vicki
05-12-2007, 05:03 AM
Hi, everybody! The VBC discussion of A Grave Talent will begin on June 1, 2007. Please join us for the VBC's inaugural discussion of LRK's first entry in the Kate Martinelli series.
Laurie wanted to offer you all some materials that might be of interest both generally and in relation to the discussion. So, if you're interested, take a look at the links below--they might give you some ideas for the discussion. Enjoy!
A Grave Talent
---First in the Kate Martinelli series, published 1993
---Edgar award, Best First Novel, Mystery Writers of America
---Creasey award, Crime Writers Association (UK)
---Bantam paperback ISBN :0-553-57399-3
(for a signed or inscribed copy, contact Crossroad Books (http://crbkswat@sbcglobal.net).
The laurierking.com page for A Grave Talent:
Check it out here (http://laurierking.com/grave_talent.php) for an extended excerpt, reviews and other background information, including the first four chapters of the book (http://laurierking.com/pdf/A%20Grave%20Talent.pdf).
A special VBC introduction to A Grave Talent from LRK:
The writer's art begins with the question, What if? In the case of A Grave Talent, my question was, What if Rembrandt were a woman? What would she look like, how would she act, how would her work be the same, and how different? And reaching back (for that is what writers do) what shaped her?
However, I did not want to write a fictional biography about a great woman artist, what one would call a mainstream novel. I saw "my" artist, Vaun Adams, as a force of nature, an individual so intensely focused, the world outside her head was to her little more than a series of subjects for her canvases.
This meant that the story's tensions had to come from outside her. I set her into a closed society, introduced a thread of terrible crime, then brought in another outsider, through whose eyes we see this female Rembrandt and her world.
A Grave Talent did not start out as a mystery novel in my mind, although I could see why its eventual publisher called it one. After all, if you are looking through the eyes of a cop and the story line involves an investigation, bodies, suspects, and the lot, where else would you shelve it but in the crime section? To my mind, while writing it, it was simply the story of two women, society's outsiders in different ways, who changed each others' lives.
Interestingly to me, one of the early reviewers of A Grave Talent said that she had given it to her husband and to an artist friend. The husband thought the main character was Kate Martinelli's partner, Al Hawkin; the artist friend thought the central character was Vaun Adams.
In a sense, although this is the first of what are called Martinelli novels, the artist friend was right. From the beginning, I set myself the challenge of writing a novel in which the main character does nothing. Vaun is, as I said, a force of nature, so intent on her artistic vision that she cannot afford the energy for deep relationships. She is less a character in the book than the axis around which the story turns.
Until the story's final scenes, when she is forced out of herself and into taking action. With catastrophic results.
For more information and background on the Kate Martinelli series, please take a look at Kate Martinelli's World (http://laurierking.com/kate_martinelli_world.php) on LRK's website.
Laurie wanted to offer you all some materials that might be of interest both generally and in relation to the discussion. So, if you're interested, take a look at the links below--they might give you some ideas for the discussion. Enjoy!
A Grave Talent
---First in the Kate Martinelli series, published 1993
---Edgar award, Best First Novel, Mystery Writers of America
---Creasey award, Crime Writers Association (UK)
---Bantam paperback ISBN :0-553-57399-3
(for a signed or inscribed copy, contact Crossroad Books (http://crbkswat@sbcglobal.net).
The laurierking.com page for A Grave Talent:
Check it out here (http://laurierking.com/grave_talent.php) for an extended excerpt, reviews and other background information, including the first four chapters of the book (http://laurierking.com/pdf/A%20Grave%20Talent.pdf).
A special VBC introduction to A Grave Talent from LRK:
The writer's art begins with the question, What if? In the case of A Grave Talent, my question was, What if Rembrandt were a woman? What would she look like, how would she act, how would her work be the same, and how different? And reaching back (for that is what writers do) what shaped her?
However, I did not want to write a fictional biography about a great woman artist, what one would call a mainstream novel. I saw "my" artist, Vaun Adams, as a force of nature, an individual so intensely focused, the world outside her head was to her little more than a series of subjects for her canvases.
This meant that the story's tensions had to come from outside her. I set her into a closed society, introduced a thread of terrible crime, then brought in another outsider, through whose eyes we see this female Rembrandt and her world.
A Grave Talent did not start out as a mystery novel in my mind, although I could see why its eventual publisher called it one. After all, if you are looking through the eyes of a cop and the story line involves an investigation, bodies, suspects, and the lot, where else would you shelve it but in the crime section? To my mind, while writing it, it was simply the story of two women, society's outsiders in different ways, who changed each others' lives.
Interestingly to me, one of the early reviewers of A Grave Talent said that she had given it to her husband and to an artist friend. The husband thought the main character was Kate Martinelli's partner, Al Hawkin; the artist friend thought the central character was Vaun Adams.
In a sense, although this is the first of what are called Martinelli novels, the artist friend was right. From the beginning, I set myself the challenge of writing a novel in which the main character does nothing. Vaun is, as I said, a force of nature, so intent on her artistic vision that she cannot afford the energy for deep relationships. She is less a character in the book than the axis around which the story turns.
Until the story's final scenes, when she is forced out of herself and into taking action. With catastrophic results.
For more information and background on the Kate Martinelli series, please take a look at Kate Martinelli's World (http://laurierking.com/kate_martinelli_world.php) on LRK's website.