Legends of Medieval France and Italy

Article on Medievalists.net about The Witcher: Magic, Monsters and Medievalism

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Sun, 19 Jan 2020 18:53:00 +0000

An article I wrote about the new Netflix series "The Witcher" is online at the wonderful website Medievalists.net . It will help those unfamiliar with the franchise decide whether or not to watch the series.

The Witcher: Magic, Monsters and Medievalism
Enjoy!

Please feel free to let me know your own thoughts about this adaptation.

Linda

Harriet Movie – Chekhov’s Gun versus “White Savior” Trope

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 04:10:00 +0000

Harriet Movie – Chekhov’s Gun versus “White Savior” Trope

I saw the movie Harriet recently and I was impressed by its scope and the power of its storytelling. I wanted to share some positive word-of-mouth to assist in it being a success, but discovered quite a bit of criticism against the movie on social media. This essay is not a review of the film, but rather a discussion regarding a few aspects of criticism I feel is unfair and a misreading of the film’s dramatic intent.

Before I begin, here is a fair warning to anyone who hasn’t seen the movie. There will be spoilers.

Also to give some background information about myself, I took two screenwriting classes at Wayne State University years ago. That trained me to understand the structures and functions of screenplays. I have a Master’s Degree from Sonoma State University as an Historian of Science, which gave me training regarding historical methods. I am also the author of two novels that are epic historic fantasies set in the time of Charlemagne and are adaptations from epic poems written over 500 years ago. Taken together, it means that I recognize the challenges faced with adapting source material with the concept of balancing historical accuracy with dramatic needs. This movie is not a documentary, but instead is a dramatization of the life of a real person and is closer to the genre of historical fiction which includes inventing dialogue, creating characters, and plot points to tell a compelling narrative.

There are many people who objected to the inclusion of Black bounty hunters in the movie, specifically the character of Bigger Long. He is not an historical figure, but instead a character added to this story by the filmmakers. Their criticism is based on his violence and suggesting this characterization adds to negative stereotypes of Black men.

I haven’t seen much discussion about Walter, another Black male bounty hunter in the movie.

I saw the inclusion these characters as adding complexity to the narrative. This time period is not my area of expertise, so I will defer to historians who say there were Black bounty hunters. They may not have been common, but they existed. Including them in the story demonstrates that both Blacks and whites profited from the cruel institution of slavery while at the same time there were Blacks and whites who aided in the liberation of those in bondage. It would not have been easy to recognize who was trustworthy and making a wrong choice could be deadly. Introducing the uncertainty about whether or not someone will betray you, adds tension.

At one point, Walter approached Harriet Tubman and offered his help. He had helped track her down when she ran away, but had a change of heart and wanted to work to redeem himself by assisting her.

I felt unsettled when he offered to help, because it felt like a trap. Except it wasn’t. Tension helps the audience feel engaged in stories and wondering what is going to happen next.

The Bigger Long character never had any such change of heart. He was a cruel and violent man who earned his living by the high stakes/high reward field of being a bounty hunter for runaway slaves rather than being paid low wages for menial jobs relegated for free Blacks.

Another fictional character introduced to forward the story is Marie Buchanon. She was a free born Black woman who ran the boarding house where Harriet Tubman lived in Philadelphia. Marie may not have been an historical character, but she demonstrates the differences between Blacks who were and weren’t enslaved. She gave instructions to Harriet as to how to hold herself with confidence when she went back south on missions to lead slaves to freedom. Marie also handed Harriet a gun.

That introduces the dramatic concept of Chekhov’s gun. Anton Chekhov was a famous playwright who famously held “One must not put a loaded gun on stage if no one is going to fire it.” He felt that this type of prop created a dramatic imperative. (For anyone wanting to know more about this literary convention, there is an excellent short film on Youtube.)

It is known that the historical figure of Harriet Tubman carried a gun. She reportedly used it to threaten any fugitives if they decided to turn back, telling them, "You'll be free or die."

In the movie, we see Harriet holding the pistol many times, but she resists firing it. There’s a scene after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act where her former master, Gideon Brodess, and Bigger Long are in the boarding house in Philadelphia where she lived. Harriet is hiding, but she sees the two men beating Marie Buchanon in an effort to get information out of her. Harriet is holding her gun and almost fires at them, but doesn’t. Marie winds up being beaten to death by Bigger Long.

Had Harriet used the gun in that scene, it would have ended badly. The pistol only had one shot and there were two assailants. Had she killed one, the other would have likely overpowered her. She would then have been hauled back to Maryland facing an uncertain, but bad fate.

Besides, the filmmakers did not want to change history by making Harriet Tubman into a killer. Instead, we see the internal conflict she has with wanting to intervene to protect her friend, but knowing she cannot safely do so.

In the climax of the movie, Harriet Tubman went back to Maryland to rescue her remaining family members and lead them to safety/freedom in the North. During the time she was gathering her family to leave, there were scenes interspliced with the local slave owners who were rallying together after learning she was nearby. They carried guns and torches. Gideon’s mother, Eliza Brodess, urged them to, “Find this thief and burn her at the stake!” That signifies for the audience what awaited Harriet if she was captured.

Harriet Tubman was a high-profile member of the Underground Railroad and in the slave masters’ eyes had “stolen property” from them. She likely would have had a bounty on her head and if caught, would be subjected to torture to extract details of the Underground Railroad. They would want to dismantle the Underground Railroad by learning names of people involved, places they lived and worked, as well as the identities and locations of former slaves who now lived free in the North. And then, she would be subjected to a public execution that be both would be cruel and unusual in nature. All to send a message to those still in bondage that their hero “Moses” was gone and that they should lose all hope of ever being freed. Being burned at the stake like Joan of Arc would have been one possible outcome, and she would have just as likely been lynched like so many other Blacks were in this nation’s history. Tubman’s violent death would have been inevitable if she was caught, and most likely would have been without the benefit of trial.

Those were thoughts that likely were running through Gideon Brodess’ mind. He needed to bring Harriet Tubman back alive. He would claim the bounty before her torture and death. He would also gain fame for being the man to bring her down.

At one point, Harriet realizes that Bigger Long and Gideon are gaining on her threatening her family’s escape. She entrusts Walter to get on the small boat and take her family to safety while she distracted Gideon.

Harriet ran in the forest and scrambled up a large rock to avoid being caught by Bigger Long. They exchanged gunfire with her shot causing his hat to fly from his head.

He became enraged and said, “You goin’ die, bitch!”

Gideon was on horseback and behind Bigger. He heard the threat and rather than try to calm his hired Bounty hunter, he shot Bigger in the head, killing him. “Alive, I said.”

That action is what is being described as a “white savior” trope by critics. Matthew Hughey, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, and author of The White Savior Film: Content,Critics, and Consumption, (Temple University Press, 2014), defined the term as “a white messianic character saves a lower- or working-class, usually urban or isolated, nonwhite character from a sad fate.” One example is The Blind Side starring Sandra Bullock as Leigh Ann Tuohy who brought the homeless Black teenager Michael Oher into her family, then helped him on a path to become an NFL player. Another example is The Help where the movie about discrimination against Black domestic servants in the 1960s south is seen through the eyes of a white author played by Emma Stone.

Given this definition, do I think this scene fits the white savior trope? No, I don’t. Gideon is not a messianic character, nor did he want to save Harriet’s life. He wanted her captured alive because bringing her corpse back would be far less valuable. A corpse could not be tortured to reveal secrets and there would be far less spectacle to serve as a lesson for remaining slaves.

This white man wasn’t trying to be her savior. In fact, by killing Bigger, he wouldn’t have to share the bounty.

And no one would really care about the reason Gideon killed a Black man. White men could kill Black men with impunity. There would be no punishment for his act of murder.

However, had Harriet died at Bigger’s hands, she would have had a more merciful death than what would have been in store for her had she been captured by Gideon.

The death of the fictional character Bigger Long, also allowed a climactic scene between the movie’s protagonist, Harriet Tubman, and antagonist, Gideon Brodess.

This was the third and final scene where these two characters interacted. In dramatic structure parlance there was a beginning, middle and end to the drama between these two characters. The beginning was when Harriet was still a slave and was then known as Araminta “Minty” Ross. Minty’s husband, John Tubman a Black free man, handed papers from a lawyer to Edward Brodess that according to a will from Edward’s grandfather, Rit Ross (Minty’s mother) should have been freed years before as well as all of her children. John and Minty wanted to start a family and wanted their children to be born free. Edward tore up the papers, ordered John to stay away, and swore that Rit Ross, her children, and any descendants would forever be enslaved. Later Edward told his son, Gideon, that he should sell Minty since she was troublesome.

Later, Gideon overheard Minty praying for the death of his father. “Oh, Lord. If you ain’t going to change that man’s heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way.”

Gideon confronted Minty. He brought up her fierce faith and remembered her praying by his bedside when he was a child and struck with a fever. She refused to back down from her wishes for the death of his father.

Edward died soon afterward.

Gideon became unnerved by this sudden death of his father and decided to sell Minty. That was the reason Minty decided to run away from the Brodess farm. She had sisters who had been sold “down south” and never to be heard from again. She did not want to be separated from her family in a similar manner.

The second scene between Harriet and Gideon, (and still technically in the beginning portion of the three part dramatic sequence), was during her escape attempt when slave catchers trapped her from both sides of a bridge. She started making moves to jump into the river. Gideon tried using soothing tones to coax her into surrendering. He said he had changed his mind about selling her and wouldn’t punish her too much for running away.

She responded by saying, “I’m gonna be free or die.” This was right before she jumped in the river.

The middle sequence is when she saw Gideon and Bigger attack Marie Buchanon. Harriet saw them, but was quiet so they didn’t know she was there. It marks the dramatic middle of this antagonistic relationship.

The third scene, and the dramatic ending, is where these two characters interacted after the murder of Bigger Long. Harriet Tubman is hiding behind a tree and frantically reloading her gun while Gideon Brodess rode on horseback and slowly made his way up the hillside to her. He was relaxed and confident, while she was summoning all of her strength and faith to survive the upcoming encounter.

Gideon was surprised by Harriet who emerged from behind a tree and aimed her gun at him.

His rifle wasn’t in the position to defend himself. She commanded that he throw it on the ground. After repeating herself, he relented and threw the rifle on the ground. She shot, but didn’t kill Gideon. She wounded his hand. The concept of Chekhov’s gun worked. The prop in the story was used, but history wasn’t changed to make her a killer.

Harriet also ordered Gideon to dismount his horse. She then took his horse and rode off,

abandoning him in the woods to find his way back to safety.

She confronted a man who had controlled every aspect of her life and of her family’s life. She demonstrated how strong a person she had become and that her faith in God was sacrosanct.

Her final farewell to Gideon was saying, “God don’t mean for people to own people.”

This sequence may never have happened in real life, but it allowed for the closure of a toxic relationship and is an emotionally satisfying scene for the audience. She was the victor by not only escaping again, but by showing that God was on her side.

And then, almost as an epilogue, there’s a scene where Harriet Tubman is shown later in life as a commander of Union Troops in the Combahee River Raid in Beaufort, South Carolina. After delivering a stirring speech to the troops, she sings a song that is the signal to the slaves that the time has come to be rescued, hundreds begin running toward the ships. Then their white masters follow in hot pursuit. It is then we see Harriet shoulder a rifle and say the word, “Ready” as the soldiers get set to shoot their guns at the rebels.

At that point, Harriet’s gun likely killed someone. So the literary concept of Chekhov’s gun was fully used, even if we never saw someone die on screen from the lead character’s actions. And, it is hard to criticize soldiers for killing their enemies in a time of war.

Overall, I simply disagree with the accusation that the film makers for the movie Harriet used the “white savior” movie trope. Instead, I find their narrative to flesh out the life of an historic character to be utilizing the literary concept of “Chekhov’s gun.”

Here is the official trailer for the movie to demonstrate a few of the lines I quoted above.

Please let me know if you have any feedback. I would like to start a productive discussion regarding this topic.

Character study of Bradamante

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 21:01:00 +0000

Joseph Campbell famously described the commonalities of myths and stories told throughout the world as “the hero with a thousand faces” meaning that regardless of the name of the particular hero or the locale in which a monster was fought - there was an underlying mythos capturing our imaginations. That is why heroic stories persist throughout the ages and continue to be propagated for new generations. One method that allows readers or audiences to recognize the significance of what role each character plays in the story whether they are hero, ally or adversary is by using stock figures or archetypes. I use the term archetype differently than what was described by Carl Jung, so I am not limited to his set of twelve archetypes. My use is more in line with recognizing stock figures that become icons in literature and drama.

From the Ariosto Room in the Il Casino Giustiani Massimo al Laterano in Rome, Italy. Picture credit to Marco Ferrara.

Bradamante is the niece of Charlemagne and a respected warrior maiden. Ariosto praises her beauty as well as declaring her to be equal in “courage, might and expertise” to that of her famous brother Rinaldo, (Orlando furioso, Canto II, verse 31).

Archetypically, I feel that Bradamante’s character had two major influences. The first was the Greek Goddess Athena.

From the Louvre Museum in Paris.

She was the goddess of wisdom and victory and known for her cool-headed strategic planning. No man ever captured Athena’s heart.

The second influence was of the historical figure of Joan of Arc or Jeanne d’Arc. I find that comparison more compelling and I feel that it was not incidental, but instead a deliberate attempt by Ariosto to invoke the parallels between the literary heroine and the real life French martyr. Jeanne d’Arc who was burned at the stake in 1431 at the age of 19. She had been known for riding a white horse, carrying a banner made of white fabric, was called “the Maid,” had cropped hair and dressed in men’s clothing.

Jeanne d'Arc, St. Étienne Cathedrale in Cahors, France

Bradamante was a young woman, most likely a teenager, and is described as having a white shield with a white plume (Orlando furioso, Canto I, verse 60) and is often referred to as “the Maid.” The color white is known for the symbolic virtues of purity and innocence. Bradamante also had cropped hair, due to a blow to the back of her head by an enemy warrior near the end of Boiardo’s poem Orlando innamorato (Book III Canto v, verse 46) and a hermit cut her hair to tend to the wound. (Book III, Canto ix, verse 61)
Ariosto neglected to mention the length of Bradamante’s hair until finally in Canto 25 when her twin brother Ricciardetto relates a tale to Ruggiero of how people commonly confuse him and his sister Bradamante since they have such great resemblance to each other. The confusion about her sex was compounded when she lost her tresses due to the head injury. (Orlando furioso, Canto XXV, verses 22-24)

Bradamante also disguised herself as a man when she approached the thief Brunello at an inn and sought to have him serve as her guide to find where Ruggiero was being held captive.

“Name, sex, race, family and place of birth

She hides, watching his hands for all she’s worth.” (Orlando furioso, Canto III, verse 76)

The greatest differences between Bradamante and Jeanne d’Arc is that the literary heroine is revered by her king, never accused of heresy, has a love life, and a much better fate than the historical figure.

Here are more artistic renderings of Bradamante.

Illustration by Gustave Doré based on Orlando furioso, Canto III, verse 9. (Doré was inspired to begin his drawings before reading the entire poem to discover in Canto XXV that Bradamante's tresses were cut to make her resemble a boy.)


Plate 20 by Jean Honoré Fragonard of Bradamant fighting Atlante on the hippogriff.

I happen to have purchased that image when a facsimile of it was sold on eBay. The scan is from my copy.

Of all the characters in Orlando innamorato and Orlando furioso, my favorite is Bradamante. She is a strong heroine who rarely loses her temper. Twice she gave into seeking revenge. Once was going after Martisino and the second was Pinabel. Both times she suffered due to her lust for vengeance. In Fate of the Saracen Knight, Bradamante hears rumors of Ruggiero being romantically involved with another warrior maiden. Will she suffer if she sets out on another quest for vengeance?

--> -->

Interview with Professor Awesome: Annotated

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Sun, 23 Dec 2018 23:53:00 +0000

I had a rollicking good time talking with Professor Richard Scott Nokes over Skype on December 8th, 2018.

After finishing the interview, I realized that I had forgotten to bring up a few things I wanted to mention. I gave a lot of advice on the writing process and thought hyperlinks might be helpful for those interested in following up on them.

One aspect of the interview that makes this a little out of the ordinary was the time spent getting the tech stuff working. We spent over half an hour trying to get the Skype application to record. After several failed attempts, Professor Nokes got it working. He started to record, but I didn't see the banner at the top indicating it was recording. I didn't want us to begin talking in earnest and have to start all over again.

I mention this because that mistake on my part is the first half minute of the video. After we stopped talking Professor Nokes spent about an hour editing the raw footage and uploaded the unedited raw footage. D'oh!

What you really missed was the cool introductory musical theme song that precedes his interviews. To get you in the proper mood, here is the music you should hear before his interviews:

And here is a re-posting of the interview with time stamps of my annotations.

At 2:04 I mention that my series is based on the legends of Charlemagne that were told and retold in the south of France and north of Italy for several centuries. For those interested in learning more, Fordham University has a website dedicated to those legends.

2:55 I mention one of the most famous contributions to the legends of Charlemagne, The Song of Roland or La Chanson de Roland. Here is a link to Fordham University's online translation and a link to Amazon.com's trade paperback version.

3:50 I show my copies of Barbara Reynolds' translations of Orlando furioso. Here are links to those copies on Amazon.com Part One and Part Two. Those books are my preferred version of this epic poem. They are in verse and there is a lot of white space, so I find it easier to read. Guido Waldman has a one volume version, and it is written in prose. I find it difficult to read because the font is so small, and there is little white space. Here is a link to his version on Amazon.com

A free online version by Project Gutenberg can be found at this link. A fair bit of warning though. This is the William Stewart Rose translation. I started reading this epic poem by printing out a few cantos of this version and found it utterly confusing. Later, once I read the versions by both Reynolds and Waldman, I went back and checked a few choice passages. Rose refused to translate some of the bawdier ones. Bummer.

(As a side note: I do not recommend the latest translation of Orlando furioso by David R. Slavitt. That is because his publisher heavily abridged his work and deleted numerous cantos that cover the Bradamante and Ruggiero story. I disagree with the editorial decision to cut my favorite storyline from the poem, and so I cannot recommend that version. )

5:50 Professor Awesome asks me to define Saracen. Here is a link to one online definition from the Online Etymology Dictionary.

I use Saracen in my title as one of the magic terms that helps to conjure the genre, time period and meaning of the novel in as few words as possible. Fate is reminiscent of the Oracle of Delphi and those in Greek mythology trying to change their destinies. Saracen is a term that went out of use after the Medieval period. Knight is also a Medieval term used in regard to war and chivalry.

Together the three terms should help readers know this is an epic historic fantasy set in the Medieval period.

8:50 I show my copy of Orlando innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo, translated by Charles Stanley Ross. This is the full unabridged version by Parlor Press. Here is a link to Amazon.com's trade paperpack.

Warning: there is a previous edition by Ross that was abridged and did not include Book III of Boiardo's tale. Bradamante and Ruggiero meet in Book III, Canto iv. I was disappointed after finishing that abridged version to realize that it did not include the scene that I most wanted to read.

10:00 Discussion about fantasy elements in realistic settings. I realize in retrospect, I didn't really answer Professor Awesome's questions about this aspect of my story.

I agree that it is difficult to strike a balance between fantasy and realism. I am retelling a story about a war that never took place between the North African Muslim army and Charlemagne's Frankish army. My goal was to make the setting feel like Medieval Europe (and North Africa) that would include historically accurate details about Roman artifacts, cultural beliefs, religious restrictions, etc. And then, there is magic, but few have the ability to cast magical spells. They are: Atallah, Melissa, and Maugis. Aistulf was given a magical book which has allowed him to cast some spells, but he is not a wizard.

For the most part, the characters live in a realistic and non-magical world, but there are times when flights of fancy come into play. The flights of the hippogriff is the most notable.

Orlando furioso included iconic visits to the Underworld and the flight to the moon by Aistulf. I had to include them, but I wanted more realism in the storyline to at least help me to "buy the premise." I feel that if I can't buy it, I can't sell it.

22:15 I mentioned writing a Master's Thesis. For anyone interested in it, here's a link to Sonoma State University's library copy of The Cultural Evolution of the Cave Man.

And here is a link to the Fifth year Harry Potter Fic that I wrote back in 2003. It won the Readers' Choice Award for novel length story on the now defunct website Portkey.org

24:30 Question about how to begin becoming a writer.

25:15 My answer: find a writers group or club. I mentioned the California Writers Club. My branch of that statewide organization is Redwood Writers.

Here are links to other writers groups that focus on genre fiction:
Romance Writers of America.
Sisters in Crime.
Historical Novel Society.
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

27:00 I mentioned the challenges of getting the Point of View or POV correct. To give a little more information here is one article about the differences in POV choices. Here is a link to an article about POV violations.

And here is where my annotation, really takes off. There are many other aspects of the craft of writing that I learned over the years from belonging to my writers club. My branch has had workshops about various topic as well as talks at our monthly meetings or sessions in writers conferences. Each one of these topics is worthy of extensive blog posts or entire books.

Here are two books that I recommend:

David Corbett's book: The Art of Character
Jordan E. Rosenfeld's book Make a Scene

Other topics that perhaps I should try to expand on as topics in the future include:

Compelling dialogue
Pacing
Plotting
Establishing setting

***One thing that I meant to bring up in my discussion with Professor Awesome, but forgot are the sheets of paper affixed with blue painters tape to the wall behind me. Those are the months of June, July, August and September of the year 802. That was one way for me to determine when different plot events took place.

The calendar was found at www.timeanddate.com This also includes the phases of the moon. I include that information in my story. If there's a mention of a full moon, I'm not making it up. And, if I have my characters do something outdoors at night and I don't want a full moon's worth of light - I will make it rain or overcast or foggy.

Using a calendar to structure your underlying plot will give backbone to your story. I recommend all writers have a beginning day and year in mind. Then establish your timeline of events accordingly to that date. It will help you to avoid continuity errors.

I had a friend whose manuscript I read as a critique group partner. Her novel had the climax of her story being on the Thanksgiving holiday. The problem was that she had not been as careful in planning the events as she should have been and she had two Wednesdays worth of chapters. There was a line where she stated it was Wednesday, but I knew it wasn't. That's because I ground myself on the days of the week and other nitpicky details. I then gave suggestions as to how she could move certain events to still make her climactic events happen on the day she wanted.

The use of a calendar to determine the dates of plot points is something I recommend every writer use.

The calendars on my office wall are hard to see, but the events in the months of July and August
are written in pencil, because those already took place in Quest of the Warrior Maiden. Fate of the Saracen Knight takes place in the months of July and August. The different color Post-It notes represent different character POVs that are being represented in chapters or are background information for me to know who was where and doing what on that day. For example: blue is for Bradamante, dark orange is for Ruggiero, yellow is either Renaud or Aistulf, light orange is for Rodomont or Akramont.

I tend to write one action/adventure sequence before switching to a different character's action/adventure sequence. Later, to balance the work I will shuffle the chapters together. To achieve balance, I may have to switch the days of different plot points. Having those plot points on color coded Post-It notes helps me visually re-organize and balance my storyline.

Once I start working on Volume III, I will update those calendars and create new months. ***

32:30 I couldn't remember the name of this website that is accessible to all writers wherever you are: Absolute Write online website. There is also Absolute Write Chat and forums.

Wattpad is another global forum for writers and readers.

So if you live in a rural area and/or cannot find any writers groups in your local area you can try one of those two online websites. Go schmooze, find like minded people and engage with them.

38:30 I recommended the book Audition: Everything an Actor Needs to Know to Get the Part by Michael Shurtleff. Oops. There are twelve guideposts for actors, I misspoke and said ten. Humor is Guidepost 4. Here is a small excerpt to demonstrate why I adore Shurtleff's book and his advice.

"Humor is not jokes. It is that attitude toward being alive without which you would long ago have jumped off the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge.

Humor is not being funny. It is the coin of exchange between human beings that makes it possible for us to get through the day. Humor exists even in the humorless.

There is humor in every scene, just as there is in every situation in life. There is humor in Chekhov (too seldom found) and even in Eugene O'Neill (virtually never found). When we say about a life situation, "And it's not funny, either," we are attempting to inject humor into a situation that lacks it. We try in life to put humor everywhere; if we didn't, we couldn't bear to live." - page 53

So yes, as writers, we need humor in our writing. Even if the only humor in a scene is gallows humor.

44:30 There was a mention of Medieval Conferences. I twice attended the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I delivered papers about Carolingian legends and Ariosto. I will be delivering another paper in May 2019 in a session organized by the Société Rencesvals. My paper is titled "To Die For: Duels by knights in Orlando innamorato and Orlando furioso over swords, horses, heraldic symbols, and women."

I delivered the paper "Orlando furioso's archetypes and the twisting of expected plot conventions" at the 15th Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society in 2016.
Here is the website for the International Courtly Literature Society North American Branch and to Academia.edu if you are interested in seeing my paper.

( I should at some point finish writing citations of the two papers I delivered at Kalamazoo and upload them to Academia.edu. One of my papers, "Ludovico Ariosto’s Legacy: Inspiring Countless Artists, Playwrights, Novelists, Filmmakers, and Puppet Theater" was filled with images and the challenge I have is finding good online sources for those images and then go through the cumbersome process of MLA citation. That shows my work ethic that I don't want to publish a paper online without my citations being in order. That will probably wait until some rainy day when I am procrastinating from doing other writing.)

I think that's all for now.

Here's a reminder that the both Quest of the Warrior Maiden and Fate of the Saracen Knight are discounted in the month of December. If you know someone who loves reading and would like to fill their physical or digital bookshelves, please send them the gift of reading. Or give yourself a gift and be transported back to the time of Charlemagne.

Cheers,

Linda
-->

At long last, an update on the Bradamante and Ruggiero Series

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Sun, 09 Dec 2018 03:28:00 +0000

At long last, an update on the Bradamante and Ruggiero Series

Release of Fate of the Saracen Knight, Volume II in a trilogy

For my longtime blog readers, I apologize for the long period of time where I did not update this blog. At a certain point, I was trying to limit or eliminate distractions from my forward progress in writing my sequel. Blogging was one of the aspects of my life that went the wayside. Today, as I post an update for the first time in four years, I went through and tested all the links in my blogroll. Those that no longer worked were purged.

So to begin with the good news that Volume II in my trilogy is released, I thought I should share with my readers how I began writing this series. Back in 2003, I read my first epic poem. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a life changing experience for me. I had intended on only reading a few cantos of Orlando furioso and used an online English translation of it because it was free and readily available. It was confusing, and so I switched to reading Barbara Reynolds’ two-volume set. I became entranced by the epic story with an expansive cast of larger than life characters and multiple interweaving plotlines. The love story of Bradamante and Ruggiero became the one plot thread that captivated my attention most of all and I found myself skimming ahead until I found their storyline resumed. I was astonished at the idea that 500 years ago there was a brave warrior maiden in literature sent on a quest to rescue her beloved. I felt cheated that I had never heard of Bradamante before.

Two years later, I made the decision to adapt two of the largest contributions to the legends of Charlemagne into novels for modern day audiences. I wanted others to know about these fantastic characters and their incredible storyline. I knew from the outset it would be an ambitious project, but I had confidence I had the talent and stamina to complete it. As I embarked on my literary journey to adapt Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto and Orlando inamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo, I naïvely thought that it would not take me as long to complete my task as it took the poets to write their masterpieces. Now, thirteen years later, I am proud to announce the publication of Fate of the Saracen Knight, volume two in my trilogy.

According to the Encyclopedia of Italian Studies, Boiardo began his work on Orlando innamorato in 1478. The first edition of his poem was published in 1483. Boiardo died in 1494, leaving his poem unfinished. He wrote his poem for sixteen years.

Ariosto was later given the task of finishing Boiardo’s poem and his work began in 1505. The first publication of Orlando furioso was in 1516, taking only eleven years. A further expansive version of his epic poem was published in 1532, sixteen years later, for a total of thirty-two years spent on his magnum opus.

The focus of my work is on the love story of Bradamante and Ruggiero, so I am not attempting to adapt the entirety of both poems. That was part of my hubris in thinking my adaptation wouldn’t take as long as it did the poets to write their stories. Thirteen years later, and I’m not finished yet.

I began this work not having been a devotée of the Medieval period. However, I have a Masters Degree as an Historian of Science from Sonoma State University and was mentally prepared for the challenge. I plunged in the deep end, learning as much as I could about medieval life, medieval history and Charlemagne. Part of my research included my husband and I traveling to France to see the places I was writing about and museums. On subsequent trips, we visited Aachen, Germany to see Charlemagne’s seat of power and to Ferrara, Italy where the patrons of Boiardo and Ariosto lived.

I have enjoyed meeting Medievalists and lovers of courtly literature. There is a definite passion for the ideals of chivalry and telling tales to entertain and inspire.

To help celebrate the launch of my second volume, both volumes are discounted during the month of December. Here are links for the ebooks of Quest of the Warrior Maiden Fate of the Saracen Knight from Amazon.com, and the trade paperbacks of Quest and Fate. The books are available on other Amazon outlets throughout the world, but availability of trade paperbacks depends on the country. The prices will go up in January.

Some of you may know Dr. Richard Scott Nokes, Professor of Medieval Literature from Troy University. Here is what he had to say about my writing. “Readers will be gripped by the epic sweep of the Bradamante & Ruggiero Series. This second book ratchets up the narrative tension and leaves the reader emotionally invested not just in the Fate of the Saracen Knight, but the fates of all the characters.”

Please consider giving the gift of reading this holiday season for yourself or for others, and supporting an independent author who shares your passion for the Medieval period.

Thank you and may you have a fabulous holiday season,

Linda C. McCabe

My website can be found at www.LindaCMcCabe.com

Celebrating Ludovico Ariosto's 540th Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 12:18:00 +0000

Statue of Ludovico Ariosto in the Piazza Ariostea, Ferrara, Italy

Ludovico Ariosto was born September 8, 1474

"Of ladies, cavaliers, of love and war,
Of courtesies and of brave deeds I sing..."
-Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso
(translated by Barbara Reynolds)

Last year I spent three weeks in Italy in research for my writing. The highlight of my trip was spending an entire day in Ferrara. I walked miles that day searching for sites associated with Ludovico Ariosto, Matteo Maria Boiardo and the noble house of d'Este. Having spent years adapting Ariosto's masterpiece into a series of novels for modern day audiences, I wanted to surround myself in the beauty and charm of Ferrara and to visit the places where Ariosto wrote. It was an inspirational trip and I look forward to returning to Italy, hopefully in 2016 to help commemorate the 500th anniversary of the original publication of Orlando furioso.

To help celebrate Ariosto's 540th birthday, my novel Quest of the Warrior Maiden will have a special discount price during his birthday week. The regular sale price is $4.99 for the ebook and $16.99 for the trade paperback. For this week the e-book is only 99 cents at Amazon.com and the trade paperback at $12. The discounted price will be available until Sunday, September 14th.

Here are some links for my international friends to access a similar discount at foreign Amazon outlets.
Australia ebook
Brazil ebook
Canada ebook
France ebook trade paperback
Germany ebook trade paperback
India ebook
Italy ebook trade paperback
Mexico ebook
Spain ebook trade paperback
United Kingdom ebook trade paperback

Please share this information with your students, friends, colleagues, anyone who enjoys epic tales of chivalry.

I am also happy to share with you some good news about my book with the following glowing review and mention of awards it has won.

"In Quest of the Warrior Maiden, author Linda McCabe reveals an undeniable talent for creating a truly memorable and epic fantasy saga incorporating memorable characters, cliff hanger suspense, magic and Arthurian romance of the first order. Quest of the Warrior Maiden is enthusiastically recommended reading and a first rate selection for community library Science Fiction/Fantasy collections." - Julie Summers, Reviewer - Midwest Book Review

AWARDS

• Winner - Best Historic Fantasy by the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association (BAIPA)

• Honorable Mention for Genre-Based fiction by the Hollywood Book Festival

For those wondering about the progress of the sequel, I am about a third of the way through. I am currently writing about Aistulf (Astolfo) chasing the Harpies into the Underworld.

My goal is to have the sequel finished in time for the 2016 Medieval Congress and all of the celebrations marking the 500th anniversary publication year of Orlando furioso.

Until then, buona fortuna!

Linda C. McCabe

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2014/09/celebrating-ludovico-ariostos-540th.html

Writing Historical Fantasy: Blending historical fiction with fantasy elements

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Fri, 23 May 2014 15:52:00 +0000

-->

It has been far too long since I posted an update to my blog. A few months ago I spoke at a writers conference at JFK University and spoke on the challenges of writing historical fiction and fantasy.

The attendees were an enthusiastic group of writers who asked some insightful questions. My presentation was largely built on the handout I gave. I thought perhaps it might be helpful to other writers, so I am posting it here. If other bloggers would like to re-post, please do so. I only ask that you link to this as your source

Writing Historical Fantasy: Blending historical fiction with fantasy elements

Linda C. McCabe, author of Quest of the Warrior Maiden

Differences between the genres of historic fiction, historic fantasy and fantasy novels:

Historic fiction is a story written about a real time and place in our history, with or without real historic figures and events. E.g. Philippa Gregory's novels about Tudor England vs. Erika Mailman's novel The Witch'sTrinity set in a fictional German village but painstakingly describes witch trials of the 16th century.

Historic fantasy is a novel about a real time and place in our history, with or without real historic figures and events along with magic and fantastic creatures. Examples are stories using Arthurian or Carolingian legends.

If a story about King Arthur doesn't use magic, it is historic fiction and not historic fantasy. An example of that is Persia Woolley's Guinevere trilogy.

Fantasy novels without being set in a real place and time in our history are not constrained to use the correct historical elements such as period armor, specific religious practices, etc. Examples are C.S. Lewis' Narnia series, J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, and George R.R. Martin's Westeros. The challenges of writing in this genre is world building where you have to define the history, climates, locales, countries, religious rules, cultural practices, races of magical peoples, etc.

The primary goal of all writing is to create a compelling narrative. Every aspect of your writing should serve that primary goal.

Secondary goals include:

1. Historical accuracy for the time period

2. Devising a dramatic plot and memorable characters

Historical research:

1. Perform general research on the time period of your story before you start the creative writing process. (You can do outlines for your plot, but it would be better learning broad historical constructs before you write chapters worth of unusable text.)

2. Absorb the information. Go to a library and check out as many nonfiction books as you can find on your period. Browse the table of contents and read subjects that you think will be of interest/use. Follow footnotes, read bibliographies and find more titles. If your library doesn't have the new titles, request them through interlibrary loans. Books that are a treasure trove of information should be ones that you purchase for your own reference shelf at home.

3. During the writing process continually ask yourself about the various details in your story and do ad hoc research as necessary. E.g. Recently I have been reading up on Islamic burial practices including washing of the dead.

4. If possible, travel to the places you are writing about. Seek out the sites in your story and see where they are, what remains, and breathe in the locale. Become inspired.

5. Find experts on various aspects of your story who are willing to review passages for accuracy.

Including historical research in your narrative:

1. Remember the primary objective is to create a compelling narrative, and not to impress your readers with neat trivia you've discovered in your research.

2. Avoid data dumps where there are block paragraphs explaining arcane information. That is what nonfiction books are about. Instead weave the historical details into your narrative in descriptions and/or dialogue.

3. Use the details you learned about cultural practices, beliefs, gender roles, food, clothing styles and fabrics, architecture, weapons, technology, medical practices to give a richness to your narrative and to demonstrate how life during that time period is different than it is today.

4. Avoid using modern sensibilities regarding marriage, relationship, gender roles in previous centuries. Unless you are using time travel with modern people being transported back in time and this is to contrast the different mindsets.

5. Do not turn your average nobleman into a religious expert so that you can have exposition about the religious practices during the Middle Ages.

6. Describe the religious practices as how they were performed, but do not explain the theological reasoning behind them. Consider that most laypeople simply followed religious dictates without question.

7. Recognize and avoid including certain historical details from your research will be difficult for readers to follow and/or would derail your narrative. E.g. allowance for the consumption of beaver tails on fast days.

8. Be on the lookout for terms in your manuscript that would be inaccurate for the time period. Eliminate them when found. For example, clocks were not as commonplace as they are today and so you should not use the terms minutes or seconds. Instead use "a few moments later" or phrases to illustrate the amount of time passed. An example from my novel: "I have seen Rodomont use a woman in less time than it takes for a horse to pass water." It not only demonstrates a length of time, it also serves to reveal crudeness of the character who was speaking.

9. Try to create a different linguistic style for the period you are trying to evoke. Avoid slang. Consider using curses and swearing, rather than profanity as used in modern discourse.

Cursing: "May Mandricardo's manhood shrivel to match the size of his brain."

Swearing: "You must do my bidding, or I swear to make good on my promise to castrate you."

Profanity: "Are you a bastard son of a swineherd?"

10. Other details such as foods, flowers, etc. Verify that they were a) indigenous to that locale, b) in season c) have a symbolic meaning which agrees with its contextual usage (that's optional, but it adds an additional layer of meaning and depth to your writing.)

Balancing dramatic needs vs. historical accuracy

1. If there is a conflict between your dramatic needs and being historically accurate, remember your primary goal: create a compelling narrative. Boring your readers is the greatest sin of all. I choose to side with Drama and then include my dramatic choice in the author's notes to inform my readers that it was an informed decision and not one made of ignorance.

2. Bending of the historical record should be done as sparingly as possible and not for trivial items such as including foodstuffs, flora, or fauna that were from the Western hemisphere and not known to Europe in that time frame: potatoes, tomatoes, corn, sunflowers, tobacco.

Fantasy elements in historic fiction:

1. Build on existing mythology such as divination practices of scrying, runes, tea leaves, Tarot cards, etc., rather than simply creating new ones. Also knots to seal magical spells, braiding of hair, etc.

2. Symbolic usages of water, caves, labyrinths, etc., add strength to your narrative. E.g. River Lethe, Spring of Mnemosyne, Cave of Trophonius.

3. Include tension between magical and non-magical people. Are magical people thought of as trustworthy or colluding with Dark Evil Forces?

4. Invoke magic when the laws of physics or nature would otherwise be violated by your plot points, e.g. travelling on horseback a distance of four hundred miles in a single night.

5. Be creative when creating enchanted realms. For example, you can use unnatural lighting, heating, ventilation, etc., without much explanation as long as you specify it is unnatural.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2014/05/writing-historical-fantasy-blending.html

Post-Wonderland Interview: Both sides of the shipping debates are winners

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 16:38:00 +0000

An open letter to the Harry Potter fandom:

The full Wonderland interview conducted by actress Emma Watson with J.K. Rowling has been published and its contents can be read on various websites including Hypable. This was published a week after a teaser article in The Sunday Times had the eye grabbing headline of:

JK admits Harry should have wed Hermione

This set off a firestorm in the Harry Potter fandom as more and more news outlets worldwide reprinted the conclusions of that Sunday Times article.

Did J.K. Rowling actually use the term "regret" anywhere in that interview? No, she did not.

Is it a fair conclusion that her comments in that interview indicate that she now regrets pairing her characters Ron and Hermione together? Yes, it is.

During the interview, Emma asked Jo Rowling if she had a new perspective on Hermione. It was an open-ended question, one where Rowling could have gone in a myriad of directions, and she chose to bring up the romantic pairing of Hermione with Ron. She said their relationship was written as "wish fulfillment," she was "clinging to the plot as I first imagined it" and the choice was made for "very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility."

Ouch.

That implies that the Ron/Hermione relationship is not credible.

Rowling went on further to say that there was too much "fundamental incompatibility" and that "in some ways Harry and Hermione are a better fit".

Those phrases are what I think led to Claudia Croft's conclusions in the Sunday Times article that Jo Rowling admitted she should have paired Hermione with Harry.

Rowling and Watson had seemed a bit nervous once the discussion dealt with incompatibility of Hermione and Ron.

Jo then said,

"I know, I'm sorry, I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I'm absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people's hearts by saying this? I hope not."

and

"I can't believe we are saying all of this – this is Potter heresy!"

Jo and Emma went on to discuss the tent scene in Deathly Hallows:

JKR: ...I'll tell you something very strange. When I wrote Hallows, I felt this quite strongly when I had Hermione and Harry together in the tent! I hadn't told [Steve] Kloves that and when he wrote the script he felt exactly the same thing at exactly the same point.Emma: That is just so interesting because when I was doing the scene I said to David [Heyman]: "This isn't in the book, she didn't write this". I'm not sure I am comfortable insinuating something however subtle it is!JKR: Yes, but David and Steve – they felt what I felt when writing it.
Emma: That is so strange.
JKR: And actually I liked that scene in the film, because it was articulating something I hadn't said but I had felt. I really liked it and I thought that it was right. I think you do feel the ghost of what could have been in that scene.

At the end of Watson's interview, Rowling attempted backtracking by saying that perhaps Ron and Hermione would "be alright with a bit of counseling."

Wow. Now that's a ringing endorsement.

They also discussed Ron's self esteem issues and Hermione's "weakness for a funny man."

This allows a shadow of a fig leaf for the Ron/Hermione shippers to cover themselves and feel confident after having the author and the actress who portrayed Hermione in the films discuss the romantic pairing in unflattering terms. Jo did not come out and say "I should have written things differently" nor did she say "I am thinking of re-writing the last book with an alternate ending." Therefore, we can assume she was just being honest in an interview, but does not currently plan on changing anything.

The websites for Mugglenet and The Leaky Cauldron were quick to provide their own interpretation of the full interview in an attempt to reassure nervous Ron/Hermione shippers that there was nothing to worry about.

Mugglenet gave the headline "The TRUTH behind the J.K. Rowling 'Wonderland' interview."

With this as their end analysis:

"WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? Well, in our view, all J.K. Rowling has admitted was to feeling that the scene in the tent was a shared vulnerable moment between two characters that revealed an intriguing degree of compatibility between each of them, emotionally. In saying that Ron needed to get over his self-doubt, Rowling is mentioning a key component that readers would agree could certainly cause some trouble in an adult relationship. However, by the article's end, Rowling and Watson have both found a value in Ron that Harry doesn't possess: Ron's humor and his ability to level Hermione's character. Thus, for all of this talk, the result is that the characters end up safely nestled where they were before, inside the canon of the Potter books."

Similarly The Leaky Cauldron's article was titled: "Full 'Wonderland' Interview Reveals Ron/Hermione Shippers Can Relax."

"The full text of the Wonderland issue that caused a Ron/Hermione vs. Harry/Hermione shipping riot this week is now out, and rumors of the death of the canon pairing have been greatly exaggerated. J.K. Rowling repeats previously made comments that there are certain characteristics between Harry and Hermione that may have them better suited, but does not indicate a wish to pair them off or any regret over how she wrote the books. Emma Watson and J.K. Rowling simply discuss the hypothetical post-Hogwarts world and what Ron and Hermione's relationship might have looked like."Rowling said that regardless of their issues, Ron and Hermione "would probably be fine."

and

An excerpt of the interview published in The Sunday Times on Feb. 1 caused a controversy when Rowling said she "wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment.""For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron," Rowling said.Many fans took this to mean that Rowling had changed her mind and would have preferred Harry and Hermione as a pairing. It resulted in shipping wars intense enough to give some of us flashbacks to 2005."

I have a little quibble with that analysis, and will cite in part a subsequent interview Melissa Anelli had with Jo Rowling that was published in her book Harry, a History.

"I tried very hard to soften it, I suppose," Jo said. "Just because someone had a view on Harry/Hermione didn't mean they weren't genuine, or that they were necessarily misguided...Steve Kloves...after he read book seven he said to me, 'You know, I thought something was going to happen between Harry and Hermione, and I didn't know whether I wanted it to or not.'...There are two moments when [Harry and Hermione] touch, which are charged moments. One, when she touches his hair as he sits on the hilltop after reading about Dumbledore and Grindlewald, and [two] the moment when they walk out of the graveyard with their arms around each other...

"Now, the fact is that Hermione shares moments with Harry that Ron will never be able to participate in. He walked out. She shared something very intense with Harry.

"So, I think it could have gone that way."(snipped for length)

The difference is that Jo Rowling pointed out two different scenes to Melissa that she felt were charged H/Hr moments and neither were the tent scene that she discussed with Emma Watson. Jo Rowling has now admitted three separate charged moments in book 7 where Harry and Hermione were pulled to one another. That means that the Wonderland interview wasn't just repeating previous comments, but instead it represents an extension and revision to her previous remarks on the subject where she concluded "it could have gone that way."

I now want to analyze the major differences between the 2014 interview and the one in 2005 performed by those two websites Mugglenet and The Leaky Cauldron. Emma Watson's interview was civil and polite. Jo Rowling was candid and was not in an atmosphere colored by partisan fandom politics. Watson is without vested interest in making herself seem "right" and others be "wrong." Back in 2005, Emerson Spartz and Melissa Anelli were hand selected by Jo Rowling to be representatives of the Harry Potter fandom and to ask her questions after the publication of her sixth novel Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

That interview caused a lot of heartache for fans of the series. Here is a link to my analysis of that online interview and why I felt insulted by it.

While I did not appreciate being called delusional, the biggest insult for me was being told by Jo Rowling to go back and re-read the books because I must have missed clues. I hadn't missed clues, I had studied the text so well I was seeing sub-text and evaluating clues that weren't intended by the author to be clues.

That off-hand remark made me step away from the fandom that I had enjoyed for several years, and I have only read the sixth and seventh book once whereas the first five books I know forward and backward.

After reading that 2005 interview where Jo Rowling categorically stated she was going to write Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione as the love pairings in Book 7, I wrote my concession messages on a few boards. I also abandoned the writing project I had been working on which was detailing the arguments used in the Harry Potter Shipping Wars. I was partnered with a R/Hr and H/G friend, who had served as a beta reader for my novel length fifth year fanfic. We were putting the common arguments into a manner that was easy to navigate for newbies while trying to make it as free of invective as possible. The project was rendered moot not by the content of the sixth or seventh book, but by an interview.

The aspect that bothered me the most was the tone of that interview and how it made the author look bad. I feel J.K. Rowling was done a disservice by the fandom representatives she chose. They knew that shipping was the most controversial and divisive issue in the fandom. They could have tried to make peace in the fandom by trying to metaphorically put baking soda on a stove-top fire, instead they threw gasoline on it and watched the flames scorch the ceiling.

Four years after that interview I was a speaker at the Azkatraz convention held in San Francisco. I live in Northern California so getting to San Francisco is a day trip. I decided to dip my feet once again in fandom waters, if for no other reason than to meet up with some friends I hadn't seen in a few years.
A few days before the symposium, I sent a message to Melissa Anelli and asked to meet with her. I wanted to give her my thoughts in person about that controversial interview.

I wasn't just a random run of the mill Harry/Hermione shipper asking the webmaster of a major Harry Potter fansite for a few minutes of her time. No, she knew who I was and we had met, albeit briefly, at the first HP symposium in Orlando in 2003. I had participated in a live ship debate and was the second chair of the Harry/Hermione side. She even mentioned me in her book.

Here I am giving a speech at the 2003 Nimbus Symposium supporting the Harry/Hermione ship.

I honestly thought I would have only about ten minutes (at most!) to tell her my thoughts on the matter, that she would nod, listen and then make me feel as if I had been heard. I was surprised when she engaged with me on the topic. We talked for about an hour and I felt at the end that nothing I said could make her recognize how her actions as a R/Hr partisan in the interview did not serve the needs of the fandom as a whole, and especially how hurtful it was reading her editorial comments inserted into the text such as: [All laugh; Melissa doubles over, hysterical, and may have died.]

I felt that they were laughing at the expense of others. It was akin to gloating or spiking the football and doing a dance in the end zone.

She was a professional journalist and I had expected more from her. I had expected her to be an ambassador from the whole fandom and not as a partisan shipper. I compared it to reporters covering political candidates and trying to keep their personal political opinions out of their news coverage, unless they are writing editorials.

She did not like that analogy because she thought the difference was reporters inserting their opinions in electoral politics might have an impact on elections and that her interview covered fiction and what had been written. So it wasn't going to influence anything. Therefore, yes she had her opinions and to not mention them in the transcript would have been dishonest.

She considered the transcript she compiled as an accurate chronicle of the interview, and Jo Rowling approved the transcript before it went online. Therefore it was fine. She also felt that it wouldn't have mattered what was said because Harry/Hermione shippers were going to be mad because their side lost. I disagree with that opinion. I was mentally prepared prior to the 2005 interview to be told by JKR that she was planning on the R/Hr and H/G pairings, but I was not prepared to have my shipmates ridiculed in the manner that we were.

My conversation with Melissa was cordial, and we left on good terms, but I continue to feel that Jo Rowling would have been better served if she had chosen different fandom ambassadors for such an important interview.

Here is proof that we spoke at that conference.

Me and Melissa Anelli after we spoke at Azkatraz in San Francisco, July 2009.

Now, nine years later after the interview by The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet, we have the same fandom members who interviewed JKR in 2005 having found themselves in the uncomfortable and unexpected position as to worrying for a few days about what Jo Rowling said in an interview regarding shipping and whether or not she has changed her mind. After the full interview was made public, they have chosen to only focus on certain aspects of it and try to minimize or ignore others.
It now appears JKR recognizes and acknowledges that the Harry/Hermione pairing had canon support and possibly, quite possibly, could have been a better fit for her heroine.

Yes, in the full Wonderland interview, Jo refers to Hermione as her heroine.

"I know that Hermione is incredibly recognisable to a lot of readers and yet you don't see a lot of Hermiones in film or on TV except to be laughed at. I mean that the intense, clever, in some ways not terribly self-aware, girl is rarely the heroine and I really wanted her to be the heroine."

Hermione was not referred to as a side-kick or as a best friend, but the heroine of the series. Pairing the hero and the heroine of a series is not an unusual or delusional pairing by any means.

I would like to see, nine years after the interview that caused so many hard feelings in the fandom, a joint statement of recognition written by someone on the staff of The Leaky Cauldron and/or Mugglenet. I would like it to read something like this:

"We recognize that Harry/Hermione shippers are loyal fans in the Harry Potter fandom who have provided spirited support for their ship before and after the publication of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Now, seven years after the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Jo Rowling admits she might have followed another direction if she followed her muse, but she stuck with her original plot line. So recognizing that we were all right in some aspects of this series, we should put aside our differences and embrace our common interests, namely our love of the Potterverse. Those who prefer H/Hr might be inspired by this latest interview to write more fanfic with their favorite ship, and we shall hopefully put this divisive topic behind us. We want to take this opportunity to apologize if our celebratory actions in 2005 made you feel alienated from the larger fandom."

Instead it seems both websites' analysis of the full Wonderland interview was designed more to maintain the position that the only thing that matters is the Ron/Hermione ship sailed and the Harry/Hermione ship sank. I do not think it would hurt their credibility in the full fandom to show a little respect for those with an alternate point of view and say, "as it turns out, your opinion had some merit."

In the grand scheme of world and life events, betting on the wrong couple in the Hogwarts Love Sweepstakes isn't a catastrophe. It is good however, when people can be civil with one another. We should not be casting aspersions about people's intellect or morality because they came up with a different interpretation while reading literature. Especially when those romantic pairings are validated by the author. Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny were what J.K. Rowling planned and wrote. Now that J.K. Rowling has had time to reflect on her series, it appears that Harry/Hermione might be what she wishes she had written. That means both sides of the most divisive topic in the fandom can claim to have merit to their position.

My last point, in 2012, J.K. Rowling was quoted as saying that she would like to go back and re-write two of her books. Imagine if she were to really regret pairing Ron and Hermione, she might decide to change more than just syntax and sentence structure to please her inner critic. I'm sure Bloomsbury and Scholastic would be willing to have new releases in the HP franchise and bookstores would love to have the Harry Potter money pipeline turned back on as well. Should she choose to change her romantic pairings then the H/Hr shippers wouldn't just have to settle for alternate universe fanfics, it could actually be "new canon."
I asked my teenaged son if he would be interested in reading a new Harry Potter book if it was re-written by J.K. Rowling. Without hesitation he replied, "Hells yeah!" I imagine that there would be many fans of the series who would also be interested in buying any new canon if it were written and published.

So please R/Hr shippers, take this opportunity to make peace with us, since we all profess to love the series and we can all claim to have support by the author. In other words: both sides won.

After the Nimbus live ship debate, the two ships were smiling for the camera.
Proof that we can all get along.

Sincerely,

Linda C. McCabe AKA Pallas Athena (or just Athena)

Second chair for the Harry/Hermione ship debate in Nimbus 2003.

Yeah, eleven years ago I debated this subject in person in front of a ballroom full of people!
Author of the First Readers' Choice Award on Portkey.org for the novel length fifth year fic, Secrets, Lies and the Daily Prophet as well as a few H/Hr themed short stories.
Author of an epic historic fantasy set in the time of Charlemagne, Quest of the Warrior Maiden, including flying hippogriffs. Yes, it was inspired during my ship debating research days.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2014/02/post-wonderland-interview-both-sides-of.html

J.K. Rowling, belated Harry/Hermione shipper

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 06:08:00 +0000

My friend John Granger clued me into a story about an interview with J.K. Rowling and how these revelations are burning up the internet and being posted and re-posted as news.

Now, I readily admit that this story isn't hard news. It does not impact the world economy, ameliorate climate change or make any movement toward establishing world peace.

Nope. It is simply a human interest story, and there is a lot of interest in it. I believe this story is more important than detailing the legal troubles of Justin Bieber (My thoughts: deport Bieber) or anything having to do with anyone with the last name of Kardashian.

I feel this story about an author's change of heart in regard to the romantic pairings of her fictional characters *is* newsworthy, if for no other reason than due to the sheer popularity of the series.

The Harry Potter series is one of the most popular series in literature with millions of copies sold worldwide in many different languages. (I don't even want to take the time to verify what the current numbers are, but I know it is mind boggling how many copies sold which made her a billionaire.)

The series served as a refuge and escape for me back in the early 2000s. I began reading the Harry Potter novels in November of 2001 at the time that the first movie was released. I was impressed by the intricate world and bizarre cast of characters in the Potterverse.

I read the first four novels in a short span of time, then began re-reading them and then searching the internet to find out more information. That is when I discovered the online fandom.

The attacks on September 11, 2001 were recent and I found news from the real world to be painful and hard to bear. It was a nice diversion from news about world terrorism to instead attempt to decipher clues with other adults in the Harry Potter series.

I became a member of the Harry Potter for Grown Ups (HPfGUs) list serv and engaged in discussions looking at the smallest turn of phrase that might be helpful in predicting where the series was going and which characters were EverSoEvil! or ESE! Literary criticism with other nerdz was fun. I enjoyed reading wild and inventive theories and spinning my own with others who loved the series as much as I did.

I started reading Harry Potter fan fiction and became inspired to try my own hand at writing in order to flesh out my own wacky theories. It was in the process of writing my fifth year fic that I started really questioning the characters' motivations and I came to believe that Hermione was in love with Harry. That she was devoted to him, but knew he didn't feel the same way about her. So she kept her feelings to herself lest he begin to feel uncomfortable about her hanging around him all the time. "Eww, I don't like you in that way. I want to just be friends, but..."

She might get frozen out of being a part of the Trio and then it would just be Harry and Ron on the grand adventures.

So Hermione loved Harry, but kept her feelings close to her vest. That's what I thought. That's what I wrote and had a fic where at the end of the fifth year the two characters became a couple.

After finishing my fic, I began posting on the HPfGUs list serv again. This time I posted my thoughts on shipping. I made what I thought was a simple post about Hermione and Krum showing how it was pro Harry/Hermione or H/Hr. That post wound up being noticed by other shippers and after a request to reprint portions of my post on a debate thread on FictionAlley.org, I found myself being lured into the great H/Hr vs. Ron/Hermione (R/Hr) shipping debate.

Later, I wound up participating in the only live H/Hr and R/Hr shipping debate which was held at the first Harry Potter Symposium in Orlando, Florida in 2003.

The Shipping Debates were a big deal. JKR didn't know it at the time, she learned about it later. She was shaken by the intensity of the arguments when she stumbled upon the online debate threads.

Then she toyed with the fandom by making posts on her website that mentioned shipping and teased her fans about it. Then after the publication of the sixth book she invited two well known people from the fandom to interview her. That was when she unequivocally stated that the romantic pairings were Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione. The tone of that interview was not what I had hoped. There was laughter and mirth about the shipping choices and the word "delusional" was used to describe Harry/Hermione shippers. My full thoughts on that interview as well as quotes from JKR on her website about shipping can be found here.

(JKR's website has been revamped and those shipping quotes from 2006 and 2007 are no longer online, but they are in my blog post.)

The last volume was published in 2007 and many of her new fans have no idea of the debates that raged when the series was incomplete.

Therefore, as a recovering Harry Potter fandom addict, I welcomed learning that J.K. Rowling now feels that Hermione should have been paired with Harry Potter over Ron Weasley. Check out these quotes:

"I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That's how it was conceived, really," Rowling says in the interview. "For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron."

"I know, I'm sorry," she adds. "I can hear the rage and fury it might cause some fans, but if I'm absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility. Am I breaking people's hearts by saying this? I hope not."

Those quotes make me feel that I and my shipmates did not deserve being called "delusional."

Rowling also says that Ron and Hermione would have needed “relationship counseling.”

Counseling. Ron and Hermione would have needed counseling.

Sigh.

Yeah. I didn't think the manner in which Ron taunted Hermione showed a depth of compassion, but instead a manner of trying to control her.

I wrote a post which detailed my dislike of this relationship and described how unhealthy I thought it would be due to Ron's underlying disrespect for Hermione. It reminded me of emotionally abusive relationships.

It was my reaction to the text and explaining why I did not need to see quotes from the books repeated on the bulletin boards again. I knew them, I had read them, and having someone reiterate the same points wouldn't make me stop and go "You're right. There is something's going on there." I could tell that Ron was possessive toward Hermione, but I didn't see that she had a similar interest in him. Instead the possessiveness and cutting insults (including Hermione's insults toward Ron) made me feel uncomfortable if a romantic relationship came from that dynamic.

My post became known as the Abusive!Ron theory, but it wasn't a theory at all. It was a lengthy discussion about my response to the interactions between Ron and Hermione in the text and why I thought it would be unhealthy basis of a romantic relationship if Ron didn't change his behavior toward her.

I felt that the politics of house-elves best demonstrated the problem of the Ron/Hermione relationship. I had also written an extensive post on the politics of house-elves and why Ron needed to change his underlying attitude toward the oppressed magical species or there would never be a chance for Ron and Hermione to be a successful couple.

As it turned out, Ron and Hermione finally became a couple when Ron made a mention in the thick of defending Hogwarts Castle by mentioning the welfare of the elves at the end of Book 7.

That plot point helped me feel somewhat vindicated, but these articles showing teaser quotes from the full interview (and I will want to read the full interview!), makes me feel even better.

Yes, I will admit there were anvil-sized clues pointing to R/Hr in the series, but I was a careful reader and saw subtle hints to Hermione caring for Harry. Maybe it was JKR's subconscious inclusion of the Harry/Hermione loyalty dynamic that led me to think H/Hr was a better romantic fit.

The problem was H/Hr went against JKR's the planned symbolic following of literary alchemical formulas. Here is where we go deep into symbolism, and I credit John Granger's numerous writings on literary alchemy:

Ron represented elemental sulfur and Hermione represented mercury. Both are necessary in creating gold through alchemy.

Yeah, I know how weird that sounds, but that was what JKR was doing. Harry's girlfriends had the following hair colors: black (Cho), white (one date with Luna), then red (Ginny) which correspond with three stages of alchemy: nigredo, albedo, rubedo. There was no room for a brown haired girl for Harry. Yet JKR subconsciously wrote Harry/Hermione as a relationship based on trust, loyalty and devotion. I was hoping that Jo while using alchemy as her underlying plot structure would not feel totally constrained to have follow it completely. I was hoping she might alter it to fit her own dramatic needs and have Harry/Hermione as the final romantic pairing and not Harry/Ginny with Ron/Hermione.

Now in retrospect, she is looking back at her story and the characters as they evolved during her story telling and she admits that Harry/Hermione would have been a better way to go!

It would have been emotionally satisfying to have her hero become romantically involved with his best friend who had been by his side from the beginning of his magical adventure, but it would have made Ron and Ginny jealous. There would have been a big love triangle within the Trio, and many, many Ron/Hermione shippers simply couldn't bear to think of Harry hurting Ron in that manner.

Yeah, and Jo thought of killing Ron.

Had she done that, I think Ginny as a romantic partner for Harry would have disappeared altogether.

Anyway, I feel vindicated by this admission by Jo Rowling. Perhaps the Ron/Hermione shippers who gloated when they did their victory lap might remember some of the arguments that I and my shipmates posted years ago and consider we weren't as wrong, wrong, WRONG as they thought we were at the time.

Feel free to let me know your thoughts on this human interest story.

Thanks,

Linda AKA Pallas Athena

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2014/02/jk-rowling-belated-harryhermione-shipper.html

Medieval fast days and beaver meat

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 06:14:00 +0000

I was recently interviewed on the Newbie Writers podcast with hosts Damien Boath and Catharine Bramkamp. I had a fun time discussing various aspects about writing historical fantasy as well as the challenges of writing a sequel.

Catharine asked me about the urge to want to include information found during the research process, basically to incorporate what I learned into the narrative. I understood the urge, but told her that I resisted that temptation. Especially when I thought it might be confusing to the readers or yank them right out of the narrative.

As an example, I mentioned a bit of trivia that I came across several years ago regarding Medieval religious dietary restrictions on fast days when meat and other animal products from were not to be consumed. I mentioned the book Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society by Bridget Ann Henisch as the source of this information about Medieval fast days. It is a wonderful book and I recommend it for those interested in learning more about Medieval diets and religious customs.

There were periods such as Lent and Advent when fast days lasted for weeks, but there were also fast days every week: Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. To clarify, these fasts was not when no food was consumed, but rather that there was a deprivation of what could be eaten. The foods to abstain consisted of meats and poultry as well as other animal products such as milk, butter, cheeses, and eggs.

That did not mean that people became vegetarians during this time, but instead they were allowed to eat fish because it was from the sea. Here's a quote from Henisch explaining the theological reasoning why fish was allowed to be eaten on fast days.

Fish, providentially, had escaped God's curse on the earth by living in the water. Water itself was an element of special sanctity, washing away the sins of the world in Noah's Flood, and the sins of the individual in baptism. Its creatures might be said to share something of its virtues. Once the choice had been justified, the rest was easy. - page 33.

The part that I found so memorable about her discussion about what foods could and could not be consumed in Medieval times on fast days was the inclusion of beavers as food from the sea.

Beavers.

By Steve from washington, dc, usa (American Beaver) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Yes, I didn't have my own picture of a beaver, so I found one from the Wikimedia Commons. Enjoy.

I knew when I read that people could eat beavers on fast days that it was something I could not bring up in my novel. My readers would be pulled right out of the narrative by laughter at the mere thought of eating a beaver.

Damien was especially amused at the inclusion of beaver meat in our chat. He inspired me to re-read the passage by Henisch describing the reasoning behind the acceptance of beavers on the Fast days menu.

The rule forbidding meat on a fast day was the one most strictly enforced and conscientiously obeyed, but some desperate ingenuity was applied to the definition of meat and fish. Reluctantly it had to be conceded that the beaver was a mammal, even though he spent so much of his life in the water, but his tail, being covered with scales, looked distinctly fishy. It was permissible, therefore, to brighten a fish menu with a dish of beaver tail. - page 47

I believe that if I used either term "beaver tail" or "beaver meat" in a novel that it would cause my readers to laugh out loud and in an inappropriate manner.

That is why I chose not to include any mention of the consumption of any portion of the beaver, but it sure makes for an amusing anecdote.

Damien was so taken with the discussion of beavers that he entitled my episode "The Mythology of Beavers."

The podcast is the Newbie Writers Episode #117 and can be downloaded from iTunes

or can be listened to on YouTube where it was streamed live and has the title "Greek Mythology and Fantasy with Linda McCabe."

Heck, if I knew he was going to give it a title regarding Greek mythology I would have talked more about that subject than just mentioning Athena and Hector of Troy in passing. Oh, well. It was a fun chat and I hope others might enjoy hearing the interview and my insights.

This Tuesday, January 28, 2014 is the 1200th anniversary of Charlemagne's death.

So to help celebrate that I am ending this post with a picture I took during my trip to Germany in 2011. This is a statue of Charlemagne outside the town hall of Aachen (the Rathaus) that was built where his palace once stood.

Twelve hundred years ago. That's a huge anniversary and this year there will be many celebrations in Aachen to mark the landmark anniversary. For those who might be interested in traveling to Aachen, here is a link to some of their plans for the year.

Please feel free to leave an example of weird Medieval trivia you may have come across over the years.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2014/01/medieval-fast-days-and-beaver-meat.html

Rose Bowl Memories and Lessons Learned

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 13:31:00 +0000

Twenty-six years between appearances, and twenty-three years of my personal waiting to attend a game

I attended the Rose Bowl this year for the first time in my life. Growing up in the state of Michigan, I remember watching the televised Rose Parades every year and the annual football game. It seemed at the time that the only schools from the Big Ten conference that played in that game were the University of Michigan and Ohio State University.

My mother was a graduate of Michigan State University (MSU), as well as many of my aunts, uncles and cousins. I grew up being surrounded by MSU partisans and later, that is where I went to college. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, MSU's football program wasn't the greatest. I attended the games while in school, but we lost more than we won.

This changed after I graduated when they hired a new coach and in 1988, MSU went to the Rose Bowl and beat the University of Southern California.

I couldn't attend that game due to timing and finances, but I did cheer on my team as I watched the televised broadcast.

In 1991, my husband and I moved to California. We promised each other that if Michigan State ever made it to the Rose Bowl while we lived in California that we would go to the game. It has been an annual joke when I told my bosses that I would be willing to work the New Year's Day holiday, *unless* Michigan State was in the Rose Bowl. Usually by October I told them that we had been mathematically eliminated from contention and I could work that holiday. So my husband and I have waited twenty-three years since moving to California for MSU to be in the Rose Bowl (but it has been 26 years between appearances.)

Getting Tickets to the game

The last few years have been nail biters as to determining if MSU was going to go to the Rose Bowl. About three years ago when I thought there was a good chance MSU was going to go, I started investigating how we would actually get tickets. I called a friend who went to the game back in 1988. Josh had a friend who was a season ticket holder and who allowed him to purchase the Rose Bowl tickets reserved for him. I didn't think that it was likely I could score tickets that way, so I went online and discovered the Team Tix option.

Team Tix is a money making scheme, similar to buying stock options. You don't actually purchase the tickets, but reserve the opportunity to buy tickets at face value should your team attend the Rose Bowl.

Here is how it works:

In September, you go to the Tournament of Roses website and follow links to the Team Tix site. The earlier you start the process, the cheaper it is and the greater number of tickets available together. These are non-refundable reservations and you are obligated to buy the tickets if your team wins, and please note that the fee paid to reserve tickets does not apply to the cost of the tickets themselves.

The longer in the season you wait, the higher the price per reservation and the fewer reservations are left. Once all the reservations for a specific team are sold, then there is the ability to trade them on an online market where people will place bids for these reservations and the current holders will determine which bids they want to accept.

So we paid money for reservations in 2011 and 2012, but didn't get any tickets from the process. We just gave money to an agency for the right to dream that our team would go to the Rose Bowl. For them, it is like printing money. They get money from alumni from dozens of schools who get nothing for their reservations. It is kind of like playing the lottery where you know going in that you might not win and you won't get your money back if you lose.

This year, it worked for us. We reserved four tickets at $25 a reservation and when Michigan State won the Big Ten Championship playoff game against Ohio State University, we received an email the next day telling us how to obtain our tickets at the face value of $150 each.

That experience was a lot better than a friend of mine who decided two weeks before the Big Ten Championship game to try and get tickets for the Rose Bowl. The Team Tix at that point was red-hot for MSU fans and her online bid didn't get accepted, like she thought it did. Instead, she had to wait until the tickets went on sale to the general public on a Tuesday morning. Ticketmaster was sold out of their allotment in minutes. My friend Sue wound up paying a different website $520 per ticket for two seats near the Stanford end zone.

It was crazy, but at least she bought tickets at that point in time. Later, the secondary market had tickets over a thousand dollars each.

That's what happens when it is twenty-six years between Rose Bowl appearances, you get a lot of pent up desire by alumni to attend. MSU did have a certain number of tickets reserved for their alumni, but 24,000 was not close to meeting the demand. The alumni tour packages sold out instantly and some creative Spartan fans looked to the Stanford allotment of tickets and found a loophole.

Since Stanford had gone the previous year and won at the Rose Bowl, there was not the same level of hunger by their alumni to attend the Rose Bowl. Stanford offered the ability to purchase four Rose Bowl tickets at face value to those who put a $100 deposit down on 2014 season tickets. It was discovered that MSU fans were swallowing up these tickets with no intention of purchasing season tickets at Stanford. Once it was discovered, this opportunity was taken down off the Stanford website. That is why there were many Spartan fans in the Stanford sections.

Getting to Southern California:

Since we live in California, we didn't have the travel headaches that Michiganders did. We simply chose which day we wanted to start driving down and arrange for hotel accommodations. We ran into a few Spartan fans who said they were unable to get a flight into LA, and instead flew into Las Vegas and got a rental car to make it the rest of the way.

That's just crazy, but it does show the determination of Spartan fans to be where they needed to be to cheer on their team.

Getting hotel rooms in the area was a difficult and expensive task. We decided to avoid the Pasadena area entirely and instead looked to Anaheim the home of Disneyland. We went to the theme parks on December 31st and January 2nd and saw many MSU fans wearing Spartan green. After making the decision to watch fireworks on New Year's Eve at midnight meant that getting to Pasadena early in the morning to be at the parade would be pushing our luck and energy. If we tried doing everything, we would be exhausted by the time the game started and *the game* is the reason we were down there in the first place. So we decided against going to the parade and instead just programmed it to be recorded on our DVR before we left home.

Parking

There is limited parking at the Rose Bowl Stadium. It is first come, first served with the lots open at Oh Dark Thirty in the morning. I am not joking, the parking lot opens at 4 am. Imagine celebrating New Year's Eve at midnight and then getting ready to wait in line for a parking lot to open four hours later. YIKES.

The Rose Bowl Stadium does allow for tailgating before games, but there are specific rules about that and a long list of prohibited items.

There is also another parking lot that is about a half an hour's walk away - the Parson's Lot. They have passes you can purchase in advance and that is the option my husband chose. However, we did not get the pass in the mail when it was promised. By the time we realized it hadn't come, and we had the postal Christmas holiday to contend with, it was very late in the calendar year. My husband sent an email and had to wait for a few business days for a reply. Thankfully there was enough time for the company to reply and have passes waiting for us at "will call" at a certain entrance.

Getting to the parking lot

We would have been better off using a paper map. Instead we trusted modern technology and GPS. BIG MISTAKE. The GPS recognized that there were barricaded streets due to the parade route, but it still tried to direct us through streets we could not traverse. We were coming from Anaheim and made really good time on the LA freeways because it was a holiday and there was no traffic to speak of, but we should have thought long and hard about the parade route and tried to go west and north of the parking lot and then get closer. Instead we followed the GPS and approached it from the south and east. Once we actually got around the parade route and were on the street we needed to be, the traffic was at a snail's pace. We would watch the traffic lights go through two or three cycles where we would advance maybe a single car's length.

It was painful.

Once we got to the parking lot, they did have our parking pass waiting for us. :whew:

There is no tailgating allowed at this parking lot, so we had to try and meet up with our friends at the stadium.

It was a sea of green and white that stretched out into a really long line waiting to board the shuttle buses. There were some Stanford fans wearing red, but they seemed outnumbered by the green wearing Spartans.

In retrospect, it would have been faster for us to walk to the stadium. Instead, we waited patiently in line.

I had made grand plans to meet up with friends and family before the game. I had read and re-read the guidelines for what was allowed for tailgating. Except, I didn't quite understand some of the finer details so my grand plans didn't work out too well.

I did meet up with my Uncle Jim, but that was after several cell phone calls and text messages trying to explain exactly where I was standing using land marks. It wasn't easy, but here we are mugging for the camera.

Lessons learned from my attempt at tail gating fiasco: unless I am willing to brave the morning rush of cars at 4 am to get a prime parking spot at the Rose Bowl Stadium's parking lot, forget about trying to bring food or drink to tail gate. They have food and drink for sale in a specified area and will not allow you to bring in anything from the outside.

Plus, I should have kept my cell phone in my pocket on vibrate. I certainly could not hear it ring reliably in my purse with the ambient noise of thousands of excited football fans.

My husband had brought his nice camera with him. Too bad we didn't notice a mention in the fine print of a prohibition for telephoto lenses. He had to surrender his camera during the game and had only a specified short period of time to pick it up after the game concluded. To make sure he didn't lose out on getting his camera back, he left the game with about three minutes left. So he missed the greatest play of the game which guaranteed Michigan State's victory.

(We did watch it on our DVR'd recording after we returned home.)

Here is a view from the Spartan end zone:

I also ran into my cousin Joann in a tunnel before the game started and had a chance for a quick hug and picture.

My thoughts about the game:

It was a close, hard fought game. I wasn't too worried when Stanford at the beginning. I knew there was a lot of time left in the game and we would get our chance.

I was surprised that the MSU Fight Song had a few minor changes done to it since I had last attended a football game. There's a part of the song which goes,

"See their team is weakening
We're going to win this game
FIGHT, FIGHT, RAH TEAM FIGHT
Victory for MSU!"

The way the fans in the stands near us were singing was a little more "in your face" style.

"See their team is WEEEEEAK"

It is fun to sing, but kinda mean.

Other observations:

I enjoyed watching the Spartan Marching Band as always. They are a great tradition and I am proud to have them represent my school.

I thought the Stanford Band was weird.

Their dress is not uniform, their instruments are not always real instruments, (one woman was using a STOP sign as a percussion instrument), they don't really march in formation or make good formations one can understand, their sound is passable but not great. Maybe if it was my school I would learn to love it and feel their irreverent ways were really cool. Being from a different background and competing school, I was taken aback by my surprise in their attire and casual approach to music.

I also think the Stanford mascot is weird. They have a dancing tree that looks like it is covered in carpet remnants. Strange.

One more thing that I find uncomfortable about Stanford is referring to the team as "the Cardinal." Singular. It is not a title of a religious leader nor of a bird, but instead it is a color.

I heard sentences that had strange syntax in them using the singular "cardinal" in a manner meant for plural usage. It was awkward and as someone obsessed with language, it bugs me.

A tree as the mascot, but the team is referred to by a singular color. Eh?

Michigan State University's mascot is Sparty, but the school and the fans are referred to as Spartans, and our colors are green and white. It doesn't seem difficult to understand or say in the singular or plural usage.

/end rant about my befuddlement about the Stanford mascot/naming scheme

Here is a scene after the victory by Michigan State University:

My group of happy Spartan fans found each other after the game was over in the parking lot. We decided to follow the large crowd walking back to the parking lot rather than wait for the incredibly long queue to take shuttle buses back. That was one of our best decisions of the day.

All in all, it was a great time and one that I am glad we did. I will always have the memories of being at the 100th Rose Bowl and cheering on my alma mater to victory.

My travels to Ferrara, Italy - Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Sun, 08 Sep 2013 16:59:00 +0000

Outside the cathedral in Ferrara, Italy

In honor of Ludovico Ariosto's 539th birthday on September 8, 2013, I felt I should start blogging about my recent trip to the city of Ferrara, Italy. I visited there in June of this year.

I wanted to see as many sites associated with Ariosto, Matteo Maria Boiardo and their patrons - the noble house of d'Este - as was possible for the limited time I had available.

I had spent countless hours planning the sites to see, but alas, things do not always work out the way you hope.

I discovered there were apartments for rent in a building once owned by Ariosto. I reserved a room for three nights. My plan was to arrive in Ferrara after a day of sightseeing in Firenze, spend the next day exploring Ferrara, and the following day we would have a day trip to Ravenna.

I had wanted to sleep in a home that once belonged to Ariosto and hope I would become inspired by the experience.

-->

Historical marker for the current Cavallini-Sgarbi House


The Cavallini-Sgarbi House showing a covered walkway.

I was looking forward to that experience, but then Fate upended my plans.

Ferrara suffered from a large earthquake in 2012, and as luck would have it - the historical building I had reservations for wound up having maintenance scheduled to be performed during the time we were supposed to stay there.

These things happen. At least I learned about the conflict with adequate advance notice to secure a different place for us to stay. I am also grateful it was not a case of being At The Wrong Place At the Wrong Time and have something Truly Bad Happen, like the devastating earthquake that necessitated the seismic retrofitting. Instead, it was simply a disappointment and inconvenience for my family.

Here is an example of damage from the earthquake and the subsequent tremors has had in Ferrara. The picture is of a ceiling fresco in the Castello Estense.

I was surprised the first time I noticed tape on the ceiling, but then quickly understood why it was there. We asked a docent about the tape and our suspicions were confirmed as to its purpose. It is to prevent further cracking until restoration can be performed.

There was a lot of tape used throughout the castle on artwork. It serves as a sober reminder of how historical items are vulnerable to the power of Nature. They are not just pieces of art created centuries ago, but are precious items that need to be preserved for future generations.

We arrived in Ferrara on a Wednesday evening, but several hours later than we expected. Our connecting train in Bologna was late. Then again, most trains were late that day. One woman on the platform informed us that earlier in the day someone had thrown themselves upon a set of train tracks and it delayed all the trains in the region for at least an hour.

Once at the Ferrara train station, we had a taxi bring us to our B&B (bed and breakfast). It would have been a half hour walk, and dragging our luggage that far after being exhausted, and really hungry was not worth saving a few euros. Taking a taxi was a necessity and not a luxury at that point in time.

By the time we got to our room we were tired, our feet were sore from our sightseeing in Firenze and we were really hungry. The weather in Italy had been HOT for days and it added to our desire to find dinner, and go to sleep early in our air conditioned rooms.

My husband and son at that point in time were not all that interested in noticing the charms of Ferrara, but I came became revived once we left our baggage behind and started exploring the city. One aspect that I love about Ferrara is that it is a bicycle friendly city. There are cars and some Vespas, but bicycles seem to be the biggest method of transportation used by the people. They are not fine racing bikes, but instead generally old beat up bicycles with baskets on their front handle bars. They are utilitarian and get their riders from place to place over the cobblestone roads.

Rome has a frenetic energy about it which led me to the conclusion that traffic there is a blood sport. Crossing a busy street in Rome you must be wary. That sense of self-preservation extends to walking in the side streets as the drivers of cars and Vespas zoom past you with little regard to your safety. There were several occasions when I found myself hugging the walls in the back streets to avoid being hit by cars, scooters or motorcycles. Ferrara was a pleasant change of pace for me and I began to relax and appreciate the atmosphere of this historic city.

We walked past the Piazza Ariostea and I was enchanted by the sight of a statue of Ariosto and the moon.

Here is a close up of the inscription on the statue.

That night we ate at a local pizza joint. It was "okay, nothing special." At least we were served quickly and it was not expensive. Afterward, we walked back to our B&B and slept soundly.

The next day was my day to explore Ferrara. My teenaged son decided that he just wanted to relax, sleep in and not go exploring. That meant I was free to roam around the city.

My husband and I started the morning by walking down the Corso Porta Mare and passing the Piazza Ariostea again.

I enjoyed walking in the park and gathering spot for locals that was built dedicated in honor of my favorite poet. We continued on the Corso Porta Mare until we came to Corso Ercole I d'Este, named after the patron for both Boiardo and Ariosto.

On that street is the famous building Palazzo dei Diamante. There are thousands of diamond shaped marble bricks covering the outside of this building. The shadows cast by the diamonds change during the day due to angle of the sunlight making the building a large and complex sun dial. It is a spectacular sight, even if it seems a bit disorienting at first.

An up-close image of the Palazzo dei Diamante and the Renaissance street Corso Ercole I d'Este.

My husband and I walked down the Corso Ercole I d'Este until we came to the heart of the Renaissance city. I had to make a quick stop to see a Piazza named for another poet who also worked for the noble house of d'Este.

Alas, this piazza was nothing more than a parking lot.


The Piazza Torquato Tasso

We soon made it to one of the big destinations for me: seeing the castle where the Estes family lived.

It is an impressive sight.

I shall continue my travelogue about Ferrara in another post, lest this become epic in size similar to the poems which inspire my writing.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/09/my-travels-to-ferrara-italy-part-i.html

New landmark for my blog and photos of a real landmark in Paris

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 23:07:00 +0000

This humble blog has now surpassed 100,000 hits. Huzzah!

To celebrate this landmark I would like share a real landmark of France. There is an old saying that "all roads lead to Rome." In France, all distances are measured from a marker in front of

-->Nôtre Dame Cathédrale.

Here is a photo with my son standing in front of the disc helping to point out its location in front of Nôtre Dame.

And here is a close up of the marker itself.

Thank you for visiting my blog and I hope you will return again to enjoy my musings and pictures from my travels.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/07/new-landmark-for-my-blog-and-photos-of.html

Magic words in France and Italy

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Thu, 25 Jul 2013 23:51:00 +0000

Traveling can be an enriching experience, not only from seeing new sights but also by learning new customs. My language skills in French and Italian are limited. I have taken French lessons at my local Alliance de

--> Française, but I realize that my grammar is still rustic and rudimentary.

I do my best to use as many French words as I know, and with the best pronunciation as I can muster, knowing that if I am patient enough I will manage. I learned early on that the French people are formal and that you must start every interaction with "bon jour." If you do not begin with that nicety, you are considered rude.

I can respect wanting a formal greeting. It is a cultural difference and this may be a source of some friction Americans have when they visit France if they do not recognize the cultural expectations of the host country. Americans are much more casual and we will chat with anyone, and even think about needing to start a conversation with a greeting of "good day."

Many times we will be at a store, say a coffee shop, where we are staring up at the menu. Then, when we are greeted and asked for our order, we are more likely to answer with the drinks we want than to start with "Good day, I would like to have..."

During my first trip to France in 2007, I did my best to use bon jour with every interaction I had with a French person. It was when we were in the Midi-Pyrenees region and at farmer's markets that I discovered a different phrase, that of

--> bonne journée. (It is pronouced bun jour-nay).

A farmer's market in Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val.

At first I thought they were wishing me to have a good journey. I wondered how obvious it was that I was on vacation. Later, much later, I realized the significance of bonne journée.

It is the feminine version of bon jour and the polite way of ending a conversation by wishing someone a good rest of their day.

Get it? Start with the masculine bon jour and end with the feminine bonne journée. It is like book ends to a conversation.

In 2011, when I returned to France I used bonne journée instead of au revoir to say good-bye. The reaction was startling. I found that in the villages, my wishing bonne journée was treated as if I paid them a high compliment. On more than one occasion, the person's voice went up an entire octave and they trilled out "Aussi! Bonne journée!" (You too! Have a Good Day!)

Seriously. Americans have become so jaded and cynical that wishing someone a good day or "have a good one" is fodder for stand up comedians. Yet, that simple nicety will endear yourself in France with the locals.

My Italian is more sparse than my French. It consists of a few all purpose words such as buongiorno, buena sera, grazie, ciao and prego.

Having learned my lesson in France, I did my best to start any conversations with Italians with buongiorno or buena sera.

The word that surprised me as to its usage is "prego." I feel it is the Swiss Army knife of words in Italian.

It is used to say please, thank you, and you're welcome. I have had waiters come to my table with their pad in hand and simply say "prego." It might translate as please, but it has so many more uses.

Tasso Ristorante Pizzeria in Sorrento, Italy

If you are traveling in Italy, know that prego is used far more often than per favore.

During our trip this summer we visited our exchange student and his family. While he was living with us in California, I saw him use his cell phone for reading texts, emails, etc., but do not remember seeing him talk into the phone. In Italy, I saw him answer the phone a few times and was surprised at his greeting.

"Pronto!"

Not buongiorno or salve, but pronto.

It reminds me of the old greeting, "go ahead, it's your dime."

The other day when I had a phone call from an unknown user, I decided to use "pronto" as my greeting. The caller was flummoxed and hung up on me. Just as well, I think it was a telemarketer and I am on the "do not call" list.

Does anyone have any other "magic" words they learned in a foreign country they would like to add?

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/07/magic-words-in-france-and-italy.html

Writing, adaptations and public speaking

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 00:06:00 +0000

This essay was inspired by a private correspondence I have been having with another writer. I realized my experience might be helpful to others and so I decided to make this into a blog post.

Every writer has specific strengths and weaknesses. The differences are as different as the writers themselves and their own life experiences. Back when I was in high school I was a member of our forensics team. In this context, forensics means public speaking and has nothing to do with autopsies.

Being involved in competitive public speaking not only helped me develop self confidence, but it enhanced my own inherent flair for drama, working within time limits and knowing how to engage an audience. I was involved with three different categories during my four years of competition. In my freshman year I was a member of our "multiple." Multiple Interpretation is a category for a group of speakers (between three to eight) and our selection was to be between ten and fifteen minutes in length. We were not allowed to have physical or eye contact with one another. The only props allowed were stools and scripts.

The selection we used during my freshman year was a script from an episode of the old television series "The Twilight Zone." The story was "Monsters are due on Maple Street" and it dealt with space aliens causing the residents in a small American town to turn on each other.

Being part of a multiple meant that I was part of a team effort to succeed. It was similar to a mini-play competing onstage against other mini-plays. Everyone involved in that year's multiple was a first year member of the team and we practiced everyday after school for months working on our performances and our timing. We made the final round in tournaments a few times and even placed second in one invitational, but we did not do as well as we had hoped.

One aspect of being on the forensics team is that our coach had a large filing cabinet with hundreds of scripts. Some had been used in previous years and were considered "winning scripts" that were to be inherited by a new generation of team members. Those proven scripts were outnumbered by ones purchased from a catalog and had never been read before being put in a file.

My sophomore year I was able to change categories and tried my hand at Humorous Interpretation. That was a solo competitive event where the speakers would rotate two different comedic scripts that were five to eight and a half minutes in length. I spent the summer looking for my own selections and settled on editing an essay from one of Erma Bombeck's books and a short story from Shirley Jackson. I was okay, but my talents were not really suited for that category.

In my junior year, I switched to Serious Interpretation and found my groove. The major difference between Serious and Humorous, (other than trying to make the audience cry rather than laugh), is that your selections alternated between poetry and prose. In the beginning of the tournament a drawing would be held and it was announced which of the two formats would be read in the first round of competition.

Because many poems are short, there were some competitors who read collections of poems to fulfill the time requirements. I found that approach to be lame. I also found myself getting bored when I heard the same poem being read by numerous people. "Patterns" by Amy Lowell was one of those overused poems. One tournament I heard that poem read three times and by two different girls in a single round of competition. It was popular because it was a single poem that when read fit the time requirements, was written by a woman poet and most of the competitors in Serious Interpretation were female. I found the poem boring and mentally tuned out when I heard it announced in the introduction. I wondered how many of the judges had similar reactions due to its overuse.

That was another reason why I thought it was better to find my own selections rather than depend on my coach to recommend something.

In my junior year I remember one of my competitors had written his own selection based on a novelization from the movie Apocalypse Now. I had not seen the movie, but was astounded at his performance, and felt that its difference from the majority of the scripts helped him stand out as a competitor. Later, when I saw the movie, it felt as if he were sitting next to me, whispering in my ear. That is how good his adaptation of the movie was to encapsulate its essence into eight and a half minutes.

That inspired me to do something similar for my senior year's selection. I read the memoir Playing for Time by Fania Fénelon. She was a Holocaust survivor who had been a member of the all woman orchestra in Auschwitz. Her life was spared, but she was still in a death camp and was forced to play music up to eighteen hours a day. The reason the musicians were allowed to live is because they played impromptu concerts for SS officers who found it relaxing to listen to orchestral music after a long, hard day of killing people.

I remember reading the book with a highlighter in one hand and marking up several particularly emotional passages. I wrote my script using portions of scenes along with transitions making it fit my time frame and knew that no one else would be reading the same work.

That strategy worked for me.

After the regular invitational season was over in my senior year, my coach told me something that spurred me on to doing another adaptation. This time it would be for the Multiple Interpretation category.

Our team was so large and successful that we had more members on it than could be entered into the District Tournament. So there were many teammates whose season was going to be over unless he did something creative. He told me that he was thinking of dusting off the "Monsters are due on Maple Street" script and create a second multiple to enter at Districts. I cringed at the thought. It was an okay script, but I did not want to see it used again. Especially since judges had seen it only a few years before. I knew my teammates who would be asked to be a part of it might feel as if they were leftovers thrown together in a hastily prepared soup.

I went home and grabbed a book of short stories by Stephen King and banged out a script for what I titled: "A Taste of Horror." I made sure that it fit the time constraints, typed it up and made a few copies. On the next school day, I told my coach that I had a different idea for a multiple and handed him the script. I also offered to direct.

It was far more than he expected from that little chat we shared on the bus. He also accepted my offer. We only had a few weeks of rehearsals, but I was proud of the performances by my teammates and I am certain they felt more confident with that script when they competed against other teams' multiples who had been together for months.

Then I entered college and didn't have any time for creative writing. Or drama. Or much else besides watching an occasional movie.

After I finished college and began working full time, I felt there was something missing in my life. I realized that I longed for an outlet for drama like I had back in high school and that one of my greatest strengths was recognizing dramatic scenes and adapting it for presentations to audiences.

I decided that I would try that on a larger scale, and so I took one of my favorite novels Whispers by Dean R. Koontz and try to adapt it into a screenplay. I owed college loans and was making entry level wages, so I certainly did not have any ability to buy the movie rights. I did however, decide to adapt the novel as a writing exercise to see if I had the talent and stamina to do such a project. I went back to using a highlighter and marking up scenes, then transferring them into my computer in a screenplay format. It took several months, but I finished the task and it was in the 110-120 page range for a two hour movie. (The working rule is one page of a movie script equals a minute on the screen.)

I was proud of my work, but I also knew that as an unknown writer with no credits I would never get hired to do film adaptations. So in order to have any chance in pursuing that career path, I first needed to write my own screenplays.

I took two screenwriting classes at Wayne State University and learned a lot. I had to write an original screenplay for the course and I realize now that it was spectacularly depressing and would never have been made into a movie had I pursued trying to get an agent. (It seemed like a good idea to me at the time, but hindsight can have better visual acuity than foresight.)

During this time I purchased several scripts of movies that I enjoyed. I re-watched those movies with the scripts in hand and analyzed any deviations. I also began watching movies before and after I read the books and compared the adaptations. I took copious notes including writing down each and every scene in a movie and realized for the first time how many different scenes there are. Sometimes over a hundred in a two hour movie.

I have been devastated when a beloved story's lifeblood was leeched out when it was translated to the silver screen by oversimplification of plotlines and elimination of characters, etc. and I have marveled at how the essence of a story was enhanced by condensing timelines, characters, etc.

I learned by this extended critical analyses that novels and movies are two different mediums and what works in one does not necessarily work in the other. In novels, you can spend an entire chapter in a character's head learning their inner thoughts, but on a movie screen that could be accomplished by a close up of a raised eyebrow or summarized into a single line of voice-over narration. Another thing I learned was the importance of having scenes with conflict and action. A stage or movie script has bare bones descriptions, whereas novels need to describe the setting, the actions/reactions of characters so that the readers "can see" these important details as well as the characters are wearing if it is important to the plot.

I have been told by many of my readers that they can see my story as a movie. I take that as a compliment that my years of analyzing what works in cinema and translating it into a different format has paid off.

My adapting the epic poems of Orlando innamorato and Orlando furioso is a result of my years of experience of larger narratives and culling portions then changing its format so that it will work for a different audience.

I still love watching movies based on books and analyzing the differences between the two forms and formats. One movie adaptation that I am looking forward to watching is the forthcoming, Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters due out August 7th.

Please let me know what some of your favorite or cannot stand adaptations from novel to screen are in the comments. By the way, I did watch the movie adaptation of the novel Whispers by Dean R. Koontz. It was awful! My script was far better.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/07/writing-adaptations-and-public-speaking.html

Glowing review from Midwest Book Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Sun, 19 May 2013 19:21:00 +0000

I am happy to announce a glowing review of my novel by the Midwest Book Review.

In "Quest Of The Warrior Maiden", author Linda McCabe reveals an undeniable talent for creating a truly memorable and epic fantasy saga incorporating memorable characters, cliff hanger suspense, magic and Arthurian romance of the first order. "Quest Of The Warrior Maiden" is enthusiastically recommended reading and a first rate selection for community library Science Fiction/Fantasy collections.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/05/glowing-review-from-midwest-book-reviews.html

Reading and signing in Milan, Italy

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Sat, 18 May 2013 20:42:00 +0000

I am happy to announce that I will be doing a reading and book signing at the English Bookshop in Milan.

Mark your calendars for Monday, June 17th at 6:30 pm, at the corner of Via L. Mascheroni and Via Lodovico Ariosto.

I blogged about this wonderful bookstore back in January. I had a wonderful chat with the store's owner, Peter Panton, and I am looking forward to seeing him again.

I was saddened to hear that he made the decision to close his store as of June 30th. It will be a great loss to the literary community in Milan. I am grateful that Mr. Panton agreed to hold an event so soon to his store's closing.

Please help spread the word to your friends and colleagues who live in Northern Italy about the book signing and also of the store's closing. I am certain Peter would like to hear from people about how his store has touched their lives over the last thirty-five years.

Another request I have is to contact him ahead of time for those who will be attending my signing so that he can better prepare the amount of chairs to set out and the number of books to order. The phone number isl: 02 4694468

You can also direct people to my official Facebook page's event listing and have them RSVP there.

Thank you and I hope to have many pictures to share later from this memorable occasion.

Linda

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/05/reading-and-signing-in-milan-italy.html

2013 Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:59:00 +0000

Douglas Gallagher, Professor Richard Scott Nokes, Linda C. McCabe, Alexis E. Fajardo, Brandon Spars

I have a quick announcement before I give my report on the 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies:

I will be doing a reading and book signing at the English Bookshop in Milano, Italy on Monday, June 17th at 6:30 pm. The address is 12 Via Mascheroni (the store opens on Via Ariosto!). Please help spread the word to anyone you know who lives in Northern Italy and might be interested in hearing me speak. Note: I do not speak Italian, so they would have to understand English. If they intend on coming, please let Peter Panton know in advance to help him determine how many chairs to set out and how many books to order. Another way to RSVP would be to send me an email or to join the event on my Facebook page.

Okay, back to my report:

I recently returned from my first ever Medieval Congress held on the campus of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

To give you an idea of how large this gathering is, here are a few statistics:

There are approximately 3,000 medievalists from all over the world who attend this four day annual event.

This year's program had over 250 pages

There were over 500 sessions with roughly fifty running simultaneously

The deadline to submit proposals for next year's Congress is June 1, 2013

It is so large that it not a conference, it is a congress. I do not know at what point the classification changes from conference to congress, but perhaps it is with the sheer number of sessions offered.

If you couldn't find something you wanted to attend, you didn't look hard enough.

I grew up in the state of Michigan, but it was only after I moved to California and started reading medievalist blogs that I learned of this annual event.

It took a fair bit of advance planning over a year ago for me to be a participant in this year's congress. Thankfully, I found some like minded people who all happen to live in Sonoma County to agree to join me in a panel. We all had adapted the legends of Charlemagne in the hopes of introducing these tales to twenty-first century audiences. I also approached a regular attendee of these congresses and asked if he would be our organizer and preside over the session.

Thankfully, Professor Awesome agreed.

Schmoozing with Professor Richard Scott Nokes AKA Professor Awesome.

We were session #402 out of 582 sessions. I think we were lucky in our schedule because it was Saturday morning at 10 am. It could have been an evening session after the wine hour or we might have had an 08:30 am Sunday morning session when people are recovering from the popular Saturday night dance.

I helped Lex Fajardo staff a table in the exhibit hall. We took turns staffing the table during meal times and when one of us wanted to attend a session.


Lex Fajardo and me at the exhibit table

There were several sessions I attended that I want to highlight. The first was "Constructions of Women Warriors in Medieval Eurasia 2.0." In particular, there were two papers that seemed appropriate to my interest in the women warriors in Carolingian legends.

Suzanne Hagedorn of the College of William and Mary gave a paper titled "The Amazon as Temptress: Thalestris in the Alexander Romance Tradition." I had never heard of Queen Thalestris and the story of her approaching Alexander the Great asking to bear his child since she regarded him as being the epitome of male strength, valor and prowess.

It was an interesting paper and it that reminded me of a portion of Orlando furioso that I did not use in my novel. Canto XX details the history of an Amazonian tribe that warrior Queen Marfisa came across during her travels. Men were scarce in this tribe and those who were allowed to live after venturing near their shores had to pass tests of surviving combat with ten men in a single day and then satisfying ten women later that night.

(While this passage is interesting and humorous, it did not further my plot of Bradamante and Ruggiero's love story and so it was cut by me.)

The second paper from that session that I would like to mention was delivered by Diane Wright of Grand Valley State University. It was titled "Early Iberian Models of the Female Warrior: History, Myth and Legend."

I look forward to corresponding with Diane in the future about those legends.


Schmoozing with Professor Diane Wright

Another session I attended was the French Cultural Traditions in Italy: The Era of Andrea da Barberino. I do not speak or read Italian, so I was unfamiliar with the source material mentioned in the various talks. However, I met scholars interested in the Matters of France and how they were disseminated into Italy and Italian literature. I anticipate having a good correspondance with those contacts.

On Friday I attended a panel regarding E-publishing and Medieval Studies. I wanted to show support for Professor Nokes as well as meet Peter and Sandra from the wildly popular blog Medievalists.net fame.

Peter and Sandra from Medievalists.net and Professor Nokes

Saturday was the day of our session and while I had been hoping for better attendance, those who came were enthusiastic about our topic.

I spoke about the challenges of adapting two epic poems into a novel suitable for 21st century audiences. This included correcting continuity errors with geography, culling extraneous subplots, and balancing the needs of drama vs. historical accuracy.

Lex Fajardo discussed his approach to blending the Beowulf story with heroes of other legends in a graphic novel form. In his Kid Beowulf series, Beowulf and Grendel are twelve year old twin brothers and his stories are "prequels" to the classic legends.

Lex showing images from the prologue of his first graphic novel Kid Beowulf and the Blood-Bound Oath

Doug Gallagher discussed how he and his students adapted Orlando furioso into a stage production using Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon as a soundtrack.


Doug showing a picture of the many visual elements of that incredible stage production.

Brandon Spars then talked about how he taught the Song of Roland to his class. It involved using a tin foil horn as a prop as he read the classic poem and then squirting ketchup on his face to simulate Roland's temples bursting. I am sure none of his students will forget that day's lesson.

Brandon Spars with "blood" on his face

After our session, I participated in a lunchtime roundtable discussion sponsored by Kalamazoo's local independent bookstore Kazoo Books. There were seven (or eight?) authors on the panel discussing writing historical fiction. Most of the authors were also professors, and I believe I was the only one whose genre extended into the fantasy realm. There was a good give and take between the presenters and the audience who asked some thoughtful questions. For the next two days I had people who recognized me from that talk and I was able to extend the conversation with them about our shared love of books.

Here are two other photos of people that I met who helped make this a special time for me.


Here I am with Medievalist blogger and grad student Jennifer Lynn Jordan

I had read Jennifer's Per Omni Saecula blog for many years and grew to appreciate her humor and love of all things medieval. It was even better meeting her in person. She's cool and I hope once her busy academic year is over that we can share a bad medieval movie mash up like she did once with Carl Pyrdum.

I had so many wonderful conversations with medievalists from all over the globe. I was thrilled to meet Italian and French medievalists so that I could talk about the legends of Charlemagne with them since it is a part of their shared heritage.

I also met a man who is descended from the Noble House of d'Este.

Yes, as I read his name badge, I asked James Estes if he was a descendant to the patrons of Boiardo and Ariosto. He admitted that he was.

This led to a spirited exchange with many laughs and this photo.

Schmoozing with James Estes, descendant of the patrons of Ariosto and Boiardo

How many times do I have the opportunity to geek out over the Noble House of d'Este?

More photos from the 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies can be found on my novel's official Facebook page with this open link. (Meaning you don't have to be a member of Facebook to see this album.)

I plan on going back to the Medieval Congress again, but perhaps in 2015 to help spur on the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the original publication of Orlando furioso. Plus by that time, I should have my sequel published.

Please let me know your experiences with the Congress and any other pages with photos, remembrances, etc.

Thank you,

Linda

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/05/2013-medieval-congress-in-kalamazoo.html

Closing of Panton's English Bookshop in Milan

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:02:00 +0000

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but another wonderful independent bookstore is closing. This time it is Peter Panton's English Bookshop in Milan, Italy.

I blogged about this store back in January, and had been hoping that I might be able to arrange an event in his store during my upcoming trip to Italy.

Alas, Mr. Panton has announced the closing of his store for good on June 30, 2013.

This is his official message on Facebook:

DIGITAL BOOKS HAVE BECOME
A SIGNIFICANT PART OF THE BOOK WORLD
The book industry is going through dramatic changes, influenced by the transition from print to digital. No part of this industry is being more influenced with this new trend than bookshops.
From independent bookshops to big chains like B&N, Borders, Waterstones etc., etc, no one seems to be immune to these changes.
Milan’s first all English bookshop, Panton’s English Bookshop, established in 1978, is no exception!
It’s a well known fact that book lovers are quite happy to spend time in a bricks-and-mortar bookshop to see what sort of interesting titles they find and then, off they go home to buy online where prices are often cheaper.
Much to our regret “Panton’s English Bookshop” will be closing for good on 30th June 2013.
A MASSIVE CLEARANCE SALE WILL BEGIN ON 13th MAY 2013.
Panton's English Bookshop
Via L. Mascheroni, 12
20145 - Milano, Italy
Phone:+39. 024694468
OPEN FROM MONDAY TO SATURDAY FROM :
9:30-13:00 / 15:30-19:30 www.englishbookshop.it

This news saddens me. I hope that come July, Mr. Panton will find more time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life such as eating bruschetta and drinking wine, as well as more time for his writing.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/04/closing-of-pantons-english-bookshop-in.html

Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 05:37:00 +0000

For several years I have seen blog posts by Professor Richard Scott Nokes about all the fun he has had at the annual Medieval Congress held in Kalamazoo, Michigan on the campus of Western Michigan University.

This year I am going to join him.

Correction, this year I am going to be in a panel discussion where Professor Awesome will be our moderator.

This will be Session #402 out of 582 sessions.

"Carolingian Legends: Adapting Medieval and Renaissance Literature for Twenty-First Century Audiences" on Saturday, May 11th, 10-11:30 am in Room 2355 Schneider.

The panel will consist of Alexis E. Fajardo, author of the Kid Beowulf series,

I will be discussing adapting my novel Quest of the Warrior Maiden from the epic poems Orlando innamorato and Orlando furioso,

as well as Douglas Gallagher and Brandon Spars of Sonoma Academy who produced an incredible musical adaptation of Orlando furioso set to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon."

It should be a fun round table discussion. We hope to inspire medieval literature professors in their preparations to have a grand celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the publication of Orlando furioso in 2016.

I would enjoy meeting up with other medievalist bloggers at the Congress. Please drop me a line here or attend my session. Lex and I will also be vendors, so you can try to find us there as well.

If anyone has any suggestions about these Congresses and what to expect, I would enjoy hearing about it. I have attended other conferences, but never one with so many sessions and an expected three thousand attendees.

Help this newbie out if you can!

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/04/medieval-congress-in-kalamazoo.html

Forged in Grace by Jordan Rosenfeld

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 06:47:00 +0000

"Jordan E. Rosenfeld’s luminous, edgy debut is dark, searingly-written, and ultimately redemptive. Forged in Grace startled me at every breathtaking turn." - Patry Francis, author of The Liar's Diary

My friend Jordan Rosenfeld's debut novel Forged in Grace publication date is February 28th.

Here is a description:

Grace Jensen survived a horrific fire at age 15. The flames changed her: badly scarred in body and mind, Grace developed an ability to feel other people’s pain. Unable to bear human touch, she has made a small life for herself in Northern California, living with her hoarder mother, tending wounded animals, and falling a little in love with her former doctor. Her safe world explodes when the magnetic Marly Kennet reappears in town; Grace falls right back into the dynamic of their complicated friendship. Marly is the holder of many secrets, including one that has haunted Grace for over a decade: what really happened the night of the fire?

When Marly exhorts Grace to join her in Las Vegas, to make up for the years they have been lost to each other, Grace takes a leap of faith and goes. Although Marly is not entirely honest about her intentions, neither woman anticipates that enlarging Grace’s world will magnify her ability to sense the suffering of others—or that she will begin to heal wounds by swallowing her own pain and laying her hands on the afflicted. This gift soon turns darker when the truth of Marly’s life—and the real reason she ended her friendship with Grace—pushes the boundaries of loyalty and exposes both women to danger.

FORGED IN GRACE gives a new twist to the idea of reuniting with an old flame—literally. Exploring ruptured female friendships as in Leah Stewart’s The Myth of You and Me with the dark psychology (and twist of the inexplicable) found in Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, FORGED IN GRACE will resonate with anyone who has wanted to set the past right.

To help build momentum for the release date, Jordan is highlighting the work of some of her literary friends and offering free copies of their work through daily literary trivia questions.

Today an electronic copy of my novel Quest of the Warrior Maiden will be given away to the first person who correctly answers the trivia question posted on her blog. She also has a Facebook author page you can "like" and a link will appear there as well.

Jordan had been an influential part of the Sonoma County literary scene when I first met her. She had created a literary salon in Petaluma as well as a literary radio program on our local National Public Radio station.

She has moved out of Sonoma County, but her influence is still felt here. Last night an interview with Jordan about her forthcoming novel was aired on KRCB Radio by Gil Mansergh, the new host of "Word by Word." It will be available in a few days as a downloadable podcast from the station's website and through iTunes. (I will add a link once that is put online.)

Jordan has written many articles that have appeared in such publications as Writer's Digest Magazine including a cover story interview with New York Times best selling author Tess Gerritsen. She has several nonfiction books on writing including the wonderful Make a Scene: crafting a powerful story one scene at a time published by Writers Digest Books.

She has returned several times to our county to be a speaker at Redwood Writers meetings and workshops. Here is a photo of her from the 2009 Winter Editing Workshops where she discussed the importance of writing powerful scenes.

Jordan has not only done her own writing, but is a successful freelance editor. I am one of her many satisfied clients in that regard.

One more thing I wanted to mention is that Jordan also teaches online writing classes with lessons and assignments to bring out the best in your writing. She has a Revise for Publication class starting February 18th. So if your New Year's Resolution was to shape up your NaNoWriMo manuscript into something publishable - consider this as Opportunity Knocking on your front door.

I wish Jordan well in the launch of her novel. Bonne chance mon ami!

Edited to add links to her book that is now available.

Kindle
Trade paperback on Amazon
Nook
Smashwords

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/02/forged-in-grace-by-jordan-rosenfeld.html

Dos and Don'ts of Public Speaking

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 18:57:00 +0000

This blog post is intended for writers who are given the opportunity to read portions of their work aloud. However, others who have to speak in front of an audience may also find some of the suggestions to be helpful.

I have over thirty years public speaking experience. In high school I was a member of our championship forensics team and was an award winning competitive public speaker in the Serious Interpretation category. This advice is the product of my experience as well as my frustration when I have witnessed public readings I have found to be embarrassing.

1. Do know your time limits and plan for them. If you have a short time frame to work with, say five minutes, select a passage that fits within those parameters including any prefatory comments you need to make to set up the scene for the audience. Time yourself. If it goes long, consider choosing another passage or perhaps change your beginning or ending places so that it fits in the time frame.

2. Don't Ramble or waste time. I have been to a few open microphone sessions where a writer is one of several speakers, but once they have the mic it seems as if s/he will not relinquish it without a big hook coming out and taking him/her off the stage. I particularly hate it when people ramble, because it demonstrates they were not prepared.

If you are given five minutes to speak, that five minutes starts from the time you are given the floor or handed the microphone. Rambling for four minutes before you start reading does not mean you still get to read for an additional five minutes. Nope. If you are given five minutes, you have five minutes. Especially if you are sharing a stage with others. That means that there will be members of the audience who came specifically to hear someone else speak. If you go over your time limit, (by more than a minute or two), you will be cutting into others' time or causing the program to go long.

Recently I saw an author bring her book to the stage, but her opening was not a statement used to set up her reading. Instead she rambled on and on about her life. She spent her entire time speaking without any discernable purpose, used up her entire time and never read a single word from her book. It became nothing more than a prop she waved in the air.

A different example of wasting time was when I delivered an academic paper at an international conference. I was one of three speakers in a session and I was given the last speaking slot. We were all to have an equal twenty minutes to present. However, the first speaker was a college professor who had not timed his presentation until the night before. He became irritated about the brevity and felt this time constraint caused him to eviscerate the heart and soul out of his talk. He complained about this. Repeatedly. Not just to the panel moderator in private, but during his talk.

He took time during his speech to complain that he did not have enough time. He probably spent a total of three minutes during his talk saying, "oh I cannot go into more detail about that because I do not have enough time."

He also ignored the moderator when she told him that his time was over, and continued speaking for a few more minutes. This cut into the time left for my presentation. I was professional about it and was able to condense and speed up some of my presentation so the session did not run overtime.

3. Do make a script that is easy to read. One of my pet peeves is authors reading from their physical books. I think it is fine to read directly from a book if it is a picture book where the pages are read and shown to an adoring crowd of children. Otherwise, it is often awkward for someone to read directly from a bound book. Not only do you have to fight with the binding, losing your place if it closes, but the font is generally not large enough to read with ease.

If you are reading your own story, then make a script off of documents you have on your hard drive.

Boost the font. Make it 18 or 20 point. Make it bold. Whatever works best for you to read without difficulty.

Print it out, and make it so that your paragraphs do not have widows or orphans. It is best to read to the end of a paragraph and then turn the page. Number your pages.

My personal preference is to put the printed pages onto construction paper. This makes it a script where the pages can be changed with ease. I find this easier to use than plain paper with a staple on the top. I also find myself being distracted from the reading by concentrating at the stapled copy in a reader's hand to assess how many more pages they are going to read. A script with separate pages will remove that distraction.

4. Don't think that reading glasses will make reading from a physical book easy to do in public.

It will not. Wearing reading glasses while trying to read from a physical book will make you have to look down more often. This will hurt your performance. As your head is turned downward, your voice will be focused downward. Or your throat will be at an acute angle and this will change the tone of your voice and your ability to project your words. Alternately, you could hold the book upward so that your neck is straight and your voice is projected well. This will also cause the book to cover your face making it hard for your audience to see your facial expressions or to have any eye contact with them.

5. Do entertain your audience. Express yourself in a manner that will captivate your audience's attention. If you are reading passages with dialogue, create different voices to help them understand and follow who is speaking. Use eye contact to engage the audience with you. Having rehearsed your talk enough times and having an easy to read script will allow you to look up and at your audience.

Remember, if you are sharing the stage with others then many in the audience will be there in support of other speakers. They may know nothing about you. Make them sit up and take notice of your performance. Make them feel as if they discovered someone new to admire.

6. Don't bore your audience. Rambling at the beginning of your talk is lethal for grabbing and maintaining an audience's attention. Once lost it is hard to get back.

Fumbling with a book and reading glasses as well as speaking in a monotone is also high risk behavior for losing your audience.

Whether you realize it or not, you are competing for all of the audience members' attentions. Make it worth their while to pay attention to you and not make a mental list of errands that need running or check their email on their iPhone. They could be other places right now, but they are chose to spend a portion of their lives at whatever venue you are speaking. They could change their mind at any moment and leave to go to the bathroom or go home.

7. Do your best to be heard. It is frustrating when a speaker does not project his or her voice well enough to be heard or does not know how to properly use a microphone. If someone objects when you start speaking and says, "I can't hear you!" make sure that the situation is resolved before you continue with your planned talk. This may mean readjusting the microphone to being closer to your mouth or forcing yourself to SPEAK UP!

8. Don't think you do not need amplification. I have seen speakers at a podium decide they did not want to use the microphone that is provided. Even after someone in the audience complained. Most of the time speakers are mistaken when they think their voice is loud enough without amplification to be heard in all corners of the room. I only knew one woman who could pull that off with ease, because She Could Project. Loudly. When she chose to project her voice, it was as if she used a megaphone. She was the proverbial exception that proves the rule.

I remember a sad case of a female politician who had become feeble in her old age. She was a guest speaker at an event and when it came time for her to speak, she could not make herself heard by using the microphone. It had worked fine for all the speakers before her, but it seemed as if it stopped working when she took the stage. People scrambled to find a replacement microphone, they tested it and then handed it to her. We were all hopeful this would resolve the problem. She took the microphone and then it became clear that her anemic vocal performance was not due to technology, but due to her inability to perform anymore.

This was heartbreaking for me, because I had looked forward to hearing her talk and knew she had a wealth of knowledge and a lifetime of experience that was worthy of hearing. I stopped straining to make out her words, and instead accepted that I could not hear her unless I was standing next to her onstage.

--

Here is an example of a recent public speaking appearance where I read a passage from my novel. You can see how I used a script, varied my voice to entertain the audience, tried to use eye contact and did my best to be heard over the ambient conversation of those in the restaurant who were not there for the literary event.

I was the only participant to stay in the 5-7 minute time frame mentioned at the beginning of the event. (The video running time is just over seven minutes, but that includes the introduction given to me before I started speaking.)

If there are any other pieces of advice in public speaking that I did not mention, but you think should be included in this list - please leave it in the comment section. Thank you and I hope this advice is helpful.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/02/dos-and-donts-of-public-speaking.html

Charlemagne died January 28th 814

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 23:40:00 +0000

A reliquary of Charlemagne containing his head. This is found in the cathedral treasury in Aachen, Germany.

In honor of the 1199th anniversary of Charlemagne's death, and in anticipation of the major anniversary to be celebrated next year, I wanted to write a post in honor of that historic leader who changed Europe.

His date of birth is reported as April 2nd, but the year is in some dispute. Encyclopedia Britannica has it listed as 747? while his official biographer Einhardt suggests he died at age 72 making his birth year as 742. There is not any dispute as to when he died.

I have snapped pictures associated with Charlemagne ever since beaming a devotee of Carolingian legends.

I wanted to share some of them with my blog readers.

Staring in Paris, there is a statue of him in front of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Then on the Right Bank is Rue Charlemagne.

I was delighted to find that his street intersected with one named after his biographer, Rue Eginhard.

There was also a bookstore named after him a few blocks away.

Not far from the Musée Carnavalet is a street named after the famous poem Les Quatre Fils Aymon.

Then in Chantilly, a chateau north of Paris I found a painting depicting those four sons of Aymon riding on the back of Renaud de Montauban's coveted destrier Bayard.

Too bad the artist did not have Renaud sporting Mambino's golden helmet. Then we would know for certain which of the four brothers was Renaud.

In the Louvre you can find not only a reliquary containing one of Charlemagne's arms,

but a replica of his famous sword Joyeuse.

While in Amboise, I noticed Rue Joyeuse.

In Reims, the treasury for the cathedral had a statue of Charlemagne that had been taken down because it has deteriorated and needs a replacement.

Here is a closer look.

Here I am providing perspective as to its size. Plus, I wanted a picture taken of me with Charlemagne.

Here is where I believe it had been placed on the cathedral. You can see the empty pedestal.

It is not so obvious when you look at the cathedral as a whole.

Speaking of cathedrals, there is an entire stained glass window devoted to the legends of Charlemagne at the cathedral in Chartres.

If you are wondering how someone can tell that this window is about Charlemagne and not just any king, you can see if you look closely the word Carolus used in many of these insets.

During a trip to Italy in 2011, I arranged a tour of St. Peter's Basilica because I wanted to see where Charlemagne had been crowned as emperor of the Western Roman Empire on Christmas Day in the year 800.

Outside the entrance to St. Peter's stands a large statue of Charlemagne.

There is a companion statue of Constantine facing Charlemagne, but I never even looked his way. So I do not have a picture of that to share.

Inside the basilica, my tour guide showed me the very spot Charlemagne was crowned. It was upon a disk of red porphyry.

My guide stressed that red porphyry was expensive and had been mined from a single mine in Egypt, but had been long since been exhausted. This made the existing porphyry all the more valuable.

I then started taking pictures of red porphyry where ever I saw it.

Here is one in the Roman Pantheon.

And a close up of that disk.

Then in August 2011, I visited Aachen. The capital of Charlemagne's empire.

This time when I saw a disk of red porphyry inside his cathedral, I made sure to have my picture taken standing on it.

Here is his throne which was on the second floor in the cathedral. There are steps leading up to the throne and pilgrims used to crawl under it.

Here is a replica of his crown that is in the Rathause, a building where the current Aachen City Council meets and where Charlemagne's palace once stood.

He was originally buried in this sarcophagus that is now housed in the cathedral treasury.

However, when he was canonized, they removed his remains and placed several portions in small reliquaries (like the golden head at the top of this page and the arm held in the Louvre) and the bulk of his bones inside a golden reliquary inside his cathedral.

In Aachen, Charlemagne's influence can be found everywhere. Including his monogram found on the streets.

I hope to make it back to visit Aachen next year and see some of the festivities planned for such a significant anniversary of the death of an important leader in history. Perhaps I will be lucky to be asked to participate as an author whose work's purpose is to inspire a new generation to discover and enjoy the legends of Charlemagne.

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 13:34:00 +0000

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop is a viral campaign to help bring awareness to writers and their works in progress and hopefully find new fans to their work.

1. What is the working title of your book?

Fate of the Saracen Knight: volume two in the Bradamante and Ruggiero series

2. Where did the idea for the book come from?

Recently I wrote an entire blog post on this subject about my participation in the online Harry Potter fandom debates (back when the series was incomplete). I began researching the symbolic meaning of hippogriffs. That led me to read the epic poem Orlando furioso.

I was amazed to discover an intricate tale of medieval knights in battle, and was drawn to one storyline in particular that featured a warrior maiden in love with a virtuous knight who was on the opposite side of a holy war. Part 2 of this answer will be finished in Question #9.

3. What genre does your book come under?

Epic historic fantasy or Carolingian legend.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

My hero Ruggiero needs to be young and handsome. I like the idea of Ruggiero being played by Ben Barnes, best known for his role as Prince Caspian in the Chronicles of Narnia films. Here is a publicity still from that movie.

For my heroine, I would love to have Jennifer Lawrence play the part of Bradamante. Her portrayal of Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games movies demonstrates the strong and determined nature of Bradamante as well as her beauty. The character is also tall, and Jennifer Lawrence is about 5'8" a good height to play the role.

©Harper Smith

From Jennifer Lawrence's Facebook page Consider this another share.

I do not want to spend too much time discussing other characters and respective actors, but there is one in particular I must mention. The famous Frankish warrior Orlando, I imagine being played by the popular French rugby player Sebastien Chabal. Perhaps once his rugby career is finally over, he will consider becoming an actor. He would be convincing as a ferocious Frankish warrior.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Ruggiero has two different prophecies of divergent fates and dueling magical forces attempting to influence which one will come to pass.

Now to elaborate a little and discuss his two different potential fates:

He will either convert to Christianity, marry Bradamante, sire a line of heroes with her, but die tragically before the birth of his son OR he will remain a Muslim, bring about the defeat of Charlemagne and the fall of the Frankish Empire which will devastate Christendom.

6. Is your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented by an agency?

Volume one was published by a small boutique publisher. Volume two will be as well.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Yikes, still going on writing the first draft of the sequel. Volume one was finished in one year, but it took me another five years to edit/wordsmith/finish obsessing over it.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

A friend of mine suggested that my story reminded her of George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. I believe that is because both series are complex with a large cast of characters, interweaving plot threads, and multiple POVs. The tone in my novels is far different in that I strive to have a heroic classical style rather than Martin's grittiness. Comparatively I also have far fewer characters than he does.

This Bradamante and Ruggiero series is based on the legends of Charlemagne which are not all that well known today. It should appeal to fans of Arthurian legends. The source material is just as luxurious as Le Morte d'Arthur, but there is the added benefit that most people will not know what to expect next in the story.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Part 2 of Question 2. I was captivated by the tale of impossible love between Bradamante and Ruggiero. While reading Orlando furioso, I kept asking myself why I had never heard of this incredible warrior maiden. I was astounded that a man wrote such a strong heroine back in the 16th century. I was also impressed by the depth of the love between Bradamante and Ruggiero was staggering, and the sacrifices they were willing to make for each other.

I remember reading the climax of the story and having tears run down my face as I sat on the patio during my lunch break. If a story can bring tears to my face while I read in a public place, it is something worthwhile.

I decided that I should not complain about the character of Bradamante in literature not being widely known. Instead, I would spend my time, talent and energy into adapting this story into one that is accessible for modern audiences.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

Orlando furioso was originally published in 1516, so we are nearing the 500th anniversary of its publication.

It was popular in its day and Ludovico Ariosto is still looked at as one of Italy's most famous poets.

Queen Elizabeth I discovered that John Harrington had translated a passage for the amusement of some ladies in her court. It was a bawdy passage, and Queen Elizabeth commanded him to leave the court and not return until he had translated the entire poem. So that is how the first English translation came about.

People might be interested in hearing me read from my current novel, the first volume in the series. I was recently interviewed on a local National Public Radio affiliate and the interview is now available as an iTunes download. The host led me on a fun chat about fantasy writing, medievalism, chivalry, as well as prompted me to read several passages.

I am also uploading a video to Youtube of a reading at a Wine and Dine with Authors event from last night. It is currently uploaded on my novel's official Facebook page and I will embed the Youtube version here later once it has finished loading.

Now to tag next week's participant on this great viral experiment:

Rob Loughran, a prolific writer of novels and joke books.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop.html

The English Bookshop in Milan, Italy

noreply@blogger.com (Linda C. McCabe) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 05:51:00 +0000

Peter Panton's English Bookshop in Milan, Italy

I have been meaning on writing this post for quite some time now. With a new year, comes a fresh determination to spend more time posting to my blog.

In June of 2011, I was fortunate enough to spend a week in Italy. I was accompanying my husband on a business trip in Milan and Rome. We did not have much advance notice of this trip, but we did our best to make the most of our time while there.

On a Tuesday morning, while my husband was giving his business lecture, I was free to explore Milan by myself. I was on a mission to find anything that had to do with Ludovico Ariosto and his epic poem Orlando furioso.

I was happy to discover there was a street named Via Ariosto. While looking on the Streetwise Map of Milan, I saw a listing on that street of a store named The English Bookshop. Going on the internet, I found a website dedicated to English language bookstores in Europe called the Bookstore Guide and their listing for that store. It was scheduled to open at 9:30 am, so I made my way to Via Ariosto with the intent of not only taking pictures of anything with Ariosto's name on it, but exploring the bookstore.

I was pleased to find several different styles of road markers.


This is my favorite of the markers.


Via Arisoto is a beautiful street with houses such as this lining it.


Imagine living in such a mansion in Italy.

I arrived at the bookstore shortly after it opened and introduced myself to the owner, a British gentleman by the name of Peter Panton. I had a lovely chat with him about writing, bookstores, and what it is like living in Italy. As I suspected, he had read Orlando furioso. I would have thought it almost a requirement for a bookstore owner on a street named for a famous poet to read the poet's work.

Several customers came in during the time I was there and I watched him converse with them in fluent Italian. His having lived in Italy for several decades, being fluent in their language would also be a necessity.

Peter Panton

Here is a description of the bookstore from the official Facebook page of Panton's English Bookshop:

Panton’s two-floor English bookshop, established since 1978, stocks over 60,000 titles and covers a wide variety of interests including: fiction, history, travel, children’s books, cookery books, art, cinema, theatre, poetry, biography, illustrated books, best-sellers, antiquarian books, as well as ELT, travel guides, maps, multimedia, software and hardware, DVDs and CD-ROMS. Mail-orders are welcome.

Panton’s is Milan’s first all English bookshop and lives up to its name with a characteristic British-style decor, a well-informed and helpful staff and a general warm and very friendly atmosphere.

The hours of operation are:

Mon: 3:30 pm - 7:30 pm

Tue - Sat: 9:30 am - 1:00 pm, 3:30 pm - 7:30 pm

Ah yes, the European custom of closing a business during lunchtime and on Sundays. That is not something that happens often in the United States, but perhaps we ought to do it more often. It is a civilizing influence.

The address for the bookshop is actually 12 Via L. Mascheroni, but the store's front door is on Via Ariosto.

Here is a link to a map.

I will concur that the store has an English flair to it. I was drawn to the prominent image on the wall of a knight in repose. I tried taking several snapshots of it, this was the one with the least glare and the most color.

An etching made from atop a gravestone.

Here is another picture of the bookstore from the outside and if you look closely you can see the street marker of Via Ariosto above the store's signage.

There is even a video showing the inside of Panton's English Bookshop and highlighting his dog. I don't recall seeing the pooch in the store, but perhaps I was just so captivated with our discussion about writing and books, that I forgot about his furry companion.

In the video, the dog appears to be as friendly as his owner.

I tried uploading this video before using Blogger and it didn't work well. Here is a link, just in case.

I even purchased a copy of the book Medieval and Renaissance Treasures from the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is hard for me to walk out of a bookstore with only one book, but I try to follow the edict of traveling light and a suitcase full of books can get quite heavy.

I hope that anyone who visits Milan takes the time to stop by Peter Panton's charming bookstore.

Note: there is another bookstore with a similar name and there might be some confusion. The other one is the American Bookstore and it is across from the Sforza Castle. I visited there as well, but I found the selection was generally travel guides and mass market paperbacks that you could find in any airport.

There was not the same sense of community and belonging. A large part of that is because one is in the heart of the tourist traffic and the other is in a neighborhood.

I much prefer places with character.

http://lcmccabe.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-english-bookshop-in-milan-italy.html