Fireproof: Never Leave Your Partner Behind

Elizabeth Camden Ramblings about Romance Leave a Comment

I loved this movie. This is a very different type of love story, as it does not follow the course of two people meeting and falling in love. Rather, it is about learning to fall in love with your spouse all over again.

The movie opens with a young married couple who have fallen out of love. Their lives developed in different directions and they have slowly become two strangers inhabiting the same home. Disrespect is corroding their ability to communicate or even want to be near each other. When the wife asks for a divorce, the husband (brilliantly portrayed by Kirk Cameron) is ready to throw in the towel as well, but decides to give his marriage one, last-ditch effort to succeed.

Kirk Cameron plays a firefighter in the movie, who is well aware of the preventive measures all people should take to insure against fire hazards that can flare up to destroy a home. The movie is about the concept of fireproofing a marriage. How to spot the corrosive habits, behaviors, and attitudes that can undermine the love that once seemed so promising. How to fix them, even if it means gritting you teeth day after day.

So often love stories deal with the initial whirlwind of falling in love. I found Fireproof a more complicated exploration of an aspect of love that hasn’t found a lot of traction in popular fiction or movies.

I gather the movie has generated an entire business helping couples, families, even businesses put the principles taught in the movie into gear. http://www.fireproofmymarriage.com/

Sheer, Magnificent Inspiration

Elizabeth Camden What Inspires You? 2 Comments

I have a picture on my bulletin board at work that I look at whenever I start to feel overwhelmed:

This is Chris Sadowski in the middle of an Ironman competition.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Ironman Championship in Kona Hawaii, it involves a 2.4 mile swim in the ocean, a 112 mile bicycle race, topped off with a full 26.2 mile marathon, all of which must be completed in 17 hours with no break.

This is challenging for any athlete, but in 2004 Chris Sadowski had an extra wrench thrown into his race.  When he was 105 miles into the 112 mile cycling part of the race, his bike was struck by a cameraman filming for ESPN.  The back wheel of his bike was mangled too badly to function, but triathlon rules insist you finish the cycling portion of the race with the same bike.  Rules don’t require him to ride the bike, but he had to cross the cycling finish line with his bike.  That meant he had to shoulder the bike and walk the remaining 7 miles of the race.  Like all the athletes, he was wearing only socks for this portion of the race, so he walked on the burning hot asphalt for seven miles with no water, no break, and no shoes.  Other bikers zoomed past him, but he did not give up.  It took him over two hours to finish what a biker could have done in a minute or two.  When he finally completed the bike portion, he had to put shoes on his aching and blistered feet and run a marathon.

Chris Sadowski finished the race.  I cut out his picture from the next day’s newspaper and tacked it to my bulletin board, where it remains….a little curled and yellowed with age, but still an inspiration.  There are days when I feel wiped out, drained, and a little overwhelmed.  Then I look over at Chris Sadowski with that bike over his shoulder and I quit complaining.   Pick up your burdens and shoulder forward.

Genre Fiction: Sometimes Even Publishers Give it No Respect

Elizabeth Camden Ramblings about Romance, The Book World Leave a Comment

The phenomenon of generic products was beginning to take root in the American marketplace by the 1970’s.  Any mass produced product that lacked unique features, such as oatmeal, canned peas, or window cleaner, could be sold in direct competition to name-brand equivalents, but at around a 30% discount.  Identified by their stark packaging, generic products were usually considered inferior to the name brand, but sold well to value conscious consumers.

In 1981 Jove Books ventured into a brief foray of madness when they attempted to launch a line of generic books.  Considered a clever marketing ploy, they launched books targeted at the major genres: Romance, Westerns, Science Fiction, and Mystery.  With a stark white covers, no author, and no blurb on the back, the only description of the content was the tagline on the front. The Romance book read, “A kiss, a promise, a misunderstanding, another kiss, and a happy ending.”  The idea was so ridiculous that some people suspected it was a hoax, but I remember seeing those books on the racks of grocery stores.  No publisher sinks money into a nationwide rollout if they did not intend to make money on the endeavor, and Jove had hopes for this project.   

Without having to invest in cover art and paying the authors a paltry $750 per manuscript, the idea was to pump out genre fiction with the same efficiency as a box of oatmeal.  Did Jove really think genre fans were so mindless they cared nothing for the content?  

People who read genre fiction are intensely brand loyal…that brand being the author.  Although they write in similar settings with comparable characters, a Lisa Kleypas novel has a drastically different feel than a Debbie Macomber book.  Genre readers flock to their preferred author, not the label “romance.”   

Jove had to learn the hard way.  The generic book project was a disaster, and folded after a couple months.  Interestingly, the rarity and novelty of those books has been a good investment for the few people who did buy them.  With a cover price of $1.50, those generic books now sell on the used book market for around $10.

Getting to your Dream

Elizabeth Camden Musings on Life, Videos Worth Watching Leave a Comment

I once heard someone say that people tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a single year, but underestimate what we can accomplish in ten years.  Dreaming big is scary.  This little video is a great way to put those huge, overwhelming, and scary dreams into perspective.

The Lady of Bolton Hill: The Cover Story

Elizabeth Camden The Lady of Bolton Hill, Writing Life 2 Comments

After years of madly scribbling away in the privacy of my office, I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to finally know that actual people are reading and enjoying my book.  A huge majority of the comments note the lovely cover.  I agree!   

At the very beginning of the design process, my editor asked me to write up some notes about what the characters look like and the setting of the book.  Unlike many inspirational romance novels that are set on the prairie, The Lady of Bolton Hill takes place in Baltimore during the gilded age, so it was important to communicate the setting so people knew what they were getting.  Hence, the skyline through the window.  In my design notes, I spoke a lot of the heroine, Clara, as a very refined and gentle woman.  This quality really comes through on the cover. 

Aside from those initial notes, the cover illustration is an aspect of the book I have almost zero control over, so I was sweating bullets over what it would look like.  In my head I have a vision of the tone, setting, and atmosphere of the book, and it is a huge leap of faith to turn all that over to someone else.   I was very lucky to be paired up with such a gifted artist, Jennifer Parker, for my first cover.   

It was late at night when I got the email with the cover image attached, and my computer was unusually sluggish.  I remember the wave of nervous anxiety as I waited for that image to load.  I think I was clenching my teeth so hard I almost gave myself lockjaw. Anyway, what a huge relief to be greeted with something so lovely!  

I never realized how much work goes into the design process.  The cover illustrator actually came up with several mock-ups of the cover before settling on the lady in the blue dress.  Here are the rough drafts of alternate cover ideas:

Once they decided on a lady standing before a window, they hired a model, a photographer, and went to work.  Here are the two, almost identical versions of the cover that made it to the final round:

They ultimately decided on the version on the left.  After that, they began working on the artwork, text, spine, and layout of the back cover.  All in all, I was immensely pleased and humbled to have such a great team of people working on my cover. 

Bibliomania

Elizabeth Camden The Book World, The Lady of Bolton Hill Leave a Comment

Bibliomania is a recognized psychological condition characterized by the obsessive need to possess books.  For those of you who read The Lady of Bolton Hill, you know the novel’s villian suffers from bibliomania.  I’ve always believed that a really good villian ought to have an admirable trait (a hobby, love for a person, desire to succeed) that has been magnified to such a degree that it turns him or her bad.  This makes them infinately more fascinating than the run-of-the-mill villians who are motiviated only by greed. In The Lady of Bolton Hill, Professor Van Bracken has an obsessive love for antiquarian books.  He will do anything in order to acquire enough money to pursue his love of books, including building a mansion in the Vermont wilderness which he keeps at a constant 60 degrees, the optimal temperature for book preservation.  The setting is chilling both physically and spiritually.  The Professor’s bibliomania also leads to a string of crimes and  kidnappings to amass the fortune necessary to acquire the world’s rarest volumes.  

For anyone interested more in real life bibliomaniacs, I recommend Nicholas Basbane’s fabulous book A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books.  I drew heavily on this book for insight into the condition.   Basbanes sheds light on the subject by providing dozens of cases of real-life bibliomaniacs, such as the homocidal Don Vincente, a Spanish monk whose monestary was mysteriously robbed of all its valuable books in the early 1830’s.  Shortly after the unsolved robbery, Don Vincente left the order and opened a rare book store in Barcelona.  Over the coming years, Don Vincente committed at least eight known murders of men who possessed fine book collections, most of which ended up in the former monk’s shop.  Don Vincente was ultimately caught and executed for his crimes in 1836. 

Basbane’s book recounts dozens of such stories, and it is a fiendishly good read for people who enjoy the world of rare book collecting.  

Here a a couple of other unhealthy book obbsessions:

  • Bibliophagy (book eating)
  • Bibliokleptomania (book stealing)
  • Bibliotaphy (the hoarding and hiding of books, usually through burying them)
  • Bibliomancy (using books, usually the Bible, for divination by flipping to a random page and pointing to a passage)

 

 

Ten Years!

Elizabeth Camden All about Me!, Ramblings about Romance 2 Comments

This week, Bill and I have are celebrating our ten year anniversary. I can say without a doubt, it has been the best ten years of my life (and I make him say the same thing to me!) 

It doesn’t seem like ten years.  It seemed like only last year we were moving in to our house and figuring out who would get to use the shower first in the mornings.  Now I can’t imagine a life without him in it.   

I got married relatively late in life, and I think this was an odd sort of blessing.  After all those years of flying solo, I have become deeply, profoundly appreciative of having a partner in life. 

 We don’t really have any special plans.  I have been warning Bill for a couple of years that I might want to get a nice ring or something (you can see from the picture that I wear a plain wedding band, and I have a grand total of four pairs of earrings to my name, so jewelry has never been a big thing for me).  We went and looked at rings, but well…..meh.  I think what I am enjoying about hitting the ten year mark is simply the ability to SAY that I have been married for ten years.  It seems like such a nice, solid number.  It expresses the sense of strength and solidity that I feel being Bill’s wife.  I can’t wait for the next ten years…

Chancellor Green Library at Princeton

Elizabeth Camden Splendid Libraries Leave a Comment

Here is one of the older libraries at Princeton:

What a fabulous building, designed in the high Victorian gothic style. This library was built in 1871 in order to address the small, crampt, and inconveniet library they had been using until then. In 1868 the President of Princeton complained that their library was only open once a week….for a single hour!

That would have been a cushy library to work at!