A Life in Fiction

I recently uncovered a copy of Surviving the Writer’s Life by Suzanne Lipsett, from among the many books on writing and writers that have been packed for months in preparation for moving into a house big enough to accommodate thousands of books and manuscripts. In this autobiographical collection of essays, Lipsett admits that she was in disbelief when a world traveler had no intention of turning his fantastic adventures into a book. “What a waste of material,” she exclaimed.

I don’t approach living as “grist to the mill” experience for my writing, but life invariably insinuates itself into my work. Whether this is conscious or subconscious is difficult to assess, but the infiltration is unintentional…for the most part. I admit to making use of life events—my own and those of others—in my novels. Who doesn’t? But who enters into an event with the sole purpose of writing about the experience? That seems like living life backward.

My debut novel, published in 2012 by Avalon Books, is set in a city with which I fell in love during a visit in the fall of 2007 (or maybe even 2006!) Years before, I had started a story about an artist’s model titled “Sylvia’s Hands” but hadn’t completed the work. My visit to Florence (Firenze) changed all that. In combination with a true-life story I heard while working as a marketing agent for a Welsh magazine that had stuck in my head, the tetra-sided tale became Wait a Lonely Lifetime.

I had not gone on the sister-bonding journey with the objective of gathering material for a book. I did bring a notebook in which I was working on another story and making notes. I hadn’t even packed a camera (which I certainly regretted) because one of my sisters had suggested buying postcards instead.

Immediately, I made mental notes about this amazing city, not intentionally to set a future novel but for my personal education. I embraced the adventure, setting aside the notebook in favor of immersing fully in the moments, absorbing every sensation and all information. Two years later, the tour of Italy with three of my sisters, bubbled and brewed and bothered to the surface with Sylvia’s hands and the lost love of a man I had never met and would never know.

Two years after that, I pitched the work-in-progress to Lia Brown, then editor at Avalon Books during the 2010 RWA Romance Writers’ Conference—the third and last of the WIPs I had prepared. One year later, all the pieces of that story came together to make the finished novel which Avalon acquired, just before the publisher completed its negotiations with Montlake to transfer all of its creative assets (writers!) to Amazon’s publishing subsidiary.

The notebook I abandoned in order to enjoy my Florence experience became my second contemporary romance novel, Salsa Dancing with Pterodactyls, which is almost entirely fictional except …

Place as Character

When was the last time you read a book or saw a film that had no physical setting? That is, was not placed in a location you as reader or viewer recognized as at least a possibility?

I’m currently watching a rerun of Star Trek Voyager. The characters are familiar. The dress and language are recognizable. The location is … somewhere in the Alpha Quadrant. Who knows where or what that is?

Fans of the Star Trek franchise are familiar with these vast stretches of the imagination. We expect it, embrace it and depend upon it. It’s Science Fiction, after all. Fantasy at its finest.

But what about other genre fiction: Mystery, Crime fiction, Westerns, Contemporary, Regency Romance? In these fictional worlds, we’re not that comfortable with entirely imaginary places. We like to know that the London of the 19^th Century has the accoutrements we know from history and the novels of Eliot, Thackeray, Austen and Dickens. And that the Alamo is as dusty and dry as we’ve been led to expect from legend and Hollywood film.

Why are we less willing to suspend our disbelief when we read these genres? Why do we depend upon these anchors in reality when we are well aware that we entering a fictional world?

In my novel, Wait a Lonely Lifetime, the first part of the story is set in Florence, the second in San Francisco. I first visited this northern Italian city in the Fall. The city was not overwhelmed by tourists at the time of year, nor was the weather too fierce. The story itself could have taken place in any city or town anywhere in the world but I had visited and fallen in love with Florence.

Although, at the time of my visit I was working on another novel, Salsa Dancing with Pterodactyls, set entirely in San Francisco (with the occasional pop over to the Central Valley and Marin County), the story set in Florence swept me off into that world of piazzas, Mentana freedom fighters, Mafia atrocities and Cosimo Medici. None of these details were essential to the actual story I wanted to tell about Sylviana and Eric, but they all added physical depth, flavor and a sense of place.

When the time came to return to writing Salsa Dancing with Pterodactyls, I had used many of the landmarks and features that are remarkably San Franciscan in Wait a Lonely Lifetime: boating on the Bay, steep hills, narrow alleys, those that best reflected the daily lives of a woman, recently divorced and raising two young girls. For the love story Emily and David in Salsa, I chose commuter trains, office buildings, dance venues, Victorian houses and restaurants, the Golden Gate Bridge and redwood-lined highways.

These physical attributes of a place lend authenticity and grounding where Sci-Fi and Fantasy rely on the lack thereof to create a sense of displacement and wonder.

The Finer Things

This last Friday, one of my neighbors and fellow commuters arrived at the bus stop dressed in denims and a t-shirt. He is a civil engineer from Ireland, recently brought in from Australia to work for a construction firm in the Bay Area. His Friday garb reminded me that Dress-down Friday is still common these days.

This particular practice became popular years ago and was a particular favorite among employees in the tech industry.

Dressing down became the norm for 'techies' and spilled over gradually into other office-based working environments, depending on the industry. Dressing down in a law office is still rare. Like my character, David Gitano, in Salsa Dancing with Pterodactyls imposed on his staff, a dress code is in place in most legal establishments, banks, financial management, accounting - in fact, wherever there is a high level of fiscal, social or governmental responsibility.

Working people dress according to the perceived respect owed to their establishment. That particular aspect of dress reminded me of expectations for proper dress etiquette when I was a child.

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We had recently moved to the Bay Area from rural Maine. My mother was adamant that certain conventions and standards were to be maintained, regardless of what anyone else did. For example:

•         A lady always wears gloves (a good idea when you consider recent health reports regarding public transportation) 
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•         A lady of whatever age always wears her Sunday best to go Downtown to shop (this now applies to shopping malls)
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•       A lady of whatever age always wears a hat in church (particularly important at Easter)

These simple requirements became archaic and unnecessary in the mid-1960s when any form of dress or lack thereof became acceptable.

They may seem inconsequential but this sort of elegance is a function of civilized society and their gradual disappearance and replacement with less formal and occasionally rude behaviors allows an erosion of basic etiquette.  

In societies where close quarters means very little privacy, the development of strict formal behaviors is essential. Civility in crowded circumstances prevents altercations and my mother’s charming, superficial dictates were the cream on top of a standard of behavior my mother expected of us, as young ladies.