Tracy Chevalier's Blog: Tracy Talks, page 4

I’m having a new experience this month. My latest novel, New Boy, is not an historical novel – unless you think 1974 is history. To me it feels like yesterday, since I lived through it. Indeed, I was 11 in 1974, same age as the characters in the book. I had lots of fun being nostalgic about Partridge Family lunchboxes and Big Buddy bubblegum while I was writing the book. (For a little hit of that nostalgia, have a look here.)

Now, during the promotion, I’m getting asked a lot about my childhood, going to an integrated school in Washington DC, playground politics, and the casual racism of the 1970s. It has made me realize how much writing books set in the distant past has sheltered me from all of that personal scrutiny. For instance, I have never been asked if I resemble the maid Griet in Girl with a Pearl Earring, or Quaker Honor Bright in The Last Runaway. Readers don’t assume I have had the experiences those characters have, since they took place in 17th-century Holland and 19th-century Ohio. Actually, though, I think there is indirectly quite a lot of me in both of them, camouflaged behind a historical setting.

I’m having a new experience this month. My latest novel, New Boy, is not an historical novel – unless you think 1974 is history. To me it feels like yesterday, since I lived through it. Indeed, I was 11 in 1974, same age as the characters in the book. I had lots of fun being nostalgic about Partridge Family lunchboxes and Big Buddy bubblegum while I was writing the book. (For a little hit of that nostalgia, have a look here.)

Now, during the promotion, I’m getting asked a lot about my childhood, going to an integrated school in Washington DC, playground politics, and the casual racism of the 1970s. It has made me realize how much writing books set in the distant past has sheltered me from all of that personal scrutiny. For instance, I have never been asked if I resemble the maid Griet in Girl with a Pearl Earring, or Quaker Honor Bright in The Last Runaway. Readers don’t assume I have had the experiences those characters have, since they took place in 17th-century Holland and 19th-century Ohio. Actually, though, I think there is indirectly quite a lot of me in both of them, camouflaged behind a historical setting.

Now, having peeked out at the contemporary world, I am heading back to my hiding place, this time in Winchester in the 1930s, sprinkling the odd drop of myself into my heroine, Violet. When you read it in a few years, maybe you’ll recognize those drops.

In May my next novel, New Boy, is published. It has been a bit of a shock to start doing interviews and events again just a year after my last novel. New Boy is a special project - a retelling of Shakespeare's Othello - so I wrote it fast; normally there's a 2-3 year gap between books. I don't know how writers who produce a book a year do it! I'll be doing events in the UK and US and Canada, as well as some tv and radio, which I'll post about on Twitter and Facebook.

In May my next novel, New Boy, is published. It has been a bit of a shock to start doing interviews and events again just a year after my last novel. New Boy is a special project - a retelling of Shakespeare's Othello - so I wrote it fast; normally there's a 2-3 year gap between books. I don't know how writers who produce a book a year do it! I'll be doing events in the UK and US and Canada, as well as some tv and radio, which I'll post about on Twitter and Facebook.

The very best thing I've done, however, is to be guest DJ on BBC Radio 6 Music, one of my favourite stations.The show is called Paperback Writers and runs on Sundays at 1pm British time. I got to choose and talk about and play all kinds of stuff: from my childhood (Stevie Wonder, Queen, Roberta Flack) to my college days (Talking Heads, Elvis Costello), to my early years in London (The Beat, Billy Bragg), through to the music I listened to on research road trips (Lyle Lovett, Blind Pilot, Gillian Welch). I prerecorded it, thankfully - hard to talk live without freaking out! It runs on April 23rd (Shakespeare's birthday). You can listen to it afterwards for a while, here.

For the Othello fans among you, just to say: Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly" is the "Willow Song" in New Boy. I'll say no more - you'll have to read it to see!

         

 

 

2 March 2017 is World Book Day. To celebrate, a very cool project called 1000 LONDONERS has posted a short film about me. I talk about the writing process and quite a lot about quilting too! Have a look. And check out the other 200 short films about a wide variety of the people who make up London. Happy World Book Day!

 

 

Earlier this month I went on a short US paperback book tour to St. Louis and three Ohio cities, with Miami FL thrown in at the end for good behavior. One day I went from Cincinnati (18F/-7C) to Miami (80F/26C)! My favorite stop was Toledo OH. I would like to state here that Toledo gets unfairly bad press. It has one of the finest art museums I've ever visited, and I was lucky enough to read there that night to 420 people! Here they are:

How gorgeous is that room! Thanks too to the Toledo Public Library who co-organized the reading. I was told they have a rocking building downtown. I just looked it up and indeed it rocks!

        

In fact, my most successful events on the tour were all organized by libraries. They seem to have taken over from bookstores as the rallying point for book lovers.

[True or false: as a child I wanted to be a librarian as much as a writer. True!]

As for the rest of the tour: as you can imagine, with a new Administration in Washington, and a lot dividing the country, things are a little...tense. If you are curious about that, read THIS. If not (or even if!), go to the library and take out a book. You will be keeping Toledo Public Library happy - or any library, for that matter.

 

 

 

Thanksgiving Day, and I am reading proofs of my next book, NEW BOY, a modern retelling of Othello. The proofreading stage is my last chance to make any changes, and is always a little nerve-wracking. Plus I'm tired of the book as I've read it so many times.

This novel is different from my others: nostalgic rather than historical, with a plot given to me by Shakespeare. Why did I choose Othello, and set it on an American school playground in the 1970s? Maybe because of this:

 

 

Yep, that's me in the middle row, the anxious girl with the pigtails and glasses, wearing - what? - plaid and stripes together. Yikes!

I had a bit of the minority experience growing up in Washington DC, and I wanted to explore that in a novel. NEW BOY flips my experience to the more common black-boy-in-an-all-white-school. Plus it's Othello we're talking about, so it's tragic, whereas my time at Takoma Elementary was...occasionally tense, but mostly peaceful. Certainly the playground was not strewn with bodies the way the end of a Shakespeare tragedy is!

Soon the proofs will leave my desk and I can relax and go back to research for my next historical novel, set at Winchester Cathedral. For now I leave you with a taste of things to come - a map of old Winchester, embroidered onto a cushion you can find on one of the Cathedral choir seats:

 

 

 

Summer's over, kids are back at school, and I am sharpening my pencils in preparation for the new year. (I still think in terms of school years, so life begins again in September.)

I began September by pressing

 

 

It felt SO good. The new book is a retelling of Shakespeare's OTHELLO and is called BLACK BOY. Set on an American school playground c.1974, it features an 11-year-old boy named Osei, a girl named Dee, her friend Mimi, and the school bully Ian. It is also a nostalgia trip for me, including Big Buddy Bubble Gum, Now and Laters, the Jackson Five, Roberta Flack, Hot Wheels, and bell bottoms with flowered embroidery on the hem. Ah, the 1970s...

Now of course I have editing to do, because a book always needs editing. You can work all you like on your own, but it's only when someone has read it that you know if it works or not. And there is always something that needs fixing.

My editor Clara and I will be talking and working over the next several weeks, and to help her along I am sending her this today:

 

 

Wouldn't it be great to have a branded pencil for every subject I write about?

Speaking of which...while I await editorial instructions about BLACK BOY, I'm taking a little research trip to Winchester for my next book. I will try to bring back something branded and post a photo so you'll know what the subject will be!

Happy Autumn...

 

I have been very busy over the past few months, juggling the publication of 2 books and the celebration of Charlotte Brontë's bicentenary. Instead of describing it all in words, I'm posting some pictures - worth their thousand, you know!

First, the LAUNCH party for At the Edge of the Orchard

 

There was lots of SIGNING.

              

 

MEDIA.

TV requires a lot of eye shadow



I got to meet Diane Rehm (NPR) and Graham Norton (BBC)


Didn't Bernard Lehut at French RTL make me look chic!




My sister said she could tell from the shape of my mouth
that I was speaking French to these bloggers!




Wall Street Journal DID manage to make me look chic.
At least the furnishings were...



I was also involved with all things CHARLOTTE BRONTË.




 Talking about Charlotte, a lot.



Laying a wreath on the doorstep of her house on her birthday



Debating over her novels with a smart bunch of writers





And QUILTS! Somehow I managed to sneak those in too.





















So. What next? SHAKESPEARE.


I am working on a retelling of OTHELLO, set on an American school playground, circa 1974.



HAPPY SUMMER!                                                                                                                                                                       

 

 

 

Since last writing I've been all over the United States and the United Kingdom, talking about two books: At the Edge of the Orchard and Reader, I Married Him: Stories Inspired by Jane Eyre. If you look around the website you'll find new interviews and radio shows, articles and reviews. The publicity is dying down but I am still doing a lot of events, some solo, others with some fabulous writers. To see if I'm coming to a town near you, have a look HERE.

In a few days it's time for another writer to step into the limelight. On 21 April we will down tools and stand up to salute Charlotte Brontë, who turns 200. I've been working for the past year with the Brontë Parsonage to help celebrate Charlotte's bicentenary, and have discovered how beloved she is by readers everywhere, and also what a surprising woman she was. You can read more about the bicentenary HERE, and about her most famous novel Jane Eyre HERE.

I leave you with the two best ways I know to celebrate a birthday: cake and quilts*. Happy Birthday, Charlotte!

 

                                   

*(Thanks to Huddersfield quilter Judith Havis for this quilt celebrating Charlotte - on display with 57 others at "Splendid Shreds of Silk and Satin" exhibition at the Bankfield Museum, Halifax, Yorkshire 16 April - 11 June 2016)