Third time’s the charm for the storyline that refuses to stay dead, Part II (Why the Minnesota setting has run its course)

Just as in real life, sometimes too the places fictional characters call home naturally run their course and are outgrown. It’s not a personal insult or done deliberately and maliciously, but just something that happens as they journey through more of life. That turned out to be true for the Konevs and Minnesota, a state I admit was pretty much randomly chosen as their future home.

Like Ivan, I also had a romantic, idealistic, fantasy daydream of someday living on my very own self-sufficient, 19th century-style farmstead. I idealized the farming lifestyle I read about in so many historical novels, and didn’t understand how much hard work is involved. I also didn’t understand how much farming began to change after the mid-20th century Green Revolution. Even small family farms use modern equipment, and they’re not sitting around the fireplace reading to one another, playing boardgames, and putting on plays when they’re snowed in, nor do they fill their spare time with barn dances, taffy pulls, and quilting bees!

While writing Dream Deferred, it finally dawned on me why Ivan latched onto this dream of becoming a farmer in the Midwest. It wasn’t driven by a genuine passion for either that region or profession, but rather an escape from his abusive father. Midwestern farming country also represented a place where he could keep his family safe from the ugly, cruel reality of the outside world. They only have to interact with one another and their dearest, closest friends out there.

I can’t believe I never realised how unhealthy and creepy it was for their three families to not only all live on the same piece of land, but also build houses for their adult children to move into as soon as they rush home from university with degrees they have no use for as career farmers in the middle of nowhere. That’s like a cult compound!

For whatever reason, I got the idea many years ago that Minnesota has a very high Russian population. I knew there were lots of Swedish and Norwegian immigrants, but thought there was also a large group of Russians. North Dakota would’ve been a far more realistic place to relocate based on that criterion.

Even without that being the reason, Minnesota always felt like a random state that could just as easily have been Ohio, Kansas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Wyoming, Indiana, or even a more rural place in New York State. I never did any worldbuilding about the fictional town of Firebird Fields other than mentioning the church and a few stores, and one scene at a skating rink. It was a self-contained world for the Konevs and their friends.

In The Twelfth Time, Minnesota is a healing escape from the poverty and tenements of New York, as difficult as it is to leave their extended circle of friends and Lyuba’s family behind. They needed that radical reset, particularly to save Lyuba and Ivan’s troubled marriage. It might be boring and cut them off from everyone back in New York but for strategically-planned visits when necessary, but all they can think about is that it’s a chance to start over properly.

In Dark Forest, Minnesota represents a safe beacon of refuge from the ugly, cruel outside world, a reliable place the Konevs can always run to when things in New York or California become too painful. It feels like a violation of this safe space when that outside drama invades and refuses to go away.

In Dream Deferred, the Konevs’ experience in another small town opens their eyes to how out of step they are in that kind of milieu. They’re seen as radical invading outsiders ruining the established local culture with their mere presence. Yet when they relocate to the Twin Cities, they choose St. Paul over Minneapolis because it’s smaller and sleepier. They still can’t shake their emotional attachment to small towns.

But before long, it becomes obvious they’ve outgrown Minnesota and that next-youngest child Sonyechka in particular feels stifled. Every time they visit New York for family celebrations, it feels so much more comfortable. I had plans to introduce three kindred spirit families (Czech, Greek, and Hungarian-Jewish), but what are the odds 1950s St. Paul or Minneapolis would have anything close to the intellectual, artistic concentration of NYC in that era? Sure such people existed, but there weren’t huge clusters of them.

Most cities in this era were built around one or two major industries (e.g., railroad, mills, mining, shipping, meatpacking). This wasn’t an era of choosing what city you wanted to move to based on the arts scene, restaurants, bars, a cute downtown, or historic architecture. If you wanted to connect with lots of other artists or intellectuals, you went to a city like New York or Boston, not St. Paul!

The idea of a large academy combining progressive pedagogy with prep school and European gymnasium education in 1950s St. Paul also now seems a bit unrealistic. The idea came to me to make Stefania Wolicka a New York school instead, when writing about Platosha Lebedeva-Teglyova’s high school graduation. She attends a progressive prep school for girls.

It’s also really expensive and inconvenient to constantly travel 1,000 miles back and forth for weddings, milestone birthdays, baptisms, and graduations. Other special events are missed entirely. If they’re all in the same place, it’ll save a lot of money and time.

And by 1952, Lyuba and Ivan have outgrown the reason they came to Minnesota. They no longer need to hide from the outside world, and they’re very eager to finally rejoin the intellectual, artistic society they were born for.

To be continued.

Celebrating Valentino-related snippets from my books on Rudy’s 97th Jahrzeit

To mark Rudy Valentino’s 97th Jahrzeit (death anniversary), I decided to feature some snippets from various of my books where he’s mentioned. One of the Easter eggs you’ll find in just about all of my books set in the 1920s and afterwards is at least one reference to Rudy. He was such a special person, beautiful both inside and out, and taken from that lifetime far too soon.

You can read longer excerpts from Chapter 23 of The Twelfth Time, “Death of Valentino,” here and here.

Sparky inspected the posters. “I’ve seen some of these people at the movies, except the man in the headdress. He has very deep eyes.”

“You haven’t seen him because he’s been dead for almost twelve years. This is Rudolph Valentino, a famous moviestar from the Twenties. He died when he was only thirty-one, before movies had sound. I was born on the anniversary of his death, and my middle name would’ve been Rudolph had I been a boy. My aunt Lucinda gave me my middle name. She still wanted to honor him in some way, so she found another seven-letter name that started with R, Rebecca.”

“Can you help me find some sheet music, Sir?” Cinni asked. “I’m interested in songs about Rudolph Valentino from the Twenties. He’s my namesake, and I like collecting stuff related to him.”

He responded in a British accent, though continued looking right at Conny. “Is your name Rudolphina?”

“My middle name woulda been Rudolph if I was a boy. When I turned out a girl, my aunt chose Rebecca as a replacement, since it also starts with R and has seven letters. I have lots of posters and photos of Valentino, but no sheet music yet.”

“Miss, I found four songs for you,” Tom called.

Cinni went towards him and took the sheet music, “The Sheik of Araby,” “That Night in Araby,” “There’s a New Star in Heaven Tonight,” and “We Will Meet at the End of the Trail.” Each had a different picture of Rudolph Valentino on the cover.

Jakob fell onto his knees and hugged Rachel’s legs, resting his head against her soft midsection, the way he remembered Rudolph Valentino doing it in one of the silent films Ruud had taken him to see at the film festivals they used to frequent. He felt like a happy little boy when Rachel gently stroked his hair.

“Isn’t it a regular habit of yours to pine for unattainable men?”

“There’s nothing unhealthy about having a crush on someone.”

“What about these?” The lawyer holds up Anastasiya’s two cosmographs.

Anastasiya gasps. “Where did you get those!”

“They’re not the originals. I have my ways.”

“What normal bachelorette has never had unrequited passion for a high-profile man?”

“It’s one thing to put up posters and photographs of your dream men on your walls, and another to make cosmographs like this!”

“I’m not on trial here! And last time I checked, millions of women are also madly in love with Rudy Valentino, and my crush on Grand Duke Dmitriy dates back to when I was a young girl!”

“Those other women don’t make cosmographs of themselves being kissed and embraced by the two men in question. I think we all know now you suffer from delusions, though your delusions are harmless and not enough to have you put away. You may step down.”

“Anastasiya wanted my head on a platter after I gave a bad review to her belovèd Rudy’s latest venture,” Viktoriya chortles, tossing crème de menthe chocolates down her throat. “God, that movie was so awful. After two years away from the screen, you’d think he’d make his return with something a lot better than an overlong, boring costume drama. I could barely keep track of who was who with all those damn powdered wigs and costumes. I understand he was trying to make a point about being true to oneself and image not being everything, but whatever noble theme he was going for got lost in all that damn wig powder.”

“Who do you like more lately, Dmitriy or Rudy?” Viktoriya taunts her. “I’d pick the grand duke over the actor, after that godawful costume drama I had to suffer through. Who finds a guy handsome in a powdered wig and seventeenth century outfit?”

“You little brat, you’re going to pay for that!”

Viktoriya laughs as Anastasiya gets up to chase after her and trips over her high heels and long skirts. “You’re probably the only woman in America under thirty who still walks around in clothes our grandmothers wore.”

Viktoriya shrieks with laughter as she picks up the form and gets an eyeful of the name Anastasiya printed. Katrin looks over her shoulder and starts laughing too.

“What? So what if I didn’t name him after my father or brother and used Russian names instead of Estonian ones? They’re perfectly respectable names.”

“How did we know you’d do something so silly and embarrassing?” Viktoriya asks. “This poor kid will be teased so much when he enters school and other kids find out whom he’s named after.”

“It’s not like they’re the only two people in the world with those names! And it’s in indelible ink, so there’s no changing the name. All you need to do is file it, and we can move on to finding a priest to baptize him.”

“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Oswald asks.

“Princess Anastasiya named her baby Dmitriy Rudolf Voroshilov,” Katrin laughs. “I’m sure you can guess the namesakes.”

Mrs. Oswald starts laughing too. Anastasiya waves her hand dismissively at them and retreats back to her room.

“Instead of being named after your vanaisa and uncle, your namesakes are Grand Duke Dmitriy Pavlovich and Rudolph Valentino,” Katrin says to the baby, struggling to contain her laughter. “At least your mother had the sense to name you for someone and give you names that mean something to her instead of randomly selecting a name.”

“Lyuba did dream Nastya’s kid was named Dmitriy Rudolf,” Viktoriya says. “She dreamt the kid would be left-handed, and so far he mostly sucks his left thumb. We’ll see over time if the rest of her dream comes true, that this kid grows up to marry a future daughter of hers and that she loses the use of her right arm.”

“In addition to tuberculosis, she also has pleurisy,” Dr. Winter continues.

Lyuba shrieks, flashing back to that mob scene at the Frank Campbell Funeral Home and the tragic sight inside. “Pleurisy! That’s what killed Valentino!”

“I wish you were right, but sometimes people remember things that happened before the usual age of memory if they’re traumatic enough,” Darya says. “My first memory is Rudolph Valentino’s wake a month before my second birthday. I can’t remember any details beyond all those screaming, sobbing women, lots of police, broken windows, and Valentino lying dead in a coffin, so pale, sad, and thin. I swear I really remember this and amn’t just saying I do because I’ve heard our family talking about it or saw pictures.”

IWSG—Of book covers and recharged mojo

Welcome back to the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. The IWSG convenes the first Wednesday of every month to commiserate over worries, fears, doubts, and struggles.

This month’s question is:

If you are an Indie author, do you make your own covers or purchase them? If you publish trad, how much input do you have about what goes on your cover?

I paid a local cover artist to do my first published book, And Jakob Flew the Fiend Away, and bought a premade cover for the second volume, And the Lark Arose from Sullen Earth. I did the back covers and spines myself when it came time for print editions some years later.

It was quite frustrating how the cover artist for the latter only provided the name Betibup33. That’s not a professional-looking credit! She also said she’d only do the back cover and spine if I bought some photos from her child’s photography profile.

                                    

I did the original covers for Little Ragdoll and You Cannot Kill a Swan myself, but came to regret that decision. They’ve since been replaced by proper cover art from free stock image repositories, which I did some edits on.

Little Ragdoll also has an e-cover from an artist in my old writing group. Initially I had expected to use that for the print edition as well, but there was a problem with the pixelation when I went to enlarge it (regardless of program), and a few tiny spots that weren’t entirely filled in. She also no longer had the artwork to make the necessary adjustments.

                         

                              

Like night and day!

I used real sepia photos for the front cover, spine, and back cover of And Aleksey Lived.

For The Twelfth Time, I found an appropriate free stock image and again fiddled with the colour saturation.

For Journey Through a Dark Forest, I found free stock photos of woods and made them as dark and shadowy as possible. Unfortunately, I was unable to use those dark covers for the print versions, since the printing process may have distorted their appearance on account of how much black there is.

                                 

                                 

For my Atlantic City books published to date, I’ve used another free stock image and changed the colour for each e-book. The print editions’ covers were designed with help from my father (who really knows his way around that software). I’m thinking I may replace the e-book covers with the print ones, since they look more professional.

                                 

                                   

In other news, I’m beyond thrilled my writing mojo seems to finally be back. I needed that humiliation and wakeup call of barely limping across the finish line of NaNo 2021 to start taking steps to pull myself out of that deep chasm. Sometimes we have to sink to the lowest, saddest, most hopeless and depressing point possible before we can start climbing back up to happier, prettier, more hopeful places and get back on track with our lives.

After I finished the Coney Island chapter in the book formerly known as The Very Last, I went back to my alternative history about Dante and Beatrice and finished Chapter VI, “Christmas Celebrations.” Then I returned to The Very Last to finish the World’s Fair chapter, which I’d barely begun in 2015.

I had so much fun researching and writing it! I almost felt as if I were at the Fair myself, and never wanted that chapter to end.

Everything became so much easier when I remembered I don’t need to incorporate every single detail from my research. Rides, exhibits, and holiday traditions are there for worldbuilding and a backdrop to character development and storylines. The entire book isn’t built around them!

The radical rewrite of TVL has also become so much easier since I began turning text blue if I recognize something’s not working, worded poorly, or clutter. Prior, I C&Ped it into a file of discards, which wasted a lot of time and fed into my bad habit of premature editor mode. Now I just make it blue so it’s marked for deletion in the final edit, and continue on writing.

Have you ever lost your writing mojo and then regained it? What helped you? How do you design your covers?

WeWriWa—Antagonistic Christmas

Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday, weekly Sunday hops where writers share 8–10 sentences from a book or WIP. The rules have now been relaxed to allow a few more sentences if merited, so long as they’re clearly indicated, to avoid the creative punctuation many of us have used to stay within the limit.

Because Russian Orthodox Christmas was 7 January, here’s one final holiday-themed snippet. This comes from The Twelfth Time: Lyuba and Ivan on the Rocks, which is set from 1924–1930. It’s now Orthodox Christmas 1925, and antagonist Boris is having a terrible holiday with his parents. They have a knack for pushing one another’s buttons, and have a difficult time seeing the other side.

Tanyechka (Tatyana) is Boris’s only blood child, whom he had with Lyuba and was forced to sign over all paternal rights to.

“So you gave dollar bills out like candy to all the kids in your religious school, and gave a ten-dollar bill to your assistant,” Mr. Malenkov says in distaste. “I suppose that’s why you couldn’t afford better presents for your mother and I. What do I want with a raccoon skin coat, and what does your mother need with a dress that looks like a slip? You expect either of us to wear these ridiculous things in public?”

“All the guys wear raccoon coats nowadays, and I want Matushka to look beautiful and fashionable when she goes out. See, the dress comes with a headband with a fake feather and glovelettes.”

“Why do I need a feather in my hair and these strange lace things around my arms unless I’m going to a costume ball or working in a brothel?” Mrs. Malenkova asks. “I’m surprised young women are able to wear such revealing dresses in public and not get arrested.”

“Your mother and I are forty-three years old, and we’d be the laughingstock of the city if we ventured out in public wearing young people’s fashions! Meanwhile we both made sure to get you presents with practical value, not things you’ll stuff in a dust-covered chest in another few years when the fad ends!”

The ten lines end here. A few more follow to finish the scene.

“Oh, yes, because every modern young man wants nothing more than long flannel underwear, bath towels, sheepskin boots, and a duffel bag for Christmas. Those are gifts you’d give your dedushka or uncle, not your young son! I dropped off my gift for Tanyechka last week, and made sure to buy her cute stuffed animals and religious storybooks. You know, age-appropriate things she’ll actually want, need, and use.”

“I suppose it’s okay if you’re not trying to see her or speak to her,” Mrs. Malenkova sighs. “The judge did say you’re allowed to deliver presents.”

“Lyuba and Ivan have the most beautiful baby girl,” Mr. Malenkov goes on, rubbing salt into his son’s wounds. “It’s a pity you’ll never father another child. It would be nice to see what a future child of yours would look like, besides the one you abandoned before she was born.”

Commingled pandemonium and sadness at Rudy’s wake

To mark Rudy Valentino’s 95th Jahrzeit (death anniversary), I’m sharing the fourth section of Chapter 23, “Death of Valentino,” from The Twelfth Time: Lyuba and Ivan on the Rocks.

“Why again are we returning to the city during a heat wave to go to a wake for someone we never met?” Ivan pesters as they get off the subway on Tuesday. “I hate crowds, and I can already hear all those loony women screaming and weeping.”

“Because our grandkids will love to hear the story of how we went to the viewing of a famous moviestar who died in our adopted hometown,” Lyuba says. “And Kittey and Viktoriya were fans, though not crazy and obsessed like Anastasiya.”

“Do I see a riot in progress?” Eliisabet asks. “I’m sure he’d be so proud of his so-called fans for turning his wake and funeral into a three-ring circus.”

When they join up with Alla, Vera, Natalya, Fyodora, and Anya Godimova, they notice smashed windows in the approaching Frank Campbell Funeral Home and a number of police on horseback. Ivan wishes he hadn’t been talked into leaving their happy shore vacation to witness this madness.

“I don’t like seeing so many police in one place,” he says. “It brings back bad memories.”

“I’ve seen those uniforms in newsreels.” Vera points. “They’re Italian Blackshirts. What are they doing here?”

“There’s still time to turn around and go back to the shore. Who knows what all these police might do to us if they think we’re among the crazy people smashing windows and fainting. I wonder how many coffin-climbers they’ve had to restrain so far.”

“Police in this country only arrest you or use physical force if they have a good reason,” Eliisabet says. “They’ll see we’re normal people not causing trouble.”

“Clearly you haven’t seen many movies,” Viktoriya says. “A lot of cops arrest or follow people who haven’t done anything. They have God complexes like doctors.”

“That’s meant to be funny!” Kittey protests.

“I don’t think it’s very funny to see people, even in fictional situations, having their basic civil liberties violated.”

As they get closer to the funeral home, they see several policemen hauling a screaming, weeping, hysterical Anastasiya out the door and through the street. Anastasiya is fighting against the cops and trying to climb over them to get back into the funeral home, loudly protesting she’s a very important woman. Dagnija, who came as her companion, looks extremely embarrassed for her.

“Why does this not surprise me?” Katrin asks. “I just knew Nastya would be among the crazy, hysterical fans rioting and fainting.”

“How come dead people have to be displayed before they’re buried?” Tatyana asks. “It’s nicer to remember them alive, not lying in a coffin.”

“It gives people one last memory and chance to say goodbye,” Lyuba says.

“If that bad guy had killed Papa before you killed him with the fire poker, I wouldn’t have wanted to see him dead in a coffin.”

“Mama killed a guy with a fire poker?” Fedya asks. “When did it happen?”

“Our last day in Russia, a man from the secret police came into our house in Pskov and made his case for me being the escaped criminal everyone was looking for,” Ivan says. “Before he could fire his gun, your mother crept up behind him and hit him on the head with a fire poker. When he started to move, she stabbed him in the heart.”

“Wow, you’re really brave,” Fedya says proudly, smiling up at her. “If you hadn’t killed that bad guy to protect him, I never would’ve been born. Babushka and Dedushka think you don’t love Papa, but if you hated him, you wouldn’t have done that.”

“Yes, your mother’s the best life partner I ever could’ve asked for.”

A phalanx of police are assembled around the funeral home, and only allow Lyuba’s party to go in a few at a time. First Kittey, Vera, and Natalya go in, having been the biggest fans, followed by Viktoriya, Alla, and Fyodora, then Katrin and Sandro, then Eliisabet and Nikolay, then Kat, and finally the Konevs. Lyuba starts sobbing hysterically at the sight of the pale, emaciated body in the coffin.

“Can we go back to Long Island now?” Ivan asks, looking uncomfortably at the dead actor before shifting his gaze back to his children.

“Can you promise you’ll never take sick and will always look after your health, Vanyushka? He was only three years older than you, and might’ve lived if he’d gone to a doctor sooner.”

“Of course I’ll take care of myself for you and the kids. Hopefully I don’t have any longterm effects from breathing in all that iron residue and lifting all that iron. My cough is slowly going away too.”

“I never want to lose you so young. He must’ve gone through such agony before God finally put him out of his misery. Promise me you’ll die on the same day and hour as I do, when we’re old, not in the prime of life.”

“I’ll try my best.”

Someone calls to them that their time is up. Lyuba takes Katya from Ivan and walks out with Tatyana, while Ivan takes Fedya and Darya by the hands.

“Bye-bye, Mr. Moviestar.” Fedya waves. “I hope you have a good time with the angels.”