Quenby Olson's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

Someone recently asked me about what inspires me to write a new story.

Seriously? Anything. Everything.

For Knotted, it was several things. I had just come out of a glut of reading nothing but darker, heavier fantasy novels (Game of Thrones, some Robert Jordan, probably a re-read of something like The Silmarillion in there...) and my brain simply couldn’t take anymore. I needed something lighter. I needed to create something lighter. And so I did. No death. No dismemberment. No dragons. Just a story, light and frothy and clean. Not only was it a palate cleanser, but it was comfort food. The literary equivalent of a box of chocolates snarfed down while watching something that had probably aired on Masterpiece Theater at one time or another.

Oh, and a friend of mine made a bet with me about whether or not I could write - and finish - a book. That, too.

But honestly, I’m not sure what else inspires me. I’d love to have some wonderful, life-changing story about that time when that dramatic thing happened and then I went for a walk and saw the most beautiful astronomical event imaginable before I arrived back at my house to find out that someone I cared deeply about had endured some other dramatic thing and then EMOTIONS and FEELINGS, and so - of course - I was left with no choice but to put pen to paper and scrawl down every heart-wrenching word that spilled into my head at that moment.

That’s... never happened to me. Ideas usually come to me late at night, when I’m trying to sleep and I can’t shut off my brain and that episode of Fawlty Towers that I’ve already watched seventeen times is failing to lull me into a deep slumber, and then I realize I’ve been in bed so long that I have to get up again to pee, and did I brush my teeth? Man, I can’t remember. Ack, and what about the front door? Is it locked? Jeez, here I am watching John Cleese get berated about Waldorf Salad and some crazy psycho could just waltz into my house and touch all my silverware without my ever knowing and then - WOW! I should really write a story about a medium in Victorian-era London. That would be AWESOME.

So basically, my feeling is that “What inspired this story?” is one of those questions that really doesn’t always have the most attractive of answers. It’s most likely not going to be the impressive, borderline-epiphanous reply that sounds so darned amazing. Unfortunately, it’ll probably run more along the lines of, “I was out walking my dog, and just as I put that plastic baggie thing on my hand to pick up his poop, I was struck by the idea of...”

Yeah, not many people want to hear that.

But you know what? If you're stuck, if you think you need some inspiration, here's what you do: Just go out, do your day-to-day things, and don’t bother about looking for something to inspire you. It’ll hit you when it wants to, even if it’s just during that late-night run to the drug store for more dental floss and Dr. Pepper.

Because, seriously. Dr. Pepper is fantastic.

This Summer (in 22 days, to be exact) I’ll be releasing my second novel, The Half Killed, a supernatural murder-mystery set in London at the end of the nineteenth century.

Now, I don’t know when the idea of The Half Killed came to me. It started with a scene. And then another scene. And then another and another, until I had an entire world in front of me and a wider variety of characters than I could have ever anticipated. Of course, once I’d written several thousand words and a few chapters, I realized I needed to slow down and research and make sure I was happy with what I was producing. I didn’t mean to slow down to the point that it would take nearly a decade to finish the book, but there you go.

This little scene was the first thing I wrote. I clearly remember sitting up very late at night (this was pre-marriage and children) and scribbling this whole thing down in a notebook, my hand cramping up as I reached the end of it but not wanting to stop for fear that the words would dribble out of my head before I could get them onto the page.

At this point, my main character didn’t even have a name. (She’s Dorothea Hawes now, but she was simply Spiritualist Girl at the beginning). But from this bit grew another 90,000 words and 24 chapters. And even more stories for these characters to tell.



The Unveiled



The hush came quickly, as it always did. Even the coughing ceased, and I knew I had them. They would hold all of it in: the noises, the whispers—even the scratchings were postponed for a time, until the lights came up again and that aura of the mysterious lost its hold.

When the curtain rose, a shudder passed through the crowd, hundreds of bodies moving forward, shifting for a better view. The immediate disappointment was an almost palpable thing. The stage was mostly bare but for a chair, a table, and a few other knick-knacks that wouldn’t serve any purpose as the evening progressed. But Marta insisted on them, claiming that a few baubles were necessary to entertain the eye.

The edge of the curtain was my barrier, my point of no return. Behind the heavy fabric that smelled of dust and age, I tried not to give in to my curiosity, my head bowed as I assured myself that no one out there could hear the erratic palpitations inside my chest. The hiss of the gas jets was something of a comfort, and I exhaled through parted my lips as I closed my eyes and pretended—for a moment, at least—that the performance had already arrived at its end.

The people would stand then, find their way back towards their homes, and I would escape to my room, if Marta allowed it. More often than not, there would be a private audience she would wish for me to entertain, and once again it would be long past midnight before I could stare out my window, until I could allow the voices to fade to a low buzz of whispering inside my head.


My feet were cold. Understandable, since I was not permitted even a thin pair of stockings for protections against the drafts that rattled through the old theater. I had complained to Marta about it, and what had she done? Nothing, as usual. Because it had been her idea in the first place, to send me out only half-dressed, as if I were some kind of nymph, a child of nature, recently caught gamboling with elves and sprites before turning onto Regent Street for a quick show in front of the natives. That is, if the natives arrived at the door with no less than five shillings and an air of respectability about them.

Marta liked to tell me I was made for this, and there were some days when I was inclined to agree with her. She claimed to have seen a promise in the soft lines of my face. Maybe of beauty, or wisdom, but something vague enough to allow people to apply any future they pleased to my unblemished features.

Perhaps that was part of my charm, my lack of age, or of the artifice that generally accompanied a person of advanced years. Every night, when I looked out over the crowd, I saw the need for trust. The people wanted to put their trust in me, because I stood there, the evidence of their second lives in corporeal form.

Marta’s voice reached my ears, her dulcet tones telling the audience what they wished to hear—that their prayers would be answered, all of their skepticism laid to rest. And there were always one or two skeptics in every crowd, usually the sour-faced man or woman leaning back in their seat, eyes narrowed as they hoped to catch a glimpse of the mirror, or the string, or the obvious tool that would transform all of my lauded powers into mere sleight of hand or trickery. Even after afterward, there would always be a few who still refused to believe. But I wasn’t there to convince them. If I’d had any choice, I would n0t have been there at all.

Marta finished speaking, and then she was again at my side, prodding my shoulder with her knuckle.

“Give ‘em a show,” she whispered into my ear, the blast of her breath on my skin raising the hairs on the back of my neck. “You always work too quick. Stretch it out some. It’s the tension they want, the suspense. Make ‘em feel it, and then we’ll see those seats full to bursting through the end of the week.”

The heat was there the moment I stepped out from behind the protection of the curtain, as if I’d deserted one world and walked into another. In this place, I looked out with eyes wide open, unflinching when I observed the look of pain or horror I’d brought to someone’s face.

But there could be joy, as well. Despite my wording, some only heard what they wanted, translating my speech into something more palatable, shaping it into a comfort that would wrap itself around them the next time they closed their eyes to sleep. A few people merely wished for closure, and I was able to offer it to them. But with closure often came the end of hope, a door or window sealed shut, one that might have remained open for years and years.

That was why they came to see me, for the assurance that death was not the end of all things. To them, death was simply another part of life—an often unseemly part, yes—but one that had to be gotten through before they could enjoy the next stage of their existence.

That is what they told themselves, those who believed their spirits would carry on long after their bodies had been lowered into the ground. That there was more life to be had, that their time on earth was but the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things.

And there were those who believed they would return after death, and that others could and did. That the rattling they heard in the attic wasn’t an infestation of squirrels, but rather the restless spirit of their dearly departed mother come back to reveal a great secret that would shake the family’s foundation to its core. Of course, those were the ones who could not be helped. Their beliefs were the most steadfast. Tell them the truth, and they would call me a liar.

The stage was gritty, though I knew it had been thoroughly swept some time in the last few hours. One night, when I moved too quickly, a thin splinter of wood forced itself into the soft flesh near the arch of my foot. A wince at the corners of my eyes, and the audience must have been convinced I had received a vital communication from the spirit world. And all I could think about was finding a warm foot bath and a pair of tweezers.

But the memory of the splinter reminded me of Marta’s constant advice, that I should be more demonstrative with my emotions. I had seen other ones like myself, or the ones who claimed to be like me. And for all I knew, they were the truly gifted while I lived with a controlled sort of madness. I had seen them put on their shows—their demonstrations—and they were all theatrics and light, smoke and mirrors. An evening of diversions and misdirection. Waving one hand to distract the audience while they picked their pockets with the other. And the people adored them.

The woman—and it was almost always a woman—appeared on stage as if that itself, her grand entrance, was enough to steal the very breath from her audience. There were colored lights to dazzle the eye, and a mist of artificial fog that clung to the edges of the stage, settling at eye level with the front row. Many handkerchiefs were drawn from pockets, and the more delicate even admitted to having been overcome by the fumes. Later, I knew that they would claim it was due to having been in the presence of such divine power, their souls stirred into a state of exhilaration their feeble bodies failed to contain.

They worked with the senses, those other intercessors between the living and the dead. The smell of roses was in the air, they said. Of lilacs. Of soured milk. Of coagulated blood. And they would claim to have heard a voice. A wispy voice. Female, more than likely. But occasionally a man’s voice, robust and chagrined all at the same time. Sometimes they would even go so far as to alter their own voice, to mimic a speech pattern so unlike their own there could be little doubt that it must have come from another speaker, a spirit inhabiting their body.

And the show would often be peppered with allusions to art. I once witnessed a well-constructed tableaux vivant, rich with costumes, with colored lights that shimmered from fire pans set at the sides of the stage. And there had even been a few manifestations, always the highlight of a successful performance. A vision of a wandering spirit, lit by white light, the picture gaining opacity as the artist sank more deeply into their trance.

I used none of those tricks. Marta told me that I should, implored me as she counted the takings from the previous week. I could’ve been a sensation. Add a tremble here or there, a kind of high-pitched keening when the pressure of the spirits became too much to bear. Do all that, and I could have found myself putting on a show in the presence of royalty.

The people who crowded into the theater every evening—twice on Saturdays—the easy cadence of their lives was more than enough. To say that I was aware of their entrance into the theater sounded more like what I ought to say than the actual truth. I felt nothing from them, sensed nothing. Standing where I did, just behind the curtain, I was mostly ignorant of the shuffling of feet, the brush of velvet against silk, a scrap of lace torn from the hem of a lady’s skirt. I had only what my imagination could conjure.

But it was what the people brought with them that alerted me to their arrival, the unseen visitors tagging along, clinging like a cloud of smoke, able to penetrate and glide through the most solid of objects. And then it was a cacophony inside my head, like the ringing of church bells. Only there was no such holy connection with what I heard.

I stood in the center of the stage, my eyes closed. The table was to my right, and I put out my hand—for support, I assured myself—and gripped the edge of the wood with knuckles that rapidly lost their color.

In my head, I heard them start. But that wasn’t quite true. They’d been talking for some time, daring to shriek while I used no small amount of strength to subdue them. In front of me, there was silence. No coughing, hardly a sniff despite the cold and the damp that seeped through the building’s framework. And then the crowd gazed up at me, waiting. For a sign. For a revelation. For an evening’s entertainment.

I wanted to tell them all to leave. The instruction danced on the tip of my tongue, quaked in my limbs. The urge to yell and scream, to tear out my hair and rave like a madwoman, spitting obscenities while the sound portion of my mind, what was left of it, recited a prayer.

Dear God, I will give you my life, my soul, if you will free me from this burden, if you will give me some meager amount of peace.

But there was no reply. There never was, no matter how many times I sent those words towards heaven. The communications between the two of us had been demolished years before, and so I was simply speaking to the air, my plea lost amid the terrible, mocking cries that poisoned my every thought.

The audience waited for me. I had to give them their show, no matter how unsatisfactory my performance turned out to be. Some would walk away calling me a fraud, a charlatan, or—if they wished the barb to truly stick—a mere actress. I’d be the topic of conversation over a late supper, and then I’d be forgotten. But not everyone would have that luxury. Others would hear my words, their eyes widening as I painted a picture of torment for them. And they would go away with a pain in their chests, like a fist closing around their heart, and even then, they would experience only a hint of my suffering.

And then, it was time.

I opened my eyes, and there were the faces. I didn’t study any of them, afraid that one of them would be familiar to me, that Marta’s dream would be realized by my acquisition of a following. Even then, I suspected that I’d become a sort of holy personage to a few of them, divine proof of the connection between this world and the world beside their own. A simple nod of my head, and I heard a woman gasp in anticipation of whatever that small movement might come to signify. But it was only a nod, nothing more. A mere welcome to the audience before me. Both seen and unseen.

This has been a difficult year. In November of last year, a week before my birthday and with Thanksgiving right around the corner, I had a miscarriage at just shy of thirteen weeks of pregnancy. Three days after losing the baby, after coming home from the hospital and being ordered to rest and recuperate from what happened, I picked up my laptop and wrote this:

One out of every four pregnancies ends in miscarriage.

That’s the statistic they gave me as I laid on a stretcher in the emergency room, after they’d changed the sheets and various bed-sized pads for the second and third times, the previous sets sitting on the floor in sodden piles, amid smears of blood and so much worse.

I was nearly twelve weeks pregnant, almost to the end of the first trimester and that point when it’s supposedly safe to proclaim to the world that you’re pregnant. But on a Saturday morning, six days before my thirty-fourth birthday, I woke up and realized I had started to bleed.

It was my fourth pregnancy, the first three all having culminated in bouncing, screaming, healthy babies being delivered into this world. I knew what was normal for my body and what would trigger a call to the doctor. Blood was bad. I knew this. So I picked up the phone and dialed the number.

I wasn’t having any cramps or pain. The bleeding wasn’t heavy. I was told to stay home, to rest, and see if it stopped. At lunchtime, it nearly did. But by dinnertime, the bleeding picked up in strength, and by bedtime, I was having contractions.

I called the doctor again. They told me to go to the emergency room.

My mom came down to watch the kids, who were all slumbering peacefully in their beds, and my husband and I braved the cold for the fifteen-minute drive to the hospital.

As we waited to be admitted, and as we were asked the same questions over and over about when the bleeding began and how many pregnancies I’d had and whether I smoked or drank or took my prenatal vitamins, the contractions grew in strength. When we’d arrived, I would’ve put them on a 4 or 5 on the pain scale. By the time they led us back into the ER, they’d leaped up to an 8.

The nurses tried to remain positive and optimistic at first. Bleeding didn’t necessarily mean a miscarriage. Even the contractions could be a symptom of something else, something not connected with me losing my child. But then a particularly strong contraction swept over me, and a particularly large amount of blood came out of me. The nurse rushed in to check on me and change the pads and the sheets beneath me. She glanced down at the soiled pads. Her expression changed. She announced that it no longer looked positive.

At that point, I knew I was in labor for a child that would not live, that probably was no longer even alive. I had never been in that position before. Me, the one who had gone through three complication-free pregnancies and complication-free deliveries. Had I started to think too highly of my fertile body? Or was this merely a fluke, my turn to add to the statistic stated to me by the doctor who came in to assure me that I had done nothing to bring on this miscarriage?

As the night wore on, my husband dozed as much as he could and I flipped through the cable channels, settling on Phineas and Ferb and hideously awful purses on one of a half-dozen shop-at-home channels. And as I laid there, dizzy from morphine and exhausted from everything else, I continued to bleed, and I watched as my belly slowly shrank down, as if there had never been a baby in there in the first place.

What I don’t want is for this fourth pregnancy, the first of mine not to make it to full-term, to become nothing more than a statistic. I was pregnant. I went through morning sickness, just like the others. I had already started experiencing weird food cravings and a constant need to pee, just like the others. I had looked forward to feeling the baby kick, to finding out if it was a boy or a girl, to holding that messy little newborn as it blinked through the goo on its eyes and took its first breaths of stale, hospital air.

But because those things didn’t happen does not make it any less than the others, relegating it to a lower status. I have been pregnant four times. I am a mother four times over. Should I become pregnant again, it will be my fifth pregnancy and my fifth child.

***

I didn’t write any further than that. I’m not sure I needed to. By the time I tapped out that last paragraph, I was spent. Some of the pain and the grief had drained out of me, leaving me feeling numb.

I went through a difficult time after that. A hard winter with bitter cold and a tremendous amount of snow and ice didn’t help matters. I was probably depressed, though I hadn’t experienced anything like it before and didn’t understand until afterwards what was going on. But I felt very little, simply moving forward through each day, thankful for making it to the end of it, and going to sleep at night, hoping not to dream.

My father’s health took a downturn at the same time. The winter was even harder on him. By spring, we knew it was going to be his last year with us, perhaps his last summer. But he didn’t even make it to summer.

And the pain is different now. With losing the baby, it was immediate and sharp, leaving a grey void in its wake that slowly faded into nothing. With my father, perhaps because there was such a build up towards the end with his chronic health problems, it doesn’t feel the same at all. I feel it constantly, but only if I allow myself to. After the baby, there was the cold emptiness. With my father, the sorrow is a living thing, always alert, waiting to pounce on me the moment I let down my guard.

My urge to write, then, is different, too. After the miscarriage, it was like pushing poison out of a wound. Putting my chin to my chest and writing as many words as I could, as quickly as I could, without a thought as to typos or mistakes. Just going, going, going until I was too tired and I could finally close my eyes and sleep. Now, I’m distracted. Wanting to take on a bajillion projects at once, unable to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes at a time.

Because pain and grief are these strange, intangible things. There’s no right or wrong way to approach them, because they are never the same animal. One might be strong enough to always hold you in its grip, while the other might release you with nothing more than a sigh.

And here I sit, the words still pouring out of me, not even sure if I have a particular point to this post or any kind of message I wish to impart to the world. Beginning, middle, and end is how these things are supposed to go. But our lives, and the pain left behind when a life leaves us, don’t always seem to follow that arc.

Beginning… middle… end.

And still it hurts. And still I write.

Generally, my heroes are good guys, in the sense that they’ve always been good. They may be a bit stuck up when I pick up their story, or have made a few poor choices here and there (because no one in the real world ever does that… *shifty eyes*…) but for the most part, they’re good. You know they’re the hero within the first few scenes they have on the page. And so you dig out your pom-poms and you cheer for them.

But sometimes… Well, sometimes I like to give the bad guy a chance. I know that’s not always something that sits well with prospective readers. We (and I do include myself in this group, sometimes) want to see things in black and white. Frodo, good. Sauron, bad. Ring must be thrown into the fire. (Isildur! NOOOOO!!!) And yet, doesn’t the “bad guy” get to have his shot at redemption?

It’s a thread I’ve noticed running through some of my stories more and more. Someone screws up. Someone screws up badly. And yet, they get their second chance (or maybe it’s their third or fourth or seventeenth chance by the time we run into them.) One of my future releases, The Bride Price, features an antagonist who early readers dislike. Vehemently. Give him a moustache and he’d be twirling it. But down the road, I still plan on giving him his own story, his own shot at fixing his life and trying to make up for past mistakes.

Some people who know I plan on giving him his own redemption story are NOT PLEASED about this. Well, okay. That’s your thing. But it’s interesting how people see villains, how they want to keep them tucked into their little box of evil and not let them out to make something better of themselves.

Is it because we like to keep things clearly delineated? Good is good and bad is bad and never the twain shall meet?

Does the young woman who gives up her child for her sister to raise and takes a large sum of money in return always have to be portrayed as bad, or do we get to revisit her some years down the line, when age and acquired wisdom have perhaps changed her views and made her regret some of her previous choices? (Yes, that character will have her own story down the line, too. Believe me, I have a lot of stories in the planning stage. Probably more than I should.)

Maybe because I’ve grown older (well, slightly older… middle-age older) I like to write characters who are not perfect, who might fit the role of antagonist in one story but work their way to hero or heroine in the next. Maybe because I’ve seen people change over the course of years (and years) that I’m more inclined to reflect those alterations in personality in the fiction I produce. Or maybe I just like messing with people. That could be it, too.

*Originally posted on Wordpress: https://quenbyolson.wordpress.com/201...

In my next book, The Firstborn, I stumble into the lives of two sisters. The older of the two, Sophia, has had to pick up the slack of caring for her younger sibling, Lucy, after the death of their parents. They’ve now lost everything of their former life. Their home, income, and all while dealing with the grief of losing two family members.

Sun_and_Moon_Flowers_1890

And then Lucy finds herself with child, without a husband, and with the eyes of their entire hometown glaring down at them through shades of scandal.

Sophia does what she thinks she must. She finds a new home for them, a home where they won’t be known. She takes on the guise of a widow, and raises her sister’s son as her own.

Simple enough, right?

Of course not. There wouldn’t be a story to tell if everything had tied itself up so neatly.

Lucy finds herself too young, still reeling from her parents’ deaths to care for her child, and so is too quick to leave her son to Sophia’s care. So when a certain Lord Haughton comes calling, claiming to be the child’s uncle and making demands left and right about the boy’s care, Sophia balks at the threatened loss of control over her own life… and the life of her nephew.

Even worse for her is the fear that her nephew will be taken away from her entirely. A woman in nineteenth century England had a frightening lack of rights, and a member of the peerage, and one with the funds to see things done, would’ve had no difficulty swooping in to take a little boy from a woman deemed unfit (i.e. poor) to raise him.

But Sophia is not the type to back down without a fight. And at the end of the day, more than anything, it is her love for her nephew that fuels her resolve to remain a part of his life.

***
Excerpt from The Firstborn:

“It does not make a whit of sense,” Sophia said, as she began to crumple the edge of the letter between her fingers. “Six weeks ago, he came here ready to settle a large sum of money on us in exchange for our silence, ensuring that no one would ever discover George’s connection to his great and illustrious family. And now he’s inviting us to his home, to mingle with his sister and make banal conversation about the weather over tea and light refreshments?” She shook her head. “I simply cannot fathom what has worked this supposed alteration in his behavior.”

Lady Rutledge slipped a bracelet from her wrist and held it out to George, who crawled quickly over to her side and babbled excitedly as she dropped the bauble into his grasp. “You suspect all is not as it seems?”

“Well, I certainly don’t believe he was visited by angels on the road to Damascus. I simply…” She exhaled heavily as her shoulders slumped forward in a most unladylike manner. “George has been in my care for his entire life. Even when Lucy was still here, she never… She always treated him as a burden. And I do understand how she could think such a thing. Children are not easy creatures to care for. They are maddening and exhausting and consume your entire life in a frightening amount of time. But even so…” She closed eyes that had suddenly become watery. “I don’t want to lose him.”

For a moment, there was nothing but the jangle of Lady Rutledge’s bracelet and the satisfied sounds of George as he attempted to shove the sapphire concoction—along with a great deal of his fist—into his mouth.

“And you believe Lord Haughton will take him from you?”

Sophia blinked several times and looked across at Lady Rutledge. “I don’t know. A part of me wants to think he’ll spirit George away forever as soon as I enter his home. But another part of me—a much smaller part, I must admit—hopes that he is truly penitent and wishes to…I don’t know, create some sort of compromise that will benefit George.”

“One in which you don’t lose access to him,” Lady Rutledge pointed out.

As George crawled his way towards her part of the drawing room, Sophia reached down and removed the bracelet from between his teeth. When he began to fuss, she merely tickled him under his arm until his cries turned to damp-cheeked giggles. “Or that involves him lording his control over me with a few coins,” she said, her fingers lightly teasing George’s plump chin.

“More than a few coins, if your description of his offer was accurate.”

“Quite accurate,” Sophia said, her eyebrows raised at the memory. “Perhaps it was foolish of me to turn him down, but I could not like the idea that I was somehow being purchased, like a horse or a bolt of silk.”

A moment of silence passed between them, apart from the steady thump of George’s knees and hands as he crawled across the floor.

***
And so Sophia finds herself dealing with someone very much like herself, someone who has been trying to keep tabs on the behavior of a younger sibling, trying to clean up the mess of their mistakes – and all while making a few mistakes of their own.

Sophia was thrill to write, a character I would very much love to meet in real life (and preferably have on my side during a fight).

*The Firstborn will be available for purchase in paperback and ebook from several major retailers on May 9th, 2017*