I am grateful to have the very talented Jeanne Mackin here today to share her impressive research.
I hope you enjoy her post as much as I did.
Historical research
When I was researching my first historical novel I found a volume of memoirs written by Marie Antoinette’s seamstress…and it had never been translated into English! I read French well enough to be able to read these memoirs, but it was so exciting to me, to hold a book published more than a hundred and fifty years before and realize I was one of the very Americans who may have read it. That’s what historical research means to me: exploration and discovery. I don’t think of it as a dry and dusty duty but almost as a form of vacation, a way to travel to different times and places, and sometimes those places I travel to are well-off the beaten path. When I began researching my most recent novel, A Lady of Good Family, I began by reading more memoirs and biographies of my characters – Edith Wharton, her sister-in-law Mary Cadwalader Jones, and Edith’s niece, Beatrix. Thankfully, all three women were writers of various types and there is plenty of material. But once that reading was finished, I began to explore garden history, since Beatrix Farrand became of the most famous professional gardeners of our country. Gardens fascinate me, as they fascinated Beatrix, and historically they offer much to the investigator willing to explore those library shelves: colonial gardens, English country house gardens, public gardens, secret gardens…they all have their own purpose, they own style and methods. In a way, gardens maintained over several generations, as some are, become their own type of library, full of experiences, discoveries, history. Who planted that tree, and why? How did those daffodils end up planted so far from the main garden? I turn over some earth and find a child’s marble buried there from decades before I wonder if that child, now grown old, ever wonders where that marble disappeared to! Gardening and historical research, you see, have much in common. They both raise questions and ask us to look for answers, or even just more questions.
Raised among wealth and privilege during America's fabled Gilded Age, a niece of famous novelist Edith Wharton and a friend to literary great Henry James, Beatrix Farrand is expected to marry, and to marry well. But as a young woman traveling through Europe, she already knows that gardens are her true passion. How she becomes a woman for whom work and love, the earthly and the mysterious, are held in delicate balance is the story of her unique determination to create beauty while remaining true to herself.
Excerpt: 1920 Lenox, Massachusetts My grandparents had a farm outside of Schenectady, and every Sunday my father, who worked in town, would hitch the swayback mare to the buggy and take us out there. I would be left in play in the field as my father and grandfather sat on the porch and drank tea and Grandma cooked. My mother, always dressed a little too extravagantly, shelled the peas. A yellow barn stood tall and broad against a cornflower blue sky. A row of red hollyhocks in front of the barn stretched to the sky, each flower on the stem as silky and round as the skirt on Thumbelina’s ball gown. In the field next to the barn, daisies danced in the breeze. My namesake flower. I saw it still, the yellows and red and blues glowing against my closed eyelids. The field was my first garden and I was absolutely happy in it. We usually are, in the gardens of our childhood. When I opened my eyes I was on a porch in Lenox, a little tired from weeks of travel, a little restless. My companions were restless, too, weary of trying to make polite conversation as strangers do. It was a late-summer evening, too warm, with a disquieting breeze stirring the treetops as if a giant ghostly hand ruffled them. Through the open window a piano player was tinkling his way through Irving Berlin as young people danced and flirted. In the road that silvered past the inn, young men, those who had made it home from the war, drove up and down in their shiny black Model T’s. It was a night for thinking of love and loss, first gardens, first kisses. Mrs. Avery suggested we try the Ouija board. Since the war it had become a national obsession. “Let’s,” I agreed eagerly.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Jeanne Mackin ‘s latest novel, A Lady of Good Family, explores the secret life of gilded age Beatrix Jones Farrand, niece of Edith Wharton and the first woman professional landscape design in America. Her previous novel, The Beautiful American, based on the life of model turned war correspondent and photographer, Lee Miller won the CNY 2015 prize for fiction. She has published in American Letters and Commentary and SNReview and other publications and is the author of the Cornell Book of Herbs and Edible Flowers. She was the recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society and her journalism has won awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. She lives with her husband, Steve Poleskie, in Ithaca. A Lady of Good Family is available at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, and other bookstores. www.jeannemackin.com jeannemackin1@twitter LINKS: https://twitter.com/jeannemackin1 https://www.facebook.com/JeanneMackinAuthor https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/36613.Jeanne_MacKin http://www.amazon.com/Lady-Good-Family-Novel-ebook/dp/B00OQRL57U http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-lady-of-good-family-jeanne-mackin/1120624847
Jeanne will be awarding a $15 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here: http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2015/05/vbt-lady-of-good-family-by-jeanne-mackin.html Callan Baird used to laugh more than he frowned, but that was before his wife died. Now his life is duty, debts and a general apathy for anything else. And then Victoria Burke burst into his life. She's everything he wants to corrupt. Victoria has two choices: agree to a grouchy, sexy Scotsman's extortion or call her boss to explain why she can't do her job. Since she's spent the last three years rebuilding her career as antique appraiser, and this one commission could make or break it, the decision is a no-brainer. Except everything about Callan is complicated. He sees no problem turning their work relationship into a sexual one. She refuses to break her boss' no-fraternization rule. He's the one thing she wants and the one thing she can't have. He's had his one great love, and doesn't want a replacement. His heart doesn't agree, because she's everything he desires. Callan will have to let go of his past if he wants Victoria to be in his future. Excerpt: The door swung open. A shirtless man glowered at her, but that description couldn't quite encapsulate him. Her smile faltered while she lost a few IQ points at the full brunt of him. Shadows deepened the grooves around his mouth and eyes. Wind creeping in through the open door whipped his dark auburn hair into disarray. He was broad in the shoulders, solid in the torso and thighs. Every sinew in his tall frame inspired an itch in her palms to touch, caress, explore all of him. He fit into the scenery—stark mountains and moors. The furrows that hinted above his brows practically promised brooding—complete with a money back guarantee. His blue eyes narrowed. “Which Baird sent you?” His thick burr rolled the “r” in a way that prickled her skin. He definitely seemed to know Ian and Tristan. Ian was her boss. Tristan was her boss' brother who ran the sales division. To say they were like night and day was an understatement. “I'm—” He scoffed, cutting off her speech with the abrupt sound. “Ian,” he guessed with pinpoint accuracy. “Tristan wouldn't have sent a lamb to slaughter.” Her spine stiffened. A lamb would have curled up when she had mistakenly authenticated a forgery three years ago. A sheep would have willingly let the world put a hand over her eyes while it slit her throat to bleed out from shame, guilt and mortification. One simply didn't recover from the kind of screw up she'd made, but Victoria had found employment, convinced her boss to send her to Scotland, alone, for an all expense paid commission of a castle. This was her first job oversees for the Bairds and it damn sure wouldn't be her last. Victoria Burke was no one's goddamn lamb. AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Melissa Blue’s writing career started on a typewriter one month after her son was born. This would have been an idyllic situation for a writer if it had been 1985, not 2004. Eventually she upgraded to a computer. She’s still typing away on the same computer, making imaginary people fall in love. Where to find me online: http://www.themelissablue.com https://www.facebook.com/themelissablue.author My Writing StyleWriters love to feel that high that often comes from writing and having written something. I love that. My writing style typically reflects my enthusiasm and, at times, my somewhat nervous “everyman” energy. There’s also an underlying befuddlement to understanding life, one’s place in life and the surrender that typically must come for growth to occur. A great deal of my writing style tends to reflect my interest in going beneath the surface of the Here and Now and exploring the underlying emotions that reside within. I love exploring beneath the surface and whether I am writing fiction of non-fiction, I typically go there. It must be built in—to just probe deep. When I was writing my latest book, Grace Revealed, the process was very unusual. For starters, it was a memoir about me and my Polish family, and it showcased the deep love my grandmother had for her children and her husband as they endured seemingly endless uncertainty during the 1940s, after Stalin deported them and nearly a million other Polish people. For that project, it was a curious mix of possibilities, because I had to both delve deeply into my own feelings about uncovering intense bits of family history as well as understanding my own place in the big spiritual jigsaw puzzle that was my family ancestry. It was quite a tightrope to walk. However, I prefer to write about those things that are often uncomfortable to face because in the facing of them, a kind of levity occurs. And this is priceless, really. When I do not write, I just feel “off.” In that respect, writing, for me, is a kind of therapeutic process—perhaps the best form of therapy around.
GREG ARCHER is an author, cultural moderator, award-winning journalist, television host and motivational speaker. His latest book, GRACE REVEALED: A MEMOIR, goes from glitz to the Gulags as the popular entertainment reporter takes a step back from Hollywood to explore his Polish family’s mesmerizing tale surviving Joseph Stalin’s mass deportation of Poles during the 1940s. What he uncovers along the way fuels his mission to not only expose the nearly forgotten odyssey that befell nearly 2 million Poles 75 years ago, but to also expose the ripple effects that remain today.
“Powerful, touching and heartfelt.”—The Huffington Post Excerpt: It all began with a broken picture frame and actor Ewan McGregor. But not at the same time. And a photograph of Ewan McGregor was not even in the picture frame. Nor did the Hollywood hotshot have anything to do with breaking it. Allow me to explain … It was the Fall of 2010 … which is the perfect way to begin a story, but for me, it really could be taken quite literally. One morning, I walked into my third-floor office of the weekly magazine at which I was the editor in Santa Cruz, California. To my surprise, the double picture frame housing two different black-and-white photos of my Polish family lay face up on my desk and the glass from the frames broken, the remnants arranged in a clumsy collection of jagged shards right there atop of it. My Polish grandmother’s disenchanted eyes stared up at me with haunting concern from one of those photos and her tightly drawn lips refused her powdered, solemn face to soften. Next to her lay a group portrait of my grandmother, my aunt, my three uncles, and my mother, all at various ages in their youth, sitting on a bench outdoors in Tanzania, Africa, during the 1940s. I sat down behind my desk and quickly assessed the situation, glancing at the top shelf on the wall nearly three feet away. The picture frame typically resided there and during the course of any given week, I would peer up at those photos more times than I could accurately assess and ruminate—on my family’s strength, their will, how World War II affected them. At times, these deep thoughts temporarily assisted me in avoiding a life-long habit I had yet to fully overcome: Mood Swinging. I would not necessarily call myself bipolar. Emotional? Of course. But bipolar. No. (Not yet.)
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
GREG ARCHER Author, Journalist, Cultural Moderator, More … GREG ARCHER is an author, cultural moderator, award-winning journalist, television host and motivational speaker. His latest book, GRACE REVEALED: A MEMOIR, goes from glitz to the Gulags as the popular entertainment reporter takes a step back from Hollywood to explore his Polish family’s mesmerizing tale surviving Joseph Stalin’s mass deportation of Poles during the 1940s. What he uncovers along the way fuels his mission to not only expose the nearly forgotten odyssey that befell nearly 2 million Poles 75 years ago, but to also expose the ripple effects that remain today. “Powerful, touching and heartfelt.”—The Huffington Post **** GREG ARCHER’s work covering agents of change, history, travel and the entertainment industry have appeared in The Huffington Post, Oprah Magazine, San Francisco Examiner, The Advocate, Bust, Palm Springs Life, VIA Magazine, Jetset Extra and on variety of cable television outlets. A four-time recipient of the Best Writer Award in a popular San Francisco Bay Area Readers' Poll, he shines the light on change agents near and far, and other under-reported issues in society. His splits his time between his hometown of Chicago, and Palm Springs. WEB: www.gregarcher.com. GRACE REVEALED: A MEMOIR SITE: www.graverevealedbook.com GRACE REVEALED / FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Grace-Revealed-A-Memoir/835500373138365?ref=hl BOOK TRAILERS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbxpaZiDod4 TWITTER @Greg_Archer
Greg will be awarding $25 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
Follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chances of winning. The tour dates can be found here: http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2015/02/nbtm-tour-grace-revealed-memoir-by-greg.html
First of all, thanks Marlow for having me as your guest. I’m so glad to stop by and share a little bit of my own history with you and your readers.
As you know from my bio, I’ve lived in the UK, Canada and the US, but I’ve also lived in Italy as well. And as any author will attest to, we take a piece of everyplace we’ve ever been with us and it seeps into our writing. Sometimes subtly — sometimes not so subtly. My personal experiences always play a role in the settings I chose for my books. Naturally, I am prone to write books set places I know well. This would be London, as I spent my time growing up there and think it offers such fabulous landmarks, architecture, moody weather and a sense of tradition that is perfect for the juxtaposition of erotic romance. Cockpit, my next upcoming release, is set in London and it was a complete joy to write.
I often write about the many cities in the US that I have lived or spent time in, from large to small, from D.C to Coronado, from the USVI to Beverly Hills, from Miami to Montecito. Sometimes it is the small out of the way towns that make the most interesting settings for books, I think. I have yet to pen a book set in Canada, but I am sure one will be coming soon, amidst the rich settings of Banff nestled in the Rocky Mountains and the cosmopolitan gem of Vancouver are both beckoning.
Readers who follow my work will know of my unrestrained love of Italy. Venice is one of my favorite cities and one I have spent much time in as, well as Florence. But what they might not know is that I spent time living in Italy, in an exquisite town on the Amalfi Coast. References to my time in Positano are throughout my writing, whether the book is set there or not.
Setting is essential to me, it’s the inspiration for any new book and it is the first thing that usually takes shape in my mind before I launch into dreaming up the characters and plotline. Even Sail Away With Me is based on my love of cruising and the time I’ve spent in the Caribbean. Same goes one of newly finished books, Bimini Bound, set in the Bahamas and the time I spent sailing there.
So, for me, where I have lived and traveled is a cornerstone of my writing. Good thing I’m not a science fiction author, Lol! I’d love to hear from you and your readers where they would love to set a book. Best, Kate xx A VIXEN IN VENICE
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