Elizabeth Loupas

A patch of sun and a good book—who could ask for more?

First I just have to say that C.W. Gortner’s The Confessions of Catherine de’ Medici is a physically gorgeous book—a stunning cover, a satisfying heft in the hands, an elegant layout of the pages. Even if I didn’t know Christopher (which I do, in the interests of full disclosure, albeit very slightly) I would have picked up this book for the sheer beauty of it.

So I was ready to sit down in my own patch of sun with a bowl of popcorn and a beagle (or two) at my feet and utterly lose myself in sixteenth-century France.

I wasn’t disappointed.

The fictionalized memoir is a law unto itself. That’s the fun of it—it doesn’t necessarily have to follow recorded history. After all, historians—and particularly those writing in a polarized era like that of the religious wars in France—have their axes to grind. And none of them could really know what was in one woman’s heart.

So Gortner imagines us into what only Catherine de’ Medici herself might have seen and done and known. Do I always agree with the version of history his Catherine recounts? No. But that’s the whole point—it’s history from Catherine’s own point of view. It wasn’t “history” when she lived it, after all. It was her life, her fears and loves and longings and insecurities and triumphs and failures. Her secrets. Her confessions. However much outsiders may have called her Madame la Serpente, from the inside she was a human woman like any human woman today, seeing the world in her own unique way, fighting keep her place (and are we all not fighting to keep our jobs today, in today’s polarized world?) and see her family achieve success.

A satisfying read, and—highest of accolades for historical fiction—one that led me to delve into nonfiction sources (more than I already had) on Catherine de’ Medici and her world.

If I thought the book looked real when I got the page proofs (which are finished, yay!) (well, finished but for one last pass which I’ll do this weekend, but still yay!), imagine how I felt when this box arrived:

Advance Reader Copies!

As I was swooning with delight, Boo inspected the box thoroughly and declared “Aroo roo rooooo arooo roo roo.” I think that means, “Whoo-hoo, Mama, you did good, now what’s for dinner?”

Watch this space for information on how to win one for your very own! (The book, not the beagle.)

Huge thanks to C.S. Harris, author of the fantastic Sebastian St. Cyr regency mysteries, for a new pre-release comment on The Second Duchess:

“Rich in historical detail and all the dangerous grandeur of court life in Renaissance Italy. Think The Other Boleyn Girl meets Rebecca.” –C. S. Harris, author of the Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery series.

I love the phrase “dangerous grandeur.”

The paperback of Harris’s wonderful What Remains of Heaven came out yesterday, so run, do not walk, to your nearest bookstore (or favorite book-buying website) and buy it today. I blogged about it back in December, as one of my Christmas gift picks for 2009, and I promise you, if you haven’t read this yet you have a rich and engrossing experience in store. And then of course there are the first four books in this terrific series. And coming up next March, the sixth installment, Where Shadows Dance. Mark your calendar. I know I have.

I love Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey (and Lady Julia will be back soon, thank goodness, in Dark Road to Darjeeling), and so I approached The Dead Travel Fast with some trepidation—would I be as intrigued by a second Victorian heroine? Would the gothic Transylvanian setting work for me?

Well, the answers are yes and yes. Miss Theodora Lestrange, orphan, bluestocking (although she denies it) and spinster of Edinburgh, could not be more different from aristocratic Lady Julia Grey of the quirky-but-charming (usually) Bellmonts. Theo, in fact, reminded me of Jo March, and like Jo she’s pragmatic, pretty much penniless and determined to earn her living writing fantastical stories. When an old school friend invites her to a castle in the Carpathians, of course she jumps at the chance. She’s prepared for the ancient mountains, the eerie crumbling castle, the fragile dowager countess, the eccentric family retainers. She’s even prepared for her friend to be—well—different than she was when they were schoolgirls together. What she’s not prepared for is the mesmerizing Count Andrei, master of Castle Dragulescu.

The Dead Travel Fast is an atmospheric 21st-century take on the Victorian gothic romance, which began with The Castle of Otranto, wended its way through my own beloved Pre-Raphaelites, and reached its height with the Brontes, Byron and Bram Stoker. Cressie awards five aroos to The Dead Travel Fast!

Mark October 1, 2010, on your calendar. That’s the day Behler Publications is bringing out the expanded second edition of The Unbreakable Child, Kim Michele Richardson’s powerful and ultimately uplifting memoir. Kim is a friend of mine and we talked about her book:

Elizabeth: Kim, your book juxtaposes two narrative threads—your terrible experiences as a child and your experience as an adult with joining the lawsuit and opening up your memories to the world. What happened in between? How did you manage as a teenager? What were your ambitions, your vision of your adult life, in those years? Did you follow that vision, or end up in an entirely different place?

Kim: As expected, when I left the orphanage life did not get better. Frying pan to fire. I went from eating gruel to living off toothpaste. My mother was simply incapable/not suited to caring for children. This coupled with the culture shock of moving out of the orphan asylum and into the ‘real world’ was overwhelming. I had not been prepared. However, as a very young child, I’d always felt I possessed a strongly adult sense of survival and I knew I would be okay—if not someday ‘great’ in the sense of emotional healing and moving forward and reaching positive goals. No easy feat, with many setbacks—stumbles along the way, but I was determined to carve a decent life out of the rubble, mud and muck I’d been given. With The Unbreakable Child’s 2nd Edition I explain and dig deeper on the subjects.

Elizabeth: Tell us a little about your life today, post-lawsuit and post-publication of your book. Have you felt the catharsis you hoped for? How might the world have been the poorer if you had not been an unbreakable child?

Kim: I feel anytime you can express your emotions with pen and pad, it is a catharsis. The healing also deepens and multiplies when you can help others. I’ve been honored and rewarded by the countless readers who’ve read my work and reached out to me. The Unbreakable Child has also become a valuable resource tool for teens, medical professionals, advocate groups and students entering the field of social work and or law. The Unbreakable Child is still, yet, the first book of its kind to be released in the US traditional publishing world, and one many feel is needed so that history never repeats itself. And with the 2nd and better detailed edition of The Unbreakable Child due out this fall, it will gain a wider audience and continue to help others emotionally and because a percentage of all proceeds go to a child advocate group; financially as well.

Elizabeth: I know you love animals. Do you think your connection with animals and compassion for animals in trouble is related to your own experiences as a child? How?

Kim: I do love animals. But just as equally, I’m passionate about senior citizens, children and those who are in need of an advocate—a voice.

And Kim is a voice—an unforgettable voice. The expanded second edition of The Unbreakable Child is available for pre-order now. Make sure you choose the second edition, from Behler Publications!

“Lord! when you sell a [reader] a book you don’t sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue – you sell [the reader] a whole new life. Love and friendship and humor and ships at sea by night [and intrigue and death and wild adventure and passionate obsession in the Scotland of Mary Stuart]—there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”

—Christopher Morley (with interpolations)

This past weekend, Nicolaus Copernicus’ remains were re-buried with great honor in a cathedral in Frombork, Poland, after spending over 460 years under the floor of the same cathedral in an unmarked grave.

This is all very well and it’s excellent to see Copernicus vindicated at last, but if his body was buried in 1543 in an unmarked grave—how did they know they had the right person?

It turns out scientists began looking for Copernicus back in 2004—they knew he’d been buried under the floor of the cathedral but didn’t know where. They found the skull and bones of a man of about the right age, and did a computer reconstruction of the face (hello, Bones) that resembled a portrait Copernicus drew of himself. Suggestive, but not conclusive.

Then the most amazing thing happened. They leafed through a book known to have belonged to Copernicus and found hairs. (I also pull my hair out over books from time to time, so I can relate.) They extracted DNA from the bones they’d found and from the hairs and eureka! A match.

So now Copernicus lies under a black granite tombstone identifying him as the founder of the heliocentric theory (well, not really, but the first to model it in full mathematical detail) and a canon of the Roman Catholic church. The stone is inlaid with a design representing the solar system, a golden sun encircled by six planets (the only ones they’d discovered at the time Copernicus lived).

One of the most poignant things about the whole story is that Copernicus published his masterwork De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium in the last year of his life. Supposedly the first printed copy was placed in his hands the day he died. One can only imagine what he felt.

Rest well, Master Nicolaus.

What I just finished reading (actually for the umpteenth time): my tattered, treasured copy of Zelda, Nancy Milford’s wonderful, terrible, mesmerizing biography of Zelda Fitzgerald. This is the book I return to whenever I’m struggling with my own writing—Zelda and Scott’s struggles are always so much more heartbreaking and heartrending than my own.

What I’m going to read next: a crisp new copy of Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran. I loved Rome on HBO (Thirteeeeeeen!) and this looks like it pretty much picks up where Rome left off. I do wish they had kept Max Pirkis as Octavian. He’s certainly the Octavian I’m going to be visualizing as I read this.

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. —Groucho Marx

It’s Christmas Eve at last, and this wonderful book is a celebration of the charming 19th-century poem we all learn as children:

’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse…

First published anonymously in the Troy, New York, Sentinel on December 23, 1823, “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” (more commonly known from its first line, as “The Night Before Christmas”) is credited with pretty much single-handedly (or single-footedly—a little poetry humor there) creating the American conception of Santa Claus. It was much reprinted and, as we would say today, “went viral.” Some years later, in 1844, Clement Clarke Moore, a Bible scholar and professor of Oriental and Greek literature at Columbia College, modestly took credit for writing it. This has recently been disputed by Don Foster, an English professor at Vassar College and a scholar of authorial attribution, with some very interesting bits of literary forensics.

But it doesn’t really matter who wrote the text. This gorgeous pop-up book is a perfectly delightful way to re-read it every year, and introduce it to tiny young readers. Robert Sabuda is a master of intricate paper engineering, and as Paul Hughes writes in the Amazon.com review:

“Santa pops in and out of the chimney, beds fold out, a window shade rises and falls, and, in a clever nod to Moore’s not-a-creature-was-stirring text, it’s a family of mice who are receiving Santa’s nighttime visit. A pull-out tab even lets readers interact, when Santa’s sleigh glides out on the clouds and over an intricately realized village. It’s hard to pick a favorite scene here, but you can bet that kids will love the book’s pop de résistance, in which Santa’s lead reindeer nearly fly right up your nose (if they don’t knock you out of your chair first).”

The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clark Moore and Robert Sabuda is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-a-Million, and of course your favorite independent bookstore. You may not have it in time for tonight, but it will be a wonderful addition to all your nights-before-Christmas to come.

[Here’s another guest post for another fabulous book to pre-order, this time from my friend and crit partner Lisa Brackmann. Book pre-orders do make great last-minute gifts, you know.]

Howdy! I’m thrilled to be Elizabeth’s latest guest for her Twenty-Four Days of Christmas Book Shopping Marathon blog series! Before we get into my book, can I just say I’ve read The Second Duchess, and it is awesome? I’d tell you all to pre-order it too, but I think it’s still too soon. So, just, pre-pre-order it! You’re in for a treat. [Thanks, Lisa! And may I just add that as one of your crit partners I’ve also read Rock Paper Tiger, and it’s absorbing, suspenseful, and simply crammed with fascinating time-and-place atmosphere.]

Okay, back to me. My debut novel Rock Paper Tiger is coming from Soho Press in June 2010. Which is a ways off, but that means your recipient will have a nice, shiny new book just in time for summer vacation.

Rock Paper Tiger is mainly set in China, a country where I’ve spent a considerable amount of time (in fact, I just got back and am trying to write this post while slightly jet-lagged). One of the reasons I wrote the book was that I felt today’s China was underrepresented as a setting in contemporary fiction. I’m not sure why, because if ever there were a place with the sorts of complexities, contradictions and global importance that make for a rich and relevant setting, that would be China. If I’ve managed to capture a tiny fraction of any of that, I’ll feel like I’ve done my job.

Your guide through this territory is one Ellie Cooper, an American and former National Guard medic who has plenty of reasons to get lost on the other side of the planet from her native country. Estranged from her husband, she’s tending bar in a Beijing dive and hanging out with video gamers and performance artists – one artist in particular, Lao Zhang, who has a few secrets of his own. When a chance encounter with a Uighur fugitive drops her down a rabbit hole of conspiracies, Ellie must decide who to trust among the artists, dealers, collectors and operatives claiming to be on her side – in particular, a mysterious organization operating within a popular online game.

Rock Paper Tiger has some suspense and thriller elements, but for me it is more of a journey story and a meditation on global communities, in both the positive and negative sense. What does it mean to live in a surveillance society? How do we live creative and free lives in a world that is dominated by huge, impersonal organizations that are largely indifferent to “ordinary” people’s individual concerns? What will Ellie do when she runs out of the Percocet she uses to self-medicate, and will her failure to forward her mother’s prayer chain emails to ten people she wants to bless really result in disastrous consequences?

You can find out more about Rock Paper Tiger at my website, and in the Spring 2010 Soho Catalog (hey, that’s my book on the cover!). Rock Paper Tiger is available for pre-order at Amazon.com, Borders, and IndieBound. (Hey, Barnes and Noble! Where’s the pre-order? Get with the program already!).