Thank you, Stella Papadopoulos, for inviting me to be a part of this writing process blog tour. Stella is a Montreal artist and entrepreneur. Being of Greek heritage, the gift of artistic journeys, and endless beauty of Greece inspired her art and writings. While at home with her young children she taught Moms and Tots painting classes at the Jewish Public Library. She subsequently obtained a Diploma in Illustration and Design at Montreal’s Dawson College.
She is a member of the Montreal Children’s Literature Roundtable, CANSCAIP, and CCBC (Canadian Children’s Book Center).
In addition she combines her illustration and writings for magazines and has been featured online and in print in The Link & Visitor, a Canadian Baptist Women’s publication.
After much virtual communication, we will be meeting in person for the first time this week.
Here is my turn to describe my Writing Process:
What are you working on?
I am in the midst of edits for Dance of the Banished, my YA novel being published by Pajama Press in August.
Based on true accounts, Dance of the Banished is the story of a teenager who leaves his fiancé behind in their Anatolian village to make a new life in Canada for them both; but soon after he arrives, World War I breaks out and the boy is sent to an internment camp in Kapuskasing, Ontario, while his betrothed struggles to survive and find a way to join him.
How does your work differ from others of its genre?
My genre is historical fiction, but I only write on historical topics that have been ignored or misrepresented. If I can find a novel to read on a topic that I’m interested in, I read it. If I can’t, I write it.
Why do you write what you do?
I feel a moral responsibility to shed light on those bits of history that have been forgotten or ignored. I can’t do all of them, of course, but I gravitate towards WWI and WWII untold stories.
How does your writing process work?
I think about any given novel for a few years before ever writing down a word. During this time, I read widely on the subject, accessing primary documents when I can, and talking to survivors of the historical incident, when possible. Over the years, I have been gifted with journals, documents and letters from war survivors and their families. I read these in addition to the other sorts of documents that I can get. It takes about ten years of research before I can write about a particular era, but once I’ve done that research, I can write a number of books. For example, I’ve had two previous books published that were set during the WWI Ukrainian internment — Silver Threads and Prisoners in the Promised Land. That prior research came in handy when I embarked upon Dance of the Banished, although this novel required additional research because Ali is not Ukrainian, he is an Alevi Kurd who was interned in Canada. I have also written five previous novels set during the Armenian Genocide — The Hunger, Nobody’s Child, Daughter of War, Aram’s Choice and Call Me Aram. Half of Dance of the Banished is set in the Ottoman Empire during the time of WWI and the Armenian Genocide but it shows a completely different aspect of this history.
I had many false starts with this novel. I abandoned a 40,000 word chunk and set the entire book aside for a year. I couldn’t quite get the voices of Ali and Zeynep, plus the history behind the story was so huge that I feared it would overtake what is essentially a love story. My editor Ann Featherstone gave me a brilliant suggestion which ended up resolving my issues with voice. She suggested that Ali and Zeynep exchange journals when they part, so their alternating WWI stories are both told from starkly different first person points of view.
Once I had the issue of voice settled, writing the story was a breeze. I finished it in a matter of months.
Thanks for reading my blog tour post! Next Monday, Lisa Dalrymple and Karen Autio will be posting:
Lisa Dalrymple is the author of Skink on the Brink which won The Writers’ Union of Canada’s Writing for Children Competition in 2011. Her other books include If It’s No Trouble… A Big Polar Bear and Bubbly Troubly Polar Bear. A Moose Goes A’Mummering will be out in the fall of 2014.
Karen Autio is the author of a trilogy of historical novels for young readers. She writes about events in Canada’s history that haven’t had much attention, such as the sinking of the Empress of Ireland and spies, sabotage, and internment during the First World War. Her latest book Sabotage has been shortlisted for the 2014 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Juvenile/YA Crime Bookand the 2015 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award.
