Kazuo Ishiguro: “Are they going to say this is fantasy?” Stellar Authors

The Buried Giant

Living in Wales, I’ve become obsessively fond of the ancient Welsh myths set out in The Mabinogion. Through the centuries since those stories were first written down, their wonderfully enigmatic themes have been borrowed time and again to help create other imaginative works.

When I first began to read The Buried Giant, by my favourite author, Kazuo Ishiguro, I was fiercely reminded of the story in Part Three of The Mabinogion. Two heros, returning  to their women from a  long and bloody war, find the landscape of their homeland altered. 

One of Alan Lee's illustrations from the Lady
Charlotte Guest translation of the Mabinogion

…suddenly there was a clap of thunder and, with such a great clap of thunder, a fall of mist so that no-one could see anyone else. After the mist,  everywhere was filled with bright light, And when they looked where before they would have once seen flocks and herds and dwellings, they could see nothing at all: neither house, nor animal, nor smoke, nor fire, nor man, nor dwelling…not-one left except the four of them…

These four central characters wander this enchanted version of Britain until two of them are tempted into an enchanted castle and find themselves struck dumb and unable to move when they touch a golden blow beside a fountain. 

One of the major themes and motifs of The Buried Giant is a mysterious mist, and I wondered immediately if Ishiguro had been influenced by ‘the mab’. He wouldn’t have been alone; it is likely that E. E. Nesbit was. In her book The Enchanted Castle, she creates a castle with living statues. Half a century later, in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Jadis, the White Witch, fills her castle with statues of Narnians she has turned to stone. Was C.S. Lewis influenced by Nesbit, or The Mabinogion itself?

Using myth to present ideas to today’s readers is not an uncommon one; we are all bound up, whether we know it or not, by the stories that define us, the archetypes that form our understanding of how the world works. With this already in my mind, I couldn’t help wonder if Ishiguro likewise had been likewise influenced. Just as in ‘the mab’, a deep theme of The Buried Giant is symbolized by a mist which has covered Britain and is making the inhabitants forgetful. The people are under an enchantment…and the book itself seems enchanted, for this spellbinding story is an allegory set out as a quest…a quest for a dragon, for family, and for memory itself. 

Several decades after the death of King Arthur, the original Britons are sharing their land with Saxons who are threatening to take over. An elderly British couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off to find their son, journeying through a landscape infested by ogres and pixies, and a dragon, Querig, who, it is said, is polluting the country with its breath, causing the mist which has resulted in an epidemic of amnesia. Axl and Beatrice want their memories back, but are fearful. Little glimpses into the past suggest things were different when they were young.

Axl and Beatrice encounter two warriors, a Saxon called Master Wistan, and the aged Sir Gawain, who both declare they are on a quest to slay Querig. They also take up with a young boy who has been inflicted with a strange bite. 

Kazuo Ishiguro

Their travel leads them into haphazard and troublesome misadventures, each revealing the human condition and the mysteries of life. One of my favourite moments in the book happens when Axle and Beatrice are sheltering from the rain. They watch an old woman slaughter rabbits to torture the sensitivities of a boatman. The old woman tells them she knows the man; he promised to ferry her and her husband to an island where they would both live. The boatman deceived her, saying he could only manage one passenger at a time. He carried her husband to the island, but never returned for her. 

Hearing this story, Beatrice becomes anxious that she might be separated from Axl. Again, I was reminded of The Mabinogion, and of the early Irish myths, in which islands, especially islands surrounded by mist, usually represent the otherworld, or the next world. This ‘story in a story’ affected me on a deep, almost subconscious level, and I became as desperate as Beatrice that she should not be left behind.

As I read deeply into the book, I could see it set up as many questions as it was answering. Are the supernatural creatures real, or just in the minds of the characters? What is it that Axl and Beatrice have forgotten? Who was Axl when he was young? Why does Beatrice not always trust him? Are the two warriors being truthful about their quests? What will happen if the dragon is slain? And, most importantly…what or who is the Buried Giant?

Ishiguro deftly exposes human nature with its weaknesses and strengths through his lyrical and emotive prose. His format is that of allegory, rather than the straightforward historical or fantasy novel, for as the messages are slowly revealed, and the characters face the effects of memory loss and the challenges of their journeys, I found myself examining this in the light of today’s world. The characters show pride, deception, lack of trust, disloyalty and disrespect. They constantly face danger, abandomnent, loss, illness and death, but also find awakening love, compassion and courage.

People have found this book mysterious, provocative and uncomfortably. It is unlike other modern novels, but I think Ishiguro means for it to be unique. He means for us to be challenged – to stop and puzzle the story out. The fact that all his other books are equally distinctive is one of the major reasons I love his work; he is without comparison, in my opinion.

The Buried Giant echoes the strange dream logic of the Mabinogion, where the tales are tangled and broken and yet weave a passionate magic; I recently spent an entire weekend at a symposium on ‘the mab’.  It would not have surprised me to learn that Ishiguro might use Welsh myths in this way, as he loves to take difficult themes and try to make some sense of them. In this book, the early confusions finally resolve into significance, but like myths themselves some extremely profound speculations cannot ever be perfectly clear. 

All Ishiguro’s books have a certain ‘dream logic’ where things are never really as they appear and core emotions, such as guilt, regret and fear of death lie just under the surface. Check out my review of one of his previous novels, The Unconsoled (1995 Faber & Faber) KTWs reading club

Gawain and the Green Knight

So was this book influenced by ‘the mab’? His answer is revealed in an interview with Guernica magazine, where Ishiguro discloses that he was, in fact drawn to the 14th Century Authurian legend, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – and even then, the major impact was that of setting – something I love to use myself. An entire novel can grow out of its setting, if a writer becomes immersed in it. 

In the Guernica article, Ishiguro says…What really sparked my imagination as far as The Buried Giant was concerned was [a] tiny little description of the country [Sir Gawain] was crossing. It sounds like such a weird place. Britain in those days was really rough. There weren’t any inns or anything like that where he could stay, so he had to sleep on rocks in the pouring rain—I don’t know why he had to sleep on rocks, he could have slept under a tree, but that’s what it says—and there are a couple of lines that say that he was chased by wolves and wild boar and panting ogres…I thought, “This is a rather interesting landscape.”

The very first and oldest tales of King Arthur are in The Mabinogion, first set down in the twelfth century and written in Middle Welsh. I would love to know if Ishiguro, among many of our great literary writers, has dipped into this fascinating text.

Kazuo Ishiguro

A Midsummer Night's Dream

 Haleakala, the volcano on the island of Maui, Hawaii. 

I got up at four this morning, walked to the top of the hill in the field next to my house, and stood, watching the sun rise. I do that every year; it's always as magical as the previous one – and I've seen the sun rise in some surprising places in the past, including Haleakala. 

But a few years ago, a particularly hot summer, we spend Midsummer Night on Glastonbury Tor. This was unforgettable too, and I recreate some of my experiences (and add to them, of course), in the opening pages of my third Shaman Mystery Novel. 


Beneath the Tor, out in December from Midnight Ink Books, is the third book recounting the adventures and life of a young British shamananic therapist called Sabbie Dare. She walks in the spirit world to help her clients, people on the edge, seeking help from a shaman because all other avenues of help have closed off, and this often sends her into terrifying places and to dangerous people.

In Beneath the Tor, Sabbie is in Glastonbury, the amazingly spiritual town in Somerset, UK, to help run a shamanic workshop. This allowed me to introduce a new bunch of amazing characters to the stories.

Ten of us – a group keen to explore shamanism – had climbed the west side of Glastonbury Tor as the sun slipped from the sky in a shock of red. I’d been taking the lead up the steep grassy slope and was finally in sight of the hill’s crest, where the ground spread and flattened as if it had been sliced off, like the top of a boiled egg. I could already hear the people, the drums. My own pulse quickened. The party had begun.

Alys had grinned as she’d surged past me, heading hotfoot for the summit. She’d balanced on the edge above and exploded into jumping jacks – from sheer joy, it seemed to me – her long legs gold in the last sun.

Wolfsbane had leaned on his staff, an ornately carved piece of ashwood, and pointed with his unlit cigarette. He was a chain smoker when he got the chance, but didn’t have the breath to light up on the climb. “That girl is going to make a terrific shaman. I can’t wait to start working with her.”

It's a balmy night on Glastonbury Tor, but it doesn't end well for Alys:

I rolled onto my stomach to watch the handful of dancers who were still going strong. Alys was among them, turboed up like a child who’d had too much ice cream, hollering and whooping. I could hear her from the far side of the summit.

I saw her dance.

I saw her drop.

She fell to the ground with a silent thud.

She fell awkwardly, one leg trapped under the other, her head thrown back.

I stared for long seconds, waiting for her to rise and start again.

Alys didn’t get up. She didn’t move at all.

I stood and ran, but one person reached her before me. Ricky dropped onto one knee and touched her gently on the cheek. “Alys? Alys!” 

There was no response.

“What is it?” I barked. “What’s wrong?”

“Exhaustion, I’d guess.”

Shell was scampering towards us. I screamed at her. “Get Brice! Quick!”

My phone was in my back pocket, switched off to save batteries. I fumbled with it, cursing the slow turn-on. I’d got a signal. I bloody-well should get a signal on the top of this rock.

Word began to spread, people realized something was happening. The drums trailed off. The other dancers closed around us. 

“Give her air, please!” I cried into the silence.

Ricky looked up. “She won’t need air.”

“What?”

“I saw her spirit go.”

Sabbie Dare and her friends are in shock and when her shamanic guru, Wolfsbane, confesses that Alys

Midsummer Day on Glastonbury Tor

may have unwittingly taken drugs during his ritual, Sabbie is  horrified.
Then, Brice, Alys’ grieving husband, approaches Sabbie for help. He has received sinister, anonymous emails about his dead wife. As Sabbie tries to unravel the meaning of these disturbing messages she is also trying to help a vulnerable and young new client, Laura, who is having terrifying panic attacks. Sabbie turns to the spirit world for guidance but only receives conflicting and enigmatic answers. As Sabbie heads closer to the truth about Alys’ shocking death, a deranged killer is also heading towards a showdown with a final victim, and both are closer to Sabbie than she knows.

https://parayournormal.wordpress.com/

There are Midsummer Night Party blogs all over the place today; go to https://parayournormal.wordpress.com/ to find out more.

How Many Notebooks does it take to...

Shoot me down in flames if you don’t agree with me, but I’d say that a writer who does not have at least one notebook, is not a writer.

To me, it’s the most essential tool. So essential that it’s the very first thing we look at in Writing Skills; Keeping a Writer’s Notebook. Just as a sketchpad makes you think like an artist, using a notebook transforms your approach to writing.

So, new writers are asked to keep a notebook, but seasoned writers don’t just keep one; even though my fingers are now hardwired to use a keyboard and my writing (and spelling) has deteriorated to chimpanzee level, I am never, never without my many notebooks. Right now, I’m using notebooks for…
Want to find out what I'm using my notebooks for? Read the entire post at
http://weareoca.com/author/nina/

Writers & Other Animals: Hens and Chicks (and the Mystery Writer)…continued...

Ceredwin and her brood

Last summer, I blogged on http://writersandotheranimals.blogspot.co.uk/ about how Ceredwin, one of my hens, had a little brood of chicks. Heavens, she was proud! She grew feathers on her feet to help keep them warm, called them each time she found food. But there came a point where they didn’t look cute and fluffy any more; they weren’t smaller than Ceredwin anymore, either. She turned her back on them – she’d taught hem well and now she expected them to fend for themselves.

Littlewings

A year later those four chicks are part of our flock. Rhiannon bears a golden shoulder cape and Pwyll has grown into a distinguished cockerel. Littlewings (so called because she was the runt of the brood –when it was mini mealworm time she’d run up and down the edge of the nesting box, trying to scale the great height of 2 inches, to join the feast, and we’d cheer her on as if we’d put money on a hurdling competition), and, finally, there’s Redneck.

Redneck is a Transylvanian Naked-neck cockerel. I swear there’s a bit of turkey somewhere in this breed, because, although much smaller than Pwyll, he’s an odd contorted shape and sometimes he sort-of…gobbles. His neck is bright red, exposed through a ruff of white feathers. He so ugly, only his mother could love him, but his mother doesn’t love any of her brood anymore, so there’s no hope.

Red Neck

We love him, of course, because he affords us so much fun. Despite his diminutive size and challenging appearance, he’s made of stern stuff. “Never give up, Never surrender,” is his motto. Never give up chasing the hens, that is.

You see, Pwyll took over the entire flock with a confidence that comes from knowing you are a hen’s answer to Joshua Jackson – I’m sure he must have looked in a mirror at sometime – it’s clear he knows how handsome he is. His approach to Redneck’s advances is; “if you want these dames, you have to fight for them.”

I came out into the yard to find them scrapping; running at each other, crowing and flapping, flinging themselves into the air, crashing at each other a yard up from the ground, beaks and spurs ripping and tearing. There was blood on the ground and on the breasts of my two cocks. 

And it was all Redneck’s.

Pwyll

He sulked to the end of the garden to lick his wounds. Actually, hens (all birds, I think) have tongues, but I doubt he did much licking. I tried several times to catch him to patch him up, but he wasn’t having any of it.

“Don’t worry,” said my poultry-expert friend, Jane. “Cocks are hardy beasts. He’ll survive.”

Redneck wears the scar showing prominently on his comb with pride. His life is lived on the edge, away from Pwyll. But Pwyll has four hens to husband; he can’t be everywhere at once, and, as soon as he takes his eye off a wife, Redneck is there, looking for a bit of lurve. If the hen that’s getting the amorous attention makes a fuss (anything from “I told you. I’ve got headache,” to “Rape! RAPE!”) Pwyll will half run, half fly across our plot to the scene of the trouble, while Redneck makes off in an opposite direction. But he never gives up. He’s always on the lookout for nooky behind Pwyll’s back.

Keeping hens is a clear case of character envy – Sabbie Dare, heroine of my Shaman Mystery Series, had hens long before me.

Sabbie is a 29 year-old shaman with a therapy business in a sleepy town in England. She helps her shamanic clients by walking between worlds...bringing messages for them back from the spirit world. She lives a self-sufficient life, growing vegetables and keeping a small flock of hens.

Book one in the series, In the Moors opens with the death of half her flock after a visit from a fox.

At the henhouse door I dropped my empty basket and cried out in raw distress. Slaughter lay at my feet. Saffron, the biggest of my hens, was gone, and Pettitgrain, my favourite, lay in the run, dead from a clean bite to the neck.

The henhouse smelt of gore. Sickness swelled in my stomach, an expansion of loathing for the fox, no doubt now slumbering, replete. My brave cockerel, Cocky Bastard, who must have defended his harem to the last, lay on his side twitching steadily. I picked him up. His body was bloodied and broken. His eyes stared deep into mine. Quickly I broke his neck. The three remaining birds huddled in a corner making low, tense cluckings, as if they were discussing their traumatic night in hushed whispers. 

Sabbie believes in omens and portents, so when a cocky detective called Reynard Buckley walks into her life that same day, it’s bound to mean trouble for Sabbie. 

In book two, Unraveled Visions, Sabbie invites Mirela, a young Buglarian Roma, to stay at her house, and in this excerpt they are searching for the girl’s missing sister:

In the chicken coop were five eggs, two as big as a child’s fist. Ginger and Melissa didn’t lay all that often now, but when they did, their eggs were as full as bombs. I thought Mirela deserved an eggie breakfast.

Mirela was a charming combination of femme-fatal, innocent child and hoary old gypsy. She ate both double-yolkers, giggling when I called the bread slices “soldiers”.

“Do you have anything of your sister’s I could use? To help me find her otherworld?”

Mirela reached for her shoulder bag and brought out a zipped, plastic makeup case, stained with lipstick smears. From this she pulled a piece of shiny card. At first I thought it was a large postage stamp, but when she handed it to me I could see that it was a reproduction of an icon – the Virgin Mary in summer blue with a golden halo. I turned it over. On the back was a scribble of biro in Cyrillic script.

 I squeezed Mirela’s arm. “Your sister has to be somewhere. To be honest, some real world searching wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

“Where I look?” She paused. “Where you look?”

Yep, there it was, that sinking feeling as my stomach hit my knees. I’d offered her a bed. I’d offered to work shamanically to find her sister. And now it looked like I was offering some practical help…

“Exactly when did Kizzy leave?” I asked. “Can you remember?”

“Yes, Easy. November six. She just start pack case right then and puff! She’s gone. Like that.” Mirela clapped her hands, once, loudly.

Suddenly, I wanted to find Kizzy badly. I was longing to give her a good slapping down.

Having had such fun with raising chicks myself, I was keen to let Sabbie Dare have a go, too. But Unraveled Visions is set in the deep winter, and no self-respecting hen is even laying eggs then let alone sitting on a clutch. But book three, Beneath the Tor, opens on Midsummer Eve on Glastonbury Tor, where beautiful Alys Hollingberry dies suddenly after dancing away the night. Beneath the Tor continues the dark, atmospheric edge of the previous two books in the series. Sabbie witnesses the tragedy, and gets caught up in its dark aftermath. And in the middle of all this, Florence goes missing.

Florence was my secret favourite. She was a curious hen, bright eyed and comical. I’d had her and her siblings for over a year; a farmer had given me one of her recently-hatched clutches of Sussex hens and they’d been productive and so beautiful to look at. 

“Florence,” I called, even though she had no idea that was her name, “Flo, where are you? Chuck-chuck?”

Beneath the Tor is not due for release until December this year, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait to find out why Alys died on the Tor and what happened to Flo!

Writers & Other Animals: Hens and Chicks (and the Mystery Writer)…continued...:
by Nina Milton

Glastonbury – A Writer's Perspective

The Cover of the third Shaman Mystery,
showing the summit of Glastonbury Tor
and St Michael's Tower, which is all that
remains of an ancient church

Have you ever suffered from the Writer Doldrums? Did they hit you when you were about halfway through the story you were writing? I call this phenomenon "The Mid-book Blues" and I reckon all writers are prone.

When I started the third book in the

Shaman Mystery Series, I was raring to go.

Beneath the Tor already had its title, and its basic structure. I had notebooks full of writing and boxes full of cuttings. I had several online files of research and a shelf of books already devoured. I’d created a sketch of each main character, especially the new ones for this third book - there are many and varied new characters in Beneath the Tor, some of them very colourful indeed! I'd even pinned up a character-driven timeline of the story on my office door. 

My Plotting Wall
showing the timeline of Beneath the Tor

Yes, I was bursting through the starting gate; on a scale of  1-10 my motivation levels were 99. I began writing and at the end of one furious month I had 60,000 words. 

Then I came up for breath and…yes, you’ve guessed it, my enthusiasm, confidence and energy seeped away as if I’d thrust my garden fork through a water pipe. (That’s happened before now, too.)

But determination will wane from time to time –  a writer would not be human if that didn’t happen. The important thing is to deal with it.

I had to deal with it. There was just no excuse – I had a contract to fulfill. But for writers who aren’t lucky enough to have already received a nice little payment and a deadline date, strategies for getting out of the Writer Doldrums are invaluable, so I thought I'd pass on my most successful one so far. You might find it useful when you hit the Mid-book Blues

Glastonbury Abbey Grounds.

I began by visiting the setting of my book. Not all writers are lucky enough to be able to do that, of course; if your novel is set on Mars, or pre-historic China, you might have trouble, but Beneath the Tor, as you might already guess by its name, is set in the amazing and unique town of Glastonbury, in the south west of England. I spend several days there, soaking up the spiritual atmosphere, imagining Sabbie Dare and the other characters from the book wandering down the High Street, visiting the Chalice Well Gardens and hiking up the Tor itself.

White Spring Wellhouse

I spent a tranquil afternoon in the abbey grounds, soaked with the sun's warmth. I found myself scribbling furiously. 

Then I visited  the White Spring Wellhouse, which is at the foot of the Tor. The spring gurgles and gushes out of the hillside into a small building, which in the 19C supplied the town with clear spring water. Now, it's a jungle of damp-loving plants and shrine icons placed there by visitors. As you can see from the picture, I was not alone. Someone was playing a guitar and softly singing as people paddled in the ice-chill water.  

Wearyall Hill, Glastonbury Town in the background,
showing the Glastonbury Thorn, cut down by vandals,
 covered with remembrances.

Finally I walked up Wearyall Hill, famous in legend as the place Joseph of Arimathea landed, when he came from the Holy Land (Glastonbury being surrounded by water at the time). Joseph thrust his staff into the ground in joy of arrival and it flowered into a tree. The tree – there are several now, of course – is called the Glastonbury Thorn and it flowers on Christmas Day. A sprig of its blossom is sent each Christmas to grace Queen Elizabeth's dining table. Recently the Thorn growing on the hill was vandalised, and now stands as a reminder of how loved it was, covered by ribbons and remembrances left by countless visitors. I was moved by this sight, and it stirred me to think more clearly about the themes and symbols in Beneath the Tor.

By the time I was ready to go home, I was also bursting to carry on with my writing. 

Take a visit to your setting; I'm positive it will stimulate your writing and give you fresh encouragement to steam ahead. If you can't actually get to where your book is set, as well as reading about it, try borrowing travel DVDs. If you can't even do that, play some music that will take you there in you head. 

Bon voyage.

A Unifying Brand – KTW Guest Blogger Edith Maxwell

Edith Maxwell, Mystery Author

My Guest Blogger at KTWs today is Amazon bestselling author Edith Maxwell. I have a great affinity with Edith; like her, I love my garden, I love my kitchen and I love researching interesting settings for my crime fiction.

Edith describes her novels as cozy and traditional mysteries, and she writes under several pseudonyms with an interesting link; almost all the novels include recipes readers can cook up in their kitchens.

She’s Maddie Day when writing her country story mysteries, 

As Edith Maxwell, she writes the local foods mysteries series and the historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries.

And just to keep things interesting, she writes the lauren rousseau mysteries as Tace Baker.

Edith is a fourth-generation Californian, and lives with her beau and three cats in an antique house north of Boston, where 

she's currently working on her next Local Foods mystery when she isn't out gardening. She’s well equipped to write about food; she’s a former farmer of a certified organic farm and she also holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics.

She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, and blogs every weekday with other Wicked Cozy Authors (http://wickedcozyauthors.com). You can find her at @edithmaxwell, on Pinterest and Instagram, and at www.facebook.com/EdithMaxwellAuthor. 

Like me, she also can’t resist shorter fiction; she’s an Agatha-nominated and award-winning writer of short crime fiction, with stories appearing in the anthologies Fish Nets, Burning Bridges, Thin Ice, Riptide, and The Larcom Review.

Here she is talking about her books and her web presence – writers who are thinking of creating their own blog or website should listen up:

I’m really excited at the moment about the new Quaker Midwife series, which features Quaker 

midwife Rose Carroll solving mysteries in 1888 Amesbury. John Greenleaf Whittier, the actual Quaker poet and abolitionist, features in the novels. The series will debut in March, 2016 with Delivering the Truth, I love the cover – midnight ink books have done an excellent job.

The latest book in my Lauren Rousseau mysteries, under the pseudonym Tace Baker (Barking Rain Press), is Bluffing is Murder. Out now, it was recently review by blogger Mark Baker; “In this page-turner of a mystery, linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau uses her smarts, her Quaker faith, and her summer vacation to bring a vicious murderer, and a secret from her own past, into the light.”

My first book in the Maxwell’s Country Store Mysteries, Flipped for Murder, from Kensington Publishing,  will be out in November 2015. I recently took an extensive research road trip from Massachusetts to southern Indiana to refresh my memory of landscape and dialect. The series will feature Robbie Jordan and Pans ‘N Pancakes, her country store restaurant in fictional South Lick, Indiana. 

And my latest in the local foods mysteries series, also from from Kensington Publishing, Farmed and Dangerous, will be out in late May. Kirkus Reviews said; “Quirky characters, lots of organic farming tips, and a well-developed mystery make this Cam’s best outing yet.”

I wanted to be sure my web site reflected all these identities and all these series, and my previous site on Blogger wasn't cutting it. The banner was made up of my book covers, but that meant it had to change every time a new book came out, and there were other issues. I started drafting a new site on WordPress, and wondered what I could use for a banner, for a common theme.

So, as often in the mystery world, I went looking to my friends for help. I checked out Sheila Connolly's new site, http://www.sheilaconnolly.com/orchard-mysteries.php. Doesn't it have a great look?

I looked at Catriona McPherson's site http://catrionamcpherson.com/ – I love those crows. She writes one series and one line of standalones, but also all under a single name. And I checked out Leslie Budewitz's site - she writes two series under one name. Isn't that an evocative painting? http://www.lesliebudewitz.com/

What I saw on each site was a unifying graphic. In the latter two, the art doesn't necessarily represent the settings of the book, but rather the author. In Sheila's, there are pictures of the places where her series are set: Ireland, Philadelphia, and small-town Massachusetts.

I considered hiring an artist to create a banner for me, either with pictures or art. Then I looked at the wall in my office and realized I had it right there!

 Edith's World, painted by Jennifer Yanco  from www.edithmaxwell.com, 

My dear friend Jennifer Yanco (a published non-fiction author) commissioned Boston-area artist Jackie Knight to create an oil painting for my sixtieth birthday a couple of years ago. It's titled "Edith's World." It's mysterious and imaginative and gorgeous. It doesn't look like any one of my series or names, but instead represents me and my work. Right?

So, I took a high quality photograph of the painting, cropped a horizontal slice of the digital image, and made it the banner for my web site. It shows up on every page. I also use it on my Facebook Author page.

And then, because I could, I made up business cards, note pads, and even a few mugs.  So I have my brand, I have my new web site, and I have a lovely connection to the friend I have known and journeyed with for almost forty years.

The pen names are on the web site on each series' page and on the business cards, in case anybody needs to find one of my selves.

Heck, maybe t-shirts are next...

Readers: Can you find other examples of multi-name multi-series web sites you like? Any suggestions for my site? (Be brutal!) Go to www.edithmaxwell.com to take a look.