Book Passage
Day 7 (I think!) and really looking forward to my event at the legendary Book Passage at 2 o'clock (WST).
Last time I was there, I had a dreadful cough- the audience was very patient - and we were caught in a downpour of Biblical proportions. This afternoon, fingers crossed, it will be more peaceful ....
Waiting and up early, I walked around San Francisco and I found myself at breakfast time near Fisherman's Wharf. I headed straight for Boudin's, the amazing bread/sour dour specialist bakery and store on the Waterfront. Over the tannoy system was playing David Bowie singing This is Not America, followed by Kim Wilde taking the opposite point of view with her 80s hit, Kids in America.
For those of you who've been following my blog on a regular basis, you'll know that I've spent a certain amount of my travelling time over the past week with American-themed songs playing in my head, so it seemed extraordinary that, again, I should have come in for breakfast at exactly the time that those particular - and rather old - pop songs should be playing. Coincidence or serendipity, the twin buzzwords of the tour so far.
It was precisely this sort of coincidence that led to the American 21st century heroine of Sepulchre, Meredith, coming from Milwaukee as her birthplace. When I toured there for Labyrinth in 2007, as I checked in to the Hotel Pfister in sub zero temperatures, over the music system came the sounds of Debussy. I've written about this before, but Bowie and Wilde made me reflect on how so much of being a novelist is about being a jackdaw. Noticing everything, being curious about everything, filing everything away in a mental folder marked 'Useful/Misc', just in case you might find a use for it one day.
This, for me, is in miniature, an explanation of how my plots start to take shape.
First comes location, supported by ideas and themes - in Sepulchre, music and art, Tarot and ghosts, the relationship between America and France at the turn of the last century. Simultaneously, the characters start to live and breathe inside their skins, until they're independent of me, the author. The plot settles, finally, from the fact that the characters behave, well, in character. The basic story is there, of course, but the twists and turns come from how the characters act, move, think, interact, driving the action forward.
So sitting in Boudin on the waterfront this morning, I thought of Meredith as Bowie kept me company, and couldn't imagine her eating the food I was eating, or enjoying listening to the songs coming over the music system. But ...
... I did start to get the first inklings of another character who might just have sat in such a cafe, looking at the monstrous seagulls and the tourists and the cable cars.
Maybe the heroine of my next novel? We'll see.
A bientôt.
Kate
Last time I was there, I had a dreadful cough- the audience was very patient - and we were caught in a downpour of Biblical proportions. This afternoon, fingers crossed, it will be more peaceful ....
Waiting and up early, I walked around San Francisco and I found myself at breakfast time near Fisherman's Wharf. I headed straight for Boudin's, the amazing bread/sour dour specialist bakery and store on the Waterfront. Over the tannoy system was playing David Bowie singing This is Not America, followed by Kim Wilde taking the opposite point of view with her 80s hit, Kids in America.
For those of you who've been following my blog on a regular basis, you'll know that I've spent a certain amount of my travelling time over the past week with American-themed songs playing in my head, so it seemed extraordinary that, again, I should have come in for breakfast at exactly the time that those particular - and rather old - pop songs should be playing. Coincidence or serendipity, the twin buzzwords of the tour so far.
It was precisely this sort of coincidence that led to the American 21st century heroine of Sepulchre, Meredith, coming from Milwaukee as her birthplace. When I toured there for Labyrinth in 2007, as I checked in to the Hotel Pfister in sub zero temperatures, over the music system came the sounds of Debussy. I've written about this before, but Bowie and Wilde made me reflect on how so much of being a novelist is about being a jackdaw. Noticing everything, being curious about everything, filing everything away in a mental folder marked 'Useful/Misc', just in case you might find a use for it one day.
This, for me, is in miniature, an explanation of how my plots start to take shape.
First comes location, supported by ideas and themes - in Sepulchre, music and art, Tarot and ghosts, the relationship between America and France at the turn of the last century. Simultaneously, the characters start to live and breathe inside their skins, until they're independent of me, the author. The plot settles, finally, from the fact that the characters behave, well, in character. The basic story is there, of course, but the twists and turns come from how the characters act, move, think, interact, driving the action forward.
So sitting in Boudin on the waterfront this morning, I thought of Meredith as Bowie kept me company, and couldn't imagine her eating the food I was eating, or enjoying listening to the songs coming over the music system. But ...
... I did start to get the first inklings of another character who might just have sat in such a cafe, looking at the monstrous seagulls and the tourists and the cable cars.
Maybe the heroine of my next novel? We'll see.
A bientôt.
Kate
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