I--not my books--have been "Reviewed"

This week (Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 2017), I am the subject of (or possibly victim of?) The Review Blog's interview between Diana Milne and an author. 

This is where you learn all my deepest, most closely held secrets that Diana skewered and pulled out of my soul. Prepare yourself for what may come.

http://thereview2014.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/diana-talks-to-christy-k-robinson.html 

In 2018, Diana Milne passed away. Because her blog may be taken down or archived, I've copied and pasted the article here. Diana talks to Christy K Robinson - author, editor, organist and jam maker extraordinaire!

I am sure that you are tired of being asked the usual questions that would be interviewers ask authors, so hopefully this interview is an interview with a difference and I have come up with some unusual questions!

First things first. I am sure there is a question that you have always longed to be asked. Now is the chance. Ask your own question and answer it!

“Christy, we’d love to employ you as one of our editors here at [magazine or book publishing company in California] at a decent salary, and offer you three weeks’ paid vacation every year in UK or Europe. What do you say?”  
“Heck, yeah! I can start last week.”
And then I could still research and write, teach piano to three or four kids a week, grow some veggies, and play keyboards for churches, but for fun, not scratching out a living.

If your latest book (Effigy Hunter) was adapted into a TV show or a film, who would you like to play the lead role?
I have actually mapped out Effigy Hunter as a PBS show, with a reporter (not me) doing stand-up shots in various cathedrals or ruined abbeys around the UK and Europe. I need to find commercial sponsors like travel agencies and airlines, a producer, video crew, etc., and I’ll happily write the scripts.

As for my fiction and non-fiction set in the 17^th century, I’d love to see a multi-year TV series between England and New England about the first founders—not of the United States in 1770s, but of the founders in the 1630s. Their issues still resonate today. Lead role? This world needs more Colin Firths in it.

What made you choose this genre?

First, I’ve been a history lover since I was in primary grades, and then I subscribed to archaeology magazines for years. I helped my chronically ill mother with family genealogy in the 70s, and did a lot of it on my own after she passed. I created a six-by-nine-foot pedigree chart that hangs on my wall, and I stuck laser-print headshots of every ancestor I could find, next to their name. Like millions of other people, I can trace my lines back to some important people, and books had photos of their effigies, so they got copied and stuck onto the chart. Then I finally earned enough mad money to book my trips to UK and Europe, and after much research and not a few hunches, I became an Effigy Hunter myself. I passed on most of the touristy sites, but looked up old abbeys, country churches, and cathedrals. In my professional life, I’ve been a book and magazine editor since my university degree, so nonfiction and a topical format, rather than a character-driven plot, is my forte.  Even my novels are as close to truth as I can make them.

It’s difficult to assign a genre to Effigy Hunter, as it’s a locator and description of nearly a thousand effigies in the UK and Europe, plus stories about some of the people memorialized in stone. It’s travelogue, history, genealogy, photos, and a bit of a romp, as one reviewer put it. A search of the internet, Amazon, and various booksellers reveals that this is a unique book—nothing like it.

How do you get ideas for plots and characters?

If I’m working on a historical novel, I only need for characters to be born during my timeline! And in my non-fiction, I only require that they be dead (so there’s a burial place to write about).

If, as a one off, (and you could guarantee publication!) you could write anything you wanted, is there another genre you would love to work with and do you already have a budding plot line in mind?

Yes, in research for my biographical novels on Mary Dyer, I found that one of my secondary characters had a sister who was a transvestite. She was baptized a female, then disappeared from records (except for her portrait as a young man), then was buried as a woman with her same birth name, not a married name. She came from a very famous family in the mid-17^th century, and I think they supported her and allowed her to live as a man. I’d like to make her a heroine/hero against child-traffickers, which was as terrible then as it is now. I do have two villains in mind, who were Puritan preachers as well as scoundrels. She never had children, but her siblings had descendants, one of whom is currently a member of the House of Lords. I’ve written to him several times, but no answer. I can’t afford time off my self-employment, or the travel expense, to go back to UK and sort out details.

Was becoming a writer a conscious decision or something that you drifted into (or even something so compelling that it could not be denied?) How old were you when you first started to write seriously.

Conscious. By nine years old, I’d turn in school reports as if they were articles in a newspaper. No one taught me that. I just did it. Then the teacher published one of them on the purple mimeograph machine in the school office, and I knew I had a future in writing. I was a teen reporter for Arizona’s largest newspapers during my last two years of high school, and hoped for a career in journalism, either newspaper or magazines. My mother was my best writing coach, and she’d have me study an encyclopedia article, then rewrite it using a thesaurus. The best advice from a professor? Write to a specific audience, and even better, a face. That helped develop my “voice” as a writer. Editing and writing newsletters, magazines, websites, and other short-form was easy and fun, but writing fiction came very late. I have a vivid imagination, but I dread just making up a story.

Marmite? Love it or hate it?

Neither love nor hate. It’s OK. The real question is: Christy’s homemade fruit jams—merely delicious, or crack?  

Do you have any rituals and routines when writing? Your favourite cup for example or ‘that’ piece of music...??

Nope. No sound track. No favorite pair of jammies. No alcohol. But it’s almost impossible to write unless it’s after 9pm. I can research any time, but writing won’t happen earlier than that.

I promise I won’t tell them the answer to this, but when you are writing, who is more important, your family or your characters?

I promise not to answer, except that I am never-married and childless.

Other than writing full time, what would be your dream job?

Historical research, digging deep in libraries and archives. *shivers*

Coffee or tea?

Depends on the country. Tea in the UK because your coffee is too strong, and your tea is smooth and mellow (Yorkshire Gold for me). Coffee in the US. My parents were from Minnesota, and Minnesotans are born with coffee in their circulatory system, so...

How much of your work is planned before you start? Do you have a full draft or let it find its way?
I have a rough layout in a Word document, and a detailed, multi-column timeline in Excel, and expand from there. I’ve been a magazine and newsletter editor since 1982, so I project several months ahead of today, and I’m always thinking of what will interest the reader: anecdotes that fit the facts, images, recent news that correlates to historical events, etc. 

If you had free choice over the font your book is printed in, what font/fonts would you choose?

Comic Sans. (Kidding! I hate Comic Sans. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest the armpits of the designer of Comic Sans.) Georgia is very readable. My editing clients lately have preferred Calibri in their manuscripts, but it’s dangerously similar to Comic Sans.

Imagine that you could get hold of any original source document. What would it be?

The personal papers of the (real) characters of my biographical novels. I have high-resolution images of four of their business letters, but I want their notes, personal letters, a journal, the family Bible, etc. I don’t know if they exist, but I suspect there might be some detailed reports written by Mary Dyer’s husband, to Spymaster Thurloe in the 1650s, that would be in the British Library. Online, and transcribed, I believe I have found a letter from Cromwell to William Dyer, though Dyer’s name is not attached—the situation is unique to him.

Have any of your characters ever shocked you and gone off on their own adventure leaving you scratching your head??? If so how did you cope with that!?

Nope. My biographical novels were as close to the actual events and timelines as I could make them. But digging up stories for nonfiction Effigy Hunter was fun because I had to wonder: what grave sins did these men commit, that they had to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and pay for some big ol’ churches to be built to get themselves busted out of purgatory?

How much research do you do and do you ever go on research trips?

C’mon, I’m still researching my novels published in 2013 and 2014! (For my blogs, I tell myself.) As for research trips, yes, I’ve been to UK five times, and they were all about research—because research is fun. I took hundreds of photos on those trips that became valuable resources when I finally got around to writing Effigy Hunter. I put together a book trailer with those photos. https://youtu.be/LHGCVmgDe9k

Also, I travelled to Boston and Newport in New England for concentrated research. I was gratified to find that my book-learnin’ and Google Maps street views were true to life, according to natives of the areas. I live in Phoenix, Arizona, thousands of miles away.  

Fiction authors have to contend with real characters invading our stories. Are there any ‘real’ characters you have been tempted to prematurely kill off or ignore because you just don’t like them or they spoil the plot?

Well, there was one fellow integral to the story that I tried to research, but he was so odious, even to his descendants, that only one man in 400 years wrote a very apologetic biography of him. He was still alive at the end of my novel because he killed my heroine.  However, I did carefully research the others, even the villains, so they wouldn’t be flat cartoons, but three-dimensional human beings. And of course, in the nonfiction Effigy Hunter, they all died. Every one. Not one lived to tell the tales.

Do you find that the lines between fact and fiction sometimes become blurred?

Lines are totally blurred in genealogy websites. Enthusiastic hobbyists will post and propagate all manner of mistakes and suppositions. However, I trust peer-reviewed journals, modern history books (but not Victorian ones), and census or military records. In some cases, I found information and made connections that no one in 400 years had thought of—but they happened. I wrote them into my books, and now, several years later, the fact/fiction border is blurry to me.

What do you enjoy reading for pleasure?

I’m such a nerd. Straight history far more than historical fiction. Biography. Science and political news.

What drink would you recommend drinking whilst reading your latest book?

Whatever Indiana Jones would drink. I mean, Effigy Hunter is adventure travel.

Last but not least... favourite author?

I could give you my “least favorite author” if you hadn’t typed that ellipsis in there. But for a favorite, I think I’m going to go with the apostle, St. John the Beloved. (That handily avoids playing faves with the authors I’m privileged to hang out with.) I learned that people cannot be told enough times that they are loved. Loved by humans, loved by pets, loved by God, or loved by the “Universe.” They need to hear it. And John the apostle said it a lot. By the way, Diana, I love you and your humor.

More about Christy K Robinson, including her history blogs, at http://ChristyKRobinson.com

© Diana Milne January 2017 © Christy K Robinson 2017

3 comments:

1. 
   Mark Mathison30 September 2017 at 19:45

   "I hate Comic Sans"? Seriously??? Hahahaha

   Reply
2. 
   Annelisa Christensen1 October 2017 at 13:04

   Loved this interview - Christy, if you are as energetic in your books as you are here, I have to read your books!

   Reply
   Replies

   
   Christy K Robinson2 October 2017 at 01:48
   I am at that. Effigy Hunter is fun because I had fun doing the research, and though I'm a devout person in my personal life, I can be irreverent (but factual) about the folks who have been dust for 700 years. In my Dyer books of the 17th century, I lived in their heads for two years while writing, and was hopping with excitement when I found their original letters in archives.
   
   My books can be found on my Amazon author page, http://bit.ly/RobinsonAuthor . I hope you enjoy them.

Scenes from a copy editor's life

Copy editing and proofreading are not the same thing, but I'll do BOTH for your manuscript. Reach me via the contact form at http://ChristyKRobinson.com .

Ride the TITLE WAVE into the 17th century

Books by Eve LaPlante, David Teems, Francis Bremer,
John Fox, and Nathaniel Philbrick,
fascinating nonfiction set in the 17th century.

by Christy K Robinson

 There’s a vast crowd of enthusiasts reading and discussing everything medieval and renaissance. But time didn’t stop with Elizabeth I’s death in 1603, and start up again at the Regency. Are you looking for the rest of the story? This is the century that brought you William Shakespeare's greatest works, the science of Bacon and Descartes and Newton, the astronomers like Kepler, the musicians Lanier and Purcell, Dr. William Harvey who discovered blood circulation, the great artists Vermeer and Rembrandt, Roger Williams and separation of church and state, the invention of the barometer and pendulum clock and steam pump and air pump, the Inquisition dispersing Protestants and Jewish refugees to Europe and America, the Great Migration to the Americas, the birth of secular democracy, Leeuwenhoek's microscope that showed bacteria and spermatazoa for the first time, and all the ideas and heresies that germinated between 1600 and 1700, the beginning of the Early Modern Period. It was a starkly different period than the medieval, renaissance, and Tudor periods it followed.

King James (he commissioned the 1611 Bible that's still the favorite version 400 years on), his son King Charles I (the only English king to be executed), and grandsons Charles II and James II kept the drama level high and dangerous in the seventeenth century. Their marriages and lovers, births and deaths, political intrigues, religious conflicts, witch hunts, and wars marked the beginning of our modern period. Their aristocrats and politicians, tradesmen, midwives, ministers, writers, musicians, scientists, and artists changed the world.

This is a list of authors who have the 17^th century covered, from Shakespeare and midwife forensic investigators to barber surgeons, Charles II’s mistresses, men and women who founded American democracy, servants and highway robbers, people who gave their lives for their principles or just because they were falsely accused as witches. In these books you’ll find sumptuous gowns and high society, educated women, poverty, prostitutes, and massacres, childbirth and plague, castles and manors, cathedrals and meetinghouses—even a vampire.

Our ninth or tenth great-grandparents knew these people—or were these people, metaphorically speaking. (Well, probably not the vampire—but everyone else!) Discover what their lives were like, and how their lives formed who you are. Many of the book characters from the 17^th century are based on facts, events, and real people. You'll see parallels in economics and politics between then and now. The authors, in addition to their literary skills, have spent months and years in research to get the 17^th century world “just right,” so you’ll get your history veggies in a delicious brownie.

Ride the wave of the time-space continuum into the 17^th century with these award-winning and highly-rated authors. The images you see are a small sample of what's available from this talented group! Click the highlighted author’s name to open a new tab.

Anna Belfrage — Time-slip (then and now) love and war.	Jo Ann Butler — From England to New England: survival, love, and a dynasty.	Susanna Calkins — Murder mysteries set in 1660s London.
Francine Howarth — Heroines, swashbuckling romance.	Judith James — Rakes and rogues of the Restoration.	Marci Jefferson — Royal Stuarts in Restoration England.
Elizabeth Kales — French Huguenot survival of Inquisition.	Juliet Haines Mofford — True crime of New England, pirates.	Mary Novik — Rev. John Donne and daughter.
Donald Michael Platt — Spanish Inquisition cloak and dagger.	Katherine Pym — London in the 1660s.	Diane Rapaport — Colonial New England true crime.
Peni Jo Renner — Salem witch trials.	Christy K Robinson — British founders of American democracy and rights.	Anita Seymour —  Royalists and rebels in English Civil War.
Mary Sharratt — Witches (healers) of Pendle Hill, 1612.	Alison Stuart — Time-slip war romance, ghosts.	Deborah Swift — Servant girls running for lives, highwaywoman.
Ann Swinfen — Farmers fighting to keep land, chronicles of Portuguese physician.	Sam Thomas — Midwife solves murders in city of York.	Suzy Witten — Salem witch trials.
Andrea Zuvich — Vampire in Stuart reign, Duke of Monmouth and mistress.

Introduction and illustrated table by Christy K Robinson. You're welcome to share this page in your blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Shortened URL: bit.ly/1xAUir1

The Editornado is a published author

You, your friends, and loved ones should have an under-Christmas-tree stash like this! Do you enjoy early-colonial history? Would you like to know more about the roots of America, going back to Britain? 

 Click the following highlighted, colored links to go to the book pages on Amazon.com. The books and e-books are available worldwide in all Amazon stores. If you'd like to order 10 or more copies, signed by the author, for gift-giving, please use the contact form to message the author, at http://www.christykrobinson.com/contact.html

If you're in Facebook, join the Mary Dyer Reading Club group and discuss!  Ratings and 5/5-star reviews for these books are HERE (click to open a new tab)

These books tell the personal story of the beginning of democracy and civil liberties in North America. The exciting narrative unfolds through the eyes of Mary and William Dyer, Anne Hutchinson, Governor John Winthrop, and Sir Henry Vane. The events and people were real, the conversations are fiction. You'll be overwhelmed by the scope of this major work. The books run between 330 and 390 pages, and are described by readers as "chewy," so they're well worth the money. Other books about Mary Dyer that have been on the market over the last 20 years are outdated and obsolete. Here, you'll find the author has incorporated new research in primary documents discovered in New England and British archives.

 Mary Dyer Illuminated  (The Dyers #1)
by Christy K Robinson.
Fiction based closely on detailed research of actual events. FIVE-STAR historical fiction about Mary and William Dyer, 1629-1651. 

Paperback, 390 pages. $19.99 (Amazon discounts this price) 
Kindle edition  Amazon price $7.99    
Amazon UK book or Kindle 


 

Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (The Dyers #2)

by Christy K Robinson

Historical/biographical fiction about Mary and William Dyer, 1651-1660, with an epilogue that spans another 50 years to include their associates and their children.

Fiction based closely on detailed research of actual events.

Paperback, 330 pages.  $19.99 (Amazon discounts this price)
Kindle edition Amazon price $7.99 

Amazon UK book or Kindle 


 

The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport  (The Dyers #3)
by Christy K Robinson
Nonfiction, illustrated. The research and recent discoveries behind the novels. The Dyers is a lively nonfiction account of background color, culture, short stories, personality sketches, food, medicine, interests, recreation, cosmic events, and all the "stuff" that made up the world of William and Mary Dyer in the 1600s. More than 70 chapters, and all-new, exclusive content found nowhere else! 
Kindle edition Amazon price $6.99 
Paperback edition now available! 320 pages, $12 (Amazon discounts this price)

Synopses: Mary Barrett Dyer, 1611-1660, was comely, dignified, admired for her intellect, and known in the court of King Charles. But how did she become infamous in England and America as a heretic who gave birth to a monster? Were she and her mentor/friend Anne Marbury Hutchinson responsible for curses falling on colonial New England in the form of great earthquakes, signs in the heavens, and plagues? What possessed the ultra-righteous Governor John Winthrop to exhume her baby before one hundred gawkers, revile her in his books, and try to annex Rhode Island to get its exiles back under Boston’s control? In Mary Dyer Illuminated, follow William and Mary Dyer from the plague streets and royal courts of London to the wilderness of America where they co-founded the first democracy of the New World 135 years before the Declaration of Independence. They were only getting started. In the second of two volumes, Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This, the Dyers return to war-torn England and their lifelong association with Sir Henry Vane, and lay a foundation for liberty that resonates in the 21st century. Why did beautiful, wealthy Mary Dyer deliberately give up her six children, husband, and privileged lifestyle to suffer prison and death on the gallows? The two novels are compelling, provocative, and brilliantly written, blending historical fact and fiction to produce a thoroughly beautiful work you won't want to put down. The author has reconstructed a forgotten world by researching the culture, religions, and politics of England and America, personal relationships, enemies, and even the events of nature, to discover who they were.  

From Dyer descendant, minister, and international magazine editor Dr. Ken Horn:

I belong to a religious tradition that values the contributions of women. The weekly magazine I edited for nearly eighteen years published an annual women's edition and many other articles about women—both clergy and lay—who excelled in ministry and community service. Many women have followed Mary’s grand example, mostly on a far smaller scale. Few have had such lasting influence.

I discovered that my ancestry includes two of the most influential Christian women in American history: Mary Dyer and Mary’s friend and mentor Anne Marbury Hutchinson, who made her own significant contribution.

This Dyer blog has provided a rich source of reliable information about my ancestor Mary. I also discovered another rich, and enjoyable, source. I took Christy Robinson's novels about Mary Barrett Dyer with me on a recent international trip and devoured them both. Mary Dyer Illuminated and Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This were both page-turners for me.

I seldom read fiction, but Christy’s writing is presented on a framework of reliable, detailed history, so there is abundant information to be gleaned … and in an entertaining way. I felt the time I invested in these books was well worthwhile. Christy’s compelling narrative greatly aided in making Mary a real person to me. These are fascinating books that deserve a much-expanded exposure. They are simply outstanding, a feast for lovers of history and good writing. 

***** (rated five stars) “Mary Barrett Dyer is one of very few 17th-century women who are remembered today. She is usually described as a Quaker hanged in the cause of religious freedom, but genealogists and historians know there is much more to her. Christy K Robinson brings the Dyers to vivid life for the rest of us, weaving superb fiction with what is known into a penetrating novel. Robinson’s research is flawless, and her engaging characters invite you into their brilliantly imagined world. Brava!” – Jo Ann Butler, author of Rebel Puritan trilogy.    

More 5-star reviews:  http://marybarrettdyer.blogspot.com/2013/11/reviews-for-mary-dyer-illuminated.html  

Key words: Mary Barrett Dyer, Anne Hutchinson, John Winthrop, civil disobedience, Great Migration, 17th century, William Dyre, Boston, Rhode Island, England, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster, Reverend John Cotton, religious liberty, church-state relations, Quaker, Puritan, oppression, colonial America

http://bit.ly/Church-State