Desultory Remarks II

Today we reached a landmark 5000 sales for I Serve. This includes Kindle sales (nearly 90%), other e-reader sales, and paperback sales. Thanks to all the readers who helped make this possible.

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This past Tuesday night was full of weeping and gnashing of teeth and the burning of the midnight oil. It was my self-imposed deadline for finishing the rough draft of Road from the West. It was also the day my laptop decided to go on the fritz. Despite technical difficulties of a most irritating nature, the manuscript came to a conclusion at around 110,000 words. It is now in the hands of three beta readers. We are looking forward to launching Road from the West on September 2.

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I recently obtained a Twitter account and have been enjoying the ability it gives me to network with other writers and book bloggers. Reading other people's tweets is fun. Writing my own tweets takes more brain power than writing a book chapter. I don't think I'm cut out for a 140-character limit kind of world.


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Starting today Miss Pickwickian at The Erratic Muse is hosting a week long Les Miserables Event. She will be posting essays submitted by readers and handing out some fabulous prizes such as the Les Miz 25th Anniversary Concert DVD and Les Miz themed jewelry, artwork, books, and posters. Let the miserableness begin! (Her joke, not mine.)

Author vs. Mother

Trying to get writing done with two six-month-old boys can be challenging. Last week--with the twins being sick, exhausted, teething, traumatized, and generally ill-tempered--it was especially challenging. Saturday, my self-imposed deadline, has come and gone, and I'm still trying to finish the rough draft of Road from the West. 

While pondering all the infant-provoked adversities that have afflicted my writing schedule (pardon me as I pause this blog post to go clean vomit off the rug), I ran across an interview with Nichole Bernier about the challenges of being both a writer and a mother. Ms. Bernier is "a freelance writer based in Boston, and the author of the novel The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D, to be published by Crown/Random House in early 2012." She has five children ranging in age from 21 months to 10 years old and offers an excellent perspective on mixing authorship with motherhood.

When asked about the impact of children on her writing career, Ms. Bernier says:

Being a mother has made me a lot more disciplined, because you have to take advantage of writing time when it comes, and I can't procrastinate deadlines until the last minute, because you never know what might get in the way. All-nighters aren't a viable option anymore.

All-nighters aren't the only thing a mom/author has to give up. Ms. Bernier mentions a theory of hers called "Three Things," the idea that anyone who has kids can only successfully devote their time to three other activities. "If you work outside the home, that's one big thing. If you exercise regularly, that's another. If you knit or belong to a book club or hold a board position at the kids' school or adore reality TV, there you go."

So what exactly has it meant for Ms. Bernier to juggle the roles of mother and author?

In practical terms, it meant years of giving over babysitting time to something that may or may not pay off financially.... In mental terms, it means finding the discipline to work when you have the time. The faucet has to go on and off based on the family schedule, not the ebb and flow of your ideas or mood. Emotionally, it's meant sometimes curbing the inner toddler that wants to throw a foot-stomping tantrum about not being able to write as much as some other writers do. Spending all day on revisions, or traveling for conferences or retreats--those aren't things that happen easily with family life. That's when I have to go back to square one and remind myself how lucky I am to know what it is I love to do and pursue it, because many people never do.

In an effort to help other mothers pursue that love of writing and break into the publishing world, Ms. Bernier offers a list of advice: make your writing as good as it can be, learn about agents and the querying process, and have a thick skin to rejection. But my favorite piece of advice is this one:

Network on social media. Write essays, articles, blogs, clever email, anything that's a limbering-up exercise to keep your thinking process sharp and your creativity going. But don't let that become so time consuming that it usurps the actual writing you want to see published.

*Sigh* Better get back to that manuscript I was working on.... New self-imposed deadline: Tuesday.

Book Cover Inspirations

Siege of Antioch - Medieval Miniature

Lionheart, by Sharon Kay Penman (2011)

Baudolino, by Umberto Eco (2000) 

These are my book cover inspirations as I think about what cover I would like for Road from the West. This Tuesday we meet with our graphic designer. Will the finished product look like any of the pictures above? We shall see....

The Peasants are Revolting

I like reading books and articles that debunk historical myths--especially historical myths that paint the Middle Ages as dark and dumb as a fence post at night. Sharan Newman specializes in debunking popular but spurious versions of history. She has written books such as The Real History behind the Da Vinci Code and The Real History behind the Templars.

In a recent post on Ms. Newman's blog, she debunks the oft mentioned medieval horrors of chastity belts and "the lord's right." In case you're unsure what those are, the chastity belt is basically a metal belt (with lock and key) and a solid attachment between the legs that was supposed to prohibit a woman from having sexual intercourse. "The lord's right" is the infamous prima nocta of the movie Braveheart where the ruling noble gets to sleep with any peasant woman he desires on her wedding night.

Ms. Newman notes that both of these monstrosities are nineteenth century inventions regarding the Middle Ages that are rejected as fabrications by all serious historians. Nevertheless, they are still "fixed in the public imagination as prime examples of medieval cruelty and subjugation of women."

There is no manuscript or archaeological evidence for chastity belts or "the lord's right," but Ms. Newman builds an even more interesting case against them by showing that such things would be contrary to the very societal structure of Middle Ages.

But the real problem with the chastity belt and the lord's right, is that they presume women were property. In the nineteenth century, under law in many countries, women were treated as children, without reasoning capacity. Medieval women were not. Of course there were barriers in law. They couldn't be priests or war leaders (but don't tell Matilda of Tuscany) and, while women made most of the beer in Europe, they couldn't be official beer tasters. Go figure. But women could inherit, buy and sell property, and speak for themselves. And a lot of them did at all levels of society.

Now this First Night nonsense also assumes that peasants were slaves. Depending on the time and place, their lot wasn't great, but any lord saying that he would get to sleep with a bride from his village on the wedding night would not have lasted long. "The peasants are revolting" is not an idle phrase. A wonderful example is from the miracle stories of St. Cuthbert. It seems that a Scottish lord once decreed that all his female field hands work naked. In Scotland? According to the story, the next morning the lord was found dead "pecked to death by crows". Sure. It doesn't matter if the story is true; it makes clear what the twelfth century thought of high-handed noblemen and implies that peasants didn't take such things lying down (so to speak).

Prima nocta in the Middle Ages is clearly an invention of men like Mel Gibson--although to cut him some slack, it also features over and over again in the works of historical novelists. (Ken Follett comes to mind.) It not only didn't happen in the Middle Ages, it probably couldn't have happened in the Middle Ages. The sort of world where "the lord's right" could be exercised with impunity is the ancient Babylonian world of Gilgamesh--and even then men like Enkidu would stand up to say "This is wrong!"

Reading this blog post by Ms. Newman has made me curious to read more of her work. Her latest book is  titled The Real History of the End of the World where she "digs into end of the world theories and shows us that whether it's aliens, natural disaster, or the Rapture, our civilization has been there and done that." Sounds like a fun read!

Shelve It

Last week was spring semester finals at George Fox University, which means that this week is the first week of my husband David's summer break! After he has been studying so hard for the last several months, it might surprise you to learn that the first thing he did for his summer vacation was hit the books.

Ever since our whirlwind move (and Adam's double surgery) in January, our books have been either shelved haphazardly or piled in disorganized heaps on the basement floor. But chaos reigns no longer.

We found a great place for our favorite bookshelf in the living room and filled it up with our ancient, medieval, and early modern history titles. Coincidentally, these also happen to be our favorite books. My husband and I frequently congratulate ourselves on how well the history libraries we acquired during our single years now complement each other--an added benefit to married life.

The basement bookshelves got a complete makeover with the sections sorted out into theology, language books, reference books, poetry, fiction, political science/economics, and photo albums. Notice our handmade   Turkish rug brightening up the floor--a Craigslist find from a few months ago.

Books weren't the only thing on the agenda. A quick trip to Ikea gave us this floor length mirror. I don't know which was the harder feat--fitting it into the car or bolting it into the wall.

Another project needing attention is pictures! Our walls have been sadly bare, but that is on the mend. Above is a collection of framed art I put together by cutting the spine off a Dover book, Great Medieval Churches and Cathedrals of Europe.

This morning we made a paint run to Home Depot, so hopefully I will soon have pictures of a "cotton fluff" white kitchen (instead of one with seven different psychotically applied colors) and a green "geranium leaf" master bedroom with white trim (instead of curry yellow).

The twins have been troopers through all of our renovating and running around, enjoying their time on the front porch whenever the weather's nice enough to go outside.