I returned to my boarding school recently to spend a day as visiting writer, talking with boys about the writing process, the writing business, and my novel The Bookman’s Tale, which some of the classes had read. The imminent trip made me go digging through a file of old high school English papers and I found that I still have a paper to which I frequently refer when talking to groups about The Bookman’s Tale.
Throwback Thursday Alice Covers
For the past several months I have been taking advantage of that peculiar holiday known as “Throwback Thursday” (does anyone know who invented this?) to showcase some of the covers of vintage editions of Alice in Wonderland from my collection. I say “Alice Covers,” however, I have included covers of other books, and even the covers of things that are not books, like games and puzzles from the 1920s and 1930s.
It’s not something I can do forever—though my wife and friends might not believe it, my Lewis Carroll collection is finite—but it’s been a fun way to explore the collection, share it with my Facebook followers, and display some of the variety of book (and related) art from the past century or more.
Why I Won’t Bombard You on Facebook
When I started to experience some success as I writer I heard it from colleagues, from friends, from my agent, and from my publisher: you need to have a presence on social media. But what is a presence? Facebook updates twice a day, ten or twelve tweets a day, and a new blog at least once a week seemed to be the common wisdom. There have been times when I have actually tried to do this. There are three reasons why I won’t be doing it in 2015. Not that I won’t have a social media presence; I will. I just think that it should be a presence that respects both my time and yours, and here are my reasons why:
Hope to See You Soon!
Well, the launch is behind me and the book tour begins in earnest today. It seems like yesterday I was out introducing the world to The Bookman’s Tale, but that was a year and a half ago and I learned a lot from the experience. One thing I learned is that I can’t reach every reader who wants to make a connection with the author. In the next twenty-eight days I have seventeen events. I will get to connect with a lot of readers. But not everybody. So, here are some promises.
Who Is Richard Mansfield?
In my new novel, First Impressions (published yesterday but you can still get a copy from your favorite bookseller), Richard Mansfield is an ageing cleric who comes to Hampshire for his health. There he meets and befriends a young aspiring novelist named Jane Austen. But there is something you probably ought to know about Richard Mansfield. He’s not a real person. Oh, Jane Austen is real enough, although in my novel she does some things that she didn’t do in real life (that’s why it’s called a novel after all). But Mansfield is no more than a figment of my imagination. That picture of him—it’s not him; if couldn’t be because he died before the invention of photography. But it’s what I imagine him to look like.
A Publication Day Thank You!
It’s publication day for my second novel with Viking Press, First Impressions; A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen. Before you read this blog, run out and buy a copy! Have you bought it? Good. Now, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—please read the acknowledgements. Writing a manuscript might be a lonely solo endeavor, but creating a book is a team effort and the acknowledgements are where the author gets to thank some of the members of the team. Of course, lead time being what it is, there are names that I do not learn until after it is too late to include them, so to the list below I would add Kristen Haff who designed the beautiful dust jacket as well as book designer Sabrina Bowers. To thank the rest of the team, here are my acknowledgements as they appear in the book you just bought (no spoilers, I promise).
Pride and Prejudice: The First Edition
I didn’t hold it in my hand until after I had written the second draft of First Impressions. The first edition of Jane Austen’s immortal Pride and Prejudice. It is a book at the center of my own novel, coming out in next week from Viking. I had written what I thought of as a very intimate scene in which my protagonist, Sophie Collingwood, who adores Jane Austen, holds a first edition in her hands. After Sophie opens the first of the three small volumes that holds her favorite text and reads the famous opening, she thinks:
Where Did You Get the Idea?
It’s one of the questions I hear most often when I speak at bookstores, schools, and festivals: Where did you get the idea for your novel. It’s complicated, because there is no one idea that makes a novel. A novel is built from hundreds or even thousands of ideas, and they don’t all come from the same place. But let me try to field that question as it pertains to my upcoming novel, First Impressions. I can at least tell you about the genesis and some of my process.
My Favorite Book
Today is my birthday, so it seems a good opportunity to answer the question I have heard many times over the years—“What is your favorite book in your collection?” I invite you to try answering this question. It’s not easy. Not, perhaps, in a league with “Which of your children is your favorite?” but still . . .
What’s In a Name
One question that pops up sometimes when I am talking to people about writing is “Where do you get names?” Names are tricky, I find. Sometimes a name simply presents itself to me. For some reason I always knew Peter Byerly in The Bookman’s Tale would be a Peter. It had nothing to do with the symbolic meaning of the name—I wasn’t trying to imply that he is a rock. He just always seemed like a Peter. Sophie Collingwood in First Impressions is named after my dog, Sophie, and Lewis Carroll’s nephew and biographer, Stuart Collingwood. Yet as soon as she was named, she became Sophie Collingwood, and could not possibly be anyone else. This brings up another tricky thing about names. I find I have to get it right the first time—it’s hard to rename a character once I have gotten to know her.