<edit> <edit> <edit> <coffee> <edit> <rewrite> <rewrite> <tear out hair> <rewrite> <edit> <edit> <write new stuff> <write new stuff> <write fantastic new stuff> <run up and down hall shouting whoo-hoo!> <scare doggies> <edit> <edit> <edit> <coffee> <edit> <edit> <edit> <edit>……..
Am immersing myself in sixteenth-century Ferrara. So much of the old city has been preserved—the medieval city walls, the Castello with its four massive towers, the magnificent Romanesque cathedral, the many palaces of the Este including the Palazzo dei Diamante, which today houses the National Picture Gallery, and the Palazzo Schifanoia with its incredible fifteenth-century frescoes. My Barbara would have known them all, walked their floors, touched their walls, breathed their air. It’s a daunting and delightful thought.
Sometimes I watch the various webcams of modern-day Ferrara.
Città di Ferrara, various webcam views
Today, for example, it’s clearly sunny and cold—the sky is blue behind the clouds but there is snow on the roofs and here and there in the streets. Much of my story takes place in December, January and February of 1565 and 1566, and I imagine the weather to have been similar. I imagine Barbara’s breath as a visible cold mist when she goes out into the city to pursue her secret plan…
I had the most delightful experience this morning—I was interviewed by Mark Smalley of the BBC for a program in the “Adventures in Poetry” series, focusing on my beloved “My Last Duchess.” My first interview! The Second Duchess isn’t scheduled until February 2011, but even so, it’s a great honor and a keen pleasure to be included (among many others, of course) in this program. I talked about my interpretations of the poem and how they drove my writing of the book, how Browning and I had fictionalized the same material but from different points of view, and how the reality of the historical personages behind the poem affected one’s reading of the poem and my writing of the book. I enjoyed myself tremendously and can’t wait to find out which snippets are chosen to actually be part of the program.
“Adventures in Poetry: ‘My Last Duchess’” is presently scheduled for Sunday, December 6th, on BBC Radio 4, with a repeat on Saturday, December 12th. After that it will be available online via iPlayer for a couple of weeks. Watch this space for further links!
And the best kind of news. My book The Second Duchess has been sold to Ellen Edwards at Penguin/NAL, with the publication date to be determined.
If you could see me now (and thank goodness you can’t) you’d see me running up and down the hall laughing and crying and jumping up and down. The dogs, needless to say, are amazed, and hopeful of getting lots of treats. The Broadcasting Legend™ is working, of course, but I’m sure he’ll be amazed and thrilled in his turn.
I’m so grateful to so many people. My nonpareil agent Diana Fox, who has kept me sane and even reasonably productive through the whole process. My many writer friends, and particularly my wonderful and irreplaceable critique group the Lurkers. (Don’t ask me why we’re called that. Because come to think of it, I actually don’t know.) The people all over the world who’ve responded so kindly (and in three languages) to my many research questions. And of course the Broadcasting Legend™ himself, who has encouraged and supported me through many highs and lows.
Now. Virtual champagne for everyone! Or come to think of it, perhaps virtual Roditis. And saganaki. Opa!
Nostradamus wrote a lot more than his well-known Prophecies and Almanacs. He cast many individual horoscopes and made many individual prophecies to private (usually noble or royal) persons. In the course of my research for The Second Duchess I found a prophecy Nostradamus made privately to Alfonso II d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara, although I won’t go into detail about it here because who knows? Perhaps one day it will play a part in another Ferrara story.
However, this seed of information is presently flowering into a lovely plotline in the new book I’m working on. What if, what if. What if Nostradamus had written a series of prophetic quatrains for Mary of Guise, the dowager Queen and Regent of Scotland, mother of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots? Mary of Guise visited France in 1550-1551 and might, just might have met Nostradamus, whose first published Almanac was for the year 1550.
What if the secret quatrains revealed the future of Scotland, vis-a-vis England and France? Imagine what, say, Elizabeth Tudor in England and Catherine de’ Medicis in France would have given to lay their hands on those prophecies.
What if Mary of Guise kept them in a silver casket? What if it was the same casket that eventually held the Casket Letters? What happened to the casket in between?
The thing is, to make this work I have to write the prophecies myself. So I have to write like Nostradamus. Now that is historical fiction with sprinkles.
I love Edwin Arlington Robinson’s work so much, and I think my favorite (although it’s hard to choose) piece is “Flammonde,” from The Man Against the Sky. In fact, I suspect reading “Flammonde” for the first time when I was probably ten or twelve made such an indelible impression on me that my favorite sort of male main character, both to read about and to write, is a Flammonde-like mystery:
He never told us what he was,
Or what mischance, or other cause,
Had banished him from better days
To play the Prince of Castaways.
Meanwhile he played surpassing well
A part, for most, unplayable;
In fine, one pauses, half afraid
To say for certain that he played.
Like another of my great favorites, dear Mr. Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” “Flammonde” tells us a story about an enigmatic man, both attractive and repellent. However, unlike Browning’s Duke of Ferrara, who speaks to his mysterious listener and thus reveals himself (however one might interpret that revelation—see The Second Duchess), Flammonde says nothing: we see him only through the eyes of a puzzled observer:
Why was it that his charm revealed
Somehow the surface of a shield?
What was it that we never caught?
What was he, and what was he not?
There is a story behind “Flammonde,” and what a lovely novel it would make. Just looking at that picture of Caroline Swan’s house makes me curious, so curious, to know what went on behind those precisely balanced, shuttered windows. Whatever it was, it did not end well:
Rarely at once will nature give
The power to be Flammonde and live.
Yes, I’m a romantic. I admit it. Absolutely incurable.
Have I mentioned lately how much I ♥ my manuscript? I’m in the last couple of chapters of revisions and I’m so happy with how it’s turning out.
I also have to say that I ♥ my agent Diana Fox for her suggestions and support. Everybody’s been talking about #agentfail and #agentwin, it seems, but for me Agent Diana transcends all the categories into #agentnonpareil. And no, I don’t mean those little chocolate candies with white sprinkles.
Although chocolate is always good.
