I'd like to welcome C W Gortner, author of The Last Queen, to The Eclectic Reader and thank him for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions.
I hope you enjoy getting to know a little more about Christopher and his work.
Teddyree: How long did it take you to research and write The Last Queen?
C W G: It took five years for me to write THE LAST QUEEN. My research included several trips to Spain, including one in which I undertook the very journey Juana made from Burgos to her last home in Tordesillas. I visited the Alhambra and the castles associated with her, and read every contemporary account about her that I could find, including letters from her custodians to her son Charles V.
Teddyree: I thought, given the chance to rule Juana would have made a good queen, do you agree?
C W G: I think it’s very unfortunate that we’ll never know. Certainly, with the right councillors to guide her, she might have been. She certainly had a precedent in her mother and judging from the evidence she was intelligent and educated enough to assume the throne; she was also kind and loyal. So much distortion accompanies her legend it’s quite difficult at moments to separate fact from fiction. But I like to think that she would have been a good queen.
Teddyree: Did you find it difficult slipping into the skin of a female to write Juana’s story in first person? (for me personally, if you found it difficult, I couldn’t tell. So even though at times I thought ‘ wow a male is writing this’ I thought it was brilliantly done).
C W G: Thank you. That is high praise for me, as my biggest difficulty was getting over my own fears of doing it! At first, I just didn’t think I could. I felt publishers wouldn’t be interested in a first-person story of a queen, written by a man; but after much soul searching and some trial writing, it came down to the fact that first-person POV was exactly what the book required. And once I started, I enjoyed the challenge. My first drafts were in third person and something elusive was missing. It was only after I allowed myself to slip into Juana’s skin, so to speak, that I began to experience her emotional complexity. There’s a general fallacy that men cannot write women as well as women can. I disagree, just as I disagree that women cannot write from the male perspective. Writers must inhabit their characters in order to bring them to life. We are not limited by gender or appearance. We are invisible. There are no limits other than our imagination.
Teddyree: I love reading a differing viewpoint about infamous people in history. I believe many women such as Juana and Marie Antoinette were maligned by their detractors, encouraging prejudice & misunderstanding that has remained through the ages. Are there other historical figures you feel fall into that category and would love to write about?
C W G: I’m very attracted to these types of historical figures, yes. I always say, that I look for secret histories, the stories that are never told, and my next novel falls right into that category. It’s called The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, and it traces Catherine’s life from her tumultuous childhood in Florence to her rise to power as queen-regent of France and mother of the last Valois kings. As I researched, I discovered that, much as with Juana la Loca, there was far more to Catherine than I thought.
She was a leader, a devoted wife and mother, and a rare voice for tolerance in a time when Europe was in the grip of severe religious chaos; she fought to save her sons and France from destruction at the hands of a ruthless nobility; and, perhaps most interestingly, she was considered a seer in her own right, who had visions of the future and patronized Nostradamus. I believe Catherine has been greatly misunderstood by history, made into a lurid stereotype that does not begin to do justice to her historical significance as both a complex woman and queen.
There are other characters that I also feel fall into this category and hopefully I will get to write them, as well.
Teddyree: Is there anything you find particularly challenging when you’re writing?
C W G: Right now, setting aside the time, for one! I still hold a 36-hour a week day job and it can be very challenging to come home after a long day at the office, walk the dog, have dinner, and tear myself away from my partner and the television to write. My schedule is that I write every night from 9 to 11 pm, all day on Friday, and I take weekends off. But it doesn’t always work that way, and some week nights I’m too tired and so I have to make up the time later. However, the reward is that by being disciplined, I can write a book. Writing is a passion, so I make the sacrifice. I’m hoping that in the next year or so, as I build my readership, I’ll be able to cut back my office hours and/or write full time.
The other big challenge is choosing what to tell and what not to tell. As we know, these historical figures had complex lives, just like ours, and a novel contains a finite amount of words. It can be very challenging to be confronted by a long, eventful and often tumultuous life, such as the one Catherine de Medici had, and realize you cannot include all of it. Making choices over what to include and what not to include is often a historical novelist’s biggest dilemma.
Teddyree: What’s next on the table for C W Gortner?
C W G: My book on Catherine de Medici will be published in the summer of 2010 by Ballantine Books. I’m hoping to write about early 15th century Italy next, followed by a return to Spain and the court of Philip II.
Teddyree: Do you have other passions or does writing ‘do it’ for you?
C W G: I used to paint quite a lot, in oil, but since my writing career began to build, I haven’t had much free time to paint. I hope one day to get back to it, as I enjoy painting and it puts me in a meditative state. I’m still an avid reader, of course; and I’m involved with animal rights and environmental organizations. I also love to hike with my partner and our Corgi, Paris, in South Lake Tahoe, where we have a second home, and we both love to travel to Europe.
Teddyree: Tell us a secret, something the blogosphere doesn’t know? (can be about yourself or your books)
C W G: As a child, I had a strange obsessive compulsive disorder: I collected books and was so afraid of damaging them in some way I’d wear white gloves whenever I touched or read them. My mania eventually passed, but for a while my family thought I was nuts.
Teddyree: Do you have a favourite book from childhood?
C W G: Fernando the Bull.
Teddyree: What would you read to your 5 year old children, nieces, nephews?
C W G: Fernando the Bull and Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.
Teddyree: 10 year olds?
C W G: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.
Teddyree: What are you reading now?
C W G: Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant.
Teddyree: A little-known author or book you like and would recommend?
C W G: She’s not little-known but I’d love to recommend Robin Maxwell’s Signora da Vinci, a marvellous evocation of Renaissance Italy and the woman who gave birth to the genius, Leonardo da Vinci. I also love her novel about Elizabeth I and the pirate Grace O’ Malley, The Wild Irish. Mary Sharratt’s The Vanishing Point is a gorgeously rendered tale of two English sisters caught up in the turmoil of wild America, and David Blixt has written a stupendous tale of feuding Renaissance families, Master of Verona.
Teddyree: When you were little what did you want to grow up to be?
C W G: A writer; I always wanted to be a writer. I know it sounds like a cliché but it’s the truth. My mom still has notebooks of stories that I wrote and illustrated myself, making covers for them with my own publisher logo. Yes, I was a freakish child :-)
Teddyree: If you could be dropped into any book as a character, who would you be and why?
C W G: I’ve never been asked this before. Hmm . . . I think that if I could be dropped into any book as a character, I’d want to be one of the rabbits who go on pilgrimage to find a new home in Watership Down. I wouldn’t want to be human; I think the world must be an incredible place as seen through the eyes of a wild rabbit.
Bookmark or Dog ear? Bookmark, always! (Remember the white gloves . . .)
Fine dining or take-away?
Fine dining.
Bungee Jump or Parachute drop?
Parachute drop.
Favourite junk food?
Potato Chips.
Favourite way to relax?
In bed, with a book.
If you could go anywhere for a holiday, where would you go and why?
Spain, because it’s my home.
3 must-have items if you were stranded on a tropical island?
Fresh water, the collected works of Daphne du Maurier, my partner.
Anything random you’d like to add?
Thank you for inviting me to your blog! I love meeting bloggers and readers; the blog world has been instrumental in helping me get word out of my books, and has shown me so much enthusiasm and generosity. If you want to find out more about me and my work, or invite me to chat with your reader group – which I can do via speaker phone or Skype – please visit my website at: http://www.cwgortner.com/
GIVEAWAY DETAILS:
I am thrilled to be able to offer readers a chance to win a copy of The Last Queen thanks to the generosity of C W Gortner. Christopher will be be posting to the winner personally so this one is only open to US readers.
Competition ends Friday August 7th and winner will be announced on this blog. Good luck to all!
This month on The Eclectic Reader you could win Blood Promise by Richelle Mead OR Destined For An Early Grave by Jeaniene Frost OR The Other Tudors by Philippa Jones. Check this blog post for details. International entrants welcome. 
