 I
must confess. For me, most board games are about
as much fun to play as watching paint dry. I haven’t
quite figured out the novelty except for the fact
that if you don’t like the way things are
going, you can just start all over again. Now
come to think of it, wouldn’t it be great
if we could just do that with the stock market?
Oh, if only we could.
All kidding aside, I think my distaste for these
types of games really has to do with my ignorance.
Take chess for instance. I’d be the first
to admit that I just don’t get it. I even
have gone so far as to buy the children’s
version in hopes that the elementary instruction
would help me see the light. No luck! I was as
confused as ever.
 But, lo and behold! This month’s Jen’s
Jewels came to my rescue. Katherine Neville
is the Internationally Bestselling Author
of THE EIGHT which was
released over twenty years ago. Her groundbreaking
novel dared to incorporate various genres into
one storyline that paved the way for such phenomenal
page-tuners as Dan Brown’s THE DA
VINCI CODE. Her latest release,
THE FIRE, is the highly anticipated sequel
which once again takes the reader jet-setting
across the globe in search of Charlemagne’s
most prized possession…the Montglane Chess
Service. From knights to queens, this novel is
pure historical pleasure. And, I am proud to say,
that my knowledge of chess has taken a giant leap
forward thanks to my new friend. (Just in case
you’re wondering, you do not have to read
THE EIGHT first. While connected,
each novel does stand alone.)
As part of this interview, Ballantine
Books has graciously donated five copies
for you, my lucky readers, to win. So don’t
forget to look for the trivia question at the
end.
Now sit back, relax, and be prepared to be swept
away by the exceptional talent of Katherine Neville.
Jen: Sometimes
to get from here to there can require taking quite
a circuitous route. The same could be said of
your stellar career. So that my readers can have
a better understanding of the journey which led
to you becoming an author, please tell us a little
bit about your educational and professional background.
Katherine: My career wasn't especially
stellar--unless you consider a roller coaster
ride to be stellar. I had to work for a living
full-time at various jobs throughout college and
later in grad school (which explains the mediocre
grades I often made.)--mostly, later on, in the
computer field.
During those 22 years, whenever the economy took
a turn for the worse I often was laid off from
jobs or fired, so I quickly learned to keep my
resume dusted off and placed around various parts
of the country, and I was always prepared to relocate
at the drop of a job offer--even to outside the
country. Meanwhile, I always took whatever work
there might be in the place where I was living,
and learned not to mind too much if neither the
job nor the pay was very glamorous. I was a busboy
and a waiter, also a model, photographer, portrait
painter, and so on.
It was pretty rocky most of the time. I went through
a lot of jobs, careers, cities--even boyfriends--but
it certainly gleaned lots of material for future
novels.
I only quit working for good when I had sold my
first two books (A CALCULATED RISK
and THE EIGHT) to my publisher,
Ballantine. But I still haven't
really settled down.
Jen: One of the
most challenging aspects of writing a debut novel
is deciding in which genre the author’s
voice best suits. Twenty years ago when you first
came on the scene, you defied the stereotypical
boundaries and put forth a novel entitled THE
EIGHT that encompassed nearly them all.
What was the driving force behind you taking the
bull by the horns? At any point did you waver
or lean towards going in just one direction?
Katherine: Actually, the reason it took
me so long to do my first novel was that I really
felt I needed the right STRUCTURE to tell the
kinds of stories that I loved to read and that
I wanted to write. I went through several university
"creative writing" programs which did
not give me the tools that I knew I needed. But
I knew what kind of books I loved to read and
it seemed that nobody who knew how to write them
was still alive.
I confess--though I am a gluttonous reader--I
was so ignorant of the book world that I didn't
even know what a "genre" was until after
my first book was published. All I knew was that
bookstores had a Literature section and a Fiction
section.
My book was regarded as so outré--so outside
of any mold--that my first fan letters, if you
can call them that, came from my fellow authors--mainly
asking me "How did you get them (the publishers)
to let you get away with it?"
But in fact, the kind of book I'm writing does
have a genre that is, thankfully, making a comeback
just now:
It's called a Quest novel and it's as old as literature
itself: THE ODYSSEY, JASON AND THE GOLDEN FLEECE,
PARSIFAL AND THE HOLY GRAIL--and the oldest of
all, GILGAMESH AND THE QUEST FOR THE ELIXIR OF
LIFE. I'm really delighted to see so many of my
fellow authors tromping around in the same pasture
now. But I still hope it doesn't become so "specialized"
that we have to give it a category and a bunch
of prizes.
The kinds of books I love to read are inspiring
and just plain fun. The test for me is whether
I want to read them again the moment I'm done.
Jen: Your latest release, THE FIRE,
took twenty years in the making. Why such a long
time to write the sequel to THE EIGHT?
If you could do it all over again, would you still
have waited so long? Why or why not?
Katherine: I always say that I don't write
my books--they write themselves. Or at least they
decide when to be written. I thought of HOW to
write the sequel to THE EIGHT
in July of 1992. As it turns out, the book refused
to be written then—THE MAGIC CIRCLE
was clamoring in the bottom drawer, demanding
to be written--so I wrote THE MAGIC CIRCLE
instead, about the turning of an aeon or 2000-year
cycle. (In 1998--just in time for the ACTUAL aeon!)
Then on a sunny day in September a few years later,
a plane hit the Pentagon just across the river
from my apartment, and I knew that I was not writing
the book I thought I was writing. You can't write
the sequel to a book about Arabs and oil and Islam
and the Middle East when real events are unfolding
all around you that are going to impact what you
are writing about.
Then while I was waiting to see what would unfold--we
began the war in Baghdad. The very place where
the mysterious chess set of Charlemagne was created
1200 years earlier--the chess set I created for
the plot of THE EIGHT!
So the event most critical to the plot of THE
FIRE had just taken place--on that first
week of April, 2003.
Jen: I have said
in previous columns that in order to make a storyline
ring true with readers, there must be at least
some amount of research incorporated into the
book. For you, this statement must seem trite.
Your novels are rich in history and factual information.
So, let’s talk about the other extreme.
How do keep it fresh while still interspersing
the story with so much historical background?
Katherine: I read the actual journals,
letters, memoirs, and eyewitness reports about
or by the real historic figures I use as characters.
But more important--I go there. I always tell
young aspiring authors the two most important
things they need to write a book: get a job and
get a Eurail Pass.
I've actually lived and worked in most of the
places I write about--Russia, Germany, North Africa,
New York, San Francisco, Idaho, and Colorado.
When I haven't been there at all, I try to get
film footage. I had extensive film footage of
the Alaska and Eastern Russia scenes in THE
FIRE.
And I lived in a place in DC--where I set most
of THE FIRE--that's so obscure
it isn't even on most maps yet!
Jen: And to tack
on to that last question, approximately how much
of THE FIRE is historically accurate?
And what, if any, liberties did you take in creating
this riveting page-turner?
Katherine: Well, I must admit that I'm
not trying to write true history. I feel that
any obligation to report fact in my books should
be mitigated by the two words on the jacket: A
Novel.
Having said that, almost everything in both the
historic and modern parts of my books is well
grounded in factual elements, right down to the
ingredients in the soup.
But I stress my feeling that if readers approach
the book and begin by assuming that everything
in the book is invented by me, then they’ll
be really delighted. Should they do any further
research on their own, they would discover how
much of it is not just factual, but actually little-known,
highly fascinating trivia about things that really
occurred--things that they'd have great trouble
finding out elsewhere.
So many events like that happened in THE
FIRE that I wouldn't know where to begin.
Some of the early topics that early readers of
THE FIRE had expressed interest
in include:
- Catherine the Great's explorations of Siberia,
Alaska, and North America;
- "Secret Societies" throughout history
which appear in my books;
- and--because of my love of cooking and because
Alexandra Solarin is an apprentice chef in
THE FIRE--many little-known things about
Food and Wine in both THE EIGHT
and THE FIRE.
Jen: You have mentioned that in your latest
release, THE FIRE, (which is
fabulous by the way) that the storyline took an
abrupt turn after your meeting with the Chief
of Staff of the U.S. Treasury. Please tell us
about its significance in relation to the evolution
of the novel.
Katherine: As a fiction writer, you often
think you made something up--and suddenly find
out that what you invented exists or has maybe
just happened.
One example from THE EIGHT is
that after Talleyrand and my heroine Mireille
had a child that I invented (Talleyrand had plenty
of illegitimate children I could have used), I
discovered that Talleyrand actually did arrive
one day from the hot springs at Bourbon, where
he went each summer, with a 5-year-old child--"Charlotte
la Mysterieuse"--whom he raised as his own
daughter, but whose parentage was never disclosed.
So I'd given her an instant family tree!
In researching THE FIRE, the
most interesting was getting an invitation from
a reader for a private lunch and tour of the US
Treasury. The "reader" said he'd been
inspired to master chess while reading my book
THE EIGHT while he was in Kuwait
and is now none other than the Chief of Staff
of Treasury. After lunch, I asked how it happened
that he had mastered chess in Kuwait. He said,
I read your book in Kuwait-- but I mastered chess
in Baghdad. I said, Baghdad! So what was he doing
in Baghdad? It turns out that as assistant to
Tommy Franks he was one of the first to enter
the city when the war first began.
So I knew, sitting there at the table that I wasn't
there to visit the secret bunkers of Treasury
at all. My book wanted me to find out about Baghdad
-- because that's where the Montglane Service,
(the chess set of Charlemagne I invented in THE
EIGHT) was originally created--in 775
AD! Serendipity!
Jen: The game of chess could possibly be
touted as one of the main characters in
THE FIRE. A question I just have to ask…are
you an avid player? What do you find most fascinating
about this game?
Katherine: I'm terrible at chess--largely
because I learned too late, not until age 18 or
so. I once checkmated a boyfriend without realizing
he was even in check (a scene that I use at a
critical point in THE FIRE.)
And I also have experienced the same "chess
blindness" as the heroine, kind of like vertigo.
So I was able to describe it from my heroine's
point of view, firsthand.
I do find chess the most fascinating game and
not just as a metaphor or a symbolic model of
the universe, but also, as you mentioned, it's
a living breathing thing that is a part of the
player's physical and thought process--and here,
as with anything else required to be a competitor,
you are first competing to better yourself.
I should mention, too, that part of the first-edition
proceeds for THE FIRE are being
awarded to SPICE--grandmaster Susan Polgar's Institute
for Chess Excellence at Texas Tech--which trains
young people--especially girls--among other things
in how to deploy tools like tactics, strategy,
and Promethean perception that they can acquire
through chess.
Jen: As I read THE FIRE,
I was intrigued by your choice of such colorful
secondary characters that added just the right
amount of panache to the novel. Which one was
the most enjoyable to conjure up? Which one was
the most challenging and why?
Katherine: When you have as many characters
as I often have, they have to step out onto the
page full of life and juice, the heroes as well
as the villains, so you will remember--even if
don't they appear again until 300 pages later
-- exactly who they are.
So it should come as no surprise that my favorite
supporting actress in THE FIRE
is Nokomis Key. She's the kind of chick that every
girl who was a tomboy growing up would have loved
to have as a sidekick-pal.
In fact, I consider myself very fortunate to have
known a lot of women--even back when most girls
were still addicted to crinolines, mascara, and
"catching a man," way before "women's
lib.” I knew women from the generation before
mine who did all kinds of things like Nokomis--flying
on their own, not whining, not afraid to take
risks.
The most challenging was Sage Livingston. We've
all known people who are born-again cheerleaders,
socialites, prom queens. It's hard to imagine
one of them being multi-dimensional enough to
act like a Rottweiler.
But that was then, of course. Life recapitulates
fiction.
Jen: Alexandra
Solarin, the central figure in the book, has many
crosses to bear. What are her greatest strengths?
Weaknesses? What makes her the ultimate player
in this international game of suspense that will
ultimately decide the fate of her family and the
world?
Katherine: Alexandra Solarin is a person
who, due to the circumstances of her parents'
involvements in the previous book, has been cast
into a soup tureen surrounded by mysterious ingredients
that she knows nothing about.
Her greatest weakness is that she would like to
blot out the one great tragedy of her past that
changed her life and (she believes) created her
as the girl she is today. Her greatest strength
is that--when she realizes that this very tragedy
is the key to everything else--she is willing
to jump back into the fray. She is wiling to suspect
people she loves and to trust people she always
believed she hated.
Only by taking off our rose-colored glasses, and
also those dark-tinted ones that filter our observations
with prejudices, are we able to see the Big Picture.
In one week of her life, Alexandra is willing
to give up her perceptions--even her beliefs--about
everyone and everything, and to take a fresh look
at real events as they unfold around her.
Jen: Peppered throughout the book are numerous
mind games or brain twisters, if you will. Were
these clever ruses the product of your imagination
or from research? How were you able to piece together
these elements of the story without losing sight
of the end product?
Katherine: All the puzzles in my books
come from research, though my research is not
usually from a book. For instance, the first puzzle
in THE FIRE--the phone number
puzzle--came from a puzzle posed by a Middle Eastern
physicist, at a cocktail party in Virginia for
a bunch of engineering professors. The minute
I heard it, I told him, "That puzzle is appearing
in my book!"
It fit so perfectly with the fact that the entire
story of THE FIRE has to do with
a chessboard--with an altar where things are transformed--not
just with a game.
That's what I mean by serendipity.
Jen: When you finally typed the words “The
End” was there a sense of sadness having
to say good-bye to these characters? I think they
must have become a part of your life having taken
twenty years to come to fruition. And also, how
have you grown as a writer in respect to your
first novel, THE EIGHT, to its
sequel, THE FIRE?
Katherine: I'm always happy to say "End
Game" in a book. Maybe it's because I always
know what the last sentence is before I start
writing the first sentence.
But as for THE FIRE, Alexandra
and Vartan are the only characters I really wasn't
ready to leave at the end of the book. I felt
that--although my publisher and I and all my fellow
authors who wrote comments definitely felt that
the book was over--these two still had more that
they wanted to say.
Who knows what or when it may be?
Jen: Please tell
us about your website. Do you have e-mail notification
of upcoming releases? Do you participate in author
phone chats? And if so, how would my readers go
about arranging one? Do you have a blog?
Katherine: Gosh--I must confess that I
am definitely a Blog Virgin.
When I set up www.KatherineNeville.com, ten years
ago, I had never even seen, much less sent, an
email. Today, my website is full of podcasts,
trailers, quizzes, photos, Q and A, reader-oriented
editorials and essays. We will soon have a newsletter.
It's great!
Jen: Are you currently at work on your
next release? If so, what can you tell us about
it?
Katherine: It's a book I've been involved
in for more than 20 years--about painters in the
1600s and the present. The smell of the oil paint--the
scent of the book! I already have my easel out
in preparation…
Jen: Thank you
so much for sharing your superb talent with my
readers. I have to say, you have broadened my
scope of world history and sparked a renewed interest
in the world in which we live. Please stop by
again. Best of luck in your future!
Katherine: Hugs from here!
I hope you have enjoyed my interview with Katherine.
Please stop by your favorite bookstore or local
library today and pick up a copy of THE
FIRE.
Okay, it’s time for the trivia question.
Be one of the first five readers to e-mail me
at jensjewels@gmail.com with the correct answer
to the following question and you’ll win!
Name the main character in THE FIRE.
Later this month, I will be bringing to you a
very special interview with Karen White. Her latest
release, THE HOUSE ON TRADD STREET is
set in one of my favorite cities…Charleston,
SC. You won’t want to miss it.
Until next time…Jen
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Meet
the Author: featuring Jen's Jewels