Remember the group read starts Monday May 7th
Interview with Marilyn Brant
author of A Summer in Europe
Deb - Marilyn is no
stranger to the General Fiction board, she was with us last year as we
discussed her novel Friday Mornings at
Nine. So Marilyn, welcome back.
Marilyn - Deb, it’s always such a thrill to be here. Thanks so much for
inviting me for a return visit!
So tell us, Marilyn,
as you were researching A Summer in
Europe did you go to all of the places in the novel? What was your most
memorable place?
While I was writing this novel, I didn’t travel at all, aside from an
occasional driving trip to visit my family in Wisconsin. (Since I live in the
Chicago suburbs, that wasn’t very far.) However, my husband proposed to me on
London Bridge during our first trip abroad together—exactly 20 years ago this
spring—which was an incredibly romantic gesture. And, for about 5 years after
that, before we became parents and homeowners, the two of us backpacked through
Europe during our summer vacations from teaching. We were insatiable travelers
during that time, and we visited nearly every site mentioned in the novel. I think
I missed only the ruins of Waverley Abbey in Surrey, England and Monet’s Gardens
in Giverny, France, which means we need to go back someday to see them both! We
had fascinating experiences in every one of the eight countries my heroine and
her companions got to visit on their grand European tour—Italy, France,
Switzerland, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Belgium and England. For me, those
travel days were unforgettable and endlessly inspiring.
As far as my most memorable place…ahh, that’s a hard thing to
narrow down. One of my favorite, completely serendipitous experiences was when
we were in Budapest, Hungary and were told by a local woman we met at a shop
about an operetta that was going to be performed that night. On the spur of the
moment, my husband and I decided to buy tickets and attend. It was truly
fabulous. I didn’t understand a word of it (!!), but the singers’ passion for
music filled the room, and everyone around us seemed to be just as touched by the
heartfelt songs as we were. I loved that night so much that I gave a similar
evening to my heroine in the story, although she had personal relationship
dramas going on around her in addition to all the dazzling musical numbers.
And then there’s Venice, Italy, which is one of my favorite
cities in the world. It’s just so breathtakingly unique and timeless. Not
everyone loves it, I realize, but I had daydreamed about visiting Venice for at
least 15 years before I finally got there. I’d been a little worried when we
first arrived that it wouldn’t live up to my fantasy, but that fear was
immediately dispelled as our little waterbus sailed down the Grand Canal and
into view of St. Marco’s Square. Just thinking about it now makes my heart beat
faster! Venice was one of those locations that simply awed me from my very
first glance. In fact, if there’s such a thing as “love at first sight” for me,
it wouldn’t be with a person, it would be with a place…that one in particular.
You are considered a
“Women’s Fiction Author.” Does being put on a genre shelf bother you?
You know, this is an interesting question. My initial response was “No, of
course not. I love being a women’s fiction author.” And that’s true. I write
stories that feature women as the protagonists, and I deal with coming-of-age
situations and major milestones for my characters that many women would—I hope—be
able to relate to personally. However, there’s been a great deal of discussion
recently about the term itself and if there’s an inherent prejudice or sexist
attitude in the use of the phrase. After all, there isn’t a similar label
specifically for male writers (i.e., “Men’s Fiction Authors”). So, the
categorizing of a group of female writers this way can come across as
dismissive, implying that the novels written by “Women’s Fiction Authors” are
only suitable for one half of the population. That, of course, I don’t believe
is true at all.
Tell us about getting
your first novel published, was it a difficult process? Were you an overnight
success?
An overnight success?! (*pausing briefly to gasp with laughter*) Oh, I wish!!
But I suppose everything is relative. From the long view of a thousand-year
epoch, perhaps, one might consider the decade I spent pursuing publication to
be merely “overnight,” right? LOL.
Getting my first book contract was a difficult and seemingly
never-ending process that took over nine years. According to Jane was the title of that debut novel—but it wasn’t
the first book I wrote. Actually, it was the fifth full manuscript I’d
completed and, even though it won the Romance Writers of America’s highest
award for an unpublished manuscript in 2007 (the Golden Heart® for “Best
Mainstream Novel with Strong Romantic Elements”), I still had to seriously
revise and restructure it before it was finally accepted for publication. There
were a lot of rejections along the way—from agents, editors, contest judges—but
rejections and require revisions don’t stop once a writer becomes published, so
the necessity of dealing with criticism was an excellent lesson to learn early.
Your writing reminds
me of an Impressionist painting, it’s not for a reader who wants to be told step
by step what happens to the characters at the end. Is this intentional or is it
all in my own mind?
Deb, to me, that’s a huge compliment—thank you!
I’ve written a couple of romantic comedies (On Any Given Sundae and Double Dipping) where the endings are more
spelled out, as is customary for the genre. Those were fun stories to write,
but the delight in reading a romance is not in wondering how it will end but in
enjoying how the characters will get to their happily ever after.
However, with my three women’s fiction books (According to Jane, Friday Mornings at Nine and A Summer in Europe) it was certainly my
intention to bring the characters to an interesting, hopeful place at the end
of the story and then allow readers to take a few intuitive leaps themselves. I’ve
always loved imagining what might happen next for my favorite book characters by
other authors. I used to spend hours mentally constructing sequels to their
adventures! So, yes, I want to give my readers that same gift of possibility…to
bring them along on a journey, let them get to know my characters well enough
to see a range of potential outcomes and, then, allow them to choose the one
that best fits their worldview and their sentiments. After all, once the book
is in a reader’s hands, it’s no longer just my
story anymore…
Do you belong to a
writer’s group?
Yes. I’ve been a member of Chicago-North RWA since 2002. It’s a part of the
10,000-member strong organization of the Romance Writers of America, but
Chicago-North also has a reputation for being a great local critique chapter.
I’ve learned so much being a part of it, and some of the people I met there are
still my closest friends and best critique partners. Life’s gotten busier for
many of us, so I don’t attend meetings as regularly as I used to, but I still
meet often with my writing friends. We frequently exchange scenes we’ve written
and give each other feedback. Sometimes we’ll get together for a weekend
writing retreat or to brainstorm story ideas. Sharing the process with them is
both helpful and a lot of fun.
Do you write fulltime?
For now, I do. I spent most of my earliest writing years working elsewhere,
though. I was an elementary school teacher when I first started playing around
with fiction. After my son was born, I took a leave of absence from the school
district and, during my baby’s naps and late into the night, I began drafting my
first manuscript. It was an incredibly flawed attempt at a novel, by the way, but
I didn’t know that then! I also began writing and publishing poems, educational
articles and personal essays in magazines, which were my first writing credits.
I eventually began working part time as a freelance
journalist for a regional parenting magazine and, also, as a book reviewer for
Romantic Times/RT Book Reviews. Soon after, I added on another part-time job at
a public library, which I went to in the evenings or weekends when my husband
could be home with our son. But, a few years ago, it got to be too much to
juggle. So, for now, I’m just writing novels and some articles, trying to keep
the house relatively clean and getting our son (who’s now a teenager—where did
the time go?!) to all of the practices and clubs he’s involved with after
school.
A Summer in Europe is your third published novel. Do you lose some
of the magic of your first release date by number three or are there still
butterflies?
There are still butterflies. For me, I think there always will be. Like
most authors, I put a lot of heart/soul/thought into my novels, even when my
experiences and personality traits are different from those of my main
characters. For instance, I was fortunate to have traveled much more
extensively in my early life than my heroine Gwen did, but I still got to
relive some of my first impressions of Europe through her eyes, and I tried to
show her growth as the result of her unusual summer abroad.
Travel, I’ve found, is a stimulating, mind-expanding
adventure. So, Gwen’s journey—both literal and figurative—is one I hope will
resonate for readers, and there’s a tremendous excitement that comes from the
prospect of connecting with readers that way. I’ll always be indebted to
novelists I admired for giving me that sense of connection, too. That feeling
that someone else out there experienced something similar to whatever I was
facing at a given stage in my life, understood its joys or challenges and took
the time to express it in fiction.
Of course, whenever you share something creative and
personal with the world, anxiety also comes along for the ride. Writers can’t
help but hope that what we say has meaning to someone beyond ourselves or our
small circle of editors and critique partners, but we’re never certain of that
until a reader emails us or writes a review. To hear “Hey, I felt that way
before, too,” or “You said something I was feeling but never put into words,” or
simply “Your novel made me laugh on a day I needed it,” well, that’s a response
that makes the months (or years!) of struggling to write and revise a novel
worth it.
Okay now for a fun
question, for someone as well traveled as you: What would be your dream vacation?
Ohhh, I love daydreaming about things like this. There are tons of cities
in the world I haven’t yet visited that I know I’d find fascinating: Moscow,
Dubrovnik, Tokyo, Perth, Cairo—just to name a few. There are other places where
the natural beauty is sure to be amazing, such as Alaska, Iceland, Fiji or
Tahiti. Believe me, I have a travel wish list that’s five miles long! I’d jump
at the chance to take an around-the-world trip and make stops at all of these
places and more…
But, my “dream vacation” is actually not about me at all,
it’s about my son. What I’d love most is to take him on a classic grand
European tour before he goes off to college. I want to show him all of the
sites Gwen got to see in A Summer in
Europe, plus some others that weren’t in the novel, like the city of
Athens, Spain’s Costa del Sol and the fjords of Norway. The time and expense
involved makes this idea the stuff of fantasy right now, but getting to share those
experiences with him would definitely be a dream come true.
My review of A Summer in Europe
A Summer in Europe
Marilyn Brant
Kensington
ISBN 13:9780758261519
352 pages
On Gwen Reese’s 30th birthday, it wasn’t the
expected gift from her boyfriend Richard (which she didn’t get) but the totally
unexpected one from her eccentric aunt Beatrice that turned out to be the life
changer for this disciplined and ordered person. Gwen suddenly finds herself
the beneficiary of a vacation in Europe complete with scenic and historic sites
and in the company of Aunt Bea’s quirky friends and members of her S&M
(Sudoku and Math-jongg) club. But something profound happened to this
regimented life on this very free spirited journey and as Gwen travels a road
she’s unfamiliar with she learns something about herself that was hidden
beneath that façade of uniformity, even more surprising is that she’s not the
only one on a path of discovery.
Emerson Edwards and his brother, Thoreau, meet the group in Italy and throw a
wrench in Gwen’s well-oiled life with their intelligence and their irreverence.
There are consequences that come with discovery and it’s as these two very
different roads connect that Gwen will find out if the fear of her past will
dictate her future.
This is a brilliant piece of contemporary literature, it’s
timeless in its essence. Ms. Brant brings us a rather later that usual coming
of age in this story of a woman who’s life has been ruled by loss and fear, then
she gives us the hope that this new woman can come out of her chrysalis in tact
and ready to take on her whole new world. She does this with her customary
prose like dialogue and a narrative that will take your breath away as she
takes us through Europe that can vividly be seen in your mind’s eye. Her
characters are superstars, every one of them from the 90 year old feisty Zenia
to the 15 year old Ani and all the ones in between. But it’s Gwen who shines
the brightest, who we will cry with and cry for, who we will root for and scold
who we will want for most of all as we see her evolve throughout the
novel. Is it a love story, yes it
is, but not just a romance, it’s the love of one’s self, of familial and friend
love and of course also that love that makes the world go round, the kind of
love that heats the coldest of nights and fills the emptiest of rooms.
This is your first must read of December and you’ll want to
share with the people who mean the most to you, a perfect stocking stuffer and
yes it wraps beautifully. It’s also a read that will be enjoyed by
multi-generations and both sexes. If this is your first trip with Marilyn Brant I know it won’t be your last.
Thank you Ms. Brant for another exceptional read.
Please join in the group read if you can
here is a link to the General Fiction book club forum
The novel also made my 20 best of 2011 list you can see it and the other selections
here visit Marilyn's website
here
And enjoy some European pictures courtesy of Marilyn and her husband
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