Christy English

A Good Book is a Slippery Slope

Thursday, September 24th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

I have just started reading CLEOPATRA’S DAUGHTER  by Michelle Moran, and now I don’t want to put it down. I am sliding down the slope…

If it was Saturday, I would read it cover to cover in one sitting. As it is, I will have to wait until my work is done…

And I had hoped to take this one slow and savor it.  It turns out, I don’t have that kind of self control. But what a delicious problem to have…a book so good, characters that breathe with such life, that I do not want to turn away.

Quote of the Week

Friday, September 18th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.”

Abraham Lincoln

C. W. Gortner to Appear on My Blog

Monday, July 27th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

I have exciting news for all the historical fiction fans who may be tuning into my blog…C.W. Gortner, the author of The Last Queen about Juana of Castile, is going to do a guest blog here in the summer of 2010! Yes, I know…that’s a year from now. But I am excited, so I had to mention it anyway. I will be mentioning it off and on between now and next summer, so brace yourselves. And if you have not read his book yet, I highly recommend it.  Juana of Castile, known in Spain as Juana la Loca, is a fascinating woman who lived a truly wild life. She was the daughter of Isabella of Castile, the same woman who sent Columbus on his voyage to the New World.  Juana has her mother’s strength and fire, if not her political backing. An amazing woman, and an amazing book.

As a side note, I will also be doing a guest blog on C.W. Gortner’s website in April. I will mention more about that as the time draws nigh.

For those of you who want to have a look at Mr. Gortner’s site, here is the link:

www.cwgortner.com

Take a look…

Siren Song

Friday, October 3rd, 2008 | Selling Your Work, The Writing Life, Uncategorized | Comments Off

 Last week I had the unusual experience of reading the comments an editor made while passing on my novel.  The Queen’s Pawn is being looked at by editors in nine houses in New York. Three of these houses have passed so far, which is to be expected. I have been at this awhile, so I am never surprised by rejection. I am, however surprised by compliments.

Last week’s pass was particularly surprising. The editor, a well respected woman at a house I have always hoped to work with, was so pleased with my style that she would read the same novel again with an eye toward buying it, if I were to make major changes.

I am still considering her comments. To hear anything complimentary in the subjective and often acidic business of publishing is rare. I will admit that I am tempted. Temptation is a new concept for me; this is the first time someone has asked me to modify my original vision to this extent.

The comments offered by the editor would add strength and dimension to the novel, would take it into different territory than I ever conceived for it. It would be a different book.

While this is not a bad thing, I hesitate. I have a pact with the protagonist to tell her story to the best of my ability. To make changes that might take the novel away from her would defeat the purpose of writing the book in the first place. (Alais, for those interested in historical fiction, is the young French princess who makes a small appearance in both the play and the film, The Lion in Winter.)

Like most women in history, Alais was silent during her lifetime. No one makes movies about her, or write books or plays in her honor, as they do for the people who surrounded her: Philippe Auguste of France, Henry II of England, Richard the Lionhearted, and Eleanor of Aquitaine. She lived and died in silence, her reputation forged in the fires of the actions of others.

In The Queen’s Pawn, I hope to give Alais some semblance of a voice. It is not possible to speak for the dead, but I hope to honor her.

But I digress. The question remains, to change the novel, or to leave it intact?

It is a question I will have to answer. But if I make changes to The Queen’s Pawn, the novel will remain Alais’ story. She and I have been partners in the work for two years. The story will remain hers, no matter what else is added to it.

Tiger’s Eye

Monday, July 28th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Once more, I disappeared from my own website for the better part of a year. I am a terrible blogger, but when I am not  online, which is most of the time, I am working to become a better writer. While most of my fiction is historical in nature, concerning the Plantagenets of England and France in the late part of the twelfth century, I also write some modern fiction. The following story is one that has never been published, but that I am fond of, in spite of its many faults. It is called Tiger’s Eye. It’s a story I wrote years ago, before moving away from Wilmington and finding greater joy in New York.

                                           Tiger’s Eye
        I drank my coffee and watched my son hang by his knees from the monkey bars. He waved. I waved back, and he smiled at me with his father’s smile.
       He swung down and landed with his tennis shoes unlaced in the dirt. We had not had rain in over a week, and the dust of the playground rose under his feet in a cloud of sand. I gave him a thumbs’ up. He laughed, his eyes triumphant, and ran away from me.
       My son climbed to the top of the highest slide. He waved to me again. When I waved back once more, he slid down in a flurry of limbs, screaming, ending on his feet at the bottom. He did not look toward me then, but raced away, heading back to the ladder. Before long, he would stop looking for me altogether. He would ascend ladders without my vigilance, and would no longer listen for my applause.
       I sat with my coffee in my hands, the newspaper I had bought lying on the bench beside me. I felt the weight of that paper press against my thigh. The wind blew its pages, and I set a rock on top to anchor it.
       I bought that paper every Sunday, and every Sunday it went unread. I bought it as penance, to remind myself of all I was missing in the world outside. Of all I had left behind when I exiled myself for the sake of the man I loved, and for the sake of our child.
       The man was gone, and I was left in the shadow of his passing. The price I paid for betraying myself was the burden of living in exile, in a town where the people were polite, but only on the surface. I could always see in their eyes the question, “And when are you going home?”
       Ryan ran up to me. I wiped the sorrow from my face, but this child knew me. I pulled Ryan close and listened as he caught his breath. He had had a bath that morning, but already he was dirty, with sand on his jeans and the sharp sweet smell of little boy sweat in his hair.
       I kissed him, and he let me. This was one of the many ways he offered comfort, by allowing me to touch him even in front of his friends, even when he would rather stand alone. I smoothed his sweaty hair back from his forehead.
       “Mom,” he said. “Can I play at Bobby’s this afternoon?”
       He pointed at the boy he had been running with, who was now hanging upside down from the monkey bars. I pressed my face into my little boy’s neck. I felt him tense, the same way his father always had, and I loosened my grip. I ran my hand down his arm, and let him go.
       “I don’t know, sweetheart. You’ll have to ask Daddy when he comes.”
       His face clouded then, before he shielded the look from me. I felt his pain as if it were my own. I would cut out my own heart rather than see that pain on my child’s face.
       “Okay, Mom.”
       I squeezed his hand. “Daddy will be here soon,” I said. “We’ll ask him then.”
       Ryan ran away before I could comfort him with another touch. I watched as he shook his sorrow off, and buried it, the way his father always buried pain, to be locked away and never looked at again.
       Ryan’s eyes were a tawny brown, like the tiger’s eye stone I wore around my neck, a gift from my early courtship with his father. When Robert gave me that stone on a gold chain, I thought that I would love him forever. I thought that I had found a love like those in fairy stories. Where the world falls under an enchantment and is never the same again.
       I fingered the stone where it lay hidden under my sweater. I had not known that the enchantment would bind only one way. I had thought that true love lasted forever. It did, but only for me.
       I saw my husband across the park, the tilt of his head, the certainty of his stride that I would know anywhere. I smiled at him, and waved. I saw the shutters close over his eyes. His gaze stayed cool until he saw our son, and then the shutters flew open as they once had opened for me. He picked our little boy up, and held him.
       I stood, crumpling my empty coffee cup in one hand. My husband crossed the park to me with Ryan on his arm.
       “Hello, Deborah.”
       “Robert.”
       He smiled in gratitude to find my voice even, devoid of accusation or appeal. As my husband set him down, Ryan looked at me cautiously, for he knew me better. I smiled for him, and he turned to his father, assured that I was well.  
       “Daddy, can I play at Bobby’s this afternoon?”
       Ryan pointed the child out, and I stood listening to their talk. This was not a decision I was involved in. I picked up my paper, and tucked it under my arm.
       “Well, I’m headed home.”
       I held out my arms to my son. He ran into them, heedless of the other children on the playground, heedless of the pain on his father’s face. This was the worst moment of the week, the moment when I left him.
       I made myself think of Thursday, when I would have him back again. I pretended that he would be back to stay, that a miracle would happen. His father would suddenly love me, and we would all go home.
       “I love you, Mom.”
       His voice was muffled in my sweater.  I knew that if I stayed a moment longer, he would cry.
       I met my husband’s eyes over our son’s head, and I saw enough pain there to make me feel stronger. I was not alone in this.
       I pulled away from our son. Robert stepped forward to take his hand. Ryan allowed himself be transferred from one parent to the other.
       “I love you, Ryan. I’ll call you tonight and read you the next chapter in our book.”
       Ryan nodded, trying valiantly not to cry. “Okay.”
       I cursed myself that I had not been clever enough to make his father love me, or desperate enough to find a way to make him stay, so that now my son looked at me with a pain for which I had no cure.
       I lifted my hand in a wave. I waited until Ryan lifted his hand to me, and then I walked away.
       “Let’s go meet Bobby,” I heard my husband say.
       “Okay.”
       I walked faster. Tears burned my eyes, and I was sick of tears. I blinked them away, and drew the city paper close against my chest.
       Today, for the first time, I would read it, every line. There was a world outside the town I was living in, places untouched by the pain I lived with. People with different pain, with worse pain, lived in the pages of that paper. I would embrace them all. I would separate myself from the silence of my house. It was always as silent as death when my son was away.