Kate Mosse's Blog

Third Time Lucky!

2009-03-07T07:39:00.002Z

Actually, it turned out that I was involved in three - not two - publications this week. The US paperback edition of SEPULCHRE. Already there's been a great review - thoughtful, interesting, informed - on the website www.supertarot.co.uk, so that was most encouraging. The second edition was my novella for adults getting back to reading after some time, which published on 5th March. But it also turned out that a short story collection to which I'd contributed published on that same time.

Midsummer Nights is the brainchild of the dazzling British writer, Jeanette Winterson. A passionate opera fan, she decided to approach various novelists, short story writers, poets to write special stories for the 75th anniversary in 2009 of the private opera house in the Sussex Downs at Glyndebourne. Each of us was to use an opera that had been performed there - in my case, I chose Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - as the starting point for our piece. Debussy's otherworldy opera ends with the death of the heroine and the birth of a baby. I took that child and imagined her life.

Others in the collection include Ali Smith, the UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, Grande Dame of Crime writing, Ruth Rendell, Alexander McCall Smith and, of course, Winterson herself. Operas chosen as inspiration include Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Verdi's Rigoletto.

As well as feeling delighted to be included in such glittering literary company, the book itself is beautiful. It is published by the young British publishing company, Quercus, and a perfect book for all opera lovers to celebrate midsummer nights.

A bientot.

Publication Day x 2!

2009-03-05T06:24:00.002Z

It is unusual, but this week I have two publication days. One, in the US, for the paperback of SEPULCHRE - and thank you to everybody who's sent emails about that. The second is today in the UK, Thursday 5th March, for a very specific short novella written for adults with literacy difficulties.

March 5th is marked as World Book Day in the UK, where all children of school age are given a voucher to buy a book and lots of very affordable titles are published. Over the years, it became clear that it might also be a good day to focus on adult literacy too. Now, six bestselling authors are each year commissioned to write 20,000 novels aimed at adults with a reading age of between 9 and 12 years old. There are restrictions - no foreign words, no words of more than three syllables and so on - but the aim is to produce exciting, fast moving and typical (in terms of eah of the authors involved) fiction for this very specific market.

The Cave is a ghost story and, although it bears many of the hallmarks of my usual fiction, I found it very challenging, although also very rewarding, to write. In a few hours I'm off to do a live event with adult learners at a trade union in a local hospital, so I'll report back.

But, for now, happy World Book day to readers wherever you are!

A bientot

Kate

Tarot Online

2009-02-23T06:21:00.007Z

At the heart of Sepulchre, is the story about a deck of Tarot cards, which is known variously as the Bousquet or the Vernier Tarot. In a strange case of art becoming life, when you tap in 'Vernier Tarot' to your search engine, it appears on the web even though the deck doesn't actually exist.

I had eight of the key cards painted, however - The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Lovers, Strength, Justice, the Devil, the Tower - to represent leading characters in the novel.

To coincide with publication in America, there will be coverage on many different Tarot websites, which I'm delighted about. I interviewed more than 25 Tarot readers as part of my research, in the UK, in America and in France. I wanted to have advice from women (mostly) and men who engaged with Tarot now, to see how they felt about what they did and how they would advise me to write about it, as a curious outsider. I used the comments, the emotions, the experiences - theirs and mine - to underpin the Tarot story in Sepulchre.

I'd love to hear what those of you who care about Tarot, who engage on a regular basis with Tarot, think about Sepulchre. I hope I've got most of it right, although I'm sure there will be things I've misunderstood or misrepresented in the fiction. Check the sites out. Post your thoughts. Share your ideas.

Curled Up With A Good Book
Book Club Queen
Tarot Garden
Aeclectic Tarot
Arnell Ando
Gaian Tarot Artist's Journal
American Tarot Association
Super Tarot
248 Book Club

A bientôt

Kate

Villa de Mazamet in France

2009-02-18T06:47:00.004Z

Authors have different views about this, but many novelists - myself, Chimamanda Adichie and Elizabeth Kostova included - also teach creative writing. We do this for different reasons, of course - a wish to share good practice, an enjoyment of engaging with other writers at the beginnings of their careers - but also, especially out of a sense of giving something back. If one has been lucky as a novelist, if you're lucky enough to be published at the right time, to find your audience, to be published well, then it seems only right to try to give other writers a leg up too.

All potential writers are readers too, of course. There are now increasingly less formal, more social ways for authors and readers to engage with one another, other than at bookshop readings or at literary festivals. One of the biggest areas of growth is literary tourism, where organisations plan a whole day, often a weekend, around the setting or subject matter of a particular novel. The participants are sometimes writers hoping for advice, sometimes purely readers wanting to know about the background to an author's work. But those of us teaching or talking at such events get as much out of it as the participants. As a writer, you learn by listening to other writers, other readers.

In this spirit, I will be going to the Villa de Mazamet in the south of France to talk at a weekend exploring Aude Cathar Country, the location of my novels. The Villa de Mazamet is a new venture, set up by Peter Friend, and offers a mixture of history, literature, gastronomy and tourism over the course of the weekend of Friday 19th - Sunday 21st June.

If any of you are traveling in France then, do book and come along. It looks as if it will be a wonderful weekend.

A bientôt.

Helsinki in the Springtime

2009-02-16T16:19:00.005Z

I've just had a comment posted from a reader in Finland - thanks for that, Tommi! It reminds me of why blogging is so powerful - it is the only quick way to keep in touch with readers and to let people know what is happening.

When you're lucky enough to be translated into other languages, it usually means the publication dates are spread out over many months, often years. I've just answered queries from my Hebrew, my Spanish, my Japanese and my Bulgarian translators, for example, for publication during 2009. But, the first published edition of Sepulchre was in the UK on 31st October 2007. The last is likely to be sometime in 2010!

So, to Finland. From a reader who was kind enough to post a comment, I know that Sepulchre is actually already available in Finnish! As it happens, I am going to be in Helsinki for the 19th and 20th March, so just a little after publication. I don't have my schedule yet, but there will be a major book club event on 19th March, followed by interviews and signings on 20th March to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the publishing company, Otava. More details will appear on the Otava website - www.otava.fi - in due course. For now, it's just great to be visiting Finland in the spring and to have a little time to explore.

A bientôt.

Kate

Countdown to March 3rd 2009

2009-02-11T21:01:00.004Z

Hi, I'm back! Paperback publication of Sepulchre in the US is March 3rd. Over the past 18 months since the UK edition came out I've visited 16 countries (Sepulchre is published in 38 languages and 42 countries, so I made it to less than half!). This time, I'm not going to be over in America for publication, which is both a relief (because it is so hard to write a new book when talking about a novel already out), but also a shame. I had not realised, until not being in the US in the Spring, how much I'd come to love being in the States.

I love touring. I love meeting readers in different countries, with different ways of seeing books, different values, different imaginations. It does stop you writing and thinking and getting on with the next book. But, at the same time, it feeds your imagination. There were also several 'firsts' for me for Sepulchre - first time visiting Poland, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Slovakia. And many happy returns to countries such as Holland, Germany, France and Norway.

So, although I'm grateful for a break from touring, I find myself longing for an early morning walk down to the Ferry Terminal in San Francisco. Or for a glimpse of the mountains in Denver. For a glass of red wine in the bar of the Pfitzer Hotel in Milwaukee. Or, after the momentous events of January, even taking on that bitter wind in Washington DC.

The next novel takes priority, though. So it's writing, not talking that matters most at the moment. That, and the exciting, nerve racking, long wait until March 3rd for the paperback to hit the US bookstores!

A bientôt

Sepulchre.co.uk

2008-09-29T12:08:00.009+01:00

I've just posted a Final Entry at my UK website at www.sepulchre.co.uk. It was a strange experience.

The moment is significant because I am consciously putting my 'current' book behind me and looking forward to the next. It made me think about time passing generally.

When being interviewed about Sepulchre - in London, Oslo, Melbourne, Singapore, wherever - there is always a question about how long a book took to write, when did it start, when did it finish. Most writers find this a difficult question to answer.

Did Labyrinth begin when we first bought our little house in Carcassonne in 1989, or when I first imagined the character who became Alaïs at Montségur in 1996. Or was it the moment in 2001 when I started to write.

Did Sepulchre start when we first visited Rennes-les-Bains in 1989? Or later, when I started to hear the folklore of that particular small area in the mid 1990s? Or when, in 2004, I imagined Léonie tapping her foot on the steps of the Palais Garnier in Paris, before Labyrinth had even published?

So, this time, I am setting a deliberate date. This is the date of the last entry for the regular Sepulchre home page and it is, therefore, the moment when I officially started writing - the as yet untitled - new novel. Sepulchre is in best seller charts all over the world - for which I am more than grateful - but I have reached the watershed.

Today, a new novel begins.

Three weeks ...

2008-08-26T11:28:00.014+01:00

Well, it seems to me that I have been talking about Sepulchre far too much!

Back in October 2007, my UK publisher organized the launch of Sepulchre for Hallowe'en. It took place in the crypt of St Martin's in the Fields - a church in the famous Trafalgar Square in London. This wonderful venue was exactly the right place for a spooky party to launch a novel with demons and dark happenings.

Since then, though, I have visited 17 countries to address readers of all nationalities. I have been welcomed by so many delightful readers that now and then I feel a fraud and have to remind myself that each time I talk about how I came to write the book - it is to a new audience. I shouldn't worry about repeating myself. But it is hard not to ...

My husband Greg and I have been in France for three weeks on a substantial tour to the southwest - the locations of most of the action in Sepulchre. We had an exhibition of photographs of the novel's locations in the actual village in the Pyrenees where the tale unfolds. We did a bilingual conference to an audience of 150 local people and several signings, including Atelier-Empreinte at Rennes-le-Château. It was a wonderful trip and I met some remarkable people.

But after all that, I have now been traveling for Sepulchre for nearly a year. I am, in fact, blogging from Singapore right now and will soon move on to Australia and New Zealand. When I return to Europe, I have visits to Germany and the Baltic, taking me past 31 October and the anniversary of the first launch.

Then I will start thinking properly about what I am going to write next ...

French radio interview

2008-07-07T17:07:00.004+01:00

I was asked to answer a few questions for a live French radio interview last week - five or six questions in about five minutes was the idea. I thought it was an interesting test of both the journalist and the author. Which questions would he choose? How would I answer them?

Well this is how it went (in translation - you can find the original version here):

Question: Kate Mosse, you have been extremely successful with your novels Labyrinth and now Sepulchre. What is your recipe for success?

Reply: What a difficult question. Do you always ask it? I'm afraid I don't have a recipe, exactly, but I do know that, when I go to festivals, readers always tell me they love the locations in Languedoc and the strong female leading characters. And, it goes without saying, a fast-moving adventure story. In the end, I write books that I would like to read myself.

Question: Can I ask you why you set your novels here - I mean in France - and why especially in Languedoc?

Reply: I'm sure you know, I was a novelist already before I wrote Labyrinth and Sepulchre - they are my third and fourth novels - but it was only here, in the southwest of France in the Occitan lands that I so love, that my imagination truly blossomed. For Sepulchre, it was in the ancient woodlands surrounding Rennes-les-Bains - so ancient that they must conceal forgotten secrets don't you think? Perhaps even ghost or demons too, because there is such a strong folklore tradition in the area.

Question: You also had or perhaps received a parallel inspiration - I'm talking about the music of Claude Debussy, a composer who even exists within your story. So tell me, why his music and which of his works in particular?

Reply: When I was a teenager, I played the violin and the piano a good deal, as a soloist and in an orchestra. In fact, it was on tour with the local youth orchestra that I discovered Chartres - a key location in Labyrinth - the twin city of my home town. And out of all that experience, it was always the music of the end of the 19th century that most spoke to me, moved me – and above all the French compositions. So in Sepulchre, I had the idea of making a connection between the music and an imaginary Pyrenean estate - the Domaine de la Cade - near to Rennes-les-Bains. But because Debussy was a real person - and quite a recent one - I was reluctant to have him appear as himself in the novel, so we just hear his piano playing through the wall or hear snatches of his letters ... As for which works, it has to be his evocative impressionistic pieces like The Sunken Cathedral and The Sea.

Question: Is musical tradition important to you in other ways?

Reply: Good heavens, yes. To start with, I still play - although very badly - and I am still fascinated by the centuries-old musical tradition which means that what we play today is more or less what was being played a hundred years ago. And, of course, the heroine of the contemporary part of Sepulchre, Meredith Martin, shares this respect for musical tradition. It is, after all, her research into biographical details of Debussy's life - in particular to do with his first wife Lilly - that brings Meredith to southwest France.

Question: Finally, you have mentioned folk lore and ghosts. Do you really believe in any of that?

Reply: Well, I wonder what you would think. Perhaps you don't know Rennes-les-Bains, an important village for the Romans, the Celts, the Visigoths, to the 19th century visitors to the thermal baths - but then somehow allowed to become a kind of ghost town. For me, it's the sort of place where things - important events - ought to happen. If you go walking in the dark woods, rich in jade and amber, if you visit the spring known as the Salt Fountain or the standing stone called the Dead Man, you cannot help but hear echoes of its adventurous past. It is hard to define exactly. The title of the new Fred Vargas novel is Un Lieu incertain - perhaps I would call it An Ambiguous Place ....

Send off: Kate Mosse, thank you very much.

Reply: It's been a pleasure.

Perhaps the Sepulchre too is an ambiguous place ...

Writing, rugby & Toulouse

2008-06-30T23:06:00.004+01:00

I was in France this last week for the release of Sépulcre - that's the French edition of Sepulchre. Interestingly, I thought the book was going to be called Sépulture in France, because that's the name of the Baudelaire poem from which part of my inspiration came. However, my publisher decided that Sépulcre sounds 'plus noble' - and who am I to disagree?

Anyway, one of the events in Toulouse coincided with the build up to the final match in the French rugby union season, in which Stade Toulousain were going for the title. Of course, we brought one another luck - the red and black of Toulouse were victorious and we had a great time too.

I say 'we' because my husband Greg came with me on the French trip. After all, when we visit southwest France we are, in a way, going home. It would be strange not to be there together. In fact, Greg was at Montségur recently filming a TV documentary and it was an odd feeling for us both.

Now I think of it, that was also the weekend when the Toulouse rugby union side won the European Cup. Could this be the start of another mystery ... ?

Huzzah!

2008-06-16T13:46:00.004+01:00

One of the best things about being a writer is that you can work almost anywhere.

One of the worst is that sometimes your friends - other writers - take advantage of this. They drift off to the far side of the globe and work there instead of on your doorstep.

I have done this myself with my family a couple of times - to France and back, depending on our children's commitments. Even when home educating, with all of its freedoms, there were ties that we were reluctant to relinquish.

Anyway, I recently received an email from C C Humphreys - actor and author. He is publishing his blog from his new home in Vancouver. He says:

I am going to be blogging about all facets of a writer's life - from the craft of creating a character, to the graft of getting a book published. From library research to hanging out in Dracula's castle. What I am most looking forward to is interacting with my readers and my fellow bloggers. As my friend Jack Absolute might say: 'Huzzah!'

Sounds good. I'll be there.

A bientôt

Kate

Sozopol / Orange / Number 1

2008-06-09T15:14:00.004+01:00

I mentioned meeting Danielle Trussoni last week. That was because I was out and about at literary festivals.

Mostly travels around publication time are to sell copies of your new book - if you can find your audience. In this case it was different.

In fact, the trip in question was to a literary festival in Bulgaria where Sepulchre has not yet been translated. I and my husband Greg were guests of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation. We spent four days in the Black Sea resort of Sozopol - once the playground of the Communist Party elite - learning about the Bulgarian publishing industry.

It was such a revealing trip - and so different to consider a country of just a few million people with a language unlikely to be spoken beyond its borders. What a challenge for writers and publishers!

Truly, one of the greatest pleasures of the writer's life is meeting other authors. It is fascinating to chat about this and that - how the imagination finds its way, how vague ideas become substantial ones; as Auden said - how 'relevant thoughts occur' and not 'lip-smacking imps of mawk and hooey'.

Also in the last few days the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction - I'm honorary director - was awarded to Rose Tremain for The Road Home
.

So, it's all go, because I have also been delighted to find Sepulchre at number 1 in the UK paperback fiction chart. That's the sort of news that revives, as my grandmother might have said.

A bientôt

Kate

Trussoni & Goodwin

2008-06-02T10:15:00.003+01:00

One of the greatest pleasures of the writer's life is meeting other authors. It is fascinating to chat about this and that - how the imagination finds its way, how vague ideas become substantial ones; as Auden said - how 'relevant thoughts occur' and not 'lip-smacking imps of mawk and hooey'.

I was delighted to read Danielle Trussoni's book Falling through the Earth on a plane the other day - I am still in the midst of publicity tours for the paperback release in the UK and many hardback launches of Sepulchre - and really enjoyed it. It reminded me a little of the beautiful poised style of another writer I know, Jason Goodwin, although in quite another area of writing. Danielle's book is a memoir while Jason's recent work is detective fiction. That said, he has also written extensively in history and travel, so perhaps that's a good training ...

Anyway, Danielle and I met at a writing festival in Sozopol in Bulgaria on the beautiful Black Sea coast. Now how did that come to pass? More anon ...

A bientôt

Kate

Page 69 Test

2008-05-31T11:34:00.002+01:00

Well, it is amazing the things you discover, just by being visible on the net.

Marshal Zeringue wrote to me to ask if I would like to contribute to a site he maintains, based on a very cute and interesting idea.

What he does is ask authors to describe the action on page 69 of their novel. How does it fit into the developing narrative? Is it atmosphere or drama, character-based or location, dialog or straight prose.

I wrote one a couple of weeks ago and Marshal has just emailed to say the pages are live. If you would like to see how it works, here are the links:

* Pg. 69: Kate Mosse's Sepulchre
* The Page 69 Test: Sepulchre
* Kate Mosse

A bientôt

Kate

Washington Post

2008-05-15T12:26:00.007+01:00

Following on from yesterday - the YouTube post! - I've just found out there are some more links available. They come from my UK publisher Orion:

- extra 1 - Tarot
- extra 2 - Debussy
- extra 3 - Musical Inspiration

I've also just been sent a link to a review of Sepulchre in the Washington Post - and the reviewer seems to have enjoyed it!

A bientôt

Kate

YouTube

2008-05-14T15:24:00.009+01:00

You can catch me on video on YouTube - there's a surreal thought! But first ...

This week is paperback publication in the UK - tomorrow, in fact. Not anywhere else though. That's just how publishing is. All sorts of countries - from Brazil to France, America to China - publish at different times of year - and sometimes years and years apart. At the same time as preparing to be in Bulgaria to talk about my last novel, Labyrinth, I am gearing up for UK press second time around for Sepulchre and the novel's next first publication in Norway!

Strangest of all, in these competitive times when readers could so easily be tempted to listen to music or go the movies or the theatre instead, is the latest sorts of publicity techniques being used.

For Sepulchre paperback publication, my UK publisher made a mini film specifically for YouTube. I know little about internet social networking sites, but have teenage children who occasionally ask me to look at strange and wonderful clips - such as sneezing pandas or a young man known to the world as 'Star Wars Kid' ...

For the promo for Sepulchre, we went into the woods near to my house in the UK. On a day of sharp, white, cold winter sunlight and the crack and snap of twigs and frozen leaves underfoot, I wandered around looking like the unseen extra in The Blair Witch Project. Later, we recorded a reading from Sepulchre. The result is something that is both entirely alien to me and extremely intriguing. The figure does not look like me, the voice does not sound like me, the landscape does not look like one that I know and love. It is, at the same time, utterly wonderful. Very much seeing the heart of Sepulchre interpreted by someone else and made real.

This, I suppose, is the nature of writing, of film making, of composition. To capture the integrity of the moment, the emotion and atmosphere that lies behind the character and plot and action.

Already, even though the mini movie has only been up on YouTube for a matter of hours, American readers have been watching and responding.

A bientôt

Kate

May Day in England

2008-05-05T09:51:00.004+01:00

In the UK, we still have the tradition of May Day being a public holiday. For a writer, these few visible links to the past, reminders of older times, are both intriguing and inspiring. Any reader who has enjoyed the novels of Thomas Hardy or any of the great English 19th century authors, from Ms Austen herself to the more Gothic writings of ghost writers such as M R James or Algernon Blackwood, will have a sense of the rural English calendar and the folklore that goes with it.

In France, unlike England, the most commonly respected public holidays of the past are linked to the church, rather than to mythology or country folklore. Saints Days are more significant, particularly in the southwest, as opportunities for country fairs, for holidays, for dancing and singing.

In Sepulchre, this network of local fairs and holidays became a wonderful way for me, as a novelist, to build up a network of events. The key, when writing fiction based on or inspired by true historical events, is to ensure there's a good balance between private events - those happening in the key settings, such as the Domaine de la Cade, where Léonie and Anatole are staying with their aunt - and public events, such as a local fair that allows all the characters to come together in, say, the square in Rennes-les-Bains. Or, using the incident of a real-life flood in Carcassonne in October 1891, as a way to move the action forward. Researching such landmark events can be done via tourist sites, history sites, in museums, and by looking at collections of old photographs, music programmes and advertising posters. All of these things can - might - fuel your plot and give you additional ideas.

After all, when telling the story, it's never just about what a character does, but also how they do it. It is the background colours, as much as the foreground image, that makes one story stand out from the next. Reality and imagination are never very far apart ...

A bientôt.

The Days After a Tour ...

2008-04-28T13:04:00.006+01:00

There is always so much to do after a tour - emails to say thank you to the bookstores, publicists, journalists and of course publishers who worked so hard to make your tour successful. Most enjoyable, is starting to receive emails from readers who have had the chance to read Sepulchre in the time it has taken me to get back to the UK and unpack my suitcase.

And oh dear me! My suitcase! In every corner, tiny cards, scribbled names and numbers on scraps of paper. I had to buy a new bag half way home as the old one couldn't stand the pace ...

So this is my first post for a couple of weeks. For all of you who have been following the blog - and even responding to it - thank you for your patience.

For most authors there is a period of trying to get back into the step of your regular, day-to-day life. All the post and work that has accumulated while you've been away. Nothing ever goes away! So, the days since returning home, have been filled with the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (of which I'm Co-Founder/Honorary Director) shortlist announcement and the London Bookfair. Held in the west of London, it's a great way to catch up with your foreign publishers - this time, I met for the first time my Slovenia and Brazilian publishers, as well as old friends such as my editor from Germany.

This is the nature of publishing nowadays, a mixture of long, private weeks, months, where you are writing and see nobody much except your family. Then, bright and intense bursts of very public activity - talking, interviewing, hearing about how Sepulchre will be published in other countries in the next 18 months.

Also, of course, planning future trips. Bulgaria, next, to take part in an inaugural writing festival set up by the academic and bestselling American novelist, Elizabeth Kostova.

But, for now, a few days of peace and quiet in the Sepulchre ...

A bientôt

Arizona

2008-04-09T22:47:00.003+01:00

Wednesday 9th April, and to Phoenix Arizona for the last gig of the tour (well, bookshop event). Last night at Warwick's in La Jolla, San Diego, will be hard to beat - a fabulous audience, meeting with a Bookclub earlier, lots of fabulous questions and leaving armed with a few more (hardback!) books for research - but if anything's going to come close, it will be the legendary Poisoned Pen in Phoenix. Many of my friends - crime writers, mostly - have appeared here, so I'm thrilled to be finishing the 2008 Sepulchre store in a place where so many writers have read, talked, met readers.

Putting together a novel is much like being on tour. A combination of location, characters, a storyline, ideas. And one of the best things about being on tour is that there is plenty of time to think. As a writer, the temptation is always to rush in, to be at the computer, putting words up on the screen for the sake of feeling that you're working. Often, writers do not allow themselves enough time to simply think, to let the characters come to you - rather than you imposing your will upon them - to let the story gently find its shape.

These past ten days on the road, have been important for the next novel. Not just in terms of reading and researching, although that has happened, but as much as for the ideas I've had time to discard as well as adopt. I don't feel clearly, quite, about where the next novel is going, nor the story line, nor even the leading characters. But I do feel certain about the location, the period of history, maybe even the title - which, of course, to fit, needs to be a single, three-syllable word like Labyrinth or Sepulchre!

A hint? Egypt in the 1920s, the magnificence and terror of the desert. A little family history thrown in, both distant and more recent. More than that, I'm not sure. All I do know is that the novel is now in my mind, deep down, writing itself while I travel.

Home tomorrow. Phoenix to New York, New York to London (and the current horror that is Heathrow Airport).

Thank you for joining me on this voyage around the US.

A bientôt.

Kate

Pacific Coast Highway

2008-04-08T20:12:00.003+01:00

Penultimate day of the 2008 Sepulchre tour, and an early start, driving along the Pacific Coast Highway (star of so many songs and movies), to San Diego. I'm staying in the Westgate Hotel, which is ornate and gilded and beautiful in a fin-de-siècle kind of a way. I have no difficulty imagining my 19th century heroine, Léonie, and her brother Anatole taking tea in the lobby, sitting in dinner suits and evening dress, fanned and gloved, watching the palm trees sway in the breeze.

Tonight, another independent bookshop - Warwick's in La Jolla. This evening, before the public event at 7.30pm, I'm meeting with Warwick's BookClub, the first time I've had the opportunity to do this on the trip. I loved meeting BookClub members, although it's sometimes daunting, in that they often have read your work so closely - and more recently than you've written it - that they have picked up all sorts of tiny, intricate details. Tonight, I expect to talk as much about my last novel, Labyrinth, as my current, Sepulchre. After more than a week on the road, it's the readers and audience members who contribute as much to the event as the author!

So, if you're in the La Jolla area for an hour this evening, come along. Now the trip is nearly over, I'm feeling nostalgic and want to meet as many real live readers as possible, before I head back to England on Thursday.

A bientôt ...

Kate

Vromans

2008-04-08T20:04:00.003+01:00

Monday 7th April and the sun is shining in Los Angeles. In each city on a book tour, authors are looked after my media escorts. I struck it lucky in LA with Claudia, LA born and bred and just the best advertisement for the city. A whistle stop tour, pointing out all the legends and the landmarks (handy for a blog), the beautiful Ocean always just at the edge of our vision, and everywhere so green and filled with red, yellow, orange and purple flowers.

Another drop-in book signing, in Barnes and Noble, which finished with us browsing in the kitchen specialist shop 'Sur la Table' opposite and a promise from the manager, John, to cook me his signature pasta dish next time I was passing through.

Vromans is one of the most famous of independent bookstores in America, out in Pasadena, so I was thrilled to be invited to give a talk and a signing, a date added quite late to my tour schedule.

The audience was fantastic - asking the sorts of questions all authors dream of answering in public, about process, about inspiration, about character. Most exciting of all was that Katie, introducing the event, had noticed the 19th century design of Sepulchre, complete with black title page, so had acquired a silver and a gold pen for me to use in the signings. I've been wanting this the whole tour, so it made the evening even more memorable.

As you can see, the business of flying, room service, talking, then starting all over again the next morning, is starting to get to me! But, I love LA, I loved the event, and found myself, as a result, answering the 'what are you working on next question' even more comprehensively than usual. In fact, I learned quite a lot about what I was intending to do last night, just listening to myself!

I'll be sorry to leave. And, next time, hope to be able to come for the Book Festival at the end of April and meet other - and local - authors.

A bientôt. And, hopefully, not too long.

Kate

California Dreaming

2008-04-08T19:56:00.003+01:00

Sunday on a book tour can feel like wasted time - often, you're half way home, so although you appreciate having a day off, at the same time you'd like to keep working. But when you're English and find yourself in California, obviously the sun puts a whole different complexion on the situation.

After a lunchtime book signing and talk, in the wonderful Book Passage - where I bought yet more books (suitcase is dangerously close to the weight limit now) and was handed a note from a friend, crime writer Denise Mina, who'd appeared at the bookshop a week before - I visited a few other bookshops in the city. It can be a salutary experience, as an author, walking in unannounced and off the street and offering to sign stock - first, they might not have any copies at all; second, they might have so few that they can't find them; third, it might just put the poor floor staff under too much pressure ...

But Borders in Union Square, San Francisco, was amazing. Not only had they plenty of copies of Sepulchre and prominently displayed, but we set up an informal signing sitting cross legged in the Mysteries department and chatted to customers passing through. It reminded me, as always, of how booksellers, both here and at home in the UK and France, are so passionate about what they do. Enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and very interesting. You learn more from a bookseller working the shop floor about what's selling and what is not than ever from the review pages or even the publishers!

So, a huge thank you to Borders in Union Square for their welcome and hard work on Sepulchre's behalf. (And sadness at the loss of another independent bookstore, Cody's, on the corner opposite.)

A bientôt.

Kate

Book Passage

2008-04-06T19:09:00.003+01:00

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

Life is Stranger Than Fiction

2008-04-06T02:42:00.004+01:00

Day six, and to CostCo outside of San Francisco to sign stock. It's a strange experience. Although we have some 15 branches of CostCo in the UK, I've never seen one or been inside and, to start with, its huge warehouse-like dimensions overwhelm me.

Between the juice and the clothing, there's a mountain of copies of Sepulchre waiting to be signed. Above my head, a huge poster like a medieval banner at the joust. I'm not hopeful. It's Saturday lunchtime and the shop is full of families and young children, tasting food on display, stocking up on industrial sized packs of shampoo, vitamins, oranges, television. It doesn't seem likely that hardback fiction will be at the top of anyone's shopping list ....

I wait. Sign a few copies, wait a little more. Then, gently, readers start to come.

A father about to go on a long air flight to visit he son in Israel buys the first copy. One by one, men or women stop, look at the flyleaf, trying to decide if it's their kind of book, smile and walk away, before turning and deciding to buy it anyway. A man stops, looking utterly dumbstruck, before coming over to the table. An Englishman, it turns out that Labyrinth was one of his mother's favourite novels and he can't quite believe the author is sitting in front of him at CostCo in SF on a Saturday in April.

Finally, the most extraordinary coincidence, when a young woman, an artist, stops. She is a designer of Tarot cards and has just finished a commissioned for the Museum of Bologna. She's already bought Sepulchre, interested in the painted cards - eight of them - at the front of the book, but buys another.

Inspired by medieval imagery, Anissa Morello works to commission and paints individual decks of cards for both herself and for others, and we talk about the coincidence and the serendipity that has brought both of this, to this one spot, in a shopping mall on this busy Saturday afternoon. Later, I visit her website - unicavita.com - and admire her beautiful work and reflect upon the fact that if, as a novelist, I wrote so many moments of chance, of coincidence, of split second, what-if, timings into my novels, my readers would through up their hands in disbelief. As always, life is stranger than art ....

A bientôt.

Kate

The Guthrie Revisited

2008-04-06T02:25:00.005+01:00

Friday 4th April

Minneapolis is a city I first visited 10 years ago, when I was Executive Director of the Chichester Festival Theatre(CFT)in West Sussex, England. Built in the early 60s, for Olivier, while he waited for his new home on the South Bank in London to be ready, CFT is the twin of the magnificent Tyrone Guthrie Theater in the Twin Cities. At the end of the 90s, things were tough in British provincial theatres, and I came over to Minneapolis to see what we, in the UK, might learn from our theatrical brothers and sisters Stateside. I fell in love with the place, with the amazing Christmas lights all around the houses, with the iconic production of A Christmas Carol, and went back to England with thoughts of how we in Sussex might transform the fortunes of the Guthrie's twin sister.

Today, in between visiting branches of Borders and Barnes & Noble to sign stock, thanks to my fabulous book escort Tim, I was finally able to see in person the new Guthrie building, beautifully blue and sleak, with a magnificent and monumental black and white image of Tyrone Guthrie himself outside. Years of waiting, fundraising, dreaming finally come to fruition.

It made me think, again, of how so much of working in the arts - in any discipline, writing, painting, theatre, sculpture, dance - is about patience. About believing in something enough to wait, to work, to get it right. Too often new writers are encouraged to look to the market, to think (guess) about what readers might want, rather than focus on the heart of the book itself. Fashions change, publishing is fickle, so the best an author can do is to write what they want to write, with passion and with integrity, and to the best of their ability. Then, when the time comes to put the novel out there, cross your fingers and hope for the best. All creative work is about taking risks. If a writer has not enjoyed writing a book, then as sure as eggs are eggs, a reader won't enjoying reading it!

Perhaps thanks to this older connection I feel with the city, the evening reading and signing event in Edina was especially enjoyable. In the audience, students of creative writing, people with a connection with the southwest of France of Sepulchre, a woman who had first heard of my previous novel, Labyrinth, thanks to a recommendation from a tour guide in France. A string of coincidences, connections and chances. Even a mother and son from another region of France, just passing by. An evening of new friends and old acquaintances. And the sun was shining!

Tomorrow, a new time zone - appropriate for an author of time slip novels - and plenty of time to read when travelling from state to state.

A bientot.

Kate