What inspired you to write, and why this kind of story?
I love reading classic literature, especially Greek mythology, but the first book that planted the thought of writing in my head was J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. I remember being so curious about that title and when I started reading it, I was hooked right away. I was 15 at the time so it’s easy to see why that story made such a connection with me. That, plus many other things had slowly steered me towards writing my own novel. This particular story swarmed in my mind for the longest time after college, but I knew I never really had the time to dedicate myself to writing until late in my life.
I think the movie Dances with Wolves had a lot to do with writing it, although, originally my idea was to tell a story about a little girl that had been captured and raised by Indians, and how that affected her life, in her voice. I started tinkering with a few paragraphs and soon realized how difficult it would be to tell this story from a child’s point of view so I went with a young woman as the protagonist instead. It was a natural progression to set the story during the Civil War era because that’s when the escalation between Indians and Whites was at its peak. I’ve always been fascinated with that time and place.
There’s more to this story than meets the eye. What does it all mean?
This is not an ordinary story and it was certainly never meant to be. Aside from being set during a historical era, its backdrop, it deals with many themes and motifs regarding life and death, human curiosities and mysteries. That alone opens up a Pandora’s Box. Questions and possibilities about our short life on Earth, to which there are always more questions than answers. What can we do with all the evil thoughts in our hearts and minds? How do we process the mysterious world around us? How do we react to our circumstances? How do we find solutions to our most profound problems? How do we remain positive, affirmative and pro-active? Who is really in control of our life and death, our Creator, or us?
These are important questions to me. The intention of this book is to reveal these questions in an enlightening way, rather than posing pseudo spiritual answers throughout. Ultimately, it is everyone’s responsibility to seek and provide their own answers. To search for the truth, wherever they can find it.
In a sense, the constructs of this story were built around a metaphor for life. In this case, captivity represents bondage; the Sioux Indians represent oppression and slavery, as well as seekers of spiritual matters. The story in essence is a parable, and it is up to each reader to decipher their own meaning and come out of it with renewed understanding and clarity of purpose for their life. To figure out the great mystery its protagonist is searching for, and to be free. Free from all negative energy that keeps us down and out in life. That’s the daily struggle. That’s what we fight against all day long, all our lives. It’s what the Apostle Paul wrote about in the Book of Ephesians. That we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of darkness in high places. And that we should take up the Shield of Faith against evil. The Armor of God in our defense.
All that is heavy and most people would rather not bring it up, but it’s the undercurrent of our lives. A never-ending stream that we ride every day whether we want to or not. The reality is that it’s there and we cannot ignore its effect, and it’s up to each of us to determine within our minds, how to shape this stream, and change the course of this ever-flowing river. How to defy its deadly path into the waterfall canyon below. How to define it and adjust its flow in the right direction for our salvation and our redemption.
Which writers have influenced your writing?
Too many to mention because I learn something from each of them, but I think without question, J.D. Salinger, Hemingway, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to name just three that have been the most influential. Marquez is probably my favorite writer, although there are so many I admire. And as you can see there’s a huge gap in that literary map among these writers but they have all inspired me and I’m grateful to have learned from them. (Let me not forget the many writers in the Bible who have influenced every writer, before and since Aristotle.) Others include, Barbara Kingsolver, Mark Twain, Roberto Bolaño, Harper Lee, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy.
I also like the screenplays of Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, and Michael Blake, to name a few. Let’s face it; I’m a fan of any writer that has something interesting to say and a unique way of saying it. But I try to do my own thing, in my own way and I don’t let other writers inside my head when I write. It’s the only way to maintain a unique voice throughout the work.
Why have you chosen so many points of view for this story?
The short answer to that is I think it adds depth and texture to the story. I realize there are plenty of rules about maintaining one POV throughout, but Toni Morrison, for example has made good use of multiple points of view, especially in her novel, Beloved, and if done properly it adds to the telling. Although, I don’t use POV’s at her level, but I like the feel of more than one POV. It adds vibrancy to the dialogue and keeps the reader off guard and always expecting something different. I think that one narrator, whether it is the main character or an “off screen” narrator, can limit the story to a monotonous tone, or a repetitive tone in some cases. Multiple POV’s keep everything fresh and alive, and zoom in on the characters, up close and personal.
In this case, I’ve used a POV devise whereas the story opens with a narrator then quickly segues into Virginia’s POV but since she is an unreliable narrator, as her opening statement shows, the story quickly shifts back to an “off camera” narrator who takes over the story until Virginia is able to tell what she remembers, beginning in Part II when she is captured.
I chose this method to tell the story because telling it from a first-person omniscient POV all the way through can get somewhat monotonous and even self-serving as far as it’s main character goes. It seems self-aggrandizing to talk about yourself, especially in print, and so I chose she set-up the story and present her dilemma in her own words via her journal and when the time comes where she forgets, or when she is not a part of a scene, the exterior narrator takes over with a more subjective POV. That happens several times throughout. But it’s easy to follow.
A lot happens throughout this novel. What is the story’s main premise?
Actually, this story works off two premises and many themes bounce off those premises. The opening and central premise is that we are not in control of our lives. The second premise, which fades in later is that the fear of living leads to a wasted life―an unfortunate death. Not all deaths are unfortunate, you know. We all know we have to die some day. It’s not so much about our dying as it is about the kind of life we’ve lived. Many people live their lives to the max and when their time of dying comes, they have no regrets. Yet that’s the exception, rather than the rule.
Most people waste their lives on unimportant things, and when their time of dying approaches, they’re resentful and miserable. In other words, dying fulfilled is possible for some people. Or as the title suggests―a death for beauty. And that’s the real meaning behind the title, in fact. It speaks to that premise in the story and not a theme, as in the death of Birdie, which is thematic to the story. The circumstances surrounding his death, that is.
Denial, for instance is one of many themes I use and in this case it plays off Virginia Mae Mercy. She owns that theme, and she is also the quintessential skeptic and her views rely more on the assumption that believing random acts of violence in the world are more than fate. Possibly even God-ordained.
And a lot does happen and keeps happening, like a toppled row of dominoes. Nothing but conflict and one thing affects the other, which is how dynamic plots are structured. Otherwise you wind up with a mash of events that may be interesting but have nothing to do with each other. So my plot is very linear, but at the same time, filled with palpable beats that don’t flat-line. Not in my eyes anyway. I’m sure every reader has their own unique way of seeing it.
Where do the character names come from?
Hmm…I found them on the internet. Well, I looked up Victorian era names and came up with a good list and worked off that but some of them like Virginia’s name I made up entirely. I love the name Virginia and in her case the “Mae” seemed like a good middle name, and “Mercy” was what she needed so, there you have it. It was the third name I had used while writing the script. Maxine was my original pick but her sister-in-law wound up with it. All the other names were off the list, except for Triste, which means “sad” in Spanish and just right for this endearing character. I think it fits.
The name of Mr. Clayton Farquhar has a sophistication to it that contrasts with his personality, his pretentious ways. There’s something comical about that combination and I think Mr. Farquhar lives up to his unusual name. Birdie’s nickname was made up, of course, to add some warmth, but his last name, Kelly, is from Ms. Kelly’s original narrative.
It feels as though you’ve really captured the many nuances of this era. What kind of challenges did you face when drawing from historical information?
I’ve always been interested in the Civil War so I had internalized a lot of things that are specific to this era, but I still had to do quite a bit of research in order to get everything as accurate as possible. That always takes a lot of time and meanwhile the writing can’t stop, so you wind up going back and forth, filling in gaps and details you missed the first time around. Some of the facts I had to skew in order to better serve parts of the story and I mention that in the preface footnotes about the use of passenger trains at the time. And so a lot of details are also added after most of the writing is done too.
I added several events about President Lincoln that I thought were interesting. It’s easy to go back and fill in small details that make a big difference in the mood of a scene. It’s similar to piecing together a video, where you cut and paste scenes and events in random order at times and then edit everything back into its rightful place. I also read as much as I could about the Civil War online and looked up many expressions, customs, foods, news events of the time, and so on. That’s always a lot of fun to do when you have a curiosity about another era. I think most of my research went into writing the preface because it’s loaded with factual history relevant to this story and so I spent a lot of my time in the library piecing that together.
What is the purpose of your preface? Most novels don’t use them.
Since part of this story is based on true events, I felt compelled to include a preface that would in effect set up the narrative that followed. There was simply too much historical content that was not only important but relevant to the telling and needed to anchor everything that followed, and so I spent a good amount of time researching the details that led up to the escalation between Indians and Whites at the time. The preface serves as a guidepost, a roadmap, as well as a bona-fide backdrop for the fiction. The short, two-page prologue in the form of a parable also serves as a springboard into the narrative. I consider the prologue an integral part of the story and it sets the tone for the entire novel.
How long did it take you to write this novel?
I wrote the first draft in about three months but it was a scant 60k words and most of that I saved for the middle of the story, or Act II. Later I added another 35k words when I expanded the beginning and the ending to the story. I worked within a typical Five Act structure. All together, I spent the better part of 3 years working on it day and night most of the time.
At least it felt that way, but I enjoyed every minute of it and I’m hoping that shows.