My brother has asked me to repost this blog every year. Jeanne's grandbaby Brinn is now in kindergarden and has a beautiful little brother. Days of Awe September 26, 2012 According to Jewish tradition, the ten days starting with Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Years) and ending with Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) are commonly known as the Days of Awe (Yamim Noraim). Those ten days are set aside for serious introspection. They are a time to consider our lives and deeds during the past year and to think about how to do better in the year to come. If indeed we have another ...
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I've been in lock-down for the past three months: finishing the first complete draft of Unremembered Lives, doing the first five editing passes through the manuscript, sending it out for comments, re-editing, fixing errors, filling in, filling out, "linearizing" chapters that looped around in time and tense. Etc. While that was going on, I didn't check this website, and when I opened it up today, there was enough spam to denude the world of both pigs and rectangular aluminum cans. You'd be amazed by how many young ladies (who assure me they are adults) would like to engage in remarkable feats of ...
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A week ago, I got to the final scene of my work-in-progress. It is complete, which is to say, it's got a coherent plot with a beginning, a middle, and an end. My elevator pitch for Unremembered Lives is "a Romeo and Juliet story set against the backdrop of a bitter 1913 copper strike in Michigan." At 91,000 words and 363 manuscript pages, it's the shortest of my novels so far, but that's not surprising. Unremembered Lives has a relatively compressed time period (seven months in 1913) and it takes place mostly in one small town (Calumet, Michigan). Now comes the editing. Usually ...
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Last summer, I signed an option with PalmStar Productions for a screen adaptation of Doc and Epitaph. So much time had gone by with no news, I was starting to wonder if they'd dropped the project, but yesterday an announcement appeared in a number of outlets, so I am free to talk about it now. I've learned a lot since 1996, when The Sparrow was first optioned by Antonio Bandera's production company. First lesson: don't get excited. Many are optioned but few are produced. An option is an agreement that for a set period of time (usually one year, with an option ...
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Unremembered Lives is about 4/5ths complete now, and the characters have officially taken over. That's a good thing. This has happened to me before, and I've heard other writers remark on how startling it can be. [Spoiler Alert!] When I was writing The Sparrow, I knew that the priest was going to stay true to his vows but I was also aiming at a scene where his resolve would be tested. I even knew the line I was going to steal from Shakespeare: "Serve God, Emilio. Love me." When I finally got to the point in the story where I was going ...
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Technically, novelists can make up anything they please, but getting things right is important to me, particularly when writing historical novels. I always try to create characters whose actions, decisions, dialog, and thoughts are comprehensible and who feel real within a narrative that seems believable. That's true even for science fiction like The Sparrow and Children of God, where the situation and all the characters are entirely fictional. Obviously, when Abraham Lincoln fights vampires, it's fantasy, not historical fiction; nobody's going to mistake the fun parts for what really happened. Personally, I hesitate to use a historical personage's name for a character ...
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Doc is my personal favorite among the books. Click to find the special e-book offer.    ...
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The easiest and probably cheapest way to have me inscribe books is to order from Mac'sBacks. Order by Dec. 14th for delivery by Dec. 24th. http://www.macsbacks.com/mary-doria-russell-signed-books There's a COMMENTS box at the end of the order form where you type in if you want just a signature or an inscription like: To Janie, congratulations on graduating from dental school." Or whatever. The owner, Suzanne, brings books to my home to be inscribed and then mails them directly to you. If you buy from the Evil Empire, you'll have to pay Darth Vader for the book, then pack it up and mail it to ...
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She was the dog of a lifetime. A perfect fit, coming at the perfect time. Imperial and needy, ruling the household, enriching our lives. Annie Fanny was the dachshund model for Rosie Posey in Dreamers of the Day. She was not a speaking character precisely -- it's a political romance about the making of the modern Middle East -- but she was a supporting actress in the drama. True story: I was going to name the dog in the novel after Annie, because "write what you know," right? Publicist Brian McLendon advised me not to. When I asked why not, he said, ...
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