I love your characters and setting and tone, but can you change the entire plot of the book?” I am currently working on revising a novel in which the editor has asked me to excise thirty to forty pages from the first one hundred. Painful as both scenarios are, they require jumping into them with enthusiasm and a sense of experiment and play, not regarding a manuscript as untouchable holy writ.

Are you writing for the right reasons? If you’re writing with the dream of having an editor call with the news that she loves your first book and that you are the most favored and talented person on earth, as a heavenly chorus of angels carol around you, you’re writing for the wrong reasons. If you dream of a beautiful book signing in which all your friends show up and fawn, and your foes have to grit their teeth over the catered appetizers and agree that you are the most fabulous person they know, or if you’re dreaming of a smart Manhattan luncheon in which you get to sip margaritas and reject dozens of book cover designs while your editors attempt to curry your favor, you’re writing for the wrong reasons. Same if you’re writing to get on Oprah. The reality of the writing life stinks: people will make fun of your pen name and not realize or care that they’re hurting your feelings. The book signings are often deadly dull and make you feel as if you’re a leper thrown into Borders in a quarantined area where no one dares to tread. You get stuck with book covers you hate, sometimes, and Oprah is never going to call. My father butchers the titles of my books; my partner does not read them. Very few of my immediate friends buy or read them. Most people will not realize how exciting it is to write for young adults, and look down upon you for writing for mere children. Or for writing fantasy. Or for writing for girls. Or for writing fiction. Most people think writing in general is like girls’ cheerleading in high school. It’s all very well to have fun with, but it’s not something one really considers as a full-time, acceptable, grown-up career. If you’re writing for the glory, or the fame, or for validation from your family and the public, you’re only going to be sadly disappointed, and disappointed quickly.

Finally and most importantly, Are you willing to pursue a bumpy path without shortcuts, even with no guarantee of success? That is, are you honestly willing to endure dozens and even hundreds of rejection letters—some of the quite cruel—that can debilitate your psyche? If not, perhaps now is not the time to follow the path. Are you willing to commit months and years of searching for your agent and publisher without giving in to the temptation of self-publishing just to have the momentary gratification of seeing your name on the cover of a book-like facsimile? It may resemble a book, it may be special-ordered through Amazon like a legitimately-published book, and it may give your mother something she can put on her coffee table, but precious few people are ever going to get their hands on it. Professional writer’s organizations will not recognize it when you apply for membership. Agents for future books you may compose will think twice about you, when you submit it as a credential. If you’re not willing to take the hard knocks gracefully, and keep sending out those query letters and synopses and to keep working on new projects for as long as it takes, now is not the time to follow the publishing path.

Because really, I want to say today, learning how to write is an admirable goal in itself, inside a classroom and without. Being published doesn’t make me a better writer; only challenging myself to develop my craft can do that. Being a published author just means I’ve managed to master the few self-promotional and marketing skills necessary to attract the attention of an agent, some editors, and a few publishing houses.

Being a better writer leads one to appreciate better the technical aspects of storytelling, and to recognize what makes a good story successful and a bad one dreadful to endure. Knowing how storytellers (and script writers) meticulously emphasize elements and manipulate their characters will spoil (let's say) every M. Night Shyamalan movie for you ten minutes into the screening, but it helps you appreciate how a script can work on a technical level (hi there, The Sixth Sense!) or help you understand why they fail (hello, Lady in the Water!). Being a better writer helps you understand why the people around you, from your eccentric aunt to your co-workers to your mate, choose the stories they share. The manner in which they relate those stories—do they rush for the payoff, or slowly relish the humorous ironies or rich details, or do they simply give the briefest and most perfunctory outline in order to conclude the conversation?—will educate you, the writer and the listener, in what is most important in their lives. Writing well helps you learn those things. Being published does not.

Even if your only intention is to write for yourself, or for your children, or in order to become the very best Spock-on-Malfoy internet fan fiction writer ever, good writing is going to help you become more observant, I plan to tell these people. It’s going to make you more insightful, and hopefully more understanding—both of yourself and the world around you. That, I intend to say, is no small nor negligible achievement.

And for the love of God, please include with your queries a self-addressed, stamped envelope.