Novel in the Cards

In the process of researching and writing historical fiction, novelists imaginatively inhabit other times and other lives and may also try out other belief systems. My current novel-in-progress challenges me to see post-Civil War New Orleans from various perspectives. While a firm believer in egalitarianism, I am endeavoring to understand the viewpoints and motivations of characters who range from humanitarian and fair-minded to racist and misogynistic and from highly rational to deeply superstitious.

On a couple of research and pleasure trips to New Orleans, I have been very affected by Tarot card readings from a particular reader in Jackson Square. My emotional response happened despite my usual skepticism and has led me closer to an understanding of an important character in my manuscript. She moves through her everyday 19th century life, mindful of her duties and responsibilities, but she is also open to sensory experience and receptive to the extrasensory. Writing about her, I sometimes feel like her spirit medium, revealing her story—and that brings me back to the Tarot.

Recently, I treated myself to a deck of my own and keep it close to my writing desk. I acquired Touchstone Tarot, a boxed set of cards and book describing the cards’ meanings and the sources of the cards’ images. For each card, artist Kat Black has digitally combined elements from Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces—from paintings by Gentileschi, Tintoretto, Bosch, Rubens, and many more—into a lush and evocative collage, whose significance seems to speak for itself.

In the book that accompanies the deck, Kat Black suggests a newcomer to the Tarot try shuffling and drawing a card a day, becoming familiar with its meaning and contemplating how it may pertain to one’s life. Thus, the single card serves as something like a thought-for-the-day on which to ponder. Over the past week or so, the ritual has already brought me fresh insights, personally and professionally. The first card I drew, the Eight of Coins, reminds me that “Talent is nothing without application”—wisdom for all writers. In the Three of Swords, I see my novel’s character, who endures heartbreak and grows stronger for it. The Hermit card signifies for me the reflection and solitude I need to finish a book. A novelist, in common with a card reader or a fortune teller, reads human nature and puts it into context, into a story that leads the audience to say—“Yes, that’s me. That’s what I feel, what I fear, what I have survived, what I long for, what I love.” Now I'm a believer in Kat Black’s suggestion of using the Tarot as a meditation to free creativity and discover my novel in the cards.

Paraplex: A Treat for the Six Senses

Research for a novel brought me this spring to New Orleans, and research for particularly gothic aspects of that novel brought me to the city’s new “attraction for all six senses”: the Paraplex. The name, short for “paranormal complex”, designates a 19th century mansion, once a private residence, later a mortuary, and now an uncanny museum and ghostly observatory. Behind its white-columned façade, the Paraplex houses displays of haunted art and personal possessions, as well as educational exhibits on psychic secrets, Ouija boards, and the Tarot. Visitors are invited to roam the mansion to explore facets of parapsychology, experience the séance chamber, and participate in the Fear Experiment in the haunted basement.

The port city of New Orleans, whose beginnings date back to 1718, possesses an eventful past of battles among men and against deadly diseases such as yellow fever and cholera; of trafficking in human beings through the slave trade and prostitution; of disasters, natural and man-made, brought on by floods, hurricanes, and broken levees. With its convoluted history of suffering, of wild Mardi Gras revelry, and of restless spirits, New Orleans provides the perfect setting for the mysteries of the Paraplex. And the city calls to me as the setting for my next Southern gothic novel.

While the plot of my work-in-progress does not exactly hinge on the supernatural, the characters do possess varying degrees of familiarity with the unseen and the inexplicable.
Hoping to better understand what haunts my particular New Orleanian characters, I entered the Paraplex séance chamber, took my seat at the round table, and clasped hands with other visitors, whom I assumed were as corporeal as I. Writers rely on their five senses to create vivid prose, but sometimes they need a little help from the sixth. I came away from the Paraplex more knowledgeable about the paranormal, more inspired by the spirit world. And, in the Louisiana tradition of the lagniappe, I received something extra: in the haunted basement, I enjoyed a great, blood-curdling scream.

For more information about the Paraplex, please visit:

http://www.paraplex.net/

Drawing Inspiration

Each weekday morning on the way to the office of my day-job at a community college, I have the pleasure of passing the small, glassed-in campus art gallery. Then, each evening I catch another glimpse of visual inspiration on the way out, which often sparks ideas to mull over on the commute home and later apply to my night-job as a writer. The January exhibit of works by Lisa Qualls has captured my imagination and begun the New Year and the new semester with a remarkable blend of the timely and the timeless.

Imagine hoop skirts covered with diaphanous silks in the colors of ivory, saffron, cocoa, and cayenne, all floating in the space between floor and ceiling, seemingly waltzing on light and air. This is the vision that stopped me in my tracks, then compelled me into the gallery for a closer look and to hear the artist’s commentary on her creations. Since my work as a novelist focuses on the mid to late 19th century American South, I immediately thought of plantation mistresses in their restrictive crinolines. But these skirts suspended in the gallery are so much more than costumes from a bygone era.

The series Lisa Qualls has entitled “Paris is Burning” combines the artist’s research into the complicated relationship between Europe and Africa with her own experiences of meeting African immigrants in Europe. Qualls states she is “interested in how cultures absorb and share garment forms, patterns, body markings, and ritual objects.” Her artwork reveals aspects of cultural identity, issues of immigration, and influences of colonialism that have shaped history and continue to affect current events. Some of Qualls’s drawings incorporate period European textile and wallpaper patterns with African ritual masks or body markings. One especially arresting pencil drawing on vellum presents the image of an African man dressed in a stylish 19th century European suit and displaying ritual scarification on his face. Another depicts a hauntingly lovely African woman dressed in white, the hem of her gown blending into the intricate pattern at her feet, the design pigmented with coffee and beeswax.

And then there are the skirts of silk organza over cotton and boning, echoing the past and the caging and concealing of women’s bodies, but offering, as well, other compelling layers of meaning. The artist calls her grouping of skirts “Surveillance Maritime”, explaining it “is about Africans leaving in boats from the Canary Islands and trying to reach the coast of France.” Qualls has applied text in English, French, and Spanish to the dyed silk, describing the European reaction to illegal African immigration. European surveillance of the coastal waters leads to the apprehension and return of Africans trying to enter Europe illegally and sometimes leads to the rescue of people in danger of dying in the boats. In the context of the exhibit, the hoop skirts become vessels, ribbed boats covered over with a skin of fabric that tells a story of a modern quest for freedom. Yet, they are reminders, too, of long-ago ships that carried Africans into slavery.

With “Paris is Burning”, through layers of line, color, texture, and text, Lisa Qualls captures layers of complexity found in the enmeshed histories of Africans and Europeans. From her work I gratefully draw new inspiration for my historical fiction, a deeper sense of the ways cultures exploit and engage each other, and a greater appreciation for the interplay between the visual and literary arts.

Rosemary Poole-Carter, author of Women of Magdalene

For more about artist Lisa Qualls:

www.lisaqualls.com

http://lisaqualls.blogspot.com/

Writer's Panic

While for everything there may be a season, late December is the season for many things: celebrating holiday cheer and lamenting over-indulgence, gathering with loved ones and missing absent friends, reflecting on accomplishments and mulling over regrets. Cold and flu season is also upon us, along with other aliments peculiar to writers—the dreaded Writer’s Block and the far more virulent Writer’s Panic.

So far, I have managed to fend off colds and the Block with vitamin C and caffeine, reliable remedies for keeping breathing and ideas in free-flow. However, while eluding the flu, I have succumbed to the Panic. The novel I began writing with such passion months ago, promising myself to complete by year’s end, is not half done. Ghosts of Literature Courses Past hover and haunt me. Shakespeare’s Richard II whispers in my ear: “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me . . .”

What happened? Where did the year go? In part and in whole, it was consumed by the trivial and the profound, by chores and errands, by pleasures and obligations, by the day-job, and by labors of love for loved ones. My thanks to Tennyson’s Ulysses for providing some comfort: “I am a part of all that I have met”, and all experience is material when writers are in pursuit of that gleaming “untravell’d world, whose margin fades /For ever and for ever when I move.”

On the threshold of a new year, I force myself to pause amid agitation and glance backward at the ways writing has shaped my past and present. My writing life is the familiar of my lived life. Again and again, I have been deeply affected by the circumstances of characters. While a heroine was slowly poisoned, I drooped and languished in the library. After typing up the evil deeds I had goaded an antagonist to perform, I washed my hands with the scalding ferocity of Lady Macbeth. Choosing writing over housework, wandering through the dusty rooms cluttered with books and manuscripts and visited by imaginary figures, I have become Dickens’s Miss Havisham, complete with her cob-webbed gown and moldering cake. Yet, through the doorway, past the gatekeepers of doubt and fear, new festivities and adventures await. If only I can harness the Writer’s Panic and give it to my characters, to send them dashing in pursuit of their obsessions.

To writers everywhere, I wish you health, freedom from blocks and panics, and a season of creativity that never ends.
Rosemary Poole-Carter

RECKLESSLY ROMANTIC IN GRAND CENTRAL STATION

In early December, I traveled from balmy Houston to brisk New York and Connecticut for some book signings. Several times my schedule took me from subways to trains and back again in Grand Central Station, where I joined other travelers bundled in drab black and gray to be dazzled by the glittering wares of holiday vendors and by a kaleidoscopic display of holiday images projected on the soaring walls of the main concourse. Then, one afternoon, I was swept away, not by a train, nor by light and color, but by music. Beneath the archway of a corridor, a violinist played the most achingly tender rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” that I have ever heard.

Drawn toward the sound, I watched the musician cradle his violin, dance with it, let it sing to the audience. As he finished with a flourish of his bow, I wiped away my tears and came forward to purchase a compact disk, aptly named “Recklessly Romantic Holidays”. I made no secret of my admiration for this concert hall talent performing in Grand Central, and as the violinist handed me the CD, he also gave me a kiss on the cheek. In the South, we call that little something extra a lagniappe.

I walked away smiling, then returned to give him a copy of my novel, which he then asked me to inscribe. I walked away again, and he came after me, giving me another compact disk and another peck. How could he have known that on this particular CD, “Recklessly Romantic”, he had recorded all my favorite music to write by? “Meditation”, “Dance of the Spirits”, “Moonlight Sonata”, “Canon in D”, “Serenade”, “Largo”, “Romanza”, and more.

That brief, lovely exchange with the violinist reminded me of how grateful I am for the inspiration of the wordless art forms—painting and sculpture, dance, and instrumental music. The patterns and relationships in these forms are revelations, which I attempt to translate into storylines and characters. While musicians have the same range of notes and writers the same store of words with which to create, some artists find ways to move beyond the technically accurate or grammatically correct. James Graseck (http://www.recklesslyromantic.com/) is that sort of artist, who gives something extra and special with each performance. His breathtaking talent is gift to all travelers. And my dearest souvenir from New York is a memory of music and a kiss on the cheek from a master violinist with a generous heart.

Rosemary Poole-Carter, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, 978-1-60164-014-7

DIRTY LAUNDRY

“In 19th century United States, Ireland, Scotland, and England, asylums for ‘fallen women’ opened that were named for Mary Magdalene: a saint that many remember as a sinner. Though administrators and clergy proposed to offer reform and rehabilitation, the asylums often became de facto prisons. So too the fictional Magdalene Ladies’ Lunatic Asylum, as the protagonist of Rosemary Poole-Carter’s Women of Magdalene discovers.”

The paragraph above opens Amiee Houser’s review of my novel for FOREWORD. Although, while writing WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, I knew nothing of the Magdalene asylums Houser mentions, I’m grateful to her for drawing the comparison. In such asylums, girls labeled by authority figures as wayward were incarcerated and forced to work in laundries under the harsh supervision of nuns. When I finished writing my novel in late 2001, still ignorant of the asylum laundries, I sent the manuscript to an agent, and started another project to take my mind off the long wait for a response. Then, in 2002, a Houston publicist sent me an invitation to a screening at the Museum of Fine Arts for Peter Mullan’s powerful film, THE MAGDALENE SISTERS, which depicts the sadistic treatment of girls and women in asylum laundries. That publicist had found the connections I’d not known existed between the film she was promoting and my ficitonal world: Mary Magdalene and dirty laundry.

Searching the Internet for Houstonians to invite to Mullan’s film, the publicist must have seen the mention on my website of my ficitonal Magdalene Ladies’ Lunatic Asylum. My novel was still a long way from publication, but my short play INCONVENIENT WOMEN, which shares the Deep South asylum setting, was already described on the site. While researching WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, I found Jeffrey L. Geller & Maxine Harris’s wonderful book entitled WOMEN OF THE ASYLUM: VOICES FROM BEHIND THE WALLS, 1840 – 1945. Inspired and chilled by the first-person accounts of inmates collected in this book, I began my novel, taking a little time out to write the short play, produced in Houston and Albany, in which four women from different times come out of the woodwork to compare notes on who committed them and why. Whether applied to an actual or fictional asylum, Mary Magdalene’s name does, indeed, remind us of the saint labeled a sinner, the woman misjudged by those with the power to make and enforce their rules.

As dramatized in Peter Mullan’s THE MAGDALENE SISTERS, the inmates of historic asylum laundries, laboring like slaves, were forced to take in washing from communities, while their keepers collected the fees. In my novel, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE, a particular patient, Effie Rampling, takes refuge in washing all the dirty laundry she can find. Though, as Lady Macbeth might attest, there are stains of experience that cannot be washed away.

Yes, all that washing becomes a metaphor, certainly for shame and guilt, but also for the duties and obligations and obstacles that keep us from ourselves and our dreams. Perhaps, WOMEN OF MAGDALENE might have been polished and published sooner if I hadn’t been so tangled up with my laundry. Yet, I know the book could not have found a better publishing home than Kunati Inc., where writers and their characters are appreciated for challenging authority, provoking thought, and hanging out the dirty laundry.

Aimee Houser writes: “WOMEN OF MAGDALENE is a brilliant example of the best historical fiction can do: illuminate the past not as it really, truly was, but as we imagine it to be, in order to better understand our own motives, desires, and prejudices.” Reading the reviewer’s words, I thought of the Zen saying “after ecstasy, the laundry” and of a wise young woman’s reminder to her mother: “the phrase could also be after laundry, the ecstasy.”

Women of Magalene, ISBN 978-1-60164-014-7