Giving Voice Blogfest

Today, 4 June, is the Giving Voice Blogfest, hosted by Madeleine Maddocks of Scribble and Edit. Participants will post stories of no more than 400 words, about a character who has problems communicating, for reasons such as stroke, Deafness, autism, stuttering, et al.

I decided to use my Deaf character Clarissa Kevorkian, in a scene not yet written in my handwritten magnum opus Cinnimin. Clarissa and her relatively new boyfriend Jeremiah Brandt (whom she’s had a crush on since childhood) have recently gotten their master’s degrees and moved to Israel to join two of Clarissa’s cousins on a kibbutz in Haifa. But before they start kibbutz life, they stay at a hostel in the Old City of Jerusalem, and Clarissa becomes very upset about something. The year is 2008 or 2009, and the story is 391 words.

***

One of the nuns came in when she heard Clarissa’s anguished sobbing.  Clarissa lay face-down, away from the door, and only became aware of another presence in the room when she felt a gentle hand on her back.  The only thing she knew was that this wasn’t Jeremiah’s touch.

Clarissa turned around, pushed her red hair out of her amethyst eyes, and saw the sister’s mouth moving, a concerned look on her face.  She pointed to her ears and shook her head, then pointed to her mouth and nodded.  Hopefully the sister would understand she could speak but not hear.

The sister covered her ears and pointed, and Clarissa nodded. “I can only lip-read a few things.  I can talk to you if you know American Sign Language or with pen and paper.  Do you know English?”

The nun shook her head and motioned to Clarissa to stay where she was.  As Clarissa waited, she wished she were back at Gallaudet and immersed in Deaf culture.  This was so far outside of her bubble, her comfy safety net. Perhaps she could fly back home and apply to a doctoral program at Gallaudet, and Jeremiah could go back to George Washington University for his own Ph.D.

Twenty minutes later, another nun came into the room and handed Clarissa a note:

My name is Sister Julia Amata, and I’m American.  I don’t know sign language, but I’ll be glad to help a guest in distress.  Can you tell me why you’re so upset?

“Because I’ll never hear my lover’s voice!” Clarissa screamed, not caring her voice must’ve sounded less than articulate at the moment. “And I don’t know Israeli Sign Language!  I used to be proud of being Deaf, but now I want a cochlear implant!”

As Sister Julia was writing, Jeremiah came into the room. Clarissa turned away as he started signing and ignored his hand on her shoulder.  She could feel Sister Julia leaving the room.

Jeremiah pushed something into her hand.  Clarissa saw a necklace with a beautiful Roman glass pendant in the “I love you” sign.  She smiled and stroked his face as he fastened it around her neck.

Even if she never heard her lover’s voice, she could still hear him with her heart and wordlessly communicate, and that was all that mattered in the world.

Six Sentence Sunday

This week in Six Sentence Sunday, Lazarus is hiding in a Confessional booth with a hidden crawl space, as the church is searched over the protestations of a man whom Lazarus will soon learn is the priest.

***

As the man to whom the new voice belonged stood by in protest, the Nazis began storming through the church, looking in every nook and cranny.  Over the man’s protestations that searching what he called the Confessional would be an outrageous violation if someone were in there waiting to make Confession, they opened up the door anyway and found nothing.

Still not satisfied, they went through the entire church four more times before leaving in a huff, severely warning him and everyone else they had come across that there would be serious consequences if they discovered this boy anywhere in the vicinity, and that they would not stop looking for him just because he hadn’t turned up yet.  Some of the congregants were crying in fear and left shaking in terror.

“You can come out now, boy.  The evil bastards are gone now.”

Sweet Saturday Samples

This week’s excerpt for Sweet Saturday Samples is the conclusion of Chapter 45 of Adicia’s story, “Bartered Like a Piece of Meat.” Ricky is horrified to learn all the heartbreaking, revolting details of why Mrs. Troy went to prison and how Adicia was coerced into doing the unthinkable to keep Mrs. Troy from returning to prison seven years later. Even though she doesn’t love him, Adicia feels a glimmer of hope when he tells her what she’s been dreaming of being told by a man her whole life.

***

“Can I have something to eat?” Adicia asks. “Talking about this upsets me.  I only have till September to figure out an escape, and it stresses me out having to dredge up the past in addition to thinking about how to get out of here in time.”

“Can we take a tour of your house after we eat?” Justine asks.

“Of course,” Ricky says.

“You’re a nice guy,” Adicia says. “I’m glad you’re our neighbor and that you don’t think I’m trash because of what happened.”

“You’ve got a really sweet heart,” he smiles. “I like and accept you just as you are.  Just the way you are now.”

“You really do? I never thought anyone from the outside world would ever like me, let alone like me for me.”

“Well, I’m telling you now that I do like you just the way you are.  And even though I’ve only known you since January, I feel really connected to you already.  I promise I’ll try to help you so you don’t have to be bartered away like a piece of meat for the second time in your life.  It’s not conditional upon you being my girlfriend. Besides, you’re a fellow lefty.  There aren’t that many of us, so we have to stick together and help each other out.”

“I don’t know if I believe in God, but I think you must be my guardian angel.  Not many poor girls get a rich friend to help them out.”

“Ricky likes you just like the Boy loves the Velveteen Rabbit just like he is,” Justine says. “It’s a really special thing when you’re Real, since that means someone accepts you just the way you are, no matter what you look like or what you’ve been through.”

Adicia’s heart races as she remembers the scene near the end of The Velveteen Rabbit, when the Rabbit is lying in the pile of toys and bedding waiting to be burned, a tear falling from his eye.  She hopes she too is able to be rescued in time, the same way the Rabbit was turned into a real rabbit before he was thrown into the bonfire.

Collage of Inspiration Blogfest

Today fellow historical fiction writer Teralyn Pilgrim is hosting the Collage of Inspiration Blogfest. Participants are linking to collages we’ve made inspired by our books or WIPs. They can contain pictures, videos, artwork, websites used for research, songs, excerpts, you name it.

I chose to make two on Facebook, one for my recently-completed WWII/Shoah-era historical And Jakob Flew the Fiend Away and one for my contemporary historical Bildungsroman Little Ragdoll. Both pages will need to be expanded to see everything, since there are quite a few resources, songs, and videos on each.

Adicia’s page, on which you’ll find media and resources including vintage booklets from sanitary napkin companies and sex ed/puberty filmstrips (including a horrifying Disney cartoon called The Story of Menstruation), some of the 1960s and early 1970s songs featured in the book, information on how the Vietnam draft lottery worked, the Five Little Peppers series (one of the book’s inspirations), Hermann Hesse (Emeline’s favorite writer), and the Manhattan neighborhoods featured most prominently in the story.

Jakob’s page, on which you’ll find media and resources including a detailed timeline of WWII and the Shoah in Holland, four different Wordles I created, a short film showing parts of the Battle of Surabaya of November 1945 in Indonesia, information about the Princess Irene Brigade, Holland’s national anthem, information about and a map of Amsterdam neighborhoods, and a couple of the songs that inspired chapter titles.

Vera Kholodnaya

Thursdays in Blog Me MAYbe are themed “May I tell you something about someone else?” Today’s spotlight is on Vera Vasiliyevna Kholodnaya, née Levchenko.

Véra Vasíliyevna Kholodnaya (née Levchenko), who lived from 5 August 1893 till 17 February 1919, was the preeminent Russian moviestar in early Russian cinema. She was born in the Ukraine, a schoolteacher’s daughter, and moved with her family to Moskvá at the age of two. She began attending private school at the age of ten, and her acting skills became very noticeable.

In 1910, at her graduation party, she met her future husband Vladímir Kholodny, a racecar driver and editor of a sports newspaper. (The surname is Russian for “cold.”) In the fall of 1914, trying to support her two young daughters, Véra took a bit part in a film, but the director felt nothing would ever come of it. Was he ever wrong.

The very next year she got picked up to do a film based on a Turgénev story, under the direction of the Khonzhonkov Studios Company, and it was a huge hit, propelling Véra to superstardom. The next year alone she was in thirteen movies (don’t believe IMDB; they’re WAY off on the number of movies she acted in!). A short retirement occurred during WWI when she was nursing her wounded husband back to health.

Everyone was in love with her, and loved both her movies and her stage roles. Even if she were just acting in a bit role or a walk-on extra part in a play, it was guaranteed to draw a full house.

In addition, Aleksándr Vertinskiy, a famous balladeer and a private in the Army, delivered Véra one of her husband’s letters shortly after she returned home from nursing him. Vertinskiy was so madly in love with her he dedicated some of his songs to her.

At the peak of her popularity, she moved to the Kharitonov Studios and began making more serious art films, as opposed to the earlier type of films she’d been making, just popular entertainment or sentimental melodramas. She also began giving concerts around this time.

Sadly, most of her films are lost not only because of the general poor care taken to preserving early films, but also because of the general destruction of the Civil War. In 1924, Soviet authorities ordered many of her films to be destroyed. Only five of her films are known to survive.

At the age of twenty-five, in February of 1919, she died of influenza, the same malady that claimed between fifty to a hundred million lives around the globe (including prominent casualities such as actor Harold Lockwood and swimmer Harry Elionsky). She died despite being treated by the best doctors Odessa had to offer at the time.

Because she’d died so tragically young and suddenly, and because she’d been so damn popular, tons of rumours began surfacing as to the true cause of her demise, such as being poisoned or strangled by a lover, suicide (the cause the notoriously inaccurate IMDB lists), and being shot by the White Guards because she’d been a Bolshevik spy. Huge crowds came to her funeral to pay one last final tribute to a truly great star and legend.

Like with Olive Thomas or Harold Lockwood, one can only speculate about what might’ve been had she lived longer, long enough to be around for the next era of silent cinema (particularly considering she would’ve been in nationalised propaganda cinema) and the early sound era.

(Information not included in my original bio: In 1931, her grave was destroyed when the First Christian Cemetery in Odessa was razed, in spite of her family’s protests. She was persona non grata under the Soviet régime till 1991. There is now a bronze statue of her near her final home at Odessa’s Cathedral Square.)

Horny Hump Day—Jakob and Rachel

Warning:  Not safe for work or appropriate for those under age 18!

This week for Horny Hump Day, I’m taking a break from Justine and David in favor of the couple from my other WIP, And the Lark Arose from Sullen Earth, a historical set in Atlantic City and Wildwood from 1946-47. I’m hoping to start querying the first volume, And Jakob Flew the Fiend Away, this summer.

Jakob and Rachel were married civilly (but not religiously) in the Netherlands in May of 1945, and Rachel was able to go to America as the wife of an Allied serviceman. Because Jakob was still in the Royal Army of the Netherlands and facing the threat (which later came true) of being sent to the Dutch East Indies to fight the Indonesians, he didn’t want to risk creating a half-orphan on their wedding night. They had oral and manual sex, but not intercourse. Now he’s arrived in America several months before Rachel was expecting him. When it comes to kissing, Rachel is a lot more experienced than her husband, but he’s always been man enough to let himself be taught.

***

He was glad to let her dominate him and reacquaint him with the style she liked, and felt his body tingling when she slithered her tongue into his mouth.  Overcome with desire, he slipped one hand under her blouse and another hand up her skirt.  He’d forgotten how good it felt to touch her body.

All that for a pair of scissors!

Tuesdays in Blog Me MAYbe are themed “May I tell you something about myself?” In February of 2008, I got in a lot of trouble with El Al security at Ben Gurion Airport, all on account of a little pair of embroidery scissors in my pocket. And instead of acquiescing and letting them throw them out, or even having them put in an envelope to be mailed to the United States, I went through all the bother of saving them and having them put on my flight.

These are the scissors in questions, which I’d had for about 20 years at that point, since I’d begun embroidering and cross-stitching:

I chose this background prop because of the white background, not because I happen to like showing off my vinyl collection. (This is the second-newest addition to the collection, by the way.)

These are totally within the approved size for scissors on United States flights, four inches or under. We flew in on Continental and not El Al (due to a scheduling snafu by the tour organizer), and none of the customs at Newark gave me any trouble because of the scissors.

After we’d checked in and had our luggage checked and stowed, while going through security, the scissors were discovered while my carry-ons were going through a metal detector. These people are trained to be paranoid (for reasons everyone but leftist extremists can understand).

A handsome young man spoke to me about the scissors, and I was as calm as could be. I said I’d said, when we were asked near the beginning, that I did have scissors, small sewing scissors, and hadn’t withheld any such information. I said I’d had them on the plane coming over and needed them for sewing. I even offered to show him the sewing projects in my backpack.

He didn’t ask check, but he would’ve seen a lot of thread, needles, an embroidery hoop, a frog cross-stitch kit, more blank fabric, and two other cross-stitch diagrams. He asked why I had the scissors in my pocket, and I said I’d had them in there while I was sewing, and had put them in there when I got off of the plane.

It’s not like I was planning to stab someone on the plane with a pair of small scissors that aren’t even industrial-strength sharp! And when I said the American airline regulations allowed scissors of that size, he said Israeli security regulations don’t allow any scissors in carry-on luggage.

And of course, since it’s El Al, I had a number of other questions leveled at me, like what the purpose of my visit was, who I came with, how long my stay had been, the name of the congregation I came with. (At our orientation meeting before the trip, our rabbi told us their profile of a potential terrorist is NOT an Arab, but a young single woman travelling alone, particularly a European.)

He gave me three options—go back through security and get a box to check them in with the other luggage, mail them home, or have them confiscated. It cost nothing to put them in an extra box, so I did that.

It took up a lot of time, and I was redirected around several times, even at one point having to get a new security strip put on the large envelope, because the first one had had a sticker placed over the numbers. I thought I was going to miss the plane because of how much time this was taking. It was pretty close, but I did get there before boarding started.

Having to go through all that hoopla just to get a little pair of scissors safely stowed on board with the other checked luggage was very nerve-wracking as the minutes ticked by, but it was worth it. I saved my property and went to the bat to preserve my civil liberties. Someday when I have a child, I’m going to use those scissors for the Upsherin (ritual first haircut done on the third birthday, which is also when a child traditionally starts learning Torah).

Wish list of what I’d like to write

Happy Shavuot to those of you celebrating!

 

Mondays in the Blog Me MAYbe Blogfest are themed “May I tell you something about writing?” While I’ve got a lot to be kept busy with for some time to come, there might someday come a day when I reach the end of the chronological road with my Atlantic City characters, my Russian characters, and the Troys, the Ryans, and their friends. I also won’t take forever to get back to my soft sci-fi books or my alternative history saga about the rule of Tsar Aleksey II the Savior.

This is a wishlist of what I’d be interested in writing about if I ever run out of material with my pre-existing, belovèd characters I’ve been with for years:

A sprawling family saga during the Civil War/Reconstructionist era. Even after I’ve long since abandoned 19th century historical fiction, this has remained one of my favoritest historical eras.

Something set in my native city of Pittsburgh, possibly late 19th or early 20th century.

A couple of Japanese historicals. I’ve loved Japanese history since I took a class in it my senior year of university. I was kind of sad to discover that my professor, Richard Minear, recently retired. He was so one of my favoritest professors, and made Japanese history and literature come so alive. Before I took that class, when I was 14/15, I taught myself some Japanese from one of the foreign language programs on the old public access channel 45 in Upstate NY, and a teach yourself Japanese book with words on stickers.

Not only do I love Japanese history, literature, and culture, but I also love Japanese names. There are so many possibilities to choose from—WWII (of course), the feudal era, the Heian period, the Meiji era, antiquity, you name it. And it would definitely let me flex my research muscles by going so far outside of what, when, and where I normally write about.

Something Medieval. In the last decade or so, I’ve really grown to love Medieval literature and history, after disliking or dismissing it for years because of the less than enlightened attitudes many people in Europe had. The Middle Ages spanned a thousand years, so there’s also very fertile ground here for a number of books. And it doesn’t have to be limited to just Europe. I’d love to write something set during the Golden Age of Islam, for example.

Perhaps something set during the Renaissance.

Maybe something set during the Ryurikovich (pre-Romanov) Dynasty in the Russian Empire. It lasted 736 years, so there are lots of eras to play around with here.

As a lifelong Native American ally, who never believed my jingoistic history textbooks’ pro-Conquistador spin, I’d feel really fulfilled to write a Native American saga.

Prehistory has been one of my favorite eras since I was six years old and started reading (on my own!) about primitive man. (Ordinarily I find the terms man and mankind extremely dated and sexist, but out of force of habit, I still tend to say primitive or prehistoric man. At least I own up to my double standard.) Neanderthals are my favorites. But whatever I write about, it definitely won’t be some prehistoric debauchery fest like The Clan of the Cave Bear series!

And maybe I should try something set during WWI. It’s really a shame how that’s gone from a war very much in everyone’s memory to a forgotten, ignored conflict and era. The last part of my future Russian novel prequel will be set during WWI, but it would be nice to have an entirely new set of characters living during that time.

Six Sentence Sunday

Happy Shavuot to those of you celebrating! My holiday has been great so far.

In this week’s excerpt for Six Sentence Sunday, Lazarus is running into a church to hide from two Nazis who’ve been following him. In his terror and desperation, he goes into a Confessional, and discovers a strange but fortuitous surprise inside.

***

Without thinking where he was going, since he’d never been in a church and had no idea how it was arranged, he ducked into a black booth against the wall and sat down on the bench inside, his heart pounding.  Moments later he heard the doors opening as the Nazis stormed inside.

Lazarus knew he could never leave the booth without being noticed, and while he was ducking down to see if there were room to squeeze underneath the bench, he realized that the floor was a false bottom.  There was a door on the floor, which he yanked open.  He slipped down into the small space beneath it before shutting the door.

“Excuse me, but what is the fuss here?”

Sweet Saturday Samples

This week’s excerpt for Sweet Saturday Samples comes, as last week’s did, from Chapter 45 of Adicia’s story, “Bartered Like a Piece of Meat.” Adicia and Justine go to visit Ricky up the street while his parents are away, and slowly Ricky learns about what happened to Adicia when she was 15 and that her parents just found a horrifying candidate they’re going to force her to marry in the fall. The conversation towards the end is PG-13.

***

While Mr. and Mrs. Troy are at work on a Saturday several weeks later, and Tommy is at soccer practice, Adicia and Justine watch from the window upstairs as Mr. and Mrs. Carson get into their car.  Their first thought after daydreaming about how nice it must be to have your own car is that maybe they’ll get to see the inside of Ricky’s house if his parents are gone long enough.  The last time they were inside a real house was when they went over to Francesco’s parents’ house ten years ago, but that was just a regular little house in Little Italy.  This is a fair size bigger, and looks much nicer from the outside too.  Not wasting a moment, they join hands and go down the steps through the bakery, which is closed for the Sabbath.  Adicia carries the keys, since the bakery door automatically locks behind them.

“They have a real fancy door-knocker,” Justine breathes in wonder as Adicia raises the handle around the ornate golden lion in her left hand and gives it a few bangs on the heavy oak door. “I wonder if they have servants too, or if they make you take your shoes off when you come inside.”

Ricky pulls the door open and smiles at them when he sees who his guests are. “Come right in!  What brings you by on this pleasant Saturday?”

“We saw your parents driving away, and thought that if they were out long enough, we’d get a chance to tour your house,” Adicia says, idly noticing what a cute smile he has.

“They went to the Hamptons for the weekend.  They just bought a house out there and wanted to start enjoying it now that summer’s here.  Don’t worry about them coming back early by surprise and ganging up on us for associating with each other.”

Justine almost trips over something when they’re walking down the front hallway.  Ricky leans over to push the strange object out of the way.

“Are those stone dragons?” Adicia asks.

“Gargoyles.  We used to have them in our garden in Syracuse, but my parents moved them to the front doorstep here.  Some local pranksters kept stealing them, and finally my dad got tired of having to walk up and down nearby streets to find them and just moved them inside permanently.  I didn’t know there’d be thieves and pranksters even in a nice neighborhood like this.”

“What’s a gargoyle?” Justine asks.

“They’re carved grotesque figures that traditionally spewed water through their mouths.  Nowadays they don’t have to have water spouts.”

“My intended future husband is a big gargoyle then,” Adicia says as they walk into the kitchen and Ricky opens the refrigerator.

“He’s forty years older than Adicia,” Justine nods. “He spent fifteen years in prison for beating his first wife to death when he was drunk and upset she was ten minutes too long at the store.  And he’s got five grown kids who all live in the house with him, on different floors with their own families.  I did the math in my head, and if he’s fifty-eight now, the youngest kid is twenty-four, and he’s been out of jail for nine years, he killed his wife when the youngest kid was just a baby.”

“He was inspecting me like a horse at auction,” Adicia remembers, shuddering. “I wanted to bite him when he was poking around at my teeth.  After he was done pawing all over me, he kissed me against my will.  I can’t decide which forced kiss was worse, his or the ones from that guy I was forced to meet to keep my mother out of prison.  I was promised a handsome husband with a good job if I slept with that guy when I was fifteen.  This guy Seth does have a good job, but he’s not young, and he’s not what I’d consider good-looking.  I guess I couldn’t expect them to pick me someone like you, since a fallen woman only has so many options.” Without really thinking about what she’s doing, Adicia reaches across the table and takes Ricky’s hand.