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Interview with Patty Templeton
Sep. 17th, 2014 08:41 amToday I have something different for you: an interview with Patty Templeton, the author of the darkly humorous historical fantasy There Is No Lovely End.
Spanning the second half of the nineteenth century, There Is No Lovely End features outlaws and patent medicine salesmen, mediums and besotted journalists, and not a few ghosts. It also features Sarah Winchester, the real-life wife of the heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.
Sarah Winchester (Source)
I gather that Sarah Winchester’s story is the nugget that started the book. How did the other characters and their stories join in?
When I decided to fall into There Is No Lovely End . . . I thought it was going to be the fictionalized history of Sarah Winchester – her and her only. Everyone else emerged slowly, over the years, over the drafts. The book became as much Nathan Garlan’s story as it was Sarah’s. Nathan being the medium who ultimately nudged Sarah to move from Connecticut to California . . . I think I felt constricted in earlier drafts. I felt like I had to “stick to history.” Sarah Winchester was a very real person and, when I was a younger writer, I was unsure how much of someone’s life I could or wanted to fictionalize. When I veered into Nathan Garlan’s story ... I felt freedom. It enabled me to outline and amplify the supernatural elements contained within Sarah’s world.
When you were writing, whose skin was it hardest to get into? Whose was easiest?
Honestly, the toughest character to write was Sarah Winchester. I wanted her to be fallible and a realistic woman . . . and the first draft or two, she kept getting trounced on by the tragedies of life. Everything happened to her all the time and she never effected change in her own story. Things were done to her, but never by her. I am pleased with how she came out, but it was a hard road getting there.
Maybe my lesson in all of this is that historical fiction is gd hard. I revise that. I love writing historical fiction. I’m usually crap for writing contemporary fiction. But! Writing of real people . . . I’m not sure I’ll do it again and, if I did, I might be tempted to go with an out-and-out biography.
The most ridiculous and fun person to write was Graham Johnson – the ghost of a dead, lusty newspaper man. He’s a side character who starts as a creeper and becomes, I think, somewhat endearing. He was as likely to spout about poetry as sexual deviance – which, apparently, I write rather easily.
( Read more... )
Any final inspiring—or terrifying—words?
To steal from Rocky Horror, don’t dream it, be it.
You are what you put the effort into being.
There Is No Lovely End is available as both a trade paperback and an ebook here, and you can see a great trailer for it here. Patty blogs at pattytempleton.com and maintains a Tumblr full of strange and wonderful images here.
Patty Templeton
Spanning the second half of the nineteenth century, There Is No Lovely End features outlaws and patent medicine salesmen, mediums and besotted journalists, and not a few ghosts. It also features Sarah Winchester, the real-life wife of the heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.
I gather that Sarah Winchester’s story is the nugget that started the book. How did the other characters and their stories join in?
When I decided to fall into There Is No Lovely End . . . I thought it was going to be the fictionalized history of Sarah Winchester – her and her only. Everyone else emerged slowly, over the years, over the drafts. The book became as much Nathan Garlan’s story as it was Sarah’s. Nathan being the medium who ultimately nudged Sarah to move from Connecticut to California . . . I think I felt constricted in earlier drafts. I felt like I had to “stick to history.” Sarah Winchester was a very real person and, when I was a younger writer, I was unsure how much of someone’s life I could or wanted to fictionalize. When I veered into Nathan Garlan’s story ... I felt freedom. It enabled me to outline and amplify the supernatural elements contained within Sarah’s world.
When you were writing, whose skin was it hardest to get into? Whose was easiest?
Honestly, the toughest character to write was Sarah Winchester. I wanted her to be fallible and a realistic woman . . . and the first draft or two, she kept getting trounced on by the tragedies of life. Everything happened to her all the time and she never effected change in her own story. Things were done to her, but never by her. I am pleased with how she came out, but it was a hard road getting there.
Maybe my lesson in all of this is that historical fiction is gd hard. I revise that. I love writing historical fiction. I’m usually crap for writing contemporary fiction. But! Writing of real people . . . I’m not sure I’ll do it again and, if I did, I might be tempted to go with an out-and-out biography.
The most ridiculous and fun person to write was Graham Johnson – the ghost of a dead, lusty newspaper man. He’s a side character who starts as a creeper and becomes, I think, somewhat endearing. He was as likely to spout about poetry as sexual deviance – which, apparently, I write rather easily.
( Read more... )
Any final inspiring—or terrifying—words?
To steal from Rocky Horror, don’t dream it, be it.
You are what you put the effort into being.
There Is No Lovely End is available as both a trade paperback and an ebook here, and you can see a great trailer for it here. Patty blogs at pattytempleton.com and maintains a Tumblr full of strange and wonderful images here.
