The Characters and Their Music in The Forgetting Flower, Part 1
I have always loved music. When I was little, I loved pop music for its catchy hooks. Then when I was a teenager, I loved rock music for its cool riffs. As a young adult, I was into alternative before my love later deepened into jazz and classical music. I was a musician myself for a while (drummer) and worked as a music editor. So, I guess it’s no surprise that as I wrote my novel, I unconsciously included music in The Forgetting Flower. It appears on the first page…
Why I Wrote a Novel About a Tree That Sings: Part Two
In Part One of this series, I wrote about how my affection for trees and the idea of plants making vibrations inspired me to write Song of the Tree Hollow. Today I’ll address the other piece of the puzzle: the sudden experience of my cat dying and coming back to life.
Why I Wrote a Novel About a Unique Apple: Excerpt
During these last few weeks, I shared two posts about the origins of and botany in my novel about a unique apple, Harvesting the Sky. The first article covered how I merged issues of an emotional past with plants and the second, my inability to eat apples and subsequent fascination with them. This week I’m posting the final segment of this series with an excerpt from the book’s first chapter. It takes place in Kazakhstan while the rest of the novel, as in The Forgetting Flower, takes place in Paris. I…
Why I Wrote a Novel About a Unique Apple: Botany
Last week, I wrote about the origins of my apple novel, Harvesting the Sky. I covered my resistance to putting plants in my fiction, how I developed a main character who was a composite of plant people I knew, and why I decided to set the story in Paris. The next step I needed to decide was the novel’s botany, what plant my main character, Andre, would be discovering. A Fascination With a Fruit I Can’t Eat As an adult, I’ve never been able to eat apples. While I know they’re good for…
Might and Main Monday: Ann Patchett
Writer Ann Patchett says it all in this quote about the creation of art and the importance of forgiveness. It’s from her article, “The Getaway Car,” reprinted in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book … that exists in such brilliant detail on…
