Sunday, January 29, 2023
The Writer's Goals~~Then and Now
Friday, April 29, 2022
Love, Madness & Mozart
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0089F5X3C
That persistent character who keeps coming back; I think most writers have a few of them. Sometimes they inhabit a book that can’t, or won't, ever be satisfactorily finished. These conundrums are in every writer’s desk drawer and on every hard drive.
My particular dark horse always returns around her birthday, at the end of April. She’s here, hanging around, just behind the curtains, even during day-light. I’m once again re-re-imagining scenes I’ve already visited many, many times. I’ve journeyed to her world for forty years now.
My Mozart is the first book I ever completed. A satisfactory ending, I think, still eludes me. Like Konstanze of Mozart’s Wife, this young heroine insists on speaking in the first person, which both narrows and deepens her POV. It’s like writing while pinned inside her dress.
I’ve heard authors talk about having a “channeling” experience with their characters. There are many accounts of automatic writing and spirit dictation, some sounding as if they should be taken with salt. At least that's what my day-light self thinks. However, after the experience of writing this initial, and, perhaps never-to-be-finished story, I believe other-worldly communications can happen. Ordinarily it takes a period of concentration and study to make your characters ("the dolls") get up and move independently, but in the case of a channeled story, they arrive fully realized, walking and talking.
So here's what I've learned, forty years after my attempt to tell this ghostly story. For a while, at least, after Mozart's death, Miss Gottlieb coped with her tragedies, until, in a final cruel blow, she lost her voice. After that, she appears to have lived on, among of the walking wounded, enduring a life of poverty until her death. Such was the fate of the first Pamina, pure heroine of The Magic Flute.
I'm glad I hadn't known her true ending before I wrote the one for this story. I was willing to follow the fantasy of a limited kind of HEA , not only for my sake, but also, the rational self argued, for marketing reasons. Any darker ending was too painful--for me, for prospective readers--and, no doubt, for my spirit informant herself.
~~Juliet Waldron
Saturday, May 29, 2021
Old Friends & Flowers on Memorial Day
Perennials are my favorites. I can't claim to be a master gardener, but I do love to put my hands in the dirt and grow things.
Walking around the yard this spring, I'm pleased with all the color. We're past even the latest daffodils here in PA, but it's Memorial Day now and so the peonies are going great guns, as well as the irises and various other plants whose names my brain has misfiled. Perhaps I have forgotten the names, but I know that they come back reliably this time of year and that they have a delicate fragrance that I enjoy when I'm sitting on the porch.
Many of my plants were gifts but ever so many of the givers are now dead. Each time I gaze at those plants, blooming away with all their might, I think of the nice folks who shared them with me and I am grateful.
Emily was one of the prolific givers. An athletic, charismatic red head, she and her equally good-looking husband Ray had a lovely down-a-country-road property. Over the years, Emily, who undertook nothing she did by halves, had turned their surroundings into a show place, with a stellar Koi pond surrounded by and ornamented with plants. There were the expected cattails and water lilies, but the papyrus she brought home from the nursery was a revelation, as I'd never actually seen a living breathing specimen before.
Over the years all the local wildlife found the pond, from deer to leopard frogs and tree toads. These little guys hatched in the water, then climbed, for the next part of their life cycle, into the nearby trees. They filled spring twilight evenings with their sweet quivering choruses. Herons came too, enraging Emily because they didn't just eat the frogs out of the pond, but her enormous Koi.
We were visiting one night, enjoying their company on the deck--they worked together in their auto dealership and had a big supply of "people are crazy" stories--when suddenly Emily shouted, leapt up and ran, an Amazon screaming curses, towards the pond. It was all explained in a flash, when an enormous blue heron, his long, yellow landing gear still dangling, executed an emergency take-off. I'd never seen one of these big birds so close, and certainly never one with a large, flapping red and white Koi in his narrow beak!
These peonies came from Emily, who told me a long story about her favorite Aunt Pard, whose flower garden and warm presence she remembered with equal pleasure. These were the old-fashioned kind of peony, no ginormous blooms, but, instead, a fragrance you don't often find in modern cultivars. These peonies were not happy in her yard, but, for some inexplicable reason they loved mine. Consequently, over the years, I've split them many times. Now they perform their brief, bright celebration of May in many groupings all over my yard--and they do smell sweet!
Today, enjoying the flowers, I remembered this couple, their out doors parties--blazing fires under 60 foot oaks, and barbecue-potlucks that lasted all night, their hunter's venison feasts and the annual trout opening day Bacchanalia begun before dawn, just behind their house on the rushing, brown Quittaphilia. So many laughter-filled, good-company evenings with them!
Now, astonishingly, these active, vital people are both gone. Like many long-married couples, Ray followed his Em to the grave within 6 months. Although they are no more, I have these lovely peonies to always remind me of them both.
~~Juliet Waldron
Friday, January 29, 2021
Mozart's Birthday, 2021
When I began Mozart's Wife, I was madly in love with the composer's music--which conflated to being in love with the man himself. His youthful music is so sensual, so bright and shiny, so full of optimism--it probably sounds like what the flowers must sing to lure the bees. it is green leaf and blue sky music--just the kind to accompany springtime and young love.
Mozart's Wife began like that, full of the romance that bloomed between Mozart and his Stanzi Marie. Pop songs from my own teen years filled my head while I wrote--songs which were likewise full of longing and desire, ones like "I think we're alone now" as the lovers seek a hiding place in which to express their body longings.
"Little sister don't you do what your big sister done" was the song in Mozart's head, I'm sure, for he'd first loved Stanzi Marie's big sister, Aloysia. This pretty, talented young woman instead had given herself to an aristocrat who obtained for her the prima donna's roles she craved.
Mozart's height of popularity is on the horizon. He and Stanzi marry, overcoming his father's objections. He composes operas for the court theater and is welcome at the soirees of the rich and famous. Stanzi, hitherto her family's Cinderella, shares in this--she has clothes, maids, lovely apartments, parties--all the perks of having a successful husband.
Babies come, as they do. A "Blessed event" used to be the euphemism. In the 18th Century, however, childbirth was "travail," a danger through which women passed with trepidation. If she was both lucky and healthy, she might escape unscathed, but death in childbirth was a real hazard. (In my own experience, a gentle, kind family friend disappeared from my childhood when she died in hospital (1953) three days after an apparently uneventful childbirth.) Back in the 18th Century, which had no knowledge of hygiene or germ theory, midwives and doctors alike transmitted puerperal fever and other forms of sepsis from one new mother to another.
Mozart concealed his acute, feminine sensitivity within his music, only expressing these culturally forbidden aspects of his personality through the female characters in his operas. Although the plots toe the patriarchal line-- i.e., his opera, Cosi fan Tutte--So do they all--these weak women--he certainly endows his female characters with engaging, memorable personalities. There are heroic women, conventional women, mad women, love-sick women, as well as power-hungry, manipulative women, women of wit, of humor and admirable gumption.
Like his wickedest creation, the rake, Don Giovanni, Mozart knows and loves them all. Once I understood that about him, even the episodes where I conjecture infidelity on his part, have a certain inevitability about them.
While writing Mozart's Wife, I discovered I did not want to take sides. I understood and loved both my leading characters.
So Mozart does what men of his century were permitted, stabbing Stanzi to the heart. Being a woman of spirit, and comforted and advised by her cynical sister Aloysia, she hardens her heart and pursues an amour her own.
In this section of the novel, I moved onto fictional ground, although plenty of rumors from which I drew my inspiration are recorded in letters and diaries of the contemporaries. Meanwhile, there are operas and orchestral pieces being written, some with no buyer in sight, created simply because Mozart's evolving genius compels him. At the same time, there was less recognition and they were falling headlong into debt; there was no stability for the little family. Despair over his faltering fortunes sends Mozart to the bottle.
Babies are born and die, famous and infamous real life characters pass through their lives--Lorenzo DaPonte, the renegade Italian priest and lyricist for Mozart's big three--Cosi fan Tutte, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro--as well as the real life Casanova. There is also a large cast of musicians, male and female, who sing or play his music. Some were friends, some were false. Some were lovers--of both his music and of the man. And all through these years immortal music was being written.
While writing Mozart's Wife, I discovered I could not take sides. I understood and loved both my leading characters, despite their failures and flaws. I hope, if you read Mozart's Wife, you will too.
Here is a group of Mozart fans from twenty years ago, at the yearly birthday party I used to have for my hero. We drank syllabub and champagne and consumed all manner of party goodies. We swapped stories that we'd read about Mozart all while listening to his blissful music. Dear friends!
Happy Birthday, Wolfgang Amadeus!
~~Juliet Waldron
http://www.julietwaldron.com
See all my historical novels @
Wednesday, July 29, 2020
The Narcissistic Villain
Villains can be a tricky proposition--in fiction as well as in our day to day world. We all hope we don't become entangled with malevolent people--ones who wish us harm--in real life. "Mad and Bad & Dangerous to know," was said of Byron, who was definitely NOT the kind of man you wanted to enchant your daughter. However, in a story, a villain provides driving force to a plot, and gives the hero and heroine an antagonist with whom to spar. Inside a book, we are safe; there is no actual blood spilled.
By the way, the gentleman on the spooky cover above is not the villain, although he is a shape-shifter. The villain in Zauberkraft: Black is "a man of wealth and taste" who also happens to be a vampire. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and vampires, certainly, have eternity in which to brood and plot.
Villains can be fun to write--my cohort were brought up on movie theater cowboy serials, thus today, in our most entertainment ready mode, we still enjoy a good melodrama. Here, the white hats win and the black hats are carted off to justice. And what could be more melodramatic than a movie like "The Heiress"? Though this picture was made before I emerged from my mother, it's one of those movies I vividly remember seeing for the first time. I remember long cold Skaneateles winter-frigid afternoons, wrapped in woolens and watching a small Zenith TV. The somber black and white flickering on the screen matched the mood of the frozen world outside.
For anyone who isn't familiar, here's the plot. A naive, lonely heiress falls prey to a narcissistic con man, whose plan is to marry her, drive her mad, and then have her committed so he can assume control of her fortune. At first, he is the caring, genteel lover of whom she's dreamed. He does every little romantic thing for her so that, without knowing anything about him, she accepts his proposal. In modern psychological parlance this is called "love bombardment." It's the full charm offensive with which the narcissist sweeps his target off her feet.
Next, the husband seduces the parlor maid and enlists her aid in his plot. Then the two of them begin to undermine his wife's trust in her sanity. Every night, he turns down the gaslight in the hall just a little bit, all the while staunchly insisting that his wife's "just imagining" it. The setting, in 19th Century America, where women were easily dispatched to asylums by husbands who had tired of them, smooths the villain's way.
Now, more than half a century later, "gaslighting" is a term with which most are familiar. Now, however, instead of referring to the actions of a single smooth sadist in an old film, it's commonly used by therapists to describe one of the ways in which a narcissist first undermines and then controls his relationship partner. In the real world, the narcissist is a dangerous creature, and lately it seems they are everywhere.
Back to the more innocuous world of fiction, where a narcissistic personality type makes a great villain. The narcissist, it turns out, has a sort of universal playbook. Reliably unreliable, considering only their own advantage, they love nothing and no one. In their world, empathy, or its cousin, sympathy, are incomprehensible, concepts "for suckers." They swallow up the people around them like a black hole. Absolute power, a constant stream of praise from sycophants combined with blind obedience to their whims is a narcissist's dream of heaven.
Some of the other traits that characterize a narcissist are grandiosity, an excessive need for admiration, disregard for the feelings of others, inability to accept criticism, and an air of entitlement and superiority. They target vulnerable, empathetic people who have something they want; they are masters of manipulation. When they don't get what they want, they become epic bullies, hounding their targets into submission.
After all, the true full blown malignant narcissist (at least, as a fictional character) is one who seems constantly in danger of "over the top." There is, after all, a wide spectrum of human behavior and one of the first duties of a writer is to convince the reader that the story is--on some level--believable. So many of my villains are somewhere in the dark gray end of the zone, not irredeemably black. Still, there are some terrors in these books of mine.
~~Juliet Waldron
Website of Juliet Waldron
Friday, November 29, 2019
Day after Turkey
Day after Thanksgiving here. We've reached the life stage where family lives far away and there are no youngsters nearby. Down to bare minimum family now. A brother-in-law who visits from Maryland. We cook less every year, but it's still too much. Husband & his brother have gone down to Lancaster County to go knife shopping on Black Friday, so here I am--tardy--but here.
Anyone who writes about Mozart has to have a love for opera, and if you've been reading me for even a small time, you know I truly adore this old, peculiar western art form. I'm beginning to break free of the tried and true repertory. (How many Madame Butterflys can you absorb?) The wonderful innovation of Met performances showing at the Movies allows me to go with a fellow devotee to see a performance from NYC of Philip Glass's opera, Akenaten.
Usually, you "hear" an opera more than "see" it. In the case of this production, however, the visual was a partner to the music. As a result of the one-two punch, the performance stunned us. Juggling has been added to the staging, and it provided another way to enter into entrancement. This composer is sometimes accused of creating what has been called "Philip Glass Time," in which the audience is left spellbound. The popular genre this music is most clearly related to is Trance.
And that's where I'll leave this, because words fail me. I can't do justice to this performance which combines choreography, music of orchestra and voice, and spectacle filled with color and symbolism.
Karen Kamensek was the conductor; good to see a woman take the podium and do exactly what the work needed. No outsize stars here, just an astonishing piece of teamwork, craft, professionalism and ART.
My friend and I were hypnotized. It took us a few minutes to collect our wits and walk with great care out of the theater with all those multi-plex (disorienting!) carpet patterns. Hours had passed; when we finally saw a clock, we were surprised by how late it was.
Here's a link--barely a minute of your time, if you are curious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSn_UAquOfw
Sunday, September 29, 2019
An AWOL Character Returns
My first novel, one where the main character moved into my head and literally would not be let me alone, not to sleep, not for work, or even to quietly clean my house. Nanina talked and talked and talked for six months straight and I had to stay up half of every night typing like crazy just to get it all down. Miss Gottlieb's story of love, of magic, of music and of madness set me on the full time writer's path some forty (!!) years ago.
Sometimes, after starting out with a rush and talking away like crazy, a character can decide to take a holiday--sometimes permanently. Actually, this is more like "going AWOL" for the hapless author, who may have a book contract to complete. This is one of the hazard's of being the kind of writer who is working their way through a planned series of linked stories. I once was far more "prolific" --the favorite description of all all agents who are shopping a writer to an editor--but my own little well of inspiration dried up about a year ago.
I believed I was done--written out. Instead of mourning or getting bent out of shape, I've been trying to Zen my way through the absence. After all so many years of story telling, there was certainly a sense of loss, but I was determined not to brood or feel sorry for myself, but simply to take a "wait and see" attitude.
Recently, however, I've received cage rattling, from not one, but from two characters, the leads in two quite different unfinished novels. One is pure, unadulterated romance (Aphrodite help me!). The other is Zauberkraft Green, which was supposed to be the third story in my "Magic" series. As the name suggests, these are historical novels with a fantasy flare, stories which cross a lot of genres, from Gothic to Adventure to Horror and Romance.
Zauberkraft Green's main character is Charlize, who is the grandchild of Caterina, who is the heroine of the strongly romance-inflected Zauberkraft Red. Charlize is also the niece of Goran, Caterina's first born son and the shape-shifting hero of Zauberkraft Black.
Typically--at least, what I'd come to expect from Charlize after we became acquainted--was a lot of ADHD precocious chatter, even a certain bitchiness. Then, just as suddenly as she had begun, her voice vanished from my head.
I'm beginning to think she didn't want to talk too much about the things that frightened and threatened her, because, hell, what I do know about those elements of the story frighten me too. However, all of a sudden, right about the dark of the moon a few days ago, Charlize began to speak again. This blog is a kind of celebration that she's taken it upon herself to reappear and (maybe) finish the darn story.
Or at least, I hope so! I don't want to go on too long about her reappearance or gloat. As everyone who writes, or aspires to, knows, these gifts from the Spring of the Muses must not be taken for granted. A lot of work and even more concentration will be necessary to turn whatever odds and ends she shares into the spooky journey I hope that Zauberkraft Green will eventually be.
BTW, all three of these novels are Regencies, even if the first two have a European setting instead of the traditional Lyme Regis or Bath. Young teen Charlize, however, has been adopted by an Englishman, a kindly gentleman who has made an honest woman of her beautiful mother and moved them all to London, so here they are at least, proper Regency people, living where they are supposed to: in the UK.
Wish me luck! I'm sure I'll need it.
~~Juliet Waldron
(Happily hearing voices in her head again!)
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Cat Wrangling For Christmas
I'm writing about our primary Christmas present, Tony from Long Island, because this little devil is just about a full time project at the moment. Tony is the new kitty kid in our household, bringing our total to three. His evolving relationships with our older felines is about all that's doing around at our house this past few weeks.
When Tony arrived--a long day's round trip for his tender-hearted rescuers from Bayshore--he was still small. However, like the monster in 20 Million Miles to Earth, he's grown by leaps and bounds.
Tony has been assisted in this astonishing growth spurt by lots of Purina Kitten Chow(c) and the testicular rocket-fuel contained in two cute gray and white fuzzy balls placed tidily beneath his ringed smoke-gray tail. The presence of these feline superchargers adds another element of uncertainty to our cat integration story. Our elder cats (both 9 years, one with muscular-skeletal issues and the other with PTSD) can scent that this young tom is in super-hero mode, all strength, activity and wacky, climbing the walls cat-a-tude.
With those afore-mentioned super-chargers attached, Tony decided to chase and wrestle with the one who had first been fun to romp with and who now, inexplicably, was refusing. That rough play led to Willy-Yum hiding under the bed and not eating. And that led to his kitty parents, who'd only seen the play part of the new relationship, pushing the panic button and taking Willy to the vet for a blood panel. After we got the bill, I knew that the "Christmas present" agreement was a realistic one, at least as far as keeping our budget under some semblance of control went.
Fortunately, I'd been smart enough to get new laser for red dot games and a new feather toy, so that I can give Tony some of the exercise he desperately longs for. Years ago, in another age, we might have let this rambunctious boy outside, but this has begun to feel owner irresponsibility. First off, this sweet and absolutely NOT streetwise boy could instantly get himself killed or lost--as in "curiosity killed the ... ". Besides, who knows what feats of ill-advised daring those testicles might urge him to undertake in the exciting out of doors?
So, until we get those fractious appendages are removed--we are counting down the days to the surgery date--I'm doing a lot of cat wrangling. This means supplying litter boxes all over the house, as well as beds and dishes of food and water in various rooms, and these must be washed and refreshed daily. Sometimes Willy-Yum and I are in my bed room for some private time; sometimes Tony is in his bedroom for a time out; sometimes Kimi has to be carried out of the cellar, is her default PTSD retreat. Afterward, she must be placed gently on the couch, combed and brushed a little and protected until Tony's interest goes elsewhere.
We are making use of the elusive antics of the red dot and the tease toys, too. In short, Kitty Mom and Dad are kept pretty busy, while, at the same time, trying not to be "helicopter parents," and allow the cats to work out things for themselves. It's much like adopting a kid in many ways, this delicate business of integrating another sensitive being into our home. We're doing our best to be responsible, thoughtful caretakers of all of our animal companions.
While this may all sound a bit over the top, as the little old woman next door used to say about her pets, "They are a whole lotta company." and so they are! And if I'd wanted a "new toy" to entertain me, I've certainly got one in Tony. We've never had a cat who watched T.V. before--I mean ALL television--not just birds and small mammals--Tony watches everything, from cop shows to football games. We have to keep the squirt gun handy in order to prevent him hurling himself into the screen.
He's going to be a great cat, our little Tony the Tiger! We think he's pretty great Christmas present, despite all the work involved.
~~Juliet Waldron
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