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Thursday, February 28, 2013

HILD cover reveal

This is the cover of my novel Hild, which will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 12 November 2013. (Why, yes, that is 11.12.13.)

I love it.

  • Cover designer: Charlotte Strick (art editor of the Paris Review, art director at Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
  • Cover artists: Anna and Elena Balbusso (multiple award-winning Italian twin sisters who have done some cracking work illustrating classics by people like Pushkin and Atwood).
This, obviously, is a JPEG so the colours are a wee bit unreliable. The physical object, though, will be stunning: uncoated, textured coverstock with the main title in gleaming gold. Drop-dead gorgeous.

I love the way Hild looks directly at her audience, utterly self-contained. I particularly admire the Botticelli-like face, and her hair, which is the exact shade of chestnut I'd imagined.
So, as I say, I love this cover—which is a miracle considering I had only one suggestion regarding the illustration: No representation of Hild! My editor, Sean McDonald (who has been my editor since Stay and, for some reason, seems to think I'm worth the aggravation) sighed and said, basically, The book's called HILD. She needs to be on the jacket.

I got a bit definite. No, I said. The novel starts with Hild aged 3. It closes with her aged 19. And she's a singular girl-woman who lives at the very edges of the constraints of her time—but is still constrained. How the fuck are you going to convey that? No. Absolutely not.

The response? The magisterial silence of an Editor Who Knows Best.

And, the thing is, in this regard he's right. Hild is in every single scene of this 200,000-word novel (though not every scene is from her point of view). She is the book; the book is her. She has to be on the cover. Just because that's impossible doesn't mean we shouldn't try do it anyway. After all, that's what I did in the writing. Why not in the illustration?

So in the end I explained how I wanted the cover to look—lush, forceful, dangerous (the way the weather is dangerous), stern, rich, luxurious, spare, clear, and other (often paradoxical; Hild's like that) things I don't remember—and put it from my mind.

And then I got this. A girl-woman with the thousand-yard stare of someone who has faced death and made terrible decisions since the age of eight, who looks out with the clarity of one who knows life is an undiscovered country full of joy and patterns to be understood. She was born in very difficult circumstances and survives because she has an extraordinary mind and a will of adamant.

What do you think?
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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

I am now an American citizen

I took the oath yesterday. It was a surprisingly moving ceremony.
I'll blog all about it in a few days. Right now I just want to loll about and bask in the glory that is dual citizenship. And—wonder of wonders!—there's actually sunshine here in Seattle. The perfect way to begin.
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Thursday, February 21, 2013

The Next Big Thing: Authors Tagging Authors

An excuse to talk about HILD...
My research blog Gemæcca began in 2008 with a medievalist blogger's meme game about favourite historical characters. I desperately wanted to talk about Hild, the main character of the novel I was working on but I had no blog. So I built one.

It is oddly satisfying to get tagged five years later for another meme just after I finished working on the copyedits of that novel, Hild.

I was tagged by the fantastic Karen Joy Fowler who talked about her new book, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, which I'm most definitely looking forward to. Karen was tagged by Ruth Ozeki, whose A Tale for the Time Being I've already started (it's excellent).

So here are the ten meme questions (I admit I edited some of them, just a bit) and my answers, followed by links to two other writers I'm tagging.
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1. What is the working title of your book?
The final title is Hild. But it began as Beneath (I wanted to turn over all the early medieval stones and look at what was wriggling on the underside). As I progressed the working title morphed from Light of the World to God in the Nettles to Butcher Bird to As It Must. But in the end my agent said, "Why don't you just call it Hild?" And I couldn't find a good answer: the book, after all, is about the formation and rise of Hild, a child and then woman with a matchless mind who was at the heart of the changes that made England.

2. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
From my publisher's catalogue copy: "A brilliant, lush, sweeping historical novel about the rise of the most powerful woman of the Early Middle Ages: Hild."

But I started off with this: "In a time of warlords and kings, when might is right, the three year-old Hild, along with her mother and sister, is homeless, hunted, and without material resources. Yet by the end of her life she is the first great abbess of the north, teacher of bishops and counsellor to kings: universally revered. This is how she did it." In other words, I built the seventh century then grew Hild inside it to see what would happen. That's what I do: write to find out.

3. Where did the idea come from?
On some level I've been working towards this since I began my very first novel. Hild is the sum and summit of all I know—in terms of writing and life. But I can tell you the exact moment I became aware of Hild's existence.

In my early twenties, I was living in Hull, a depressed (and depressing) industrialised city on the river Humber (the southern boundry line of Deira, which became part of Northumbria). For a break, my partner and I went north up the coast, to Whitby.

The first thing I saw at Whitby was the ruined abbey on the north cliff. It's an astoundingly gothic silhouette, mesmerising. I didn't wait to unpack but climbed the hundred and ninety-nine steps with my gear on my back. It's difficult to describe how I felt when I first stepped across the threshold of the ruin abbey. It was as though the history of the place punched up through the turf and coursed through me. I knew my life had changed, I just didn't know how.

After that, every year, sometimes twice a year, I visited Whitby. I walked the coastline. I roamed the moors. I spent hours at the abbey. I started picking up brochures and leaflets and imagining how it might have been long, long ago. Even after I moved to the US and started work on what would become my first novel, I came back once a year.

On one visit to England, I picked up a battered 1959 Pelican paperback edition of Trevelyan's A Shortened History of England. I started reading it on the plane on the way back. I read about the Synod of Whitby in 664 and, frankly, don't remember the rest of the flight. This, I thought. This Synod was a pivot point in English history.

Two or three years later, I stumbled across Frank Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England. And I was off. For the last ten years I've been groping my way through ever more modern scholarship. I've been reading bilingual versions of Old English and Old Welsh poetry, absorbing the latest translations of Isidore's Etymologies, thumbing through translations of Bede, thinking, thinking, dreaming in the rich rolling rhythms of another time and place.

4. How long did it take you to write the first draft?
Three or four years.

5. Who or what inspired this book?
Hild herself. Plus I was born about three miles from where I imagine Hild was born. I grew up where she grew up—in what was Elmet, a part of Yorkshire. As a child I might have walked the hills she walked, climbed trees in the same valleys, poked sticks in the same streams, watched the same shaped clouds, listened to the same seas on the same coast. It felt inevitable.

6. What genre is it?
Literary fiction. Epic page-turner. Historical fiction. Bildungsroman. Political thriller. An ethnography of the seventh century/ethnogenesis of the English.*

7. What other books would you compare yours to?
I was born in Yorkshire in the twentieth century, but as a teenager I rode the stony slopes of Mary Renault's Macedon in winter and gazed out over the fjords of Sigrid Undset's Norway in summer. Alongside Alexander I led bronze-age cavalry and clashed with my father; with Kristin Lavransdatter I managed a fourteenth-century household and refused to behave. I lived their story as deeply as I lived my own; their lessons were my lessons. And from the moment I realised I would write about Hild, I wanted her story to be as powerful to readers as Alexander's and Kristen's had been for me. I wanted readers to live and breathe the seventh century, to reach the end of the book and nod: Yes, that's how it was.

8. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
The book is represented by Stephanie Cabot of the Gernert Company and will be published November 12th by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (In hardcover for $28—according the very nifty app isbn.nu—and, I assume, in a variety of digital formats. No info yet on audio or foreign editions.) Publishing-wise, this has been the best experience of my life so far. At FSG I feel part of a smart, agile, committed team. Everyone is behind the book. It's deeply exciting. This is how publishing should be.

9. Which actor would you choose to play your character in the movie?
I haven't a clue. Several actors would be needed to play Hild. The book opens when she's three and closes when she's nineteen. But—and it's probably heresy to say this—I think the novel is too long for a movie. It might make for a splendid premier cable series though: murder, intrigue, starvation, religion, war, sex, love, betrayal, lust, ambition, change...

10. What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
Here's my hope: that Hild will do for Saint Hild and seventh-century Britain what Hilary Mantel did for Cromwell, and Mary Renault did for Alexander—bring a whole world to life for the reader through the lens of a singular character who changed history, one who did so by acting at the very limits of the constraints of her time.

Also, I like to think admirers of British nature writers—Roger Deakin, Rupert Macfarlane, Richard Mabey—might find something to enjoy.

A handful of people have already read it:

"Nicola Griffith is an awe-inspiring visionary, and I am telling everyone to snatch this book up as soon as it is published. Hild is not just one of the best historical novels I have ever read—I think it's one of the best novels, period. It sings with pitch perfect emotional resonance and I damn well believe in this woman and every one she engages. I finished the book full of gratitude that it exists, and longing for more." — Dorothy Allison
"An enthralling tale from an extraordinarily talented writer. It drew me into the volatile, dangerous world inhabited by the real Saint Hild fourteen centuries ago. The historical setting feels so real that it seemed that I was walking across the living landscape of seventh-century Britain. The characters are utterly believable in their time and place. Historical accuracy alone would make this novel a remarkable achievement, but the author has given us a thrilling story, too. Brilliant stuff!" — Tim Clarkson, author of The Picts (2010), Columba (2012) and other works. 
"What a fabulous book! Although finely detailed, with complex characters and a beautiful evocation of the natural world, the tensions of the gathering plot made Hild feel like a quick read. Too quick! I fell into this world completely and was sorry to come out." — Karen Joy Fowler
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When I pondered whom to tag in return, I asked women: I've taken the Russ Pledge to promote and support women writers. But all the writers I considered were out of the country/unavailable to check with, had already played, were wilting under deadlines, didn't know who to tag in turn, or didn't want to for other complicated reasons. And given that I've already been dilatory (so many things to do in support of Hild, even at this stage) I turned to men.*** And I'm delighted to report that two are willing to take up the challenge:
  • Dennis Mahoney, aka @Giganticide, whom I met on Twitter just a few days ago. We bonded over Patrick O'Brian's 21 Aubrey/Maturin books which, as I've said before, is basically one long novel—a novel that begins to thin out a bit around book 15 but, until then, is practically perfect. Anyone who likes O'Brian probably writes stuff I'd enjoy reading, so I'm looking forward to reading his new novel, Fellow Mortals, just out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  • Matt Ruff, aka @byMattRuff, my friend and author of Tiptree-winning Set This House in Order, and the bad-girl-who-isn't-entirely-what-she-seems thriller Bad Monkeys (recently optioned by Fox to be a TV series). Matt's most recent novel is The Mirage which come out last year but is just out in paperback last week from HarperCollins.
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*    I'm not supposed to say this. My editor and publicist turn pale.
**  advance reading copy These are essentially private editions of the book printed for reviewers, booksellers, etc. It's a publicity tool.
*** There's a phrase you won't see me use often.
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Monday, February 18, 2013

Project decisions

An evening of this:

Leads to noodling like this:
And the begins of a decision. If you know my work worrying well, you probably have a clue what I've decided. Now I just have to figure out whether I go the traditional or the crowd-funded route. Hmmmm...
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Friday, February 15, 2013

My new author photos

Today for your delectation and delight, three recent (January 2013) photos of me by Jennifer Durham. (You can see bigger versions by clicking through.)

The first is my new official Author Photo: the picture that goes on the book jacket of Hild and accompanies reviews (should one be lucky enough to get any in places that run author photos as well as cover graphics). I was artfully lit and photographed by Jennifer--who also artfully smoothed out some of the dings and dents and creases acquired in my 50+ years of standing on the surface of a planet that hurtles through the cosmos at a bazillion million kilometers per hour, and as a result of not always eating what's good for me and almost always drinking what's bad...

Photo © Jennifer Durham
This one is probably my favourite, the one that most resembles my interior picture of myself. It won't work for a book jacket--readers, apparently, prefer their authors to look right at them--but I sent it to my publicist at Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the hope that, one day, some fabulous book-focused journal will run one of those juicy long profiles about me and/or Hild, and that this might make a good accompaniment.

Photo © Jennifer Durham
And then there's this. It was an experiment in lighting. Jennifer is really, really good at knowing how to emphasise and sharpen (and soften and hide) with light, and she wanted to see what a black and white face-only thing would look like. The proofs looked okay, perhaps a bit stark, but then I said: why don't we leave my eyes their real colour and see what happens? The contrast is surprisingly subtle. Most people I've shown it to aren't keen. "Freaky!" they say. "Weird!" But I kind of like it.

Photo © Jennifer Durham
Also, I've seen the first pass cover art for Hild. It is going to be a knockout. But that's all I can say right now. But I'm chortling...
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Monday, February 11, 2013

Ammonite prequel--and more!

From: MP

I find it odd emailing an author after reading her book. In some cases, the book becomes such a personal experience for me that I feel it is mine and that communicating with an 'outsider' about it would be pointless. Which is a testament to your skill as a writer and for that, I am thankful.

I am about to finish Ammonite but I don't really want to finish it because I am pretty sure there is no sequel. So my question is, is there a sequel? Will there be one?

In any case, thank you for writing Ammonite. I already have The Blue Place on my nightstand.
No sequel, but there's a story prequel, "Mirrors and Burnstone," which you can read as a free PDF.

Also, at some point this year, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of publication, there will be a very limited edition (six? two dozen? fifty?) of hand-made art books based on Ammonite. And by handmade I mean every single copy will be unique: nine interior fold-out/accordian pages of two-colour original lino-prints, by Vicki Platts-Brown, of images from the book. On gorgeous fine paper. With quotes from Ammonite--done by hand with an ancient letterpress, and making their own little story. Each book will have end pieces made of something fabulous (slate? copper? resin?). They are designed for display. They will be for sale. As soon as I know more I'll post info.

I hear you on books being a personal experience. They get woven into our lives. For me, at least, they become part of what makes me me. I wouldn't be the person I am without the novels that taught me how to approach the world; Kelley and I wouldn't be together. It warms the cockles of my heart to think that Ammonite might be doing that for you. Thank you.

Oh, and one more thing: don't read the end of The Blue Place in public...
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Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Driven by strong women


From: Meredith

I'm a big fan of your books, so I was pleased when I wandered into Chapters-Indigo in Vancouver and saw that they were showcasing Slow River. Have a look: 

I hope they sell many copies. Thank you for writing such wonderful stories.
It's my pleasure. And thanks for sending the picture. It's pretty cool to see Slow River classified as a thriller--though now I recall that when the book first came out Ballantine spent some time and effort positioning it as a "near-future thriller." Hmmm, I'd forgotten that.

People often ask me: Where will I find your books shelved? And I have to tell them: It depends on the tastes of the bookseller. I've seen, for example, Slow River classified as literary fiction, lesbian fiction, near-future thriller, hard science fiction, dystopian fiction, noir, industrial fiction, erotic fiction, a braided novel, and cyberpunk. Every bookstore a new adventure. Sometimes this is a good thing because readers who might not have picked up something labelled SF are intrigued by the notion of, say, women living an underground, underclass existence in the near future. Sometimes, well, not, especially if a reader actively looking for a hard science tale of a woman in a bad situation who uses biology and chemistry to survive wanders into a bookshop that classifies it as noir.

I amuse (and horrify) myself by trying to imagine how Hild will be categorised by booksellers and readers. Two things I'm sure of: it's not a Western, and it's not Satire. But as for the rest, eh, I could probably make a case for it being at least ten genres. Officially, though, it will be billed as something like A brilliant, lush, literary historical novel about the rise of the most powerful woman of the Early Middle Ages: Hild.

But that won't be for nine months. So next time you're in Chapters-Indigo, please thank the booksellers for me. It's lovely to know that those on the front lines, who interact with the people no writer can do without--the readers--are paying attention. Putting a book face out on the shelf makes a big difference. And the company Slow River is keeping is pretty cool, too. I had quotes for Aud books from both Laurie King and Val McDermid--and Val's quote ("Without Aud it's hard to see how they could have been a Lisbeth Salander") makes this set up even more cozy. It's a small world; novels bring us all closer.
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Friday, February 1, 2013

The blush that means spring is coming


Well, something thinks it's spring here, even if the weather gods are disagreeing rather sullenly. (Sky as low as a zinc pot-lid, and endless, dispirited mizzle.) I've no idea what this bush is. (Azalea? Unlike Hild--and Aud--I do not possess formidable knowledge of local flora.) But it grows alongside our driveway, along with a bunch of other stuff like Oregon grape and vine maple. The bush tits love it out there.

Seeing these blushing pink buds every year is what helps me believe that the miserable Seattle winter* really will end. Spring will come. Then summer--in which I'll be doing a wee bit of travelling this year; more on that anon--and then autumn, when Hild will be published.

My 2013 is shaping up nicely. I hope yours is, too.

* Actually we've been really lucky this year: more sunshine and less rain than usual. More is, of course, a relative term...
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