Clear

Clear air, water, mind

Gliding into the new year...thanking you all.

Thank you to all my dear friends and readers for making 2010 so wonderful.I love the community that has grown up around this website, as well as on my Facebook fan page.  The comments have been so warm, touching, poetic, filled with humor and kindness.  I am moved by the way you support each other, and so grateful for the support and kindness you continue to show me by reading my novels. Being born a writer was a great gift.  I am so fortunate to be able to express deep emotion through my work; by telling stories, I make sense of my own experiences, and enjoy the thrills of leading many other lives.  Writing is how I connect.  If it weren't for my readers, the books wouldn't be alive.  They would still matter to me, but they would be words on a page.  They only come to real life through your reading them, relating to the characters, taking the journey with me.  For that and so much I am grateful to you.

2011 will bring a new novel, about which I am so excited: The Silver Boat.  It is the deepest, truest novel I've ever written--it touches many themes familiar to you, but writing it I let myself go down new and hidden paths.  I can't wait for you to read it.  My book tour will take me out on the road for the first time in several years.  I'll post the destinations under "events" on this website, as soon as I receive details.  I hope I'll be visiting your town.

In January a rare book of mine will finally be back in print: Secrets of Paris.  Of all my novels this one has been the hardest to locate; I know many fans have spent large amounts on eBay and other such places to buy the old hardcover.  In just a few weeks it will be out in trade paperback.

On Facebook I've done frequent giveaways of novels, audiobooks, and DVDs of television adaptions there.  If you are interested in finding me there, you can join in the fun.  I'm very lucky to have some creative young assistants who always seem to come up with new ideas and ways for me to give back to all of you--to thank you for being such faithful readers.  Please visit!  (Click here.)

One last thing...here at the end of the year, many readers have asked me where I make charitable donations.  You will find links to the right on this web page.  But I'll tell you more specifically.  NRDC is a great environmental group, dedicated to living in peace with the earth.  They protect many endangered species, and work on keeping the oceans clean and healthy. They do amazing work...maybe some of you remember the whale trip I took, to Laguna San Ignacio...the winter grounds for the California Gray Whale.  I traveled with a group from NRDC, whose work saved that lagoon and protected it from being destroyed.  It's a place where mother whales give birth, and where their calves spend the first months of life.  A magical, amazing place.  Even a small donation will help the whales and other creatures sharing our beautiful planet.

The other charity closest to my heart would be any national or local domestic violence organization of your choice.   Raising awareness, giving support to people affected by abuse, is very important to me and--i know, to many of you.

Thank you all for being so wonderful.  I am the luckiest writer on earth to have you as readers.  Happy, exciting, peaceful, amazing 2011 to you all!

Much love, Luanne

Blizzard

Driving snow, wind howling up the Hudson River, thunder and jagged lightning, an epic storm. Torn: stay inside, write and be cozy, watch sheets of snow blow past the windows, river unseeable though the whiteout?  Or bundle up and go outside, coat-hat-scarf-gloves-boots, and feel the blizzard?

Both, as it turned out.   Last night, ice in the wind, blinding and stinging; hearing the wind roar was like standing in a kettle drum.  Cabs inching along.  A toboggan track in deep snow, leading down West 23rd St to the subway station.  And today a snow day, streets empty of cars, side streets unplowed with taxis and even a bus abandoned to the drifts.  i wanted to build a snow fort, and came upon the one above, occupied by neighborhood kids.

Click link to see some photos I took of the blizzard and the day after.  Stay warm...

Music of the Spheres

I am hearing the Music of the Spheres this week before Christmas.  On Tuesday there was a full moon, full lunar eclipse, and Winter Solstice, all at once.  How could such events, especially during the holidays, fail to turn each of us into a mystic? Musica universalis--Pythagoras said "There is geometry in the humming of the strings.  There is music in the spacing of the spheres."  It's a harmonic philosophy regarding celestial bodies, space among the sun, moon, and planets.

Maybe it's because my mother told us that if we were very still and quiet on Christmas Eve, we could hear angels singing--the only night of the year that was possible.  Of course that was a bold attempt to settle us down, wild with excitement for Christmas morning, but even as young children we felt the deeper meaning.

Everyone feels the holidays in their own way.  For me Christmas is inseparable from my mother; after a very long illness, when she was constantly dying, the time finally came.  Her final death started in mid-December.  The doctor and a priest charged me with telling her what was happening.  I remember sitting by my mother's bed at the nursing home, informing her that she was going to die.

She got really mad at me, and refused to speak to me for a week.  I'd go see her, and she'd turn her head to the wall.  I found a small tree and decorated it with lights and our family ornaments, irridescent balls decorated with twinkling snow, dating back to my grandmother's turn-of-the-century childhood.  I brought her Scottish Terrier, Gelsey, to visit her.  I introduced her to my new tiger kitten, Maggie.

No response.

Then, finally, one night I was sitting by her bed in the dark, with only the tree lights illuminating her small room.  I looked over at her, and saw her staring at me--intensely, as if she was trying to memorize me.  Her mouth moved--I read her lips: "I love you."

"I love you, too, Mom."

I held her hand, and we looked at each other for a long time.  She slipped in and out, but talked to me when she could.  The cold shoulder was forgotten.  Having fought so hard for so long, she really didn't want to let go.  It was a case of "blame the messenger," but that's okay.  I understand, and am all the more grateful for our last few days together.  She died soon afterwards, on January 2, 1995.

Music of the spheres.

Love the planet, love the moon, love the sky, love each other, love what is and not what you would have it to be, love music, love the beasts, love yourself.  Peace on earth.  Or as Peter Lehner of NRDC says, Peace With the Earth.

I have quoted this section from Shakespeare many times, on this site and in essays I have written--it speaks to me for so many reasons.  Today, I'm hearing the "heavenly music" line...

From the Tempest, Act V, Scene I:

I have bedimm'd The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up The pine and cedar: graves at my command Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth By my so potent art. But this rough magic I here abjure, and, when I have required Some heavenly music, which even now I do, To work mine end upon their senses that This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And deeper than did ever plummet sound I'll drown my book.

Solemn music

How To Write A Novel

Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author of the forthcoming The Silver Boat, gives away all her secrets in less than two minutes.

Ten Ways It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

Ten ways it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas: 1) The tree sellers are back in Chelsea.  They were my inspiration for Silver Bells, a Holiday Tale.  From the first page: "Everyone knew the best Christmas trees came from the north, where the stars hung low in the sky. It was said that starlight lodged in the branches, the northern lights charged the needles with magic."

2) Pandora has a Classical Christmas station as well as good old Christmas radio with at least twelve versions (and counting) of Baby, it's Cold Outside.  My mother's favorite song was Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.  "Through the years we all will be together..."  I miss her and am feeling nostalgic.

3) Yesterday I brought home a tiny boxwood tree and decorated it with white lights.  While Maggie looks very sweet and Christmassy here, the photo was taken ten seconds before she began chewing on the leaves.  Maisie has taken to batting the ornaments around.  Only Mae-Mae keeps her distance (SO FAR.)

4) The days are getting shorter.  I know about SAD and send love and support to those who suffer from it.  But I love this time of year leading up to the solstice, when darkness covers the earth and drives us inward, to consider our lives, and to draw together--to actively need each other, as a way to chase the shadows...  The stars are bright in the sky, and I dream of going far north to see the aurora borealis.

5) I attended the New York City Ballet's Nutcracker for the first time in many years with the young, beautiful, and graceful Nyasha.  Here we are with Ashley, one of the Snowflakes.

Lincoln Center is always magical, perhaps most so in winter.

6) The lobby of my apartment building is beautiful and festive, and emil and jose (shown here) and the rest of the staff are as always kind, generous, and wonderful.

7a) Festivus.  Our family will celebrate soon in Newport, RI.  Twigg plays an integral role in this holiday.  To keep the spirit alive, we have a festivus pole here in NYC.  It's actually a hollow tree with an owl's roost hole, transported from the Maine woods to my apartment, but I wrapped it with colored lights, et voila.  (That's Maggie, of course, on the sofa.)

7b) I made a pomander ball for the first time in forever.  My grandmother always had one hanging in her closet, usually made by one of my sisters, Rosemary and Maureen.  We had this set-up in the bedroom we shared (or sometimes the basement)--Santa's workshop, and my sisters were the best at making presents for the family.  For a pomander ball you take an orange, a bunch of whole cloves, and some pretty red and green plaid ribbon.  Create swirly patterns by sticking the cloves into the orange.  Or you can cover the whole thing, or make stars or whatever you like.  It smells good but, yikes, my fingers sting.

8.The Empire Diner is no more, and Dan's Chelsea Guitars has moved into smaller quarters a few feet down in the Hotel Chelsea.  The neighborhood is changing, and that makes me sad.  I miss the Diner, one of my favorite neighborhood places, and all the people who worked there.  Renate, I'm thinking of you...

9)  My fingers sting from the pomander ball, but also from playing my baby Martin guitar, on which I'm attempting to write a song, or maybe more like a story set to music.  It involves snow, stars, the tallest spruce in the world, a very wayward cat, and snowflake fairies.  It will be a huge hit on Pandora next year.  There are a lot of C and E Minor chords.

10) I'm giving away Silver Bells--novel and DVD--on my Facebook fan page.  If you haven't already, please friend me, then "like" the fan page to win.  We have lots of fun and giveaways on Facebook...it's a bit more interactive than this site.

If you are on Facebook, I'll be asking about your top ten reasons and hoping you'll let me know.  I'm so appreciative of my readers and all visitors to this site.  I hope that you are enjoying the season as much as I am, and if  you have cats (or dogs) they limit their love and attention for your holiday decorations to the occasional walk-by or curious gaze.

* The painting of of Santa in his magical swan sleigh is by William Holbrook Beard, ca. 1862.   It's on display at Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art.  When I lived in Providence, the image graced my Christmas cards.  Now, saving trees, this serves as my Christmas card to all of you.

Look up

There is so much to love and find beautiful right now, while memories tug into the past, thoughts of Christmases gone by.  I find this time of year bittersweet. I think of my mother, father, and Mim, old friends, a sister who's said goodbye.  I remember the house we grew up in, on Lincoln Street in New Britain, Connecticut.

We'd decorate the tree, wrap a lauren garland  around the banister, place another over the mantle,  and drape one over the front door.  Mim would decorate the wreath, hang it on the door.  We'd bake Christmas cookies.  One year we made clay angels, and our favorite was the one that looked like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family.

Even then, at a young age, there was longing for more connection, especially with my father.  If you've read my novel Firefly Beach, you know the story of my pregnant mother, three-year old sister, and my five year old self being held hostage one night, by the man with a gun.  It happened at Christmas, and had to do with my complicated father, so that experience is in my holiday memory bank as well.

Isn't it strange the way we sometimes miss sad or painful things?  Maybe it's the desire to go back and make them turn out right.  My father would be magically happier, the man with the gun wouldn't have come, the cold and dark would stay outside while in our little cape cod house our family would be cozy, drawn together, safe and sound.  That's the visions-of-sugarplums version.

In reality there were many visions-of-sugarplum moments.  My mother would read to us from The Cricket on the Hearth and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens; The Story of Holly and Ivy by Rumer Godden; A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas.

One summer we found an enormous starfish, and began to use it as the star atop our tree.  When my father was home he'd place the star; I'd always have a lump in my throat when he did that.  On Christmas Eve my mother would tell us to listen for the angels singing, it was the one time in the year that we could hear them, and we always would, just before drifting off to sleep.

Later, after my father died, we moved to the beach year-round.  We kept the old traditions but found new ones.  We heated with a coal stove, so there was an old-fashioned ritual to stoking the fire.  We'd tie red ribbons around all the candlestick holders, and light the night by candlelight.

On Christmas morning, nearly every year, we'd look out at Long Island Sound and see sea smoke: a low mysterious cloud just over the water's surface, like smoke above a cauldron, a phenomenon caused when arctic air moves over warmer salt water.

Sometimes we'd see ships passing down the sound, some with lighted Christmas trees tied to their masts--magical to look far out and see that, tiny bright spots sailing along the horizon--and we'd wonder where they were going, how the crew felt to be away from their families.

At night we'd go outside.  Maybe it would be snowing, or the stars would be blazing, and one year a comet streaked through the sky--celestial wonder.  The moment brought us close to heaven, and I'd think of my father, I think we all did, and sent him love while also wondering why he couldn't have been happier here on earth, and Mim would stand in the kitchen door calling us back inside, weren't we freezing, it was making her cold just to look at us.  We'd laugh and go in.

So many gone, but strong love still here.  My little sister and I have each other.  Her husband and daughter, and our niece and her husband, and two friends so dear they're nothing less than family to us.  We've been creating our own traditions over the last years. We've invited to the table our ghosts and lost loves, so they can be at the celebration too.  We carry them with us.

Maybe the lesson, if there has to be a lesson, is that nothing is ever all one way.  The holidays seem to promise universal goodness, happiness, togetherness.  That isn't always the way, and because of our heightened hopes, the disappointment can be all the greater.

There's beauty in every life, every single day.  Sometimes it takes effort and focus to find it.  To find that starfish, taking that beach walk we had to look down.  Even when your heart is aching for who's not here, you look around and find who is.  There's someone who loves you.  There's a cat who wants to sit on your lap.  There are bright stars in the cold, dark sky.  Position the starfish at the top of the tree.   All will be well.

Look up.

[Image at top of page: The Meteor of 1860 by Frederic Church.]

Coming soon

Coming soon, How to Write a Novel video.  I'll tell you all my secrets!

[Update: video is up!  Aspiring writers and others, please click above to watch.]

The shoot lasted all day.  Once darkness fell, Mike O'Gorman, the director, (pictured below) set up lights with red and blue gels.  The effect was quite magical.  A night shoot was essential because dreaming is such an important part of writing.  I fall asleep and take my characters with me.  Dreams mix everything together, answers are revealed, and story falls into place.  I wake up, write down what I've learned, and go back to sleep.

Here are a few stills from the How to Write a Novel shoot.  Notice Maggie sleeping next to me...  There's one of Mike taking 5, and one of my wonderful video-online team at the wrap party at the Red Cat.  From left--my assistant (and Mike's fiance) Jessie Cantrell, Ted O'Gorman, me, Mike O'G, and Hallie Clarke.

A Romantic Story By Luanne Rice

If you thought Luanne Rice just wrote about love, you were sadly mistaken. In this new video, she talks about a personal experience that sounds like something right out of her novels.

We Gather Together (even if we can't)

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. This year I'm missing my sister Maureen--she and Olivier went to France, to say bon voyage to his brother and sister-in-law, leaving Bordeaux to open an inn in Indonesia.  Missing my nieces, too--Mia will be with her friend, and Molly will be with her husband Alex and his family.  We'll all be together in spirit, as well as with Rosemary...sometimes that's the best even a close family can do.

Thinking of Maureen and Olivier in France, I remember having Thanksgivings in Paris.  The day would start by reading Art Buchwald's yearly-repeated column in the International Herald Tribune.  Then I'd make dinner, including a not-so-easy-to-find dinde, for all my American friends there.  There'd always be at least twenty...

I'm very lucky, though; a young friend, Nyasha, is coming down from Massachusetts to spend the holiday with me.  I love having visitors from out of town, and I'll enjoy showing her all my favorite NYC places, and having a special dinner.

Growing up always had dinner with my father's sisters and family--Aunt Mary, Uncle Bill, and Billy Keenan, Aunt Jan and Uncle Bud Lee--either at our house in New Britain or the Keenans' in Elmwood.  When it was at ours, we had lots to do to prepare.  Wednesday was a half-day at school, and my sisters and I would run home to help our mother and grandmother.

We'd go down to the basement to get the good china and crystal glasses, and we'd wash everything till it sparkled.  Mim would bake pies, and we'd help: apple, pumpkin, and mince.  One of us would make cranberry-orange relish--a recipe via Ocean Spray from the Whitneys, the family across the street for whom I babysat--and another of us would bake cranberry and date-nut breads.

The three of us would help polish the silver, and fill bowls with nuts in their shells.  My grandmother had a turkey platter, a green oval with a splendid turkey, its tail spread and preening, displayed on a hutch in the dining room.  We would take it down, the only time all year, feeling excited to know the next day it would be laden with turkey.

(Photo below from right: Tom Rice, Bill Keenan, Mary Keenan, me, Billy's elbow, Lucille Rice raising her glass, tiny corner of Maureen's hair.)

After dinner, my father would lead a walk on Shuttle Meadow golf course, across the street.  It was always wonderfully bracing and damp, and usually cold, and we'd tromp through the rough toward the brook and ponds, to see if any ice had formed yet.  Given my father and Uncle Bill's humor, there'd be lots of laughter.

Dinner at the Keenans's was great, not only because we were guests and had only to bring the pies, but because Billy had these toy horses that I loved and wanted to play with long after it made sense age-wise.  When we got older and could drive, "the kids"--my sisters, Bill, and I--would go to the movies.  Billy and I were recently reminiscing about seeing Silent Movie at the Elm Theater.  Dom Deluise's line, "I need a blueberry pie badly" made a particularly deep impression.

Billy was a football player; if he had a game we'd go see him play at Northwest Catholic.  Later, when he went to Amherst College, one of my teenage highlights was to head up there with his parents and my sisters, tailgate in the parking lot, and feel like hot stuff because we knew Billy.  (Photo of Rosemary, me, Bill Keenan.)

This year Thanksgiving falls on November 25.  That is a bright and shining occurrence.  It happened once many years ago.  Mrs. Whitney, my "other mother," (and currently bookseller extraordinaire at G. J. Ford ) gave birth to her second daughter, the exceptional and luminous Sam--aka the best midwife in the west in my novel Dream Country.  Sam lit up our lives from the minute she was born, and continues to do so while being the best midwife in the west, raising her daughter (my goddaughter) and twins, and telemark skiing in the mountains of Park City, Utah. (Photo of Sam and Sadie)

We all attended Vance School--from my mother to my sisters and me to the Whitney children (aside from Sam, the birthday-Thanksgiving girl, there are Tobin and the twins Sarah and Palmer.)

Every year all the classes filed into the auditorium, and we'd sing We Gather Together and Over the River and Through the Woods.  May you all be gathering together with your families and friends, all your loved ones.

Cranberry Orange relish:

1 bag cranberries; 1 seedless orange; 1 cup of sugar.  Make in two batches: chop up the orange and put half plus half the cranberries and half the sugar through a Cuisinart, food mill, or grinder.  Then do it again.  The relish will be delicious and you will be happy.

The photo above is of Maureen and me in the kitchen at Hubbard's Point.

Night Neighbors

[Essay written for the catalogue of Linden Frederick's November 2011 exhibition at the Forum Gallery, New York.] Night Neighbors: Linden Frederick

By Luanne Rice

The night is dark, and you’re all alone, or maybe you’re not.   The road takes you through town after town, headlights coming at you, and you see houses, not so different from the one you grew up in, a trailer park in the hollow off the interstate, a motel with its neon sign flickering out, steam billowing from a brick factory, a spooky Victorian with one light in a downstairs window, and the road feels really long and lonely, but then you see…

Linden Frederick starts the story and leaves it to the viewer to finish.   Twenty years ago I bought my first of his paintings.  No larger than two inches square, it shows a full moon rising above a distant ridgeline.  With detail so real, specific, and compelling, that tiny picture drew me into itself.  It told me about a woman leaving her husband, and I wrote it down, and it angled its way into the first fiction Linden inspired in me.

Another painting, The Night Before (2006,) captures hardship and one December’s dusk.  A turquoise double-wide squats in a snowfield of raggedy pines; an old-model car tilts, as if on a flat tire, in the driveway alongside.   A vermilion streak on the horizon—an unmistakably winter sunset—illuminates clouds overhead.  More snow coming, and you can feel the cold.  Through the trailer’s window a Christmas tree glows with colored lights.  Who lives there, where did they find hope instead of hopelessness, what grace made them decorate that tree?

So many of Linden’s paintings feel as if they’re set on the edge of town, away from the center of things.  They touch the part of us that exists on the outside looking in.  He paints what is.  He doesn’t pretty things up, but he doesn’t have to: he finds beauty in the ordinary, familiar, and lost.  The most literary of painters, he is also the most mystical—a metaphysician illuminating the dark night with headlights, a Christmas tree, the glittering neon of an ice-cream stand, a line of yellow light shining through a neighbor’s drawn curtains.  His work reminds me of the Luminism school of the 1800's, yet is immediate and of-the-moment, so luminously captures the time in which we live.  I think of it as being geographically northeast--Maine, especially--but it is purely American.  

For two decades, since I bought that first small painting, Linden Frederick has inspired my fiction.  I keep a second apartment in Chelsea just to hold his paintings.  It’s where I write.  I’m surrounded by all this work that acknowledges big loneliness, but offers connection and consolation.  He reminds me of my neighborhood, of growing up in a factory town, of my grandmother’s summer cottage.

And I’m moved by the celestial phenomenon that fills his work—turn of day, shadows falling while the sky remains brilliant blue, full moon, crescent moon, the Big Dipper, the first streaks of dawn.

For one of my novels I used an epigraph from Albert Camus:  “In the depth of winter I finally knew that within me was an invincible summer.”

I was staring at one of Linden’s paintings when that thought came to me.

exhibit_259_6

Summer House, 2009, oil on linen, 40 x 40 inches

Painting at top of page:  Highwayman, oil on linen, 35 x 35 inches

The Rocks at High Tide

The Rocks at High Tide is one of my first published short stories.  It is one of many three sisters stories I wrote early on, and a predecessor to my first novel, Angels All Over Town.  It came out in ASCENT.   I was so fortunate to be plucked from the slush pile by the brilliant editor Dan Curley.  He went on to publish several other stories of mine, and helped me connect with the editors of other literary magazines.

Dan was wonderful.  I remember having a story accepted at another small magazine about the same time as my first publication in ASCENT, and Dan insisted that I let him claim me as his discovery, that he be able to say that ASCENT published me first.  How flattering that was to a young writer.  I'd thought no one could possibly care about such a thing.

He was a great champion of fiction writers, and I am so grateful for all his support and guidance.  We met only once--he was reading from his own fiction at the library in his hometown of Bridgewater, Massachusetts.  He'd mentioned the reading casually in one of his letters, and  I knew I'd get there no matter what.  And I did, and we met, and our work went on for many years, and when he died--so many years ago now--it took me a long, long time to get over.

Please click on the link below to read the story.  (Thanks to Mia Onorato, an incredible writer herself, for ransacking the bookshelves at Hubbard's Point, finding the magazine, and scanning the story to me.)

The Rocks at High Tide

Luanne's Tribute To Her Grandmother

In this video, Luanne Rice, tells us how her Grandmother, Mim, became a huge influence on her writing.

Bare Branches

And now it's November. As if on cue--well, actually on cue--nature knows it's time for the thermometer to plummet, for the warblers and raptors to be on their way south, for leaves to fall so tree branches can scratch at the sky.

I have a great fondness for bare branches.  They allow more sunlight through.  At night they seem to cradle the moon.  Walking through the park or a forest, if you look up and keep your gaze soft as you scan the branches' lacework above, you might see something that's not supposed to be there: a dark oval that is really an owl.  You'll see it stir, then spread wings and silently fly, off on the hunt.

By day you might see corvids perched in the branches.  Such intelligent birds.  My friend in Old Lyme knew a crow when he was a boy.  The bird had somehow sliced its tongue, so it was forked, and the bird could talk.  My friend and the crow would carry on conversations.  He has reported them to me, and I have no reason to believe he misquoted the crow.

While looking for an image of November trees or a corvid, I stumbled upon a beautiful print of both, in the illustration above: by the artist Amie Roman, it is called Bare Branches, and by way of homage, I so title this post.  The image is a single block relief print, created by traditional printmaking methods.

I hadn't known Amie's work before, but I have now fallen in love with it.  She loves nature, as I do, and her photo on her website shows her with a cat that reminds me of Maggie.  I feel a connection to Amie's work, and parts of her life--just as I was inspired by my grandmother and mother, she was influenced by her talented grandmother, Caro Woloshyn, AFCA, and is inspired by her artist mother, Betty Cavin.

I'm grateful to Amie for allowing me to use her print, and I'm delighted by what came of a chilly November day, browsing images of bare branches and corvids, and discovering a kindred spirit a continent away from New York, in British Columbia.

Pierce Brosnan Interviews Luanne Rice Part 3

In this 3rd and final installment, Pierce Brosnan concludes his interview with New York Times bestselling author, Luanne Rice.

Halloween

All my childhood Halloweens took place in Connecticut and all my grownup ones have been in New York City.  [Thank you to Amelia Onorato for the magical illustration.]

Connecticut is next to Massachusetts and my sisters and I had strong imaginary connections to the women, a.k.a the witches, of Salem.  We had more local witches as well--the weathervane atop E. E. Dickinson's Witch Hazel factory in Essex, CT, always a favorite sight when my family would drive down Rte. 9 to the beach.

And the  young Connecticut "witch" Kit Tyler, age 16 in 1667, the heroine of one of my favorite books, The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare.

The book frightened and thrilled me--to think about such prejudice and hatred, and to read about Kit's strength, independence, loyalty, and ultimately, faith that the truth would out.  The novel and its characters felt very close to home--Kit first landed in America at Old Saybrook, just across the Connecticut River from our beach cottage in Old Lyme.

Maybe it was Kit's story that always inspired me to dress like a witch for Halloween.  Each year I wore the same thing: Mim's ancient crinoline black slip, lace up pointy-toed boots, and a black velvet opera cape that I had actually sewn, and who knows why?--the only opera I'd ever attended was I Pagliacci, at the Bushnell Theater, with my seventh grade class from St. Maurice School.  But there came a time when my sisters and I got seriously into capes, and we sewed them, complete with hoods, silk lining, and hand-tied black frog closures.

It was all very dramatic.  Trick-or-treating down Lincoln Street, with the Whitney children (my second family and beloved babysitting charges) holding our hands in the darkness, I think we envisioned ourselves crossing some moor in Puritan times, fighting oppression and casting spells whilst collecting candy.

Halloween didn't used to be so commercialized.  Plastic pumpkins were rare--who would even want one?  We carved elaborate jack-o-lanterns, placed candles inside for scary illumination, and toasted the pumpkin seeds.  Some families actually handed out crisp apples and we liked getting them.  (At least in my memory we did.  Probably not as much as Snickers bars, however.)  The holiday was a melange of fun and gravity; candy and costumes mixed in with our Irish Catholicism--All Souls Day, All Saints Day, All Saints Eve, All Hallows Eve, with a dash of Celtic Samhain tradition as well.

It was New England, therefore spooky with bare branches raking the cold sky, piles of dry fallen leaves underfoot, the sound of wind whistling through the swaying trees, but also reverent, in that we felt and heard the ghosts and prayed for them to be released from this life into the next.

Then I moved to New York.  Halloween in Chelsea makes me happy.  So many brownstones, pumpkins, set designers who go to town on their own houses.  The late great Empire Diner always decorated for holidays, Halloween included.  I miss Renate and the diner.  Grrr, things change, and good places and people leave.  

So here's to the Whitneys, now trick-or-treating with their own children; the Witch of Blackbird Pond; the spirits of Lincoln Street; the ghosts of Chelsea; the Empire Diner; and hobgoblins everywhere.  Happy Halloween.  Please enjoy a good apple and a Snickers bar for me.

Life of a Book

The Silver Boat feels very alive to me.  It's only October, and the novel won't come out until April 2011, but already it's making its way in the world. I'm always amazed at the secret, labyrinthine, enchanted life of a novel, and I thought maybe you would be, too.  First it has to be written.  That in itself is pure magic and spirit.  The initial idea lodges in my heart, I live with it for some time, and soon I find yourself looking for a pen, jotting down the first lines, the character's name, a vision of where she lives, what she sees.  Or maybe the idea is big and fully formed enough for me to go straight to the computer, open a new file, and let the story flow.

Living with the novel, listening to the characters, is more privilege and joy than work.  To wake up every morning, hit the desk and start up where I'd left off the night before, let my characters lead me deeper, is the best.  I'm never happier than when writing.

When I've written the last page, reread the draft, feel it's time to let it go, I send the manuscript to my agent and my publisher.  For many years, since my first novel, I've incorporated talismanic elements into the submission; I almost always find a card, or a postcard, that somehow illustrates the essence of my new novel.  I still remember the one I used for Crazy in Love: Winslow Homer's Summer Night, a painting of a couple dancing in moonlight on the beach.

The postcard I included with the manuscript Secrets of Paris, was a photograph of a woman writing at a Paris cafe, and actually inspired Viking to use it as the book cover.

Talismanic postcard or not, There are some tense days, waiting for a reaction.  When it comes, if it's good, I'm thrilled and ready to dig into the next phase--revision.  The first draft is a gift, and revision is really work.

Finally the novel is finished, accepted, and a new round of fun begins.  Cover sketches, proofs, choices.  Pam, my editor, had a very clear idea for The Silver Boat's cover; I remember sitting in her office when she showed it to me.  I loved its simple beauty, luminosity, and the way it drew me in to the novel.

Now the ARCs (advance reading copies) are finished, being sent into the world.  Publishing industry people will read it.  Peggy, the agent in charge of foreign rights, went to the Frankfurt Book Fair, and showed the cover to foreign publishers, and reported back that they loved it.

Tonight I'll have dinner with a woman from LA who will help publicize the novel.  I love all these moments, pre-publication, because I see how each one helps the book come to life.  Books are like the Velveteen Rabbit--they have to be read and loved for them to truly be alive.

I have a shelf of much-read and greatly-loved books--my own private Velveteen Rabbits.  Actually, The Velveteen Rabbit is one.  Honor Moore's The White Blackbird, Alice Hoffman's The Story Sisters, J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, Laurie Colwin's Happy All the Time, Ann Hood's The Red Thread, Joe Monninger's Eternal on the Water, Katherine Mosby's Twilight (published way before the other Twilight,) Rumor Godden's Little Plum, Marguerite Henry's Misty of Chincoteague, James Joyce's Dubliners, Sylvia Plath's Letters Home, Gretel Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces, Pam Houston's Cowboys are my Weakness, Braided Creek by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser,  and so many more: I've read and read them, loved them all, in some cases until they're threadbare.

April seems a long ways away, but I know it will come fast.  Actual publication is something else again--exciting, satisfying, and I never tire of walking into a bookstore and seeing my novel on the shelf.  But by then I'm usually deeply into a new novel, with a group of new characters, and a whole new life is underway.  Another book, another life.