The Girdle of Melian

nterview! With the amazing Barbara Rogan!

I first met Barbara through the Compuserve Books and Writers Community (thank you, Diana Gabaldon), and recently participated in her Revising Fiction Workshop, which helped me no end when I was trying to finalise the edits for Out of the Water (also, thanks to Matthew, I'm going to revise my query again!). And now, here's Barbara, first as an author, and then as an editor:

As an author...
Which is the most embarrassing song, book, movie or TV show that you love?

I watch those high-end real-estate reality shows, "Selling New York" and the like, which is pure voyeurism: seeing how the 1% live and imagining myself in those houses.


Which of your characters is most like you?

There's some of me in all of them, including (or especially) the villains. I do feel a great affinity with one character from my second book, Café Nevo: Emmanuel Yehoshua Sternholz a 72-year-old waiter in a Tel Aviv café. Sternholz is always there, sweeping …

uestions! More questions! I've mixed up a few from Cherie and from Julie:

1. What's your favourite item of clothing and why?

Leggings. I'm really excited that they're back.

2. If you could have any exotic or fantastical pet, what would you have?

Misha mentioned a cat-sized dragon...

3. What is your current writing project? Ayten's story, Rome, Rhymes and Risk (historical romance, set in 1493):
Ayten, an Ottoman girl kidnapped as a slave, is rescued and embarks on a voyage across the Mediterranean with her new friends, on their way to join Columbus' second voyage. She finds herself falling for the man who owns the ship: Devran, the son of the Grand Vizier.

Exiled for a crime he did not commit, Devran's also got one secret: before Ayten was kidnapped, her father had arranged for her to marry Devran.

Devran's been in love with Ayten for months - but having met him only after his exile, Ayten believes him a penniless rake. Their ship docks for a week at Venice…

riday fun facts! That's the name of the fun new weekly feature Karen has on her Outlandish Observations blog. They're all Outlander-related, of course, but interesting even if you haven't read the novels, including titbits about 18th Century printing presses, poisonous tomatoes, what a bodhran sounds like, electric eels, and more.

[Don't forget the Campaign Challenge! My post is below the post about Talli. If you like my entry, please click on Like on Rach's page - I'm number 24]

I've been distracted by reviewing former blog posts for Pinterest, and noticed that I barely knew how to format a blog post when I first started, in 2007. Some of my links are spelled out, and there are hardly any images - some posts are only one one sentence long! One of the first to feature an image was the post where I talked of discovering a photo of my character Austin, from the MG The Face of A Lion. Along the way, I found a quote from Joanna Bourne, featuring Tolkien, on the…

on't forget to take a look at my challenge entry below, if you're part of Rach's campaign!

Abebooks did a round up of romance book covers over the years, featuring recurring motifs of nurses, uncomfortable embraces, floating heads, another tropes. While the article generally deplores the kind of 'art' that's graced the covers of this genre over the years, it also seems to reinforce the point that these novels are mostly about fantasizing and escapism - as is science fiction and fantasy.

Er, no. There are worlds in those stories, and there can be just as much character development and interaction as in any other genre of story. They're not all fluff.

Unfortunately, they're right about the old covers: "Just like your favorite sci-fi novel will often be adorned with outdated fonts, blinding color schemes, multi-headed monsters and embarrassingly scantily-clad space-vixens, you’ll similarly rarely find a subtle romance cover. No tasteful muted tones, no…

ampaign challenge!

Shadows crept across the wall. Devran picked up her quill and twirled it. "I was banished to Smyrna."
"Smyrna!"
"Yes." Orange ink splattered onto his knee. "I was there last autumn."
The quill came close to her dress. "So that's how you knew everyone at my father's funeral." She pushed his hand aside and the quill fell on the sand.
"I wasn't long in Smyrna. My mother took ill and -"
"You said it'd been years since she'd passed away. Or was that a lie?"
"I was not lying, Ayten," he said, rising. The sunset behind cast his body into shadow. "I don't tell falsehoods or embellish my words. That would be the task of a poet." He tossed the quill beside her.
"Tell me the story then, and we'll see what poetry comes of it. A young girl, lost in the city. The spoilt son of the Grand Vizier, who takes advantage of her innocence -"
"Be careful wh…

ow that I've signed up for the campaign challenges, I'll miss my Sunday ROW80 updates this week and later on in March, as I'll be posting Monday. Wish me luck with the first challenge!

So here's a quick update: I've gotten a few more scenes under my belt, and a little more research reading - which reminds me:

If you were sailing from Constantinople all the way to Spain, in 1493, and had left rather in a hurry, what sorts of items would you need in your cabin? Items you might purchase in an Athens market. Candles? Extra clothing? A knife? A lantern? Something else?
I've also been agonizing over this month's Writers' Exercise on the Forum. Something about writing a metaphorical bedroom scene...

Meanwhile, though, I'm closer to finding an exact image of Magdalena, Rosa's mother. The timeline goes like this - Santiago and Magdalena meet in London in the 1470s. Their only child is Rosa, who goes on to marry Baha, as told in Out of the Water. They resc…

ag! I'm it!

Thanks to Kaylie for posing these interesting questions:

1) What is your most embarrassing moment?

Aha, you think I'm going to reveal that here? I'll think of another one though... there might be something book related... ah yes. I'm a rather bad (read: terrified) public speaker. My brain pulls a Homer Simpson, and disappears. So one day, in eighth grade, I had to do a book review, in front of the class. I'd been warned that we'd lose marks for reading, so I tried not to look down at my notes and instead, out of sheer nervousness, went off on a rant about the author. Caught sight of my teacher's open-mouthed expression and promptly shut up. Afterwards, one of my classmates said, "I could see your knees shaking." Yes, thank you. I was aware.

2) If you had to play a sport as a career, which one would it be?

Good question! Something historical, like archery or swordfighting. I think I could do darts and archery rather well, but I'm not …

ery slow progress. Steady, but slow. I just want to sit there, eating that ice cream, and spend the weekend reading. I think I'll set aside next weekend as Reading Weekend, just to try to make a dent in the TBR hills, especially all my author friends' books .

Although, the other day, I came up with a new trick that seems so obvious, I don't know why I didn't think of it before. I was all stalled and lazy and just wanted to read, so I thought:

Why don't I WRITE the kind of scene I feel like READING?
And I did! I might post a snip, once I've done a little editing.

Then, the next day, I got a little distracted by my new Pinterest boards. It's like Tumblr, but with images only.

Here's one of the images I'm going to add on there, Quentin Blake's illustration for the Folio Society book bag:

And now... Origins!
This fun blogfest, which officially begins tomorrow, is hosted by DL Hammons, Alex Cavanaugh, Katie Mills, and Matthew MacNish.
"Post your own …

ate Kaynak's Operative is coming! This is the fifth book in the Ganzfield series, all about Maddie Dunn and the other G-positives who live at the Ganzfield training facility. I reviewed the third book, Legacy, here.


In the latest book, Maddie and the others (including sparks and minders - and Maddie's boyfriend, a telekinetic (who, because of what happened in the last book, is now afraid to touch her)) have to catch the person selling classified information about them to terrorists - before they become the targets. I'm looking forward to reading it this weekend!

And now... Rach Harrie's Fourth Writers' Platform-building Campaign is here!
"the Campaign is a way to link those of us in the writing community together with the aim of helping to build our online platforms. The Campaigners are all bloggers in a similar position, who genuinely want to pay it forward, make connections and friends within the writing community, and help build each others' online platfo…

n 1 January, the published works of James Joyce came into the public domain. Apparently his grandson and only living relative, Stephen Joyce, used to keep a tight rein on all Joyce's works, but now that his published novels and stories are in the public domain, they can be (among other uses) freely quoted from.

If anyone knows, please tell me - can't executors of a literary estate keep 'buying' the copyright? That is, if Stephen Joyce was oh so controlling over his grandfather's estate, could he not have kept renewing the copyright?

I first read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in my early teens. I had a sweatshirt that featured Joyce and jokingly referred to Beckett going out in the middle of the night to get pizzas. Or something like that. Tried to Google it, but can't find the exact text, so here're Joyce and Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare & Company in Paris:

(image from Princeton Magazine)
Here's the lyrical opening to Portrait:
"Once upo…

y latest update for ROW80:

If slow and steady wins the race, I might have something tangible by the end of this round. I started with 25 scenes to fill in and I've done close to 10 of them already. I hope I don't cringe when I come to type them up. I do still love the story and the characters, and that's always been my benchmark for whether an MS is worth sticking with.

But look at all the scribbled paper edits I have to deal with once I've typed up the missing scenes:

The opening:

A few blurry shots of the worst messes:



Frodo gets in on the act:

"Keep this page":


Helen MacInnes' books are coming back into print! I really hope they reprint and publicise Friends and Lovers.


I picked up this novel at a book fair or secondhand bookstore years and years ago and fell in love with it - with the story, with the characters - on the first page. None of the handful of other MacInnes books I've read have had that same effect. Every few years I reread Friends and Lover…