A Real MAN: The Presiden’ts Day Edition

Elizabeth Camden Musings on Life Leave a Comment

If you are like me, the only reason you know it is President’s Day today is that there will be no mail delivered.  Nevertheless, it gives me an excuse to ramble on about one of my favorite men in history, President Theodore Roosevelt.  

I grew up thinking of TR as the tubby guy with weird glasses…..but as I got a little older and more appreciative of the male species, I found a new admiration for Roosevelt.  He was a visionary and a leader, a conservative progressive in an era before it was fashionable.  He recognized the rugged beauty of America and preserved it through our National Park System.  Beneath the weird glasses and unfortunate mustache, he’s kind of hot.  There it is….. I think Theodore Roosevelt is hot.  I’ve confessed my sin to my husband, who has resigned himself to it.

Theodore Roosevelt was a raw, aggressive man who deeply loved his family and had a passionate relationship with his wife (Both of them.  After his first wife died tragically young, he spiraled into a depression, abandoned his burgeoning political career, and lived as a cowboy on a North Dakota ranch for two years.) 

He wrote one of my favorite quotes about manhood of all time.  Man or woman, anyone who embraces this philosophy and tries to abide by it will do well in life:

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Today, I’m raising a toast to, President Roosevelt!

Bane….Is….Back!

Elizabeth Camden The Lady of Bolton Hill, Writing Life 12 Comments

I’m hugely excited to announce that my next novel, Against the Tide, will feature my all-time favorite character.  Bane Alexander first appeared in the Lady of Bolton Hill as a whiplash smart and lethally dangerous 17-year old troublemaker.   He is now all grown up, has straightened himself out, and is ready to set the world on fire.

If you haven’t read The Lady of Bolton Hill, no worries.  Against the Tide is an entirely stand-alone novel set in Boston of 1891.  The heroine is Lydia Pallas, a translator for the U.S. Navy whose skills Bane desperately needs to unravel a smuggling ring.

It took me a while to dream up a heroine who was a match for Bane.  Bane is such an overwhelming force who was a scene-stealer in The Lady of Bolton Hill, so I needed a woman who could match him in terms of wit, intelligence, and bravado.  She also needed to have a deep gash of vulnerability that would slice through Bane’s tough, cynical hide and make him go weak in the knees.  I think that Against the Tide is the most romantic of any book I’ve written.  Look for it to hit the shelves in October of 2012.  Keep your eyes peeled!

 

What’s Wrong with a Happy Ending?

Elizabeth Camden Writing Life Leave a Comment

I recently read a book about the art of writing movies (Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting).

What I found interesting was how the same rift that plagues the book publishing world is also a hotly contested issue among screenwriters.  There is a trend among late 20th century screenwriters toward highbrow, morally neutral films that lack a clear protagonist who wrestles with good and evil before triumphing in the end.    Scholarly critics love this sort of film, and tend to give Academy Awards to dreary and depressing films.  Meanwhile the public flocks to Star Wars, Dances with Wolves, Lord of the Rings, and The Shawshank Redeption.

In the book world, most genre fiction is heavily based on values.  Beneath the trappings of space aliens, murder mysteries or steamy love scenes, most genre novels reflect core values of justice, love, truth, fair play, accomplishment and perseverance.  By the end of the novel a fantastically drawn protagonist will figure out what is worth fighting and dying for.  And the American public loves it.  If they didn’t, you never would have heard of Nora Roberts, Ken Follett, John Grisham, Harlan Coben, or Francine Rivers.  The triumph of genre fiction in the market place makes literary writers cringe.  They castigate popular fiction as predictable, simplistic, something to make the reader feel good by confirming their preconceived values.

Lucky for me, I don’t write for critics, I write for the lady in New Zealand who emailed me and thanked me for making her elderly mother happy because she fell in love with Bane from The Lady of Bolton Hill. Or the high school student who wrote to tell me that reading about Clara made her feel a little less like a dork.   I write because of all the wonderful genre writers who have embodied the values of hard work, perseverance, and fighting for a cause who helped me through those stress-filled adolescent years. 

I don’t know if this split will ever go away.  I’m merely glad that there are plenty of readers and writers who still flock toward a wonderful, life-affirming ending.

Saint Jerome’s Splendid Libraries

Elizabeth Camden Splendid Libraries 1 Comment

Normally I reserve the Splendid Library entries for photographs of spectacular libraries I can drool over, but there are quite a few interesting paintings of Saint Jerome, usually depicted in a library.

Saint Jerome (c. 327-420 A.D.) was best known as the man who translated the Bible into Latin. He was born in rural Italy, but converted to Christianity when he went to study in Rome. He lived in semi-seclusion most of his life, working on his translations and studying ancient texts.  Legend has it while living in the desert he removed a thorn from the paw of a lion, who loyally stayed with Jerome for many years….thus, the frequent depiction of a lion in these pictures.

Saint Jerome is also the patron saint for librarians, so without further ado, here are some spectacular renderings of his library.  The first is my favorite by Albrecht Durer:

 

A Good Fight Scene

Elizabeth Camden Ramblings about Romance 2 Comments

What is the most interesting part of a romance novel?  The first date?  The wedding scene?  The love scenes? (sorry folks, there aren’t any in inspirational romances!) 

For me, it’s the best parts of a romance novel are the fight scenes.  I always perk up when the hero and heroine delve into a great, air-clearing, rafter-shaking fight.  As a person who has conflict-avoidance coded deeply into my DNA, fighting is something I dodge in real life, but in a novel?  Yes, please!

Think about the great romantic pairs.  Rhett and Scarlett.  Maddy and David (Moonlighting)  Sam and Diane (Cheers) Barrons and MacKayla (Karen Marie Moning’s incomparable Darkfever saga). 

Some of my favorite fight-scene-writers derive from mainstream romance: Lisa Kleyaps, Judith McNaught, Kristan Higgins, and the aforementioned Karen Marie Moning.  Watching the way a couple argues is a great way to reveal layers of their character and inject a healthy dose of angst into the story.  

A great romance novel should have a variety of good, conflict laden fights.  Not the stupid bickering types of fights (although those can be fun, too!)  I want to see the heart-rending fights, or break down and weep fights that require a good grovel afterwards.  Perhaps most powerful are the arguments where both parties are RIGHT.  I wrote The Rose of Winslow Street with a plenty of conflict that had no easy exit because both Michael and Libby were fighting with Right on their side.  To my mind, these healthy arguments make getting to the finish line of a romance novel that much sweeter!

 

 

Worst Marriage Proposal Ever

Elizabeth Camden Ramblings about Romance, Videos Worth Watching 5 Comments

Pulling off a marriage proposal is a tricky thing.  Some women have terribly high expectations, and men are trying to step up to the plate, but it’s tough!  Skywriting?  A diamond ring hidden in a cake?  It can be hard to pull off something that is surprising, romantic, and unique.  Frankly, any woman who must be courted by such extravagant gestures may be not quite fully baked, but I digress.

For a romance writer, there is similar pressure to come up with something that will surprise and delight the reader.  The writer can always go for stunningly romantic, but there is a charm in the bungled proposal, too.  The Rose of Winslow Street will have seen a world-class botched proposal, but for your viewing pleasure, I give you a clip from Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.  This is surely one of the most wretched proposals in literary and cinematic history!

 

Where Do Writers Get their Ideas?

Elizabeth Camden What Inspires You?, Writing Life 2 Comments

One of the most common questions any novelist gets is “where do you get your ideas?”   I can’t speak for other people, but my hunch is that most writers have a mind that is always asking, ‘what if?’  As I go through the day, something will trigger that what if question, then my imagination takes over.  Sometimes it can be a turn of phrase, a news story, an interesting picture, or even a piece of music.

Here is an example.  I was reading a copy of the The New York Times from 1884 to get a sense of what people were talking about in the mid 1880’s, and I ran across a tiny news article at the bottom of the page about a group of Civil War soldiers who had all been hospitalized following the battle of Gettysburg.  They bonded in the hospital, and vowed to meet exactly twenty-one years later at Niagara Falls.  Amazingly, eight of the surviving ten members showed up on the appointed day.  Now that is the basis for a good story!

There are lots of ways this story could be tweaked to turn it into an interesting novel or a short story.  Perhaps instead of soldiers, it could be nurses.  Or perhaps it is set during the American Revolution or World War I.  Maybe they weren’t soldiers at all, but college students, or refugees from Nazi Germany.

I was moved by the story, but I know it is not something I am ever likely to use, so I’m throwing it out there to the world.  Maybe someone will try to do some research on these amazing men and follow it up.  Here is the story as it appeared on the front page of The New York Times on July 5, 1884.

Balloon photo coutesy of Diego da Silva

Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul

Elizabeth Camden Recommended Reading, The Rose of Winslow Street 1 Comment

I loved this book.  I’ve been happily married to a “manly-man” for ten years.  Although it is not politically correct to say, I do believe that there are inherent differences in the way men and women are wired.  The author of Wild at Heart thinks so too, and it helped me understand some of the reasons men behave the way they do.  It celebrates manhood…the rugged, daring aspects that are often stamped out in an attempt to make boys behave in the classroom or on the playground.     

Eldredge’s thesis is that built into the soul of every man is the desire to be a hero, live a life of adventure, take risks, and be a warrior.  Little boys like to play with toy guns.  If you take the toy gun away, they will pick up sticks and make bang-bang noises to simulate a gun. If you take the sticks away, they’ll point with their finger and thumb.  They are boys!  Eldredge suggests that rather than try to stamp these qualities out of boys, these impulses should be channeled to allow boys to become the heroic warriors they have the potential to become.  He is careful to draw the distinction between a heroic man and the dim-witted macho version of the unthinking male.  Most importantly, he tackles the dicey aspect of how modern interpretations of Christianity are often at odds with those ideals, in which men are pressured to be “nice guys” who would be comfortable in great-aunt Irma’s parlor fetching her a cup of tea.

This is a controversial book.  You will see from some of the excoriating reviews on amazon that many people reject Eldrege’s thesis.  Anytime an author attempts to characterize 50% of the human race in broad brushstrokes, you are going to be able to point out thousands of exceptions.  Nevertheless, I found Wild at Heart to be a wonderful, unapologetic celebration of manhood.   HIGHLY recommended.

Are Deserts Beautiful?

Elizabeth Camden Videos Worth Watching Leave a Comment

These ones are! Having spent a good part of my life in some not-so-attractive parts of Texas, I have a love-hate relationship with desert scrub. It can be dreary, dry, and dull. But deserts can also be ruggedly beautiful and inspiring. I think this is why so many of the early monks retreated to the desert for spiritual renewal. This video is wonderful:

Whatever Happened to the Evil Other Woman?

Elizabeth Camden Ramblings about Romance 2 Comments

I began reading romance novels in the 1980’s, where a common plot device was the Evil Other Woman (EOW).  She was always older and more experienced than the heroine, and she generally seethed sexuality in contrast to the heroine’s wide-eyed innocence.  The EOW usually had a sordid past with the hero, and continues to lurk in the background to torment and undermine the confidence of the heroine.

The EOW littered romance novels of the 1980’s and early 90’s, but somewhere in the late 90’s she started vanishing from the scene.  What happened?

Most people speculate it has something to do with distaste for “woman-bashing.”  Because these EOW were almost always sexually experienced, the implication seemed to be that while a Virgin equates with good and pure; the Experienced Woman was an unredeemable skank.

I can see the point of this, but I think something deeper was going on.  The first wave of romance novels really didn’t have a lot of psychological heft to them.  There was plenty of external conflict with pirates, wars, crops dying in the fields, etc…..but in order to introduce an internal conflict, the EOW was just so easy.  After all, most of us remember what it was like during those painful high school years when we felt awkward, inadequate, and completely overshadowed by the self-assured goddesses who cheered on the football sidelines and always seemed to have the best of everything.  Perhaps we were naturally predisposed to harbor revenge fantasies in which the unassuming heroine triumphs over the EOW who seems to have it all.

As the genre matured, authors can’t get away with cookie-cutter villains, and we needed to dig a little deeper to develop internal conflict and growth.  The inspirational genre pushed this even further by welcoming a spiritual component into the mix.  We’ve come a long way, and for the most part, I applaud the demise of the EOW.

Still, sometimes it is fun to pull out those wonderful old paperbacks with yellowed pages and tawdry covers to revisit the glory years of the EOW.  One of these days I may have to bring her back for a visit in one of my books.  I kind of miss her.