My sister is doing a year of service work in Europe this year, so for Christmas, instead of flying her home, my parents decided we’d go out there to see her. We took on quite an ambitious itinerary for a ten day trip. It was dubbed the “Christmas Mart Vacation.” Our travel corresponded with the schedules of the different Christmas Marts.

Marienplatz and all the booths of the Christmas Mart.

We started off in Munich, Germany. Munich, the third largest city in Germany, is the capital city of Bavaria and is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. The year 1158 is the earliest date the city is mentioned in a document and hence assumed to be its founding date. 1158—That’s still over 300 years before America is discovered! At the center of the city is the Marienplatz—a large open square named after the Mariensäuke, a Marian column in its center—with the Old and New Town Hall. This is the location of the Kris Kringle Mart. I love Munich’s Mart, for the German food (I ate my way from booth to booth pretty much), the hand-made German crafts (most especially their straw ornaments a traditional German ornament you’ll find on most of the trees in all the German churches), and for its atmosphere of good cheer.

From there we moved on to Salzburg, Austria. I’ve been to Salzburg before, but it was in the summer and when I was younger, so I didn’t have many memories of it. The markets were neat. They didn’t have the atmosphere of the German marts, but it was still fun to walk around them and there was a stall that made the most amazing linzer pretzel cookies. HUGE! DELICIOUS! COOKIES! I really liked walking around the town and just soaking in the history. It’s so amazing when you walk through a graveyard and the dates on the headstones go back to the 10th century or even earlier.

In Salzburg...with my dad being silly. The water/fountain in the back ground was a watering and bathing place for horses in eariler centuries.

Life size mascot...I had to get my picture with Ljubljana's Dragon.

Third on the whirlwind vacation was Ljubljana, Slovenia. This was my first time visiting Slovenia, and I’d like to go back in the summer and just spend a whole week or two exploring the country. There was a charm about Ljubljana (the capital) that I wasn’t expecting for a large city. Their Christmas Market was quite extensive and very different from Germany, but unique, with its own personality. We took a walking tour of the old city, which I’d highly recommend it. Ljubjana’s city symbol is the Dragon, which symbolizes power, courage, and greatness. It’s depicted on the top of the tower of the Ljubljana Castle, on the coat of arms and on the Ljubljanaica crossing Dragon Bridge.

To split up the very, very, very long drive from Slovenia to Belgium, we stopped in Rothenburg, Germany for a night. I love this medieval town, and since I have a post about it planned for the near future, I’ll hold off on mentioning any more at the moment.

The next day was a seven hour drive to Bruges, Belgium for two nights. Bruges was fun to just walk around and soak in all the medieval architecture. One of my favorite spots had to be the Church of Our Lady. I have to say it was impressive! The church dates mainly from the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. Its tower is 401.2 feet high making it the tallest structure in the city and the second tallest brickwork tower in the world.

Finally, we ended up in Brussels, Belgium on our last day. Chocolate! Really, really good chocolate! Brussels started as a 10th-century fortress town that was founded by a descendant of Charlemagne and grew into a metropolis of more than one million inhabitants. It’s a bustling city. And really does feel like a city compared to the smaller and quainter Bruges. We had about half a day in Brussels that we spent walking around and just taking in the city square and walking the very expansive Christmas markets.

It was a treat to spend ten days exploring all the “old” of Europe. One of these days I’m going to write a novel set in Europe! I want to take some of this history and make it part of one of my stories. I do love Europe!

We'd climbed to the top of the tower in the castle in Ljubljana. One side you see the entire the city, the other side you see country side. Loved it!

Outside the castle at Ljubljana.

Ljubljana Castle...I just loved this shot and wanted to share it!

Famous door at one of Ljubljana's Churches...too long to explain it all here.

My little brother and me!

I went with this picture this month because I have a special announcement to make!  This is probably one of my favorite pictures of my brother and me. And it plays into my announcement   My brother was a couple months old in this picture.  I was about 3 and 3/4 years old.  There was a 4 year age gap between my bother and I basically growing up.  He’s not so little now!  He out grew me in height (just barely).  And I think he’d be doing more of the protecting than I would, but for a long time I was the protector.  And I loved being a big sister (still do).  Now my little brother and sister-in-law have made me an aunt! Or a soon to be aunt!  In July 2012 we’ll be welcoming a new addition to the family and I’m so excited!  So congrats to Will and Danielle and here’s a post dedicated to you Will.  I love you!

• My brother is about three months old here.
• We were living in Hanua, Germany.  My brother was born in Frankfort, Germany.
• I got the sled for Christmas and my mom said she always wished it had sides and back cause it was tricky pulling us on it without us falling off.
• We owned that wood sled for years and years.  I remember using it when I was in fourth grade to sleigh down this huge hill in the back of our apartment complex in Kansas.
• I’d just started preschool and loved it.
• My brother had his days and nights messed up He’d sleep through the day and keep my mom up at night.

It happened this year: 1984

• The Summer Olympic Games are held in Los Angeles.  The Winter Olympic Games are held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.
• USSR And soviet block boycotts the Olympic games in retaliation for Western Boycott in 1980
• Aids Virus identified by French Immunologist.
• The first Apple Macintosh goes on sale.
• The Space Shuttle Discovery has its maiden voyage.

Cost of Living:

• Average Cost of new house $86,730
• Median Price Of and Existing Home $72,400
• Average Income per year $21,600.00
• Average Monthly Rent $350.00
• Movie Ticket $2.50
• 1 gallon of gas $1.10

Tricia (left): "So, as I was saying—" Julie: "I'm out of here. Already heard this one."

Here I am at ten months old in 1959. We lived in Braintree, Mass. My three older siblings liked to squeeze me a lot. Can you blame them?

Random tidbits from 1959

o Cost of a movie ticket is $1.00; a loaf of bread—20 cents

o Popular films include Ben-Hur, Some Like It Hot, and North by Northwest

o Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone premieres on CBS

o Mattel introduces the Barbie Doll

o First Grammy Awards ceremony

o The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the “sheaves of wheat” design.

Major events during 1959

o Alaska become 49th state; Hawaii becomes the 50th

o St. Lawrence Seaway linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes opens to shipping

o Fidel Castro comes to power in Cuba

o The Dalai Lama is forced to flee Tibet

Nothing shows the passage of time quite like kids growing up. I don’t look a whole lot different here in 2004 than I do now, but the munchkins on either side of me sure do! Yesterday, Boy Munchkin turned twelve, and his sister will turn eleven in March. WOW!!!! Back in college, I baby-sat these two quite a bit, then lived in their finished attic for a year until I graduated and moved “to the corner” of their placemat-map of the US.  I get to see them once, sometimes twice, a year now, and in between, I miss them and their parents a lot.

In the intervening time, I guess a lot has changed for me, too.  In Dec. 2004, I was:

• a junior at Purdue University (go Boilers!), majoring in creative writing
• just a few weeks from formulating a plan to allow me to spend the following summer studying in Ireland, which in turn allowed me to graduate a semester early, in Dec. 2005
• majoring in creative writing, covering entertainment for the student newspaper, and wondering what in the world I was going to do for a living after graduation
• just starting to check out Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction program
• having the occasional conversation with a grad student at church who, less than two years from then, would become my husband
• NOT considering the possibility that I would EVER move to Seattle…silly me

Major Events of 2004 (outside my sheltered university life):

• George W. Bush is elected for a second term as president (my first time voting in a presidential election, btw).
• An earthquake in the Indian Ocean creates a tsunami that ravages several south Asian countries and kills nearly 300,000 people.
• Martha Stewart is sent to prison for insider trading.
• The Summer Olympics are held in Athens, Greece, a fitting tribute to the ancient games which provided the format of our modern ones.
• Afghanistan holds democratic elections for the first time.
• And, the greatest lasting impact from 2004: Facebook launches at Harvard.

Jennifer, Emilie, and Tricia

My novel, DOUBLE CROSSING, skims the YA edge with a heroine one month away from her 20^th birthday, so Lily Granville is a traditional “damsel.” I love historicals – reading them and writing them, so chalk one up for “regress.” And one basic rule of writing is conflict in the plot – which is where the “distress” comes from, because without conflict, there is no story!

But one important point about writing conflict in your YA or mystery or romantic suspense is having the heroine rise to the challenge and face the antagonist – and defeat him/her. Years ago, I read books where the hero rode in to save the day, but no more. I much prefer books which empower young and old female readers to battle and succeed. So while a hero is still important – he can help, he can teach, he can inspire – but remember that Dudley Do-Right and his pretty Nell is a cartoon.

Not that a hero like Ace Diamond can’t expect to ride in and save the day – but you’ll have to read DOUBLE CROSSING and find out just how much help he gives Lily. In fact, Ace hinders her at one point which spices up the tension. It’s always fun to involve a little tug-and-pull (and I don’t mean clothing!) between the hero/heroine – so beef up the internal conflict with doubts and secrets, those little annoyances in verbal and non-verbal ways that can aggravate. Readers can get pretty bored if it’s a heroine/hero “lovefest” from the beginning.

Here’s an excerpt from DOUBLE CROSSING that illustrates this point:

“Ace Diamond? That ruffian who crashed through the window last night?” Aunt Sylvia’s demanding voice had returned. “Why would he be coming?”

Raising my chin, I met her direct gaze. “I hired Mr. Diamond to protect us on the journey to California.” Charles dropped his newspaper, his mouth open in shock. “Someone searched my pocketbook and my valise yesterday. It could have been the man who killed my father.”

“But I’m here to protect you, Lily,” Charles said. I caught wounded pride behind his spectacles while he folded his newspaper. “You don’t trust me?”

“Of course I do, but—well, two men are better than one,” I said lamely.

Aunt Sylvia shook a finger at me. “The last thing I expected of you, Lily Granville, was being a shameless flirt. First Charles Mason, and now a Texas hooligan who brawled in the street and ruined your dinner. By his name alone, he must gamble at cards.”

“I admit Mr. Diamond may have an unusual name,” I said, “but you cannot assume that he’s a gambler.”

Charles frowned. “I think your aunt may be right—”

“It’s Lady Sylvia to you, Mr. Mason,” she said. “And of course I’m right.”

I refused to defend Charles or challenge Aunt Sylvia. Kate studied her gloved hands, fidgeting beside me, while I packed my sewing kit away. My stomach churned. If Diamond failed to arrive, I knew I’d strangle my aunt and ‘Sir Vaughn’ within an hour of leaving Kate in Cheyenne. Gritting my teeth, I took out my sketchbook. The train’s final warning whistle sounded a few minutes later but I fumed in silence….

The train started slow and then built up speed, skirting the river until the tracks curved west. Kate nudged my elbow and leaned close to whisper.

“I guess he did take the money and run.”

So how do you balance out the conflict, the emotional ups and downs and the reveals through the dialogue exchanges? With gritty, vivid imagery that pulls the reader back in time and makes them “live” the adventure right along with the characters. I love infusing realistic research like pearls dropped along the path – the smell of horse manure, the taste of greasy potatoes and doughy biscuits at the station eating-houses along the railroad, the sight of black steam puffing from the train’s balloon smokestack, the sound of screeching wheels or clattering horses’ hooves and the softness of suede beneath the heroine’s fingertips.

Get in on the Goodreads’ Giveaway for a print copy of Double Crossing! Here’s the link, and best of luck!

DOUBLE CROSSING — A murder arranged as a suicide … a missing deed  … and a bereft daughter whose sheltered world is shattered.

August, 1869: Lily Granville is stunned by her father’s murder. Only one other person knows about a valuable California gold mine deed — both are now missing. Lily heads west on the newly opened transcontinental railroad, determined to track the killer. She soon realizes she is no longer the hunter but the prey.

As things progress from bad to worse, Lily is uncertain who to trust—the China-bound missionary who wants to marry her, or the wandering Texan who offers to protect her … for a price. Will Lily survive the journey and unexpected betrayal?

Thanks, Meg! If you don’t win the contest, DOUBLE CROSSING can be purchased through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Astraea Press. For more information on Meg and her work, check out her website.

1. You’ve written a number of historical novels. How did you decide to write one about Cleopatra?

It’s always fun to come up with a fascinating female character, particularly one who lived in a time period I’d never written about before, and Cleopatra was a natural. The challenge was to develop a narrative based on very little real data. And I had a hard time getting Elizabeth Taylor out of my head…..

2. Me too! What are the pros and cons of writing about a real historic person?

The down side is that there may not be much to go on; we don’t really know what Cleopatra looked like, exactly when she was born, who her mother was, or if she had two sisters or three. There are huge holes in her story, most of them filled with legend. The up side, then, is that there isn’t much to go on, and so I was free to fill in those huge holes in her story with my own creation.

3. I’ve noticed that you vary between present tense and past tense in many of your stories. Why did you use only present tense in Cleopatra Confesses?

It’s a matter of voice, and I fiddled around with it for a long time trying to get a feel for how I wanted her to sound; present vs. past tense was part of that—it just felt right for the story I wanted to tell. One of the big debates I had with my editor was the use of contractions; she opposed it, and I felt it was the best way to show informal speech with Cleopatra’s sisters, friends, and maids. I have no idea how she might have spoken to them in ancient Greek, but I’m pretty sure it would have been different from the way she addressed her father, for example.

4. What kind of research did you do?

Short answer: lots! Reading not only about Cleopatra, but about culture of the period—food, music, dress (or lack of it—there was a lot of nudity), how the calendar worked, etc.  I did visit Egypt and went on a boat trip down the Nile, but I’m pretty sure our boat was in no way like the floating palace in which Cleopatra traveled.

5. You didn’t dramatize Cleopatra’s adult relationship with Marcus Antonius like you did with Caesar. Was this mostly because of book-length constraints?

When the book was in early draft, the decision was made to focus on Cleopatra’s early life, ending the narrative before the birth of Caesar’s child. Marcus Antonius didn’t come into her story until much later. Many older readers who are familiar with the story of her life with Marcus have expressed disappointment, and in fact I have been roundly criticized for “stopping too soon.” Given the age of my usual readers, I think it was the right decision. What I’d REALLY like to do is to write a sequel aimed at those older readers and covering that torrid love story. Maybe it will happen.

6. Yes, I think paying attention to the age of your readers is important. What were your favorite books as a teenager?

I don’t remember—isn’t that awful? I had a strong liking for the Uncle Wiggly books when I was very young, but I’m pretty sure I had outgrown them by the time I was a teenager. I probably read a lot of trash. It didn’t seem to hurt me.

7. What are you working on now?

VICTORIA REBELS is in the editorial process right now. I’m pleased to have uncovered a feisty young girl in those decades before Victoria became a sour-looking old woman, and the villainous man who was always hanging around her mother and making Vicky’s life miserable.

Sounds great! Thanks so much for visiting with us! For more information on Carolyn and her books, visit http://www.readcarolyn.com/index.htm. Don’t forget to stop by on Friday for a chance to win a copy of Cleopatra Confesses.

In the twenty-third year of King Ptolemy XII’s reign, ten-year-old Cleopatra learns that her father’s fleet has been spotted outside of Alexandria’s Great Harbor. Too excited to wait in her quarters, she dresses like a servant and sneaks off to the public marketplace. Here she watches as workers prepare the docks for the king’s arrival from Rome.

Commoners grumble about cruel overseers and high taxes, and Cleopatra can see that the people don’t live well. How much of that is her father’s fault? He’s been gone for almost a year on a mission to placate the Roman triumvirate so they will support him as ruler of Egypt. Knowing her father was worried when he left, Cleopatra is eaten up with anticipation.

So begins a fascinating tale, rich in historical detail. In Cleopatra Confesses, author Carolyn Meyer takes the reader on a journey with the royalty of ancient Egypt, presenting their excesses, foibles, and political maneuverings.

Cleopatra is the third of the king’s six children and is considered his favorite. She shares his intelligence and concern over Egypt. And even though she’s young when the story begins, she’s well aware of the murderous threat her older sisters and others represent to both her father’s rule and her own expected succession to the crown.

Meyer wrote Cleopatra’s story in the present tense. I don’t usually even notice present tense in books anymore, but in this instance, it brought an immediacy to the narrative that drew me deeper into Cleopatra’s hopes and fears.

I choose this book because I’d never read fiction set in ancient Egypt. Is it just me, or is there an overabundance of YA books set in Victorian England? Not that those are bad—I was just ready for something different. And Cleopatra Confesses provided royalty, intrigue, and an actual historical character. It was also nice to read something that helped me let go of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra. By the way, I love the cover!

Please join us on Wednesday for an interview with author Carolyn Meyer and on Friday for a contest to win a copy of Cleopatra Confesses.