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****Amalia Stankavage Dillin’s DAUGHTER OF A THOUSAND YEARS is #108 in the
never-ending series called INSIDE THE
EMOTION OF FICTION where the Chris
Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific excerpt from a fiction
genre and how that fiction writer wrote that specific excerpt. All INSIDE
THE EMOTION OF FICTION links are at the end of this piece.
Name of fiction
work? And were there other names you considered that you would like to share
with us? Daughter
of a Thousand Years—I bounced a bunch of
different titles back and forth with my editor before we settled on this one,
but my working title was One Thousand
Years, because the two timelines were a thousand years apart. It was a
tough book to title because of the dual timeline element. The heart of the
story for both times was the same: both Emma, in the contemporary United
States, and Freydis, in the Viking age, are pagans in predominantly Christian
communities and daughters of influential men in positions of leadership in those
communities, as well, but there’s a lot of difference in how those communities
conduct themselves, and the challenges they face are unique to their times.
Has this been
published? And it is totally fine if the answer is no. If yes, what publisher and what publication
date? Yes, by Lake Union Publishing, February 2017!
What is the
date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely
finished the piece of fiction? I started writing Daughter
of a Thousand Years in October 2015 or so, under contract. I finished
it in the spring of 2016, delivered to my editor before Easter that year.
Where did you
do most of your writing for this fiction work?
And please describe in detail.
And can you please include a photo? I wrote Daughter
of a Thousand Years in what had been my Grandfather’s house, where my
husband and I were living at the time, and a place that has been very special
to my all my life. (Right: Amalia's Grandfather's garage)
I’d recently set myself up a real workspace that wasn’t just the
couch in the living room, but it was pretty bare bones! Just a desk and a
crooked office chair and a pile of reference books in the corner of our freshly
repainted bedroom. But it was my space, and I could close the door and keep
people from interrupting my workflow. (This was a lot less of an issue before I
was writing novels under contract!)
What were your
writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote,
listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of
day?
I worked on my laptop, in Word 2007, and
occasionally in various notebooks while I ran errands on the weekend. My
workday was generally 10am to 10pm, with breaks for lunch and dinner. Sometimes
I sometimes listened to music—though I don’t remember being fixated on any one
band or playlist, as sometimes happens with other books I’ve written! Probably
Of Monsters and Men, if anything!
What excerpt of
the book was the most emotional for you to write? This excerpt can be as short
or as long as you prefer.
“I know,” Sarah
said. “I know. I get it. But if you guys connected—maybe he wasn’t worried
about it until he realized he really should be, because it was going to destroy
him if it didn’t work out.”
I moaned,
sliding down the wall. “Please don’t let that be what’s going on. It’s going to
make it so much worse when I have to tell him how not Catholic I really am.”
“You didn’t?”
“Of course I
didn’t! It was our first date.”
“But you guys
talked about religion, you said.”
“It was bound
to come up,” I told her. “But it was mostly just kind of probing to feel out
his position on things, not mine. I didn’t want to scare him off.”
“You should
just get it out of the way, Emma. Tell him you’re whatever you are, and move
on. He’ll either understand or he won’t, but it’s not like you worship Satan.”
I tipped my
head back against the wall, thumping it once, twice,again. “No, I just worship
Thor.”
“Right,
whatever.”
I let out a
long breath, forcing myself to ignore the way she dismissed my words. My faith.
If someone suggested she was Catholic and not Protestant, she would be
offended, but I was just whatever. And this was why we didn’t talk about
my faith. Why even though she knew the truth, I still felt so alone. “You know
it isn’t going to be that simple.”
“Would you
rather get all wrapped up in him, let him fall in love with you, and then
spring it on him and break both your hearts when he looks at you like you’re
crazy?” she asked. “Because judging by this conversation, that’s where this is
headed. And it’s going to get there fast.”
I closed my
eyes, hating that she was right. Hating that she’d looked at me like I was
crazy, too, when I’d first told her about my beliefs. That she still to this
day couldn’t bring herself to say the word Heathen without implied
subvocal air quotes, when she could bring herself to say it at all. Like it
couldn’t possibly be as real to me as her faith was to her.
And if Alex
responded the same way . . .
We’d been on
only one date, but I knew already it would tear me apart.
“Just tell him,
Emma,” Sarah said. “If you’re serious about your faith and it means that much
to you, it isn’t fair to keep it from him. This is Alex. You already know he
can be trusted not to wreck your father’s campaign if things go south. Just be
honest.”
“Yeah,” I said,
blinking back the tears that pressed behind my eyes.
It was so easy
for her to say. For Sarah, for my dad, it was nothing to say they believed in
Jesus. People just accepted Christianity as a matter of course, and no one was
going to accuse them of being racists or neo-Nazis because of it. No one was
going to tell them their god didn’t exist in the middle of a history class, or
blink if they suggested they’d had some kind of spiritual experience of Christ.
And sure, yeah, maybe part of it was that it was a big deal to me, and I
was making more of it than I needed to because of that, but when the base
assumption of everyone around you was that everyone else was monotheist or
nonreligious and you weren’t either one, it was something that you became a
little more acutely aware of.
“Who knows?” I
said, forcing all the rest of it away. Forcing myself to keep my voice steady
instead of strangled. “Maybe there won’t even be a second date.”
To be honest,
after this, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted one.
Why is this
excerpt so emotional for you to write?
And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this
specific scene/excerpt? So this whole book was kind of an emotional
roller coaster for me. I wasn’t at all prepared to write it or ready for what
writing it would mean for me, personally. DAUGHTER OF A THOUSAND YEARS, at its
heart, is a book about faith and spirituality that exists outside of what is
considered normal or acceptable, and writing that book meant being publicly and
personally open about my faith and spirituality in ways I hadn’t ever been
before—ways I had been too afraid to
be, before.
So in many ways, Emma’s confession was also mine, and putting it
in print, in a book that would be published, was terrifying. Her agonizing
about that confession, and how the people she loved most would respond, was
something I was experiencing alongside her, anticipating having the same
conversations with my family and loved ones, who I had been too afraid to talk
to about my faith before. (And like Emma, some of those people were more
accepting and understanding than others—which is just human nature, I think,
when it comes to faith.)
Were there any
deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please
include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. Nope,
no cuts from this scene—it DID need some clarification and expansion to give us
a stronger sense of what was going on between Sarah and Emma, and what Sarah
understood about Emma’s faith, so this was a scene with a lot of additions
rather than subtractions. Lines like “And this was why we didn’t talk about my
faith. Why even though she knew the truth, I still felt so alone.” came in
later, to give their relationship a little bit more depth and make it clear
that Emma had hit up against this same wall in the past—and explain part of why
she was so hesitant to have these kinds of revealing conversations with other
people, as well. The work-up isn’t such that it makes for a very dramatic
picture, or really works to take a screenshot, sorry.
Other works you
have published? As Amalia Carosella, I’m also the author of HELEN
OF SPARTA, BY HELEN’S HAND, and TAMER OF HORSES, as well as a
co-author of the collaborative History 360 Team novel A SEA OF SORROW: A NOVEL OF
ODYSSEUS, and the short story “Ariadne and the Beast.” I also write
fantasy and fantasy romance as Amalia Dillin, including the Orc
Saga, the Fate of the Gods trilogy, and the Postcards from Asgard
duology.
Anything you
would like to add? DAUGHTER OF A THOUSAND YEARS
was maybe the most personal book I’d ever written to date, and certainly it was
the most soul-baring and difficult as a result. It felt like I was bleeding all
over every page—but looking back, I can see how much my own fear influenced the
book, and the act of facing that fear through writing the novel allowed me to
grow and find my own strength, so I could go on to write a book like FROM
ASGARD, WITH LOVE (as Amalia Dillin) more boldly, and also become more
true to myself on the whole.
I want to note, too, that writing this book, I wanted to be as
sensitive in my portrayals of the spectrum of faith that exists both for
Christians and Pagans—to show how even people of the same faith can respond
differently. Freydis, for example, is rather extremist, in opposition to her
half-brother, Leif, who is fairly zealous in his quest to convert his father’s
settlement, while their father Erik the Red, and other brother Thorvard are
more moderate (and in Thorvard’s case, he accepts and practices BOTH
Christianity and the pagan faith of his father.) Among the Christians in
Freydis’s timeline, in contrast to Leif, Gudrid is in my book (as in the
original sagas) an incredibly virtuous and kind, generous woman—a model of
Christian love and charity. I tried to show the same variance of spectrum of
understanding in Emma’s present timeline, too—to reflect the reality of the
world we live in today.
Amalia
Carosella is the author of Bronze Age Greek and
Viking Age historical fiction, including Tamer of Horses, Helen of
Sparta, and Daughter of a Thousand Years. As Amalia
Dillin she also writes mythic fantasy and time-hop fantasy romance, including
the ongoing Orc Saga and the completed Fate of the Gods
trilogy. Once upon a time, she dreamed of being a zookeeper, but she’s settled
for a house cat and a husband instead.
Twitter
@AmaliaCarosella,
support her on Patreon, to stay up to date on
her latest authorish adventures.
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