Posts Tagged ‘heroine’s bookshelf’

Missed the tour?  Never fear!  Click here for a podcast, map, and handouts for the tour and recreate the experience alone or with an intrepid friend!

We finally have details on what might be the most anticipated event of my mini book tour…The Heroine’s Bookshelf Heroines of Literature Walking Tour in Greenwich Village, NYC on the evening of Tuesday, October 26!

The tour will be co-hosted and curated by Erin Blakemore, author of The Heroine’s Bookshelf, and Glamour columnist/NYU adjunct journalism professor Jessica Siegel.

The Schedule:

Tuesday, October 26^th

6:15 p.m. – Meet at bookbook bookstore, 266 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10014; (212) 807-8655

6:30 p.m. sharp – we will leave on the walking tour

7:30 p.m. – Book Launch party and book signing event at bookbook

R.S.V.P. to Heather Drucker, HarperCollins Publicity at heather.drucker@harpercollins.com or 212-207-7468

On the docket are an exploration of the homesites and haunts of some of literature’s greatest heroines, culminating in a launch party and book signing at an independent book store.  Prepare to see.

. . . . .The street where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women . . . .

. . . . .The place where Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter Rose Wilder Lane lived in bohemian splendor as a “bachelor girl”. . . .

. . . . .The home of Edith Wharton where she lived with her mother at age 20 .….

. . . . . From Wharton’s House of Mirth – the former Benedick men’s residence where Lawrence Selden, Lily Bart’s friend and confidant, lived – the house is still there! . . . .

. . . . .The former home of Alice Walker and husband Mel Leventhal . . . .

. . . . .Edna St. Vincent Millay’s house (the smallest house in NYC!), and the many places that she lent her “heroism”: The Cherry Lane Theater, the Provincetown Playhouse, old Chumley’s location ….

. . . . .Willa Cather’s famous haunts .  . . .

And, much, much more!

This event is free and fun.  All you need to do to attend is to R.S.V.P. to Heather Drucker, HarperCollins Publicity at heather.drucker@harpercollins.com or 212-207-7468. I can’t wait to walk and learn with you!

As you may have heard, the audio rights to The Heroine’s Bookshelf were recently sold to Blackstone Audio, which got me thinking…what’s a day in the life of an audiobook narrator like?  Luckily, I have a great resource in my Twitter friend and new heroine Lorelei King, who just happens to be an accomplished actress and the multiple-award-winning narrator of an astonishing number of audiobooks and BBC Radio 4 programs (we’re talking the books of Margaret Atwood, Patricia Cornwell, Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, and even Louisa May Alcott…click here for an impressive list).  Lorelei isn’t just fabulous, she’s gracious…and she’s agreed to answer some of my niggling questions about the life of an audiobook narrator in my never-ending attempt to assuage the longstanding pain of waiting (in this case, to find out who’s going to narrate my book!).

To make things fun, I’m giving away one of Lorelei’s award-winning audiobooks to a lucky winner (details below).  But be sure to read Lorelei’s fabulous insights before scrolling down:

Erin Blakemore: Tell us a bit about the path you took to a career in voice acting and audiobook narration.
Lorelei King: Like most things in my life, I stumbled into it! I was living in London and working as an actress when I got a call from a friend who owned a recording studio; he was recording an ad for a client, and the US voiceover hadn’t shown up. Could I get there in 10 minutes? I did. Hurrah! I loved the experience, and found I had a knack for it. Audiobooks came about in a similar way — someone who knew my animation work asked me to do a book. Again, I loved the experience and definitely had a feeling of “coming home.” And my voice career then, as now, ran in parallel with my acting career.

EB: How does audiobook narration differ from acting for the camera?
LK: When acting for the camera, you normally only play one character. With an audiobook, you might be playing hundreds! Also, in front of the camera your character is normally engaging with other characters, which speads the load a bit — whereas an audiobook is essentially a very, very long monologue. And of course for tv you have to be ‘camera ready’ — no dark roots, no spinach in the teeth, full makeup. Recording an audiobook, I could turn up looking like a troll and it wouldn’t matter. Not that I turn up looking like a troll. Very often.

EB:  How do you prepare to perform an audio piece?
LK: To prepare the book for record, I read it through once and make a cast list on one side of a piece of paper, jotting down and clues about the kind of voice that character might have. Some authors are very helpful in that regard, telling you a character’s accent, voice quality and so on. If there are no clues, I have to make an educated guess! On the other side of the paper I make of list of any pronunciations I want to look up. A good producer will check all that for you, but I like doing my own research.

EB:  What’s the most challenging part of your job? Do you have any disasters or horror stories you’d care to share?
LK: The most challenging part of the job is maintaining stamina — having the same energy level at the end of the day that I had at the beginning of the day! Horror stories? The most horrifying thing is if the engineer makes a mistake and deletes the morning’s work. It’s only happened twice in my career, but I cried both times!

EB:  What do you like best about your job?
LK: I get paid to read books! What could be better?…. And I love being a storyteller. Audio is a particularly intimate medium — and I feel so privileged that people are wiling to listen.

EB:  What are your personal reading habits like? Who are some of your favorite authors and why?
LK: I get very little time to do reading for myself as I have to do so much reading for work! Of the books I read for work, I love the funny ones (like Janet Evanovich) and the crime fiction (like Tess Gerritsen). As for personal reading, my favourite author of all time is Gerald Kersh –Song of the Flea is probably my favourite of his books. I’m also very fond of horror — I like Stephen King, Robert Bloch and Harlan Ellison, among many others. I’ve always had a soft spot for Somerset Maugham — The Razor’s Edge had a HUGE impact on me when I was 11 — and of course I have to mention my Greek boys, Homer (I prefer the Illiad to the Odyssey) and Herodotus (it’s like reading Hello magazine)! For enjoyment I read them in English, and for torture I read them in ancient Greek.

EB:  What surprises you about the audio world? Are there any trends to watch for?
LK: I’m surprised at how much it’s growing! It’s wonderful that people are integrating audio into their lives, listening to audiobooks the way they might listen to music.  As for trends, I think digital audio publishing means we’ll be using audio in new and original ways: shorter titles, individual short stories and poems, getting to market much more quickly with subjects that are trending, publishing in digital download only, embedding audio into eBooks … I am co-founder (with Ali Muirden, former head of audio at Macmillan UK) of a digital publishing company, and we’re exploring some of these things already. It’s a scary and exciting time!

Lorelei King Tallgrass Contest

To liven things up a bit and give one of my readers access to a great heroine book, I’m giving away one copy of Lorelei’s Audy and Audiophile Award-winning reading of Sandra Dallas’s Tallgrass, a poignant story of the Japanese-American internment of the 1940s as told through the eyes of a young girl.  Here’s how to enter:  leave a comment on this blog post telling who you’d have voice your favorite heroine (voice actress, actress, friend, mom…just make sure to identify her!) and why.  Comment with a link to your tweet, blog post, or Facebook “share with friends” about the contest and I’ll enter you twice! I’ll choose the winner at random at close of business this Friday, April 2.  Contest is open to United States, Canadian, and U.K. residents only.  Good luck!

It’s Friday, and my Google Image Search obsession is as strong as ever.  Since Friday is a day for fun, I hereby bring you the first in a series of Friday blogs about covers of books included in The Heroine’s Bookshelf.  First installment:  Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, originally published in 1813.  Click to enlarge these gems!

From left to right, top to bottom:

1)  First, a bit of history.  Here’s the original front page (they didn’t do fancy artsy covers in the early 1800s).

2)  is kind of a swinging late 60sish take on P&P (reminds me of the exquisite Fairy Alphabet on Sesame Street).

3) has to be in the running for Lamest Cover Ever, right?

4) This illustration by Reuben Toledo brings a bit of fashion to Meryton.

5) and 6) Marvel recently put out a comic version of P&P that deserves two postings for its amazing covers by Sonny Liew.  I’ve included the first cover and the fourth.  Make sure to click to enlarge…they’re exquisite. 

7) Harper recently released a version of P&P styled after the Sparkly Vampire Series That Cannot Be Named…eek!

For another cool roundup of P&P covers, check out Belle of the Books’ recent post, which features tons of international Pride and Prejudice flava.

I have of course neglected to post the many, many covers that include a classic portrait of a woman on them.  Zzz.  What’s your favorite of these covers?  Got a favorite P&P cover you’d like to share?

This is the story of a woman whose work was lambasted as unchristian, immoral, anything but the work of an upstanding lady.  She was nervous in temperament and given to moody depression and moments of utter despair, sadness that the unfettered moors of her childhood home heightened.  She wore spectacles and had ruddy cheeks and a few missing teeth.  And she gave us Jane Eyre, another plain, poor woman who changed the world.

This was Charlotte Brontë, and she’s been on my mind recently for many reasons.

To me, reading is as immersive and essential as breathing, and there are some authors who are more than my favorite writers…they feel like my intimate friends.  Charlotte Brontë is one of those women, and she’s the subject of my first Heroine Mini-Series featuring three pivotal moments in her life.

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That shuffling scamp! Charlotte read the letter swiftly, taking in the news once, twice, until she could scarcely see for anger.  He had done it again.  Thomas Newby, the man who had published Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, was spreading a vicious rumor, this time in the United States.  Seeking to expand his fortune and capitalize off of the controversy surrounding Charlotte’s incendiary Jane Eyre, he had led the American publishing house Harpers to believe that the pen names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell all belonged to one person and that Jane Eyre, the American rights to which they had just bought, was in fact the work of one author instead of three.

That shuffling scamp! The Brontë sisters had never been ones to make public spectacles of themselves, but after the months of terrible reviews and public scrutiny, this was the last straw.  Charlotte and her sister Anne tromped four miles across unforgiving moorland, enduring a thunderstorm before falling into a carriage that carried them to London.  Barely rested and painfully aware of their countrified appearance in the midst of a bustling city, they sought out the offices of Smith, Elder.  Charlotte herself had carried on a years-long correspondence with her publisher, George Smith…under the pseudonym of Currer Bell.  And now his name, the name of the man who had fought for her book and brought it into the world, was being smeared an ocean away.

That shuffling scamp! Charlotte insisted, gently at first, more passionately when denied, that she must see Mr. Smith at once.  And there he was, “young, tall, gentlemanly,” stepping forward courteous and confused at the sight of these two thin, timid-looking women.  Charlotte thrust a letter into his hand, one he had addressed with his own hand to “Currer Bell, Esq.”  He started, sputtering.

“Where did you get this?”

“At the post office.  It was addressed to me.”  She let the words sink in before she continued.  “We have both come that you might have ocular proof that there are at least two of us.”

To be continued…

One of the most gratifying parts of writing The Heroine’s Bookshelf was discovering the backstories behind the women who wrote some of my favorite books.  And it wasn’t all fun and friends.  During the course of the book, I got to look at the underbelly of some of these women’s lives:  depression, chronic illness, opium addiction, adultery, even suicide.   And you know what?  I loved every minute.

Why embrace the serious sides of my literary heroines when many of them left such happy, pert, intelligent women as their legacy?  (Anne of Green Gables or Lizzie Bennet, anyone?)  Why not just focus on the picture they wanted to present to the world…the picture of the productive, happy writer who left her dirty laundry between two covers and moved on with life?

I was reminded of this question when reading this article about Louisa May Alcott and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dirty little opium secrets (or not-so-secrets, as the case may be).  For me, the answer is all about context.  When we look at the real lives of these writers, their accomplishments in the face of great trials and hardships are even more impressive.  Louisa May Alcott wrote her books in a state of constant, crushing financial worry…and if she hadn’t known what it was like to be poor, she could never have given us the image of four sisters sewing their way through dire straits and attempting to burden the load they must shoulder.  Could Charlotte Brontë have made Jane Eyre‘s Lowood School so terrifying if she herself had not survived a similar experience?

Now that I know the backstory behind my favorite books, I feel even more grateful that these women took time out of their lives to give something to us, people they never met or even imagined.  Not that I subscribe to the thought that writers must be tortured (that’s probably material for a whole ‘nother post), but I think they’re at least allowed to be human.  When we deny a Jane Austen or a Frances Hodgson Burnett her humanity, we miss out on the rest of the story.