Fission the Novel – author interview – Tom Weston

Fission Book Tour

Paperback Writer welcomes Tom Weston, author of the historical fiction novel Fission as he virtually tours the blogosphere in December 2011 on his fourth tour with Pump Up Your Book!

About Fission

Lise Meitner:
a physicist who never lost her humanity
First they tried to deny her.
Then they tried to destroy her.
But she survived to discover nuclear fission and spark the race for the atomic bomb.
The clue is to be found in her headstone. No, it isn’t the physics. For, as much as I like science, the scribbling of mathematical equations on blackboards and the clicking of Geiger-counters does not make for riveting story-telling. What drew me to the Lise Meitner story is the humanity.
Imagine a story of hate and greed, intrigue and danger, war and destruction, the slaughter of the innocents on a biblical scale and the collapse of empire. And imagine at the centre of it all one little woman, brilliant but shy, victimized but resolute, betrayed but ultimately vindicated. What a story that would make! Well, you don’t have to imagine it, because that is the Lise Meitner story. And I didn’t have to invent any of it . . .
. . . it’s all true.

Interview

Q: Do you work from an outline?

I have a three stage process which I call building the beast; and the first stage is to build the skeleton – This is the outline, and is generally about 20% of the finished novel in terms of word count, but more importantly, 100% of the ideas. When I have the skeleton, I can stand it up, take it for a walk and make it dance. I can see if the beast is complete. I can also see if the beast if flawed. Yes, next I have to put flesh on the beast (the actual writing) and to give it strength and intelligence (the editing), but without a sound underlying skeleton, it’s still not going to walk on its own legs.
Some would argue that such a mechanical approach to writing stifles artistry. I contend that having such a detailed outline actually gives me more freedom during the writing phase to express myself. I have my skeleton. I can now work on the flesh, and heart and lungs. I can now spend my time honing a witty piece of dialogue or a cutting-edge simile. Artists such as Titian and Rembrandt always began by sketching an outline in charcoal on the canvas over which they would begin to paint, usually after several preparatory sketches. I don’t know of any artist that looked at a blank canvas and said, “Hmm, let’s improvise today” – not even the Impressionists. Rembrandt is praised for his use of light and economy of brushstroke – these things determine our opinion of him as a great artist – but it was still having that detailed outline to work from that freed his hand.

 

Q: Biggest Pet Peeve about the writing life.

Proof reading my own work is definitely my least favorite task. I’d like to make this distinction between proof reading and editing, because the editing process is a distinctly creative and rewarding part of the process. But proof reading has me pulling out my hair. In my previous life as a systems consultant, when we were acceptance testing new systems, it was commonly understood that for every bug we found there were 6 more waiting to be discovered. That’s how it is with proofing – just when I think I’ve got them all, I open the book to a random page and discover another error.

 

Q: What’s next for you?

I’m currently wrapped up in the third book of the Alex and Jackie Adventures. It’s called ‘Feathered: being a fairy tale’. This one finds the sisters in Ireland in a story involving Fairies, Vikings and the Book of Kells. I had a great time this summer in Ireland doing the research for the book. As a story teller, there is no better place to be than in a nation of story tellers.

Beyond that, I’m just starting to get the ball rolling on our next animation project. One of the great things about life is the constant surprise. During an earlier book tour, in support of FIRST NIGHT, I wrote a short story called THERE BE MONSTERS! which was then turned into an animated short. I didn’t expect much from it, but it led to a year of Film Festivals and speaking invitations, and proved another way for me to share my stories. So, the sequel to that is on the schedule for 2012. As I said, constant surprise.

 

Q: Who is your favorite author, and why?

I’m never very far away from a P.G. Wodehouse novel; he is the Master. But because his forte was light comedy, people tend to not take him seriously as a writer. Yet as any comedian will tell you, there is an awful amount of hard work that goes into making it look easy. Wodehouse had such a command of language and technique that the effect is transparent to the reader, but he is word perfect.

 

Q: What are a few of your favorite genres and why?

Today, I will instantly pick up anything by Terry Pratchett or Christopher Moore; they are both such a joy to read. Add to that my favorite book, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and people may think, given those names and my own work, that Fantasy is my favorite genre. But it’s not enough just to have magic or supernatural creatures. For me, the best Fantasy is that which is rooted in our own mythology and history; a genre which goes all the way back to Homer and Malory. My reading list alternates between fiction and non-fiction, and between the classics and the contemporary. Great writers can’t be put in a box.

 

Q: Do you have a writer’s studio? Describe it for us and what is the view you see from the window?

I have an office/studio. It’s comfortable, with books, couch, computer, and a window. I live at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, so it is mostly trees and sky. There are few people, but sometimes deer or turkeys. It’s very relaxing. The window is important. I tried writing in a sealed environment – it just doesn’t work; I can’t get the creative juices flowing in an isolated environment, I’m too busy wondering what is happening in the outside world.
Most of my work is done on the PC in the office; I don’t see the point in handwriting only to end up typing it anyway, but I do carry a small notebook around with me, in case I suddenly get an idea or bit of dialogue and the PC is nowhere near.

 

About Tom Weston

Tom Weston’s work includes the fantasy based Alex and Jackie books, First Night and The Elf of Luxembourg. His latest project is Fission, a novel based on the true life story of scientist, Lise Meitner. Prior to its publication in 2011, Fission was serialized online for Tom’s fans. To find out more about Tom and his work, or to read more about Fission, please visit http://tom-weston.com/ or http://www.facebook.com/tom.weston.readers. A portion of all sales of Fission, no matter where purchased, go to the ‘Because I am a GiRL’ campaign by Plan, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children since 1937. Visit PlanUSA at http://www.planusa.org/content1619891 or get involved with your own national/regional Plan office.

Chapter One Excerpt from The Confessions of Catherine De Medici by C.W. Gortner

Click in the cover to purchase this book

Chapter One

I was ten years old when I discovered I might be a witch.

I sat sewing with my aunt Clarice, as sunlight spread across the gallery floor. Outside the window I could hear the splashing of the courtyard fountain, the cries of the vendors in the Via Larga and staccato of horse hooves on the cobblestone streets, and I thought for the hundredth time that I couldn’t stay inside another minute.

“Caterina Romelo de’ Medici, can it be you’ve finished already?”

I looked up. My late father’s sister Clarice de’ Medici y Strozzi regarded me from her chair. I wiped my brow with my sleeve. “It’s so hot in here,” I said. “Can’t I go outside?”

She arched her eyebrow. Even before she said anything, I could have recited her words, so often had she drummed them into my head: “You are the Duchess of Urbino, daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his wife, Madeleine de la Tour, who was of noble French blood. How many times must I tell you, you must restrain your impulses in order to prepare for your future?”

I didn’t care about the future. I cared that it was summer and here I was cooped up in the family palazzo forced to study and sew all day, as if I might melt in the sun.

I clapped my embroidery hoop aside. “I’m bored. I want to go home.”

“Florence is your home; it is your birth city,” she replied. “I took you from Rome because you were sick with fever. You’re fortunate you can sit here and argue with me at all.”

“I’m not sick anymore,” I retorted. I hated it when she used my poor health as an excuse. “At least in Rome, Papa Clement let me have my own servants and a pony to ride.”

She regarded me without a hint of the ire that the mention of my papal uncle always roused in her. “That may be but you are here now, in my care, and you will abide by my rules. It’s midafternoon. I’ll not hear of you going outside in this heat.”

“I’ll wear a cap and stay in the shade. Please, Zia Clarice. You can come with me.”

I saw her trying to repress her unwilling smile as she stood. “If your work is satisfactory, we can take a stroll on the loggia before supper.” She came to me, a thin woman in a simple gray gown, her oval face distinguished by her large liquid-black eyes—the Medici eyes, which I had inherited, along with our family’s curly auburn hair and long-fingered hands.

She swiped up my embroidery. Her lips pursed when she heard me giggle. “I suppose you think it’s funny to make the Holy Mother’s face green? Honestly, Caterina; such sacrilege.” She thrust the hoop at me. “Fix it at once. Embroidery is an art, one you must master as well as your other studies. I’ll not have it said that Caterina de’ Medici sews like a peasant.”

I thought it best not to laugh and began picking out the offensive color, while my aunt returned to her seat. She stared off into the distance. I wondered what new trials she planned for me. I did love her but she was forever dwelling on how our family prestige had fallen since the death of my great-grandfather, Lorenzo Il Magnifico; of how Florence had been a center of learning renowned for our Medici patronage, and now we were but illustrious guests in the city we had helped build. It was my responsibility, she said, to restore our family’s glory, as I was the last legitimate descendant of Il Magnifico’s bloodline.

I wondered how she expected me to accomplish such an important task. I’d been orphaned shortly after my birth; I had no sisters or brothers and depended on my papal uncle’s goodwill. When I once mentioned this, my aunt snapped: “Clement VII was born a bastard. He bribed his way to the Holy See, to our great shame. He’s not a true Medici. He has no honor.”

Given his prestige, if he couldn’t restore our family name I didn’t know how she expected me to. Yet she seemed convinced of my destiny, and every month had me dress in my uncomfortable ducal finery and pose for a new portrait, which was then copied into miniatures and dispatched to all the foreign princes who wanted to marry me. I was still too young for wedlock, but she left me no doubt she’d already selected the cathedral, the number of ladies who would attend me—

All of a sudden, my stomach clenched. I dropped my hands to my belly, feeling an unexpected pain. My surroundings distorted, as if the palazzo had plunged underwater. Nausea turned my mouth sour. I came to my feet blindly, hearing my chair crash over. A terrifying darkness overcame me. I felt my mouth open in a soundless scream as the darkness widened like a vast ink stain, swallowing everything around me. I was no longer in the gallery arguing with my aunt; instead, I stood in a desolate place, powerless against a force that seemed to well up from deep inside me . . .

I stand unseen, alone among strangers. They are weeping. I see tears slip down their faces, though I can’t hear their laments. Before me is a curtained bed, draped in black. I know at once something horrible lies upon it, something I should not see. I try to stay back but my feet move me toward it with the slow certainty of a nightmare, compelling me to reach out a spotted, bloated hand I do not recognize as my own, part the curtains, and reveal

“Dio Mio, no!” My cry wrenched from me. I felt my aunt holding me, the frantic caress of her hand on my brow. I had a terrible stomachache and lay sprawled on the floor, my embroidery and tangled yarns strewn beside me.

“Caterina, my child,” my aunt said. “Please, not the fever again . . .”

As the strange sensation of having left my own body began to fade, I forced myself to sit up. “I don’t think it’s the fever,” I said. “I saw something: a man, lying dead on a bed. He was so real, Zia . . . it scared me.”

She stared at me. Then she whispered, “Una visione,” as if it was something she’d long feared. She gave me a fragile smile, reaching out to help me to my feet. “Come, that’s enough for today. Let us go take that walk, si? Tomorrow we’ll visit the Maestro. He’ll know what to do.”

ABOUT THE BOOK:

The truth is, none of us are innocent. We all have sins to confess.

So reveals Catherine de Medici in this brilliantly imagined novel about one of history’s most powerful and controversial women. To some she was the ruthless queen who led France into an era of savage violence. To others she was the passionate savior of the French monarchy. Acclaimed author C. W. Gortner brings Catherine to life in her own voice, allowing us to enter into the intimate world of a woman whose determination to protect her family’s throne and realm plunged her into a lethal struggle for power.

The last legitimate descendant of the illustrious Medici line, Catherine suffers the expulsion of her family from her native Florence and narrowly escapes death at the hands of an enraged mob. While still a teenager, she is betrothed to Henri, son of François I of France, and sent from Italy to an unfamiliar realm where she is overshadowed and humiliated by her husband’s lifelong mistress. Ever resilient, Catherine strives to create a role for herself through her patronage of the famous clairvoyant Nostradamus and her own innate gift as a seer. But in her fortieth year, Catherine is widowed, left alone with six young children as regent of a kingdom torn apart by religious discord and the ambitions of a treacherous nobility.

Relying on her tenacity, wit, and uncanny gift for compromise, Catherine seizes power, intent on securing the throne for her sons. She allies herself with the enigmatic Protestant leader Coligny, with whom she shares an intimate secret, and implacably carves a path toward peace, unaware that her own dark fate looms before her—a fate that, if she is to save France, will demand the sacrifice of her ideals, her reputation, and the passion of her embattled heart.

From the fairy-tale châteaux of the Loire Valley to the battlefields of the wars of religion to the mob-filled streets of Paris, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici is the extraordinary untold journey of one of the most maligned and misunderstood women ever to be queen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

C. W. Gortner, half-Spanish by birth, holds an M.F.A. in writing, with an emphasis on historical studies, from the New College of California and has taught university courses on women of power in the Renaissance. He was raised in Málaga, Spain, and now lives in California. You can find C.W. at his blog, Historical Boys

Acclaimed for his insight into his characters, he travels extensively to research his books. He has slept in a medieval Spanish castle, danced in a Tudor great hall, and explored library archives all over Europe. His debut historical novel The Last Queen gained international praise and has been translated into eight languages to date. His new novel, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, will be published on May 25, 2010. He is currently at work on The Princess Isabella, his third historical novel, and The Secret Lion, the first book in his Tudor thriller series,The Spymaster Chronicles. You can visit C. W. Gortner’s website at http://c.w.gortner.com/