Author: rachelhartman

Seraphina: Origins I

/ rachelhartman / 4 Comments

(I know, I said I was only posting three times a week. Apparently I’m starting that next week.)

It took me eight years to write Seraphina. More accurately, it took me eight years to write four distinct novels, three of which were called Seraphina. The first was called Theodosia. I started writing it when I was pregnant with my son, but I started thinking about it a couple years before that.

When I was a wee lass, just twenty-nine years old, my parents got divorced. It was a shock; I’d sooner have believed the Law of Gravity was being repealed (in fact, for a time I was certain it had been). I found my feet again, eventually, and as the dust settled I was left with an idea: what would it be like to marry someone with a terrible secret, and then to learn it only after they died?*

*NB: this is not what happened to my parents, exactly. This was just some residue I found on the ground after the explosion.

I didn’t get to work on it right away, though. I’d just won the Xeric Grant and was putting together the collected edition of Amy (and oh, was it ever lucky I’d finished Belondweg Blossoming, because I was in a very different place than when I began it!). I didn’t get a chance to start writing until I was nearly 31, when I was pregnant and about to move across the continent and in the mood to write a dismal novel full of family secrets and futility.

I wrote Theodosia by committing to e-mailing a chapter a month to my sisters and Josh (who was an honorary sister). That’s a slow way to go, 10-12 pages a month, but I was writing in 15-minute stretches while the baby napped (he was never a very good napper). There was a father, Claude, whose wife had died in childbirth — revealing her terrible secret! The child, Theodosia (called Dosey), wasn’t told the terrible secret because of course the best way to deal with such a thing is to continue keeping it secret at all costs! No one must know! And then Claude married into a family of gangsters who would want to know the secret, and there were other secrets as well, the keeping of which eventually exploded Claude’s second marriage. Poor Claude, he just never learned. Then Theodosia, having finally learned all the secrets, decided to keep them.

When I got to the end, my REAL sisters were kind and supportive and give me a dog biscuit for having finished. Josh, that phoney baloney sister, said NO NO NO you can’t end it that way. You’ve written a tragedy, woman! Dosey’s just going to go out and make all the same mistakes as her father!

Yessss, I said. Isn’t it gloriously dismal? It’s like Ibsen, with dragons.

But then I thought about it some more and realized he was probably right. It was depressing. I brightened up the ending, had Dosey leaving home and her father advising her not to be a bonehead like him, and then I called for beta readers on my blog. I was shocked how many volunteers I got.

And that was the beginning. Poor, sad Claude has been with me the whole time. The father-daughter tension is still there, but not as front-and-centre as it was. As tends to happen, my preoccupations changed over time. I’m never able to write the same book twice.

Limelight

/ rachelhartman / 8 Comments

This is the post I had envisioned myself writing first, but it turns out I’m like a whippet: I have to sniff in a circle for a while before I lie down. Once I’m down, of course, I just flop right on top of you and stick my skinny legs in your face and look at you like, What? I’m a whippet. You are my sofa. I’m pretty sure the reverse isn’t true.

So. Here’s the comfy flop: I’m a big nerd, and I like Rush. I intend to talk about music on this blog, and they’ve got a song that’s been on my mind, the lucky lads, so here they are right up front.

The embed function has been disabled on the YouTube video of the song, which is just as well since maybe you’re eating breakfast and maybe you don’t want Geddy Lee staring at you from my blog while you eat. But if you’re not familiar with “Limelight”, here she be. Unless you live in Canada, where a certain percentage of “Canadian content” is required, it’s not on the radio very often.

If you are in a bit of a rush yourself, ha ha, or if you are already rolling your eyes and thinking, “I haven’t liked Rush since I was fourteen years old and male!” — no worries. Here’s the punchline: As I set off on this journey toward publication, as I launch this new blog and poke at the internet, trying to establish some kind of “web presence”, it is a relief to hear my own ambivalence reflected in someone else’s music.

If you’re nerd enough to read on, matey, step into this matter transporter, here: Continue reading →

A little housekeeping

/ rachelhartman / 11 Comments
  • I’m going to try keeping to a schedule with this blog, since I am the sort to fling myself passionately at a new project and then burn out. I’ll be posting on M-W-F for a few weeks and see how that works.
  • Why yes, I do know it’s Tuesday, smarty-pants. I did not write this! I was not here!
  • I’m slowly but surely putting some delicious links down in the blogroll list, for days when you are sad and miss me. Right now it’s mostly book-chat sites, authors I like, and favourite musicians. Soon (by which I mean “whenever my inner chaos permits me to get to it”) I hope to link to a few other places my previous work can be found on the web. Things like the comic strip I linked to last post. There’s more where that came from.
  • If you’re very, very good, I could probably insert some comics directly into the blog here. Many (though not all) of my old comics are set in Goredd, just like my novel, so that might provide some insight and amusement. Or, y’know, bail me out when the day comes that I can’t think of anything to chat at you about.
  • Don’t count on that day coming too soon, however. I actually sat down and brainstormed blog topics – in the interests of not burning out, which is something I’m slowly learning I need to focus on – and I believe I could go on until the proverbial last dog is hung. (NB: no dogs will be hung on my watch, you have my word!)
  • But not today! I vanish as quickly as I appear! You saw nothing!

An oldie but goodie

/ rachelhartman / 1 Comment

Ask the Authorette.

The origins of my cockroach quote, below. I know you were dying to know when I’d said that. DYING.

The scariest part is: I still kind of look like that.

Here’s how it’s gonna be

/ rachelhartman / 4 Comments

I always like to write myself a little mission statement at the beginning of a new blog, so that I can look back years later and say, “Whaa? I said I would do THAT?” It’s like getting a surprise present from myself!

I have a few aspirations for this blog. I often find myself pontificating in my own head whilst walking the dog, explaining to some invisible audience all the myriad odd inspirations for my work – and there are a lot of them. There’s music, of course; the book is deeply concerned with music. There’s neurology, psychology, and philosophy. There’s my Grand Tedious Theories of ART. There’s that feeling I get when I’m walking under the plum trees in March, and I look up and see the first buds, bright as stars, opening against the grey sky.

Inspirations are everywhere, and ideas are not far behind. As I always say, “Ideas are like cockroaches: there’s always more behind the fridge!”

Books are an antique map of the mind, curlicued and elegant, with Zephyrs and grotesquerie all around the margins. Here be the author’s dragons! Here the Mountains of Madness and the Swampland of Piss and Vinegar! Such a map is beautiful, if baroque, but not always an infallible guide to “What was she thinking?”

Sometimes what you want is a GPS. That’s the blog. A crisp, sure voice saying, “In 100 meters, turn right onto Music Theory Road.”

I’m looking back over what I just wrote and trying to decide whether it sounds grand or silly. I’m gonna have to go with silly. Also: nerdy. That sounds like an excellent (and accurate!) start to me.

A beginning is a very delicate time…

/ rachelhartman / 6 Comments

That’s the obligatory first blog post title of any nerdly being worth the name, is it not? Well then. I had to fly my colours right up front, so you know who you’re dealing with.

Of course, now you’re going to picture me as the disembodied head of Princess Irulan. I can think of worse things, so that’s okay.

My name is Rachel Hartman. I’m a writer and a smart-ass. I’m Canadian and American and generally full of beans. This is a test-post, obviously, so you shouldn’t take anything here too much to heart.

Welcome, all.