Getting Medieval

It's a Wonderful Life in L.A.

The Los Angeles Conservancy is a great organization. It was started to preserve the historic Los Angeles library downtown, a library I haunted as a child and appreciated even then. But we went downtown to go to the Million Dollar Theater to see the 1947 movie It's A Wonderful Life. I don't get to do this very often, go see an old movie in a theater with an audience, but if you've never done it, you definitely should. I don't know how many hundreds of times I've seen this movie, but with a live audience, you get a whole new feel. There were even folks in the theatre who had never seen it. You could tell by their reactions. The funny lines were funnier, the pathos was sadder. But the only thing that didn't seem to hold up to the test of time was when Clarence the Angel declared that poor old Mary had ended up an old maid! And--horrors--was a LIBRARIAN to boot! That one got hoots of laughter. Probably a lot of librarians in the place.

But let me back up. There was a lot going on.

We arrived downtown on a sleepy Sunday. The Million Dollar Theater was built in 1918 with all the Spanish rococo flourishes expected from the era. It was, as they say, a movie palace! With a long arcing balcony and some 2345 seats originally, it was one of the largest theatres in the coountry built exclusively to show movies. L.A. is full of great old buildings like this, great little pockets of architecture. Behind is Bunker Hill, which used to be home to fabulous mansions in the late 1800's (and you can still see a few of them hauled lock, stock, and ornate barrel beside the Pasadena Freeway on your route to Pasadena) but is now bludgoened by the blight of a 1960's rambling apartment complex. Angel's Flight, a very short funicular railway, used to be the cheap way to get up and down the steep hill. Though the original railway was dismantled despite years of groups trying to preserve it, it was finallyy restored and rededicated in 1996, making a few flights up and down today.

Across from the Million Dollar Theater is the infamous Bradbury Building. Built in 1893, it's unique interior was inspired by a work of science fiction; how buildings would look in the year 2000! The interior is a gorgeous play of ironwork and skylight. Galleries, wood, terracotta friezes, two open ironwork elevators, marble--it's an amazing interior. And naturally enough, it's been used in the movies a fair few times, including Blade Runner, Double Indemnity, and D.O.A.    

Broadway between 4th and 7th is now host to a mostly Hispanic population and the storefronts reflect that, as well as Grand Central Market, with it's fighting aromas of Mexican food and Asian cookery. We almost stopped there to eat but we got a 10% discount to eat at the historic Clifton's Cafeteria and that's another place I'd always heard of but never got a chance to go to.

Down the street we went. Built in 1931, this Cafeteria has seen five generations keep it alive. Inside, you are whisked to the Santa Cruz mountains with forest murals painted by L.A. muralist Einar Petersen; a brook running through with a waterfall; "redwood" tree pillars hold up the roof; a moose stands guard over diners from above, and diners sit up and around a forest chalet. Yup. It's all California!  

After lunch, we strolled and shopped. One shop in particular caught my eye. It's window shelves were stocked with plastic and plaster saints and it could have been just another Catholic paraphenalia store...except for the statues of Death. In all sizes. Well, I had to go in there and get one. It's not everyday a person like me can buy death on the street.

As we look around, we begin to sense that this is not for Catholics much. Odd shaped candles for rituals, including a penis-shaped candle, and lots of stuff in the "pharmacy" area that looked suspicious. But I wanted my death statue, so the fellow behind the counter was friendly and most helpful. In fact, when I made my choice of the many little statues, he pulled back a red curtain and showed me a much bigger statue of Death with candles and a prie-dieu. If I felt like praying, I was free to do so. I didn't.

We just assumed we were in a Santeria shop, that blend of West African, Caribbean, and Catholic religion invlovling sacrificing chickens. But when I looked at the L.A. Times the next day, there just happened to be an article about this fellow--gal, really--Santa Muerte (Holy Death).

You can find anything in L.A. That's why I love it so much! It's a wonderful town.

More shots of downtown. Yeah, I was pretending to be a tourist.

Grand Central Market.

A view of some of the great old architecture down Broadway.

If you had any doubts, the sign told you.

More old theaters per capita. Unfortunately, most are only husks of what they once were.

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

It's not often you get to recreate a scene from one of your favorite films, but tonight, a mysterious package showed up on my porch, inside a Home Depot Box. Huh?

I order lots of stuff from various people and never have any idea what I'll get at any one time. But as soon as I saw the shredded paper I realized what this was. There was another box inside the bigger box. When I opened that there was an object wrapped carefully in paper towels. I began to giggle. I ran for my husband. "Hey!" I called to him. "You want to see what dreams are made of?"

"Am I going to need a drink for this?" he asked.

"Just get in here. It's not everyday we can recreate a movie scene."

I was giddy as I tore off the wrapping just like they did in the film...and there it was. My ebay find. A Maltese Falcon, a reproduction from the 1941 movie. We turned it and were tempted to take a knife to it just to make sure it wasn't jewel-encrusted under its black covering--but we refrained. I laughed a Sidney Greenstreet laugh and danced with it. It's one of my favorite films and the book became the chart for me to navigate the writing of my first medieval noir novel. Yup, it is the stuff that dreams are made of and darned fun to have around.

   

Guest Blog from John Desjarlais

We have the occasional guest blogger on Getting Medieval. Today's is author John Desjarlais with an all-too familiar tale about what can happen to an author's work in this crazy world of publishing. No, we don't get to sit back and let the publishers do the work. We've got to be on top of it at all times. We are the captains of this vessel and if we don't keep watch, we'll sink.

John wrote a book of Crusaders and relics, a 12th century adventure that got lost in the shuffle. Well, we'll let him tell it. 

“Son of Man, can these dry bones live again?” God asked the prophet Ezekiel in a symbolic vision of a valley of skeletons. The answer, applied to my second historical novel Relics, is yes.

Relics (Thomas Nelson, 1993) is set in medieval France and Crusader-occupied Palestine in the year 1250, soon after the disastrous venture in Egypt led by the saintly King Louis IX of France (for whom St. Louis, MO is named). Intended as a men’s adventure story with a crime element – a suspicious cathedral fire, stolen relics, and a terrorist plot to kill the king of France – the book was marketed as a women’s romance. To be sure, the story contained a romantic element (a lovely, lonely baroness who is the protagonist’s idealistic and impossible love). But I must admit that when I first saw the cover, with its soft-focus flowers and charming French chateau overlooking a serene river, my heart sank. Where was the brave knight on a swift steed? Or the imposing Krak de Chevaliers fortress overlooking the desert?

Perhaps due to my own unhappy lack of enthusiasm in marketing, or the recession of 1992-93 in which I lost my day job and my thoughts turned toward survival, the book underperformed and was hastily remaindered. My agent retired and my writing turned to academic articles and short literary fiction. Relics, like the enshrined bone of any saint, was dead.

Still, I thought it was a fine yarn. After several years, when used copies of the book were selling for a penny on Amazon, I asked for the rights. Maybe I could re-issue it via a POD, as with my first book when it was declared out of print.

Not so. The publisher replied that the title was officially “out-of-stock,” not out of print. I made several inquiries over the years, with no results. Then last year, when the “Google Settlement” web site listed Relics as out of print, I contacted the publisher again. Please return the rights to me, I asked, or re-release it so I can promote it anew. Its subject matter – the collision of the West with militant Islam – is timely. At least consider re-issuing the title to prevent Google from hijacking the book.

They agreed to re-release the book in a ‘short run’ – code for Print on Demand. As it turns out, they were already planning to restore many backlist titles to their catalog since POD technology allowed mainstream publishers to make such books available again at virtually no cost to them. At any rate, I had my book back in circulation – sort of.

While the rich trade in holy relics is no longer a provocative issue today, the sudden confrontation of the West with jihadist Islam is. In Relics, my examination of multi-layered Islam – the practical Sunnis, the intense Shi’ites, the resentful splinter groups and fanatical military sects – reflects the shifting complexities of the Middle East in which the West is currently entangled. My portrayal of the Western powers – well-meaning but naïve, devoted to high principles while at the same time acting barbarically – serves as a cautionary note to our own culture.

I hope readers find Relics to be entertaining, and that they learn a few things along the way. But the power of historical fiction is in its ability to examine our own times through the experience of another time. Given our current venture in Afghanistan and the Levant, there is hardly a more important story to be told. We certainly do not want this to turn out the way it did for poor King Louis: senseless losses, squandered resources, a shameful retreat and animosity burning for generations. That’s why I’m so glad to be resurrecting Relics.

You can find out more about John Desjarlais at http://www.johndesjarlais.com, http://jjdesjarlais.blogspot.com, and  www.facebook.com/desjarlais1  

Tucson and the Long Good-bye

I did my stint at Mostly Books in Tucson where I got to meet--in the flesh!--a real live Guppy(one of over two hundred members of an online subgroup of Sisters in Crime). Thanks for stopping by, Jackie!

So here was an instance where the bookstore did not have the books. What I usually do when I go to events, is carry a box of my books in the trunk of my car, just in case. I have heard these stories for a long time before I was published, how bookstores sometimes do not get in the copies of your books when you are doing a signing. But this time, our small car was loaded with so much stuff it just got forgotten. So as I accosted the customers as they came in (and as they looked over my collection of medieval weaponry) and I got them interested, I signed bookplates for them as they ordered the books. Another lesson learned. 

That evening I sidled over to Clues Unlimited where I chatted with a couple of folks from the history department at the University of Arizona. (Small turn-outs change from persentations to chats. Easily done and sometimes more fun.) 

And so our Arizona book tour comes to a close. It's a seven + hour drive back to southern California. What is a successful book tour? It can't be measured by the crowds or lack thereof. It is rather measured by the relationships one culls at the bookstore one visits. Talking with the guys who work in the stores and developing a report is the best kind of marketing. If the sales piople get a chance to know the book and author better, that gives them the tools they need to sell your book later. It's about accumulation. At least for us midlist guys.

That's my story and I'm sticking with it!

Guppy Jeri meets Guppy Jackie at Mostly Books.

Jeri sharing a fake laugh and fake conversation for the photo with University of Arizona staffer Cynthia. ("Welcome to Sherwood!")

Scottsdale and the Poison Pen Bookstore

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting Poison Pen Bookstore, the brainchild of publisher Barbara Peters who is head honcho at Poison Pen Press. Barbara interviewed me and fellow author Pete Goodman about his book Smoking Frog Lives! and we tossed around answers to the small but interested crowd.

We hung around in Scottsdale for a while, taking in the artwalk and investigating the galleries. It's southern California weather here in Arizona, meaning it isn't any cooler here than it would be back home. I don't know why I expected cooler. It is the desert, after all, with saguaro cactus and everything. (Arizona is not packed with saguaro, the creepy iconic tall cactus with arms. It is in selected locations. And as far as I can tell, it doesn't show up at all in California except in the expensive landscaping in Palm Springs.)

  

Brabara Peters and me.

That's Pete Goodman in the hat to the left of me.

Old Town Scottsdale.

Entertaining the crowds at lunch.

Well Red Coyote in Sedona

Arizona is a land of contrasts. First we are traveling through desert, which changes to desert with Joshua Trees. And then it is prairie where cattle can be run. And suddenly, you turn a corner and big pines are sprouting out of the hillsides. We are approaching Flagstaff where we spend the night...with the trains which run all night. Nearby. Before that we hit a brewpub and wander down the creative center of Flagstaff, just in time for an art walk.

The next morning we hit the road again for the very colorful drive through Oak Creek Canyon to Sedona to Kris Neri's bookstore the Well Red Coyote. The leaves are turning along the creek, and above, the amazing cathedrals of stone or red rock, the kind of stuff that makes the desert "magical."

At Kris' store, I give a writing workshop on "Bringing History Alive." There about ten people in attendance, all with varied interests in what they were writing, from science fiction writers to a woman who writes musicals and one-woman shows! I only went for an hour but could have gone longer. A good bunch. A great big thank you to Kris for hosting this event!

The library was close by so I trotted in there, found Veil of Lies on the shelf and offered to sign it. I guess they never confronted that before, but in the end, said that would be okay. I left bookmarks. Hopefully, they'll order Serpent.

Then we were on the road again to Phoenix where I will be at Poison Pen in Scottsdale. 

Sedona Library. 

Arizona Book Touring

We continue the SERPENT IN THE THORNS book tour by picking it up in Arizona for the weekend. We started in Primm, NV, a few days early to relax and do a little gambling at the casinos before hitting the road to Flagstaff, AZ. We took Route 66 for a bit of scenic side-touring, which was all we had time for today.

Below are some highlights from our diversion. Tomorrow, I will be in Sedona at the Well Red Coyote giving a writing workshop on "How to Make History Come Alive." Hope to see some of you there.

 You just don't know what you're going to see out in the desert. This poor Easter Island Guy appears to be a bit lost. And yes, you can stick your hand up his nose. Er...just in case you wondered. Um...yeah.

This is a pretty famous spot in Hackberry. Of course, this is all there is in Hackberry. Another pic of the same location follows.

And then to our left, we could see the top edges of the end of the Grand Canyon. Or was it the beginning? Anyway, that was going to be considerably out of our way, so we had to miss it this time around, though we have been there before. We didn't want to miss, however, our stop at the Grand Canyon Caverns with commenserate concrete dinosaur. About twelve years ago we made this Route 66 trip and went on the caverns tour where you see the mummified remains of a bobcat, a recreation of a giant sloth, and feel the actual cool air from the Grand Canyon whooshing down through these dry caves. Weird! The tour and gift shop are as tacky as you think it is...but in a good way. 

Before...

...After.

All along the lonlier stretches of Route 66--which is most of it--there are the old-timey signs with the little rhyme ending with the Burma-Shave sign; the phenomonally successful advertising campaign was begun in 1925 to 1963. That's when the company was bought by Philip Morris. Then The American Safety Razor Company bought it, or the name since the company was pretty defunct by then, and issued a gift kit with the brushless shaving cream. The company may have faded, but the nostalgia for the signs lives on.

More interesting sights along the road.

 
 

 

Happy Halloween

Just a few of my friends: