I have this habit of finding writers of serial novels and reading the entire series, then finding another, similar author or genre and so forth. This has inherent limitations though. I was reading mostly crime and geo-political fiction, that sort of author tends to be white and male. I figured I needed to expand my intellectual scope to include other types of authors, else get stuck with a mindset/worldview that was a bit too narrowly focused.
So I declared 2007 to be the year of the female author.
Of course I started by looking up female authors of that same genre. I didn't have a lot of luck. Then on NPR. . . yes I listen to NPR, I heard an interview with an author who was talking about one of her recent characters. A Norwegian, lesbian, badass character, no less.
She had me at 'Norwegian'.
The author admitted that she had very little first hand knowledge of Norway, but that was part of the fun, part of the challenge of writing a series of novels.
The Author, Nicola Griffith, liked research, was almost obsessed with it.
I get that. . I too find research to be very challenging and, well, fun.
I'm one of those guys that will overhear something in a conversation, like "I can't remember what the TV show was, but it had Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch. . . and maybe that little guy from Mayberry RFD. . ."
By the time they get to the question mark, I've already Googled it. ('F Troop', by the way.) I thirst for knowledge, mostly the more obscure and rarely relevant kind.
Even when I pound out one of my nearly weekly lame and silly restaurant reviews, I will look up a fair amount about either the establishment itself, or a dish offered there, or maybe just an ingredient. . . I simply love that part of the process.
So I figured that this writer and I had something very basic in common. Then again, maybe it was her voice that captivated me.
Nicola is British by birth and even though she'd lived in the U.S.,(Seattle), for several years, she still had a distinct accent. There are many different flavors of British accent, hers was not the street urchin 'Cockney', hers sounded to me more like the accent of a more well-bred, university polished, more 'sophisticated' style, the kind we Americans hear and get the impression that the person speaking must be very, very intelligent, very in-the-know. It's a BBC news reader sort of accent.
Whatever it was, I was looking for female authors, crime fiction preferably, and it had just been handed to me on a Chablis and Brie platter.
So I ordered the series.
Sure enough the voice in the books was completely different from what I was used to. It's hard to pinpoint the difference exactly, but this was new for me.
The main character, Aud Torvingen, was quiet, reflective, strong and fiercely independent, all qualities I
She required no big, strong, handsome men to rescue her or even to assist, no comedy sidekick. . .
I thoroughly enjoyed the entire series and wanted more.
I looked up Nicola on Facebook and sent a friend request. That's not an unusual thing for me to do. I often reach out to or link to authors. I like to get updates on what they are working on and occasionally I'll post a note of appreciation for their work. Usually, the more well known authors will have a page you can subscribe to, rather impersonal, Nicola actually accepted friend requests.
Within a few days, she accepted. I was impressed and flattered.
I sent a post, or something, which included a request for more Aud books.
She was working on something else though. But I wasn't the only fan begging for more.
Some of the fans wrote admiringly about an earlier work of hers, science fiction, 'Ammonite.'
So I ordered it.
I can't honestly say I enjoyed it. It lacked the pacing and the characters I'd enjoyed in the Aud series, add to that the fact that I only rarely read scifi anyhow, it's just not my thing.
It was different though. Once again it spent more time inside the head of the characters than I was accustomed to. Not much actual action at all.
Which is funny, that I don't find that more interesting, since I am terribly cerebral myself. I spend a lot of time thinking, thinking about thinking, revising and editing my thoughts, rehearsing my lines, mentally poking and prodding at things around me. . . feeling, yeah I do that too. Don't laugh, I really do have feelings, despite an abundance of rumors to the contrary. I have swirling mental anxiety storms, exaggerated fears and triumphs, even a laugh track and a theme song.
That I don't talk very often, or much, is merely reflective of all the thinking going on, the constant editing and filtering. . .
If I determine that I have little or nothing interesting, articulate, useful or amusing to add to a conversation, I'll probably just sit there with a blank, detached expression on my face and quietly bide my time. Just ask the guys I occasionally go to lunch with. At some point it always devolves into a discussion about sports, a subject I have very little interest in. If it goes on for a while, I'm off in my own little world and the next thing I hear is "Yeah, he's gone, we lost him again."
It's not personal, I just don't like to fake interest in certain subjects.
So a few female-authored books went by, I found a few I quite enjoyed, as well as many I didn't care for at all. I even read every one of Janet Evanovich's 'Stephanie Plum' books which were at the time growing in mass popularity. Why, I am not very sure. . . The first book, and maybe the next one or two, were enjoyable, funny, quirky. The rest of them were heavily repetitious and formulaic. I could not distinguish at all between 'Three to Get Deadly' and 'Hard Eight'.
Early on I had also subscribed to Evanovich's newsletter, something that I now seem to be unable to unsubscribe from, despite several overt efforts.
Admittedly I am a rather fickle fan. I have subscribed to several authors, male, female, alive and dead and subsequently unsubscribed from many of them. As soon as they start getting formulaic, enslaved to the strict form and characters that previously 'popped', I lose interest.
But I hung on to Nicola. Occasionally I'd comment on a post, a couple of times those comments were acknowledged, mostly not. I didn't want to come across as pushy or stalky.
I knew of the place, it has a great reputation among we upstart, struggling, local writers. I'd just never been there.
When I saw the subsequent Facebook post that was broadcast from a hotel in St. Louis complaining about the freezing temperatures outside, I replied with a 'Welcome to St. Louis!' response.
She actually replied to that:
"Will you be there?"
Gulp. . .
That gulp is not a reflection of narcissism, that a real, live author had actually invited me to an event, no, it was darker than that.
What immediately popped into my head were dozens of reasons, excuses, that I couldn't be there.
It's just my instinct. My primary reflex is to go out of my way to avoid social situations, especially in unfamiliar places and among people I have never met. A situation like that, for me, is like hell on earth. Any other living nightmare of that amplitude involves the lopping off of limbs, or wild, swirling flames lapping at my facial features.
I know it is completely irrational, that's why it is so scary, it defies all logic and reason. A lot of people are afraid of speaking in public, I am as well, but my fears start at a point well ahead of actually standing at the podium, it starts at the door.
I was torn. I would really like to see and maybe actually meet Nicola and there wouldn't ever be very many chances.
I responded with a safe, calibrated "I'll try." It would be the next night, Friday, at 7 P.M., nearer my place of work than home, with plenty of time to leave work, pick up a bite of something and be at the bookstore.
I told Angel about it, then went and found, among the hundreds of books I have shelved and boxed, my hard covered, dust jacketed copy of 'Always'.
I knew this presentation would be about her newer book, 'Hild' but I thought I'd beg for indulgence and get a signature on this old one as well.
'Hild'
I knew about Hild. Nicola had been posting updates for at least a couple of years or more. It never sounded like anything I would want to read.
The work is historical fiction. Saint Hild (or Hilda) did exist. She was born in England in 614, yeah, seventeen hundred years ago. All we really know about her is what the Venerable Bede wrote about her in Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People). Bede was the premier chronicler, and many would say chief propagandist, of the early Christian faith in England. Whereas he details major accomplishments of Hilda, that she was sought out by kings for counsel, headed up several abbeys, and had attributed many miracles to her, including turning snakes into stone, very little is mentioned about her early life.
This lack of back-story fascinated Nicola.
So she had questions. How does a peasant-born female in seventh century England break out of the chattel-like role certainly foisted upon her by the times and culture, to become, at a fairly young age, a teacher, a sought-after counselor, a renowned head of large institutions?
In order to build a plausible thesis, Nicola would have to learn as much as she could about that place and time.
She polled experts and amateur historians. She needed to know about the food, the economics, the daily lives, not of the kings and priests and princes, but the peasants, the farmers, the laborers, for this was where Hild was from.
In her presentation on Friday, yes I did attend, she absolutely glowed, radiant with stories of discovery, of hidden truths revealed about this research.
I was jealous.
I know that feeling, when you work, read, query, then finally reap the reward of new found knowledge. The assembly of dusty, nearly forgotten fragments into a tapestry, a texture, a landscape and a timeline.
For example, she told us that at one time she thought the young girl Hild might have a dog. But what kind of dog? What kind of dog would even be in England in 620 A.D.? Surely not a Pekingese, probably not a poodle. . .
So she queried the net, trolling for advice from experts, amateurs and historical records.
I find things like that nearly orgasmic. I too have done that sort of thing about Eastern Missouri in the later 1800's. What was grown in the garden at the county poor farm? How was madness, mania and dementia handled by society and medicine at the time? What happened to the paupers that died? What kind of buggy and horses would have been common, family farm appropriate? What did they teach the kids? How was news spread?
All of these things we might have some rough ideas about, but as a writer, you have to make sure. As sure as you can be, at least.
We'd hate to see our labor of love be stripped of all credibility simply because we assigned someone like young Hild a dog whose breed had not even been developed yet. Pile on three or four little inaccuracies like that and your book is bound to be tossed away in its entirety as fraudulent or amateur.
Historical fiction is tough. You have to confine yourself to the physics, science, geography, technology, biology and geo-politics of the time and place. Unlike science fiction or fantasy, where you get to fully define your own universe, historical fiction requires one to paint within the many borders already well established.
During her readings and discussion, Nicola filled in some of the story she had built for Hild. As she presented, her hands actually formed shapes around the various objects she was describing, the lance, the fruit, the stones. I recognized this as well. In a writers mind the story and the objects in that story must actually exist as real. She did not merely write that Hild threw a stone at an animal, she had to feel the texture, weigh the heft of the stone as if it were as real as those found along an actual woodland path.
Most writers also know that it is rare that a character ends up exactly as initially planned. Characters grow, learn, evolve, adapt as their story unfolds. This is part of the fun as well. Start with a narrowly described human and watch it grow. You can't control it any more than you can a real child. Your job is to point it toward goals, give it what it needs and then let go so it can bend with the twists and curves, finding its own path.
The event.
When I finally arrived at the bookstore, which took more effort than it should have and eventually involved
That's not as difficult a deduction as it may seem. Since I had been following her posts for several years, I was familiar with her close-cropped hairstyle, her general frame, and of course, the crutches.
Nicola has Multiple Sclerosis. If you'd read her bio or followed her on social media, or even just heard that NPR interview (or many others) a few years earlier, you'd already know that.
I walked in and approached, swinging a wide berth so as to come up from the side. Angel is always accusing me of sneaking up on her, people at work have said the same thing. I apparently possess stealth-like qualities that I am not consciously aware of. When I do remember, I make sure to make a more overt, even noisier approach.
Of course it also gave me an opportunity to confirm that it was indeed her, I'm nothing if not in constant self-doubt.
There was no mistaking it though. She looked up at me, I detected a detached recognition in her face, I was someone she'd perhaps met before, or saw before, but little more beyond that. That was expected. She has hundreds of 'friends' online that she's never actually met. I had no presumption of overwhelming personal charisma. I introduced myself. My name, she recalled. We had just exchanged greetings the day before.
Then I hugged her. A greeting hug, like more socially adept people are wont to do. I hoped it was appropriate, not forward and creepy.
Growing up, my family were not huggers. Physical contact with other people, anything more intimate than a handshake, was almost completely foreign to me. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it was just our way. Over the course of my rather bland and unremarkable adulthood though, I've developed a more relaxed, dare I say, outgoing attitude. It still feels awkward, but the occasional welcoming or consoling hug no longer sets off klaxons and sweaty tremors quite like it once did.
Rather than object, she introduced me to a man with a nice camera. Mark, her close friend and part of her traveling entourage for this tour. Then she introduced me to Kelley.
I knew of Kelley. Once again if you'd read the bio or read about her on the internet. . .
Kelley Eskridge is Nicola's wife. She is an accomplished writer in her own right. I was honored, flattered.. They then led me to the room adjacent to the main entry and pointed at a small bar offering beer and wine.
Noticing Nicola holding a dripping brown bottle of Schafley's, a local brew, I followed suit and grabbed one for myself.
I hadn't had a sip of beer in months. I'm more of a wine guy. I also have a fairly low reaction point to the 'medicinal' properties of booze. I had to drive later, so I would not be drinking very much at all, of either. I don't drink beer often, but when I do, I like good beer, not that thin, pale, industrial American stuff, so Schafley's was just fine. It at least didn't taste like old furniture polish and it had a tangible, earthy texture to it.
I thanked them and took my leave to explore the store. I'd heard about it, I knew it dealt with many local and regional works and was generally liberal and rather esoteric in theme. I saw a few interesting works that might find a way onto my Christmas wish list. . .
More people wandered in, I went up to the counter, picked up a copy of 'Hild' and paid for it. It's the first time I'd ever bought a book while buzzing a little on booze.
I was now packing around the big hardback I'd brought in, the smaller paperback I'd just paid for, and my E-Tablet, which doubles as a camera. I asked the lady at the counter about the WiFi password, found a seat and checked email and social networks. Nicola had settled in a chair behind a small library table at the front of the room. I snapped a few photos, no flash, no fake camera sound. . . I call it non-intrusive photography, Angel would probably say it was sneaky. I didn't ask permission, I just assumed that it would be okay since Mark was going around taking crowd shots anyhow. I don't usually ask permission to photograph things but that's because I mostly photograph dogs, gravestones, food and weeds. I seldom get objections from any of them.
The seats behind me started filling in and soon enough Nicola, apparently not fully understanding the unassuming and bashful nature of midwesterners, had to cajole them to fill in more chairs in the front. I felt personal gratification that I was already in the front row, if only because I didn't want a bunch of heads blocking the sneaky photos I was taking.
She began her presentation, two readings, one from the beginning of the epic, then a break for Q&A and followed by another reading from the later stages of the book. This book only covered the Saint's very early life, up until very early adulthood. This book was to be the first of three. The real Hilda lived to a ripe old age, in her sixties, so the trilogy would chronologically separate the three major life phases.
Her reading of it was enchanting. She deftly shifted from contemporary English narrative to old Anglo dialog, with all the guttural clicks and buzzes of that archaic form. The text was highly descriptive, even more so when read by the author. Sometimes when you read something you have to assume rhythm and inflection, this was much better, the words and sentences being read aloud exactly as they were intended.
If it sounds like I'd never been to a book promotional event before, you'd be wrong. I've been to . . . two, at this national/international release level, if you include this one.
The other one was sometime in the 90's by a former fighter pilot who had written a few military/political novels of his own. I had read the first one or two of his books, saw in the paper that he was going to be in town, then made an effort to show up for that and get his autograph. . . I won't mention his name since unless you were reading lots and lots of second tier geo-political techno-thrillers in the 90's you wouldn't recognize it anyhow and also for the fact that his later books were simply awful, in nearly every respect.
So no, I do not go to enough of these things to fully grasp the protocol and decorum, nor too often to be non-impressed with hearing an author put voice to their own work.
I can't say I lusted to rip open the new book and start burning my way through the pages of 'Hild'. . . but I certainly enjoyed what I heard and was motivated a little more to actually read it. Middle Age British historical fiction has never, ever been on my bucket list. . . but I respect the effort and the work and realized that I probably wasn't exactly the target demographic anyhow. So I might read it. . . maybe. . . but I did not just buy a copy out of guilt or to sit collecting dust on my bookshelf. . . I've bought a few books by local authors that I never finished, a couple I've never even started, in a vote of support of local writers. This was not one of those purchases though.
This was in fact a Christmas present . . . for my mother. . . Whose name happens to be . . . Hilda.
Dennis, I loved reading about your experience -- what a very thorough account of a once in a lifetime opportunity to meet a favorite author. I've been to a book reading before and you're right -- they're definitely not all that good. =)
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