The Audacity

How in the world could I have decided to write a novel and do a simultaneous blog about the process without some knowledge or experience as a novelist or blogger? The best answer I can think of, at least regarding the novel, is the remark made by an experienced novelist whose name I’ve forgotten. Asked why he was struggling with his book when he’d written so many, he said yes, he’d written lots of books, but he’d never written this book.      

As for blogging, I’ve no explanation. My sister threatened an intervention when I told her, and my good friend rolled his eyes. But I press on regardless.

The blog is stimulating helpful questions. Why, one of my favorite readers pointed out (it wasn’t a question), would one write bucolic pieces about hunting and geese and dogs—nature pieces set on the eastern shore of Maryland—on a blog about a history novel set in Europe.

My answer is that the story will include scenes of hunting, game birds, and dogs, and the eastern shore is where I was located. Perhaps those pieces were a simple case of entertaining an imagined action that might occur anywhere.

The word reimagine keeps coming into my head. Strictly speaking, it's not a word, at least not one recognized by my dictionaries. But I've heard it used regarding history novels, and I find myself doing a lot of it, that is putting myself in the midst of an historical situation with real historical figures and reimagining it, imagining what they were thinking, what their personal concerns were, what they would have felt, filling in, as it were, what history does not tell us so that the event takes on a new richness of meaning.  

Alright, enough of that. Here’s a real and concrete scene for you where a critical action will occur, the Budapest Opera house. I love this building, both interior and exterior. What a sumptuous place for a bit of intrigue. And what a challenge it’s going to be create this picture by words alone. And to reimagine what my character saw and thought and said on that historic night. The real person climbed those stairs. Take a virtual tour here.