Research vs. Experience

Recently, John and Hank Green were on tour in the UK for the first anniversary of The Fault in Our Stars, and John made this video in which he basically broke my heart by going on my favorite walk along the Thames - the one that goes past Parliament and the London Eye and the Globe and eventually winds its way to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London - as well as mentioning getting a drink at Eat to be rebellious and calling Caffe Nero "Caffe Nerd" because the font does kinda make it look like that, and all sorts of other London-y things that made me viscerally miss that place I once called home. (Not like I don't do that enough as it is, thanks John.)

But he was also, kind of, in an uncertain way, making an argument that virtual narratives are now so real and compelling as to stand up to physical narratives. He was looking at an object in the British Museum that was actually on loan to a museum in Toronto, but the space had been filled by such a convincing 3-D photo that it took him a minute to notice it wasn't real. So, he says, does that matter? Is it important to be looking at the real thing?

I'm a history minor; I do a rather ridiculous amount of research like it's my job. So there's something to be said for that - I do not have a time machine. I cannot find out, in a personal, physical way, everything about daily life in World War II or the French Revolution or Victorian London. I just can't. I have to turn to official documents and personal narratives and paintings and photos and maps; I can piece together my own truth based on the snippets I've been given.

And I obviously did enough research to create a landscape for my characters before I went to Europe. I'd written A TERROR OF DARKNESS completely when I finally went to Paris, and I think the only thing I wanted to change after having gone was noting how damp the catacombs actually are - it looks pretty dry and dusty down there in all the pictures I'd seen.

But even though the research I'd done was enough, I wouldn't have traded that semester abroad for the world. There are some things you simply cannot learn from books - sometimes you have to buy a drink at Eat and get stuck in the snow at Piccadilly Circus and eat pub food and discover places not listed on the maps. Sometimes you have to touch the stones of Notre Dame and breathe the dank air of the catacombs and dance through the gilded halls of the Palais Garnier.

I don't think John is arguing that everyone should always stay inside 100% of the time and be glued to their computer screens. That would be silly. And I think the question he's raised is interesting: is it sufficient to look at a picture of a thing? How much is there to be said for looking at the thing itself? How important, for example, was it for me to see the actual Mona Lisa when we went to the Louvre, versus looking at a picture of the Mona Lisa in my textbooks and online?  

Maybe the virtual experience is so detailed now as to be enough. But the real experience just adds something more. It allows you to create something more than what's merely "enough."

Blind Speed Dating Writing Contest!!

So, this week's post comes to you a day early, because I am a part of Cupid's Literary Connection Blind Speed Dating contest!!! I am already in the agent round, so this post is for HONORABLE MENTION ONLY, but I thought I'd also enter the kissing scene competition portion of the contest because, you know, kissing scenes are fun.

So here is the kissing scene from my manuscript A TERROR OF DARKNESS. Avar, a werewolf, has just helped chase off some Parisian guards who want to arrest Rose and, well, chop her head off (this is the Reign of Terror, after all). Enjoy!

------------------------------------------------

“You saved my life,” she breathed. He grinned at her.

“You seem so surprised.”               

                                                                                        

Rose could not stop herself smiling; her breaths became short, giddy laughs. He was there, standing in front of her with that silly smirk on his face, there, solid, real, when she thought she would never see him again.

“You came back.”

“I came back,” he repeated with a nod. “I-”

He broke off, dropping his eyes for a moment, and when he looked up again he stepped in towards her, raising a hand to brush her tousled hair away from her face. 

“I finally found someone I could never run from,” he said. 

Words Rose could not say caught in her throat, tangled in surprise and wonder and something she could not define.  His hand, still resting gently against her cheek, tilted her face towards his, and he kissed her. 

At first, his lips were feather light and hesitant on hers, and for a moment Rose was convinced that she had never woken from those fevered and unattainable dreams. But no, it was real, beautiful in its impossibility, and her hands found his shoulders, pulling him closer to her. The cold, tight feeling that had lodged her chest after he had gone melted in an instant, chased away by his hand at her waist, his fingers in her hair. Rose gave herself up entirely to that moment, that kiss, letting everything else slide away, except the thought that for once in her life someone needed her as much as she needed him. 

Avar pulled away, letting Rose catch her breath, but she felt even more giddy with every fresh gasp of air. He looked guilty, but she could not stop smiling, hardly able to believe the strange and wonderful thing that had just happened. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I should not have presumed – we are – different, we cannot-”

Rose shook her head, silencing him. 

“None of that matters,” she said, her face an inch from his. “Remember? We are not so very different, you and I.”

And she reached up and kissed him again, his arms wrapping securely around her. None of that mattered; their differences were imaginary, and no one could tell her otherwise, not anymore, not ever, and especially not in that quiet little alleyway, a deserted street at the heart of Paris. Just then, for those silent, stolen moments, they were all that mattered, the only two players in a perfect and precarious world of lovely dreams.

About The Book

Hello All! So, my awesome summer intern friend Ari tagged me in her last blog post. I think this one is especially interesting and useful, so I am going to pounce on it (... a week later... sorry Ari... I might talk about Doing All The Things on Thursday...) I hope you guys are interested too!



1. What is the name of your book?

A TERROR OF DARKNESS

2. Where did the idea for your book come from?

Heh, this is kind of a long story. When I was a sophomore in high school, I was sitting with my friend Erin on a bus in the dark, on the way back from our annual band/chorus trip, and I said I'd been mulling over a retelling of Beauty and the Beast with a werewolf in. She thought that was awesome, so I wrote it on and off for a while. I finished it and started working on a sequel.

Then I went to college and asked a professor how one goes about publishing a novel. She introduced me to a student in the other section of her Intro to the Essay class - Kody Keplinger - who taught me how to write a query letter and told me that, seriously, I needed to cut my book in half if I wanted to actually pitch it. I managed to get it from about 163k (!!!) to 100k (!), and then I queried it. I got some interest, got some feedback, and then decided it needed to be reworked. I puttered around for quite a while, trying to find a good way to fix all the problems in the ms.

And then I rewrote the entire thing from scratch. The only thing that's stayed the same from the beginning are the central characters, who I love beyond reason, really.

3. In what genre would you classify your book?

YA historical fantasy. This might be a point of contention for some people, since there are werewolves in my manuscript. I do see this in the realm of fantasy rather than paranormal, however. In most paranormal books, I think, the werewolf/vampire/evil rabbit character has to keep that identity a secret, and there's an introduction to that secret world for a normal human character. Whereas in fantasy, elements of magic - in my case, a magical creature - are simply present and accepted in the world. Does that make any sense or am I losing my mind?

4. If you had to pick actors to play your characters in a movie rendition, who would you choose?

Um... well... Ben Barnes as Prince Caspian looks rather like Avar, I think... although that random kid I sat next to on the Tube once was a dead ringer for him. He was also wearing a fez, too; so much the better.

5. Give us a one-sentence synopsis of your book.

Seventeen-year-old Rose must break her family out of the most feared prison in Paris before they face the guillotine, with only the help of the werewolf who got them all into trouble in the first place. 

6. Is your book already published?

*grins hopefully at the Literary Powers that Be* Someday, I should hope!

7. How long did it take you to write your book?

Um... about five years, I think? Although that's from "initial idea" to "manuscript as it is now," not how long it actually took me to physically write anything. That I don't remember.

8. What other books within your genre would you compare it to? Or, readers of which books would enjoy yours?

Well, my query letter compares it to The Scorpio Races and A Great and Terrible Beauty, because that kind of mixture of reality, history, and fantasy is what I'm really gunning for when I write.

9. Which authors inspired you to write this book?

Well, goodness. Libba Bray to an extent. I think I was initially inspired by wanting to write my own version of Beauty and the Beast. After that, my obsession with the French Revolution and my love of the characters carried the project.  



10. Tell us anything that might pique our interest in your book.

It's a kissing book. *grins*




All right, there it is! Some information on A TERROR OF DARKNESS. I tag... anyone who wishes to complete this tag! (I know, I know... but d'you know All of Those Things I mentioned? I ought to go do them now. Until Thursday!)

Teaser Tuesday + Tags = Double Time!

I know, I know, I failed a little on the alliteration there... bear with me, I'm a writer, not a poet.

But! The lovely and talented Ari, she of the fellow-interning, Nerdfighting, and snarking characters fame, tagged me the other day, and I thought I ought to play along. :)

The Lucky 7 Meme Award Rules are as such:
1. Go to the 7th or 77th page of your work in progress.
2. Go to the 7th line of the page.
3. Copy the next 7 sentences or paragraphs. Remember, they must be as they are typed.
4. Tag 7 authors.
5. Let them know they’re it!


Now, I'm going to cheat a little and not tag people, because I'm still recovering my blog-reading habits from the Blindingly-Slow-Internet-to-Crashed-Hard-Drive-to-Lost-Bookmarks Debacle of 2012, so to be perfectly honest I'm not sure which of you fine readers to tag. (Bonus: freebie excuse to send me the link to your blog so I can add it to my bookmarks again! Go go go!)

Instead, I will give you TWO snippets, as this is both a Teaser Tuesday and a tag post. Woo!

First, a piece from page 77 of the MS that is currently riding the query-go-round, A Terror of Darkness: 

“Where have you been?” Avar snapped, still gripping her hard by the shoulders.

            Rose raised an eyebrow; he was seething at her, absolutely furious, but his eyes looked – frightened. 

            “I would not have thought you cared,” she replied quietly. 

            “You promised to help me get them out of Paris,” he said, gesturing sharply at the grate and the three other wolves who waited in the camp for them. “If you disappear, so does my only chance to escape this place. You said so yourself – you need me, I need you. Where have you been?”

            “I went to the Conciergerie-”

            “Again? Why? Rose, if you are seen there too often someone will notice-”

            “I was befriending a guard,” she told him. “I cannot get into the prison through strength of arms or stealth, so I am going to try to be invited inside.”

 
And next, a piece from my new wip - this one's from page 7, since I think I'm only on page 13 so far!

            “Many of those stories are merely hearsay and idle gossip, not anything upon which to base a serious field of study.”  

            “Josephine, might I trouble you for another cup of tea?” 

            Everyone except Kate jumped at the sound of Clara’s voice. Grandmamma looked especially startled; it was quite likely that it had been so long since she had heard Clara speak that she had quite forgotten her capable of it in the slightest. But when Josephine turned to Clara, her sister did not look at all perturbed by the attention she had suddenly turned upon her; on the contrary, she was smiling calmly, holding out her cup and reminding Josephine to perform her duties as hostess and fill it once more. Josephine smiled back, pressing her sister’s hand warmly as she took the cup and saucer from her. 

And hey, if you want to copy this meme and play with it on your own blog, go right ahead! Do please send me the link, as well! 

Thoughts from Places: Lots of Geeking Out

So my internet is being an entirely new brand of cranky right now; hopefully I'll be able to slap this post online tomorrow morning before I start my work for the day.

Our journey to Paris, naturally, started at an ungodly hour of the morning. We all got up, grumbling, scrambling around and blinking in the too-early, too-bright lights in our flat, getting dressed and throwing toothbrushes into already packed suitcases before heading out the door to the tube, King's Cross, and then the Eurostar. I now know, from the journey home, that the Chunnel is rather unexciting - it's simply twenty minutes of dark, rather than the flat fields of France or the rolling hills of England - but on the way there, I slept through just about everything, which was probably a good thing, as two very full days were ahead of me.

If any of you are ever planning to go to Paris, do yourself a favor - spend more than two days there. I loved it there, and it's on top of my list of places to return to when I'm rich and famous (ha) someday. (The second is Venice, during Carnival.) We did an awful lot, as you shall see, but there's certainly more that I would have liked to see, given the chance.

Once we had arrived in Paris, found the hostel, and dropped off our bags, my French Revolution professor took us back onto the Metro and we began our French Revolution walk, starting, naturally, at the Place de la Bastille. We saw, among other things, the site of La Force prison and the oldest cafe in Paris and the Conciergerie and Notre Dame and the Palais Royale. The Conciergerie and Notre Dame especially were the first of many instances in Paris where I was utterly overwhelmed with amazement at the simple fact that I was standing where I was and seeing what I was seeing. I've done so much research and written so much about the Conciergerie, and there I was, standing right in front of it. I've seen so many pictures of and read books about Notre Dame, and there I was walking through it; I even touched one of the many Gothic columns. (That's one thing I like about old architechture; it feels like walking inside a work of art, and yet you can reach out and touch it to remind ! !yourself that it's real, that someone once made the thing you are marveling at.) In simpler terms: I did an awful lot of geeking out in Paris.

After the walk, we returned to the hostel to check in properly and put our things in our room; we were quite pleased to find that there was a lot of floorspace (more on that later) and that our beds each had curtains on them, rather like sleeper cars in a train. It felt very fancy.

Lisa and I then had a snack (mmm, Croque Monsieur), and then a group of us headed back to the Metro (the Metro, by the way, is very efficient and very easy to use, but feels a bit like people have been put onto a train, and then the train placed in a box, and then the box shaken by a very eager small child) to go to the Louvre, which is free for under-26s on Friday nights (the student discounts in Paris, by the way, are epic). We of course went right to the Mona Lisa - we were, after all, there, and could hardly pass it up - and then we spent another few hours wandering around the Greek and Roman statues and the Egyptian section before our feet decided they had had quite enough. We stopped for some dessert (mmmm, chocolate mousse), and then attempted to complete our plan for the evening, but we quickly discovered that while the Eiffel Tower LOOKS like it is quite close to the Louvre, it most definitely is NOT close, and as we were quite certain we would not make it all the w! !ay there before the last elevator at 10:30, we went back to the hostel and collapsed for the night.

The next morning, Lisa, Tory and I were joined by our friend Bonnie, and the four of us jam-packed our day. We started off with a visit to the Catacombs; after having a bit of difficulty initially finding the entrance, we descended the twenty-six meter spiral staircase (with every step, I gained a new appreciation for just how much my characters must hate me for putting them through that) and headed off into the dark tunnels. There is quite a long walk in the tunnels to get to the actual ossuary, but that was fine with me; the whole time, I was taking mental notes, glad to see that I'd gotten the approximate size and general feel of the tunnels right, telling myself that I ought to write the dampness of the air down there into my manuscript, and again thinking that Rose must hate me so very much for making her walk down there without any light. Finally, we reached the entrance to the catacombs themselves (I might have freaked out a bit upon seeing the "Arrete! C'est ici l'em! !pire de la mort" sign over the entranceway; I asked the others if it was morbid of me to think of the catacombs as one of those places where I could hardly believe I was actually there, and some other American tourists seemed to get a kick out of that. Hopefully they also heard the impromptu history lesson on the catacombs that I gave, so they know I'm not a complete weirdo... just a little bit of a weirdo). The catacombs are kind of unreal. I almost could not process what I was seeing as anything other than, say, a movie set. I could not believe that there were really six million skeletons all arranged down there, and that six million skulls were watching me as I walked past them. The bones go on forever, with the skulls sometimes arranged into hearts or crosses, with plaques on some pillars or propped up by more skulls explaining where the bones had originally been buried or presenting a quotation on the nature of death. It was extremely eerie, but absolutely fascinating.! !

After the catacombs, we stopped for lunch (because seeing six million dead bodies naturally makes you hungry, right?) and then we headed off to the next stop on our itinerary - the Opera Garnier. There, of course, I geeked out quite a bit more, although I refrained from the impromptu history lesson this time. I was thrilled by this place not because I had written about it, but of course because Phantom of the Opera is one of my favorite musicals, and there I was, in the Phantom's opera house, looking at the real chandelier and the real Box 5. The building is stunningly beautiful, with every hallway filled with chandeliers and mirrors and gilt woodwork. I could easily have spent hours there poring over every room, wishing we could have visited the cellars, and imagining Faust being performed on the stage or the staircase filled with people at the Masquerade.

We had to be off to our next stop, however; we went back to the Ile-de-la-Cite, crossing the Pont Neuf and walking alongside the Conciergerie (which was sadly covered in scaffolding) to stop in at Shakespeare and Company, a really neat English-language bookstore across the street from Notre Dame. It was a really neat little shop, if a bit crowded for its size, and I had a good time poking around before we got back on the Metro for our last stop of the day - the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower involved an awful lot of standing in line - first, there was the line for the tickets, and then the line for the elevator to the second floor, and then the elevator all the way to the top, and then again for both elevators on the way down - and while the weather was sunny and gorgeous on our first day in Paris, it was cold and a bit drizzly that evening while we were standing beneath the tower and waiting. I do think however that the view from the top, the way that the rain looked like golden glitter in the lights on the tower on the way down, and the fact that I can in fact say that I've been to the top of the Eiffel Tower all made the long lines worth it.

We left Paris late enough the next morning that I was able to stay awake on the train, but early enough that we couldn't really do anything much other than visit a boulangerie. Even though every time I return to London from an adventure, it feels more and more like home, I definitely felt that I had not had quite enough time in Paris, and I will definitely be going back there someday.