Writing is a Passion - Writing Process Blog Hop

13th Century Bohemia. I wonder what the writers of the Codex Gigas would have replied, if asked, "So, what is your writing process?"  To the question, "Why do you write what you do?" - what could authors of this mysterious manuscript, which features a portrait of the Devil on page 290, have possibly said? 

In future centuries, I wish my books could inspire as much curiosity as the Codex Gigas does now, but one can only dream.

Still, it is an honor to be tagged in a blog hop by author, Marie Macpherson.  In this post, I will be answering four questions about my writing process and will tag three authors.  Look out for posts by Andrea Zuvich, Wendy Dunn and Sarah Kennedy on 28 April.

I want to take this opportunity to share a little about Marie Macpherson.  Marie was born in Edinburgh, Scotland.  She is a fan of Leo Tolstoy and holds an Honors degree in Russian and English.  Marie’s PhD thesis research saw her spend a year in Russia.  Her first novel is based on the early life of the Scottish reformer, John Knox.  Marie has won prizes and awards for her writing, including the Martha Hamilton Prize for Creative Writing from Edinburgh University, and 'Writer of the Year 2011' title awarded by Tyne & Esk Writers. 

Question 1 - What am I working on?

The Mascherari  is my first attempt at the historical mystery / supernatural genre.  I began research two years ago and completed writing in about a year.  Last month I worked with designer, Caryn Gillespie, on the paperback cover design, which has since been retouched for digital publishing. Here it is (again!)

Ok, it doesn't quite compare with that Devil's portrait. But one does one's best.

I am also working on my third book, a speculative history novel featuring mermaids.  The story's underlying influence is a tale that has touched me as a child - The Little Mermaid. It is titled, The Pearl Slaves.  I promise it will be a mermaid tale with a dark edge. 

My current writing phase is a blend of dreaming, musing and historical research. It's nebulous territory, but one with enormous potential because it is my subconscious which is hard at work.  I see writing as part-technique and part-art, and to encourage the art, I feed my subconscious daily.

It is also the phase where I am creating characters, their background and their role in the story. During this time, I absorb everything: history books, historical and cultural articles, music and costumes. I think back to movie scenes I liked, and try to extract what it was - either in the dialogue, setting or mood - that worked for me.  They say you should only write what you want to read. I will only write what I would accept in a film.  If it isn't visual enough, it is no good.


Question 2 - How does my work differ from others of its genre?

As a novel set in China,  The Ming Storytellers is unusual because it avoids homogenization of foreign cultures and peoples.  It recognizes the diverse cultural landscape that was and is China. For example, it features characters from two important ethnic minorities: the Hui and the Nakhi.  That makes perfect sense, considering that the author has a personal experience with plurality. I think it is important to transcend certain cultural portraits and to a degree, I think The Ming Storytellers achieves that. Years ago I toyed with applying the genre, "Ming Gothic", to it. I still think it is the best categorization, even though it sounds pretentious.  I mean, if we can have "Victorian Gothic", then why not "Ming Gothic".  

I wish I could pitch The Mascherari  by saying it's The Name of the Rose meets Le Club Dumas (or The Ninth Gate, for those who know the movie).  These two tales combine all that I adore about mystery and occult themes.  Along the way however, I found that The Mascherari acquired a surrealistic quality that differentiated it from those novels.  I think the surreal is unusual in historical fiction. 
More unusual, are novels set in 15th century Venice, or those that prominently feature the secretive Council of Ten (What's The Council of Ten? Think: NSA, but from the Late Medieval to the Renaissance period).  

The Mascherari also differs from novels set in Venice through its epistolary form.  It consists of letters, depositions and diary entries from various characters. 


Question 3 - Why do I write what I do?

Self-indulgence.  I can be utterly selfish while writing.  I write about subjects that I want to research with a passion, and that stir me to the point of obsession.  I have an affinity for all history that is forbidden and /or shunned, and that has not yet found its place in popular cultural psyche.  Like many writers, I also love uncovering secrets and revealing them.  I seek to break preconceived notions and to present history with all its ugliness. 

If I write in the historical fiction genre, it is also to be carried away into worlds that inspire me.  For The Ming Storytellers, I traveled to Beijing, Lijiang and Kunming, while for The Mascherari, I visited Venice.  But no modern journey compares to the joy of time travel.  I love being in the past. Writing gives me that. It's wonderful.

Hard at work...

It is not all selfishness.  There is duty.  I feel in me a duty to tell an honest story, a duty to inform, or to reveal parallels between past and present.  Often a glimpse into the past can be an avenue for reckoning with our present condition and evaluating it critically.  This reckoning is all the more important when dangerous prejudices exist today which I feel must be overcome in the interest of humanity.  Humanity!  It is a big word, yet I feel that a conscientious writer ought to be writing for humanity.  With The Ming Storytellers, I found myself incorporating an environmental sensitivity into the narrative. I liked that.

An ambitious task for any writer is to stir emotion in their reader.  I try to do that, too. I love writing scenes that inspire awe.  I want to become better at moving my reader.


Question 4 - How does my writing process work?

At any time, a writer may be musing about many ideas.  A project truly begins, for me at least, when an idea is so entangled with my obsessions, that I would deprive myself of pleasure if I did not convert these obsessions into a story.

I then enter a state of research, a state of yet more dreaming and plotting from which I derive all the more pleasure. (See Question 1 above.)

After considerable integration between dreams and research material, a thin plot outline will be born, together with several compelling characters. That’s where the hard work begins. 

Enter discipline.

1. I will write a story outline. Always.

2. In a spreadsheet, I will then list those chapters that are needed to complete the full story.  Each chapter is conceived as a movie scene. The chapter will be listed beside the research material that needs to be refined, or further developed, before I am confident about writing it.

3. Over a period of months, I attack each chapter, one by one, alternating between research and writing. I commit to a number of words per day and stick to that. Fifty percent of my time is spent typing out material and fifty percent is entirely research. 

Halfway through, something happens: I completely ditch my story outline and let the story take me for a ride.

When do I write? I write any time when I am feeling positive.  I have written when ill and drunk (red wine is fabulous for liberating ideas and overcoming fear) but – I never write when I feel down. For me writing should be about pleasure, and I never associate a negative emotional state with my creations. Never.

***

So there you have it - a quick glimpse into my writing process. My books will never fascinate as much as the Codex Gigas, but I love them and I love writing. I am curious to know what other writers do and this is why this blog hop is a wonderful idea.  Next week, three talented writers will take part, sharing their writing process with us.  Here’s a little bit about them.

Andrea Zuvich

 

Andrea Zuvich, aka The Seventeenth Century Lady, lives in a small town in England. She is a full-time historian and often gives lectures about the Late Stuart period, in which she specialises. Zuvich is a historical fiction authoress of the best-selling "His Last Mistress" about the Duke of Monmouth's last days. She was one of the original developers of and guides on the Garden History Tours at Kensington Palace.

Website - www.andreazuvich.com

Wendy Dunn

Wendy has been obsessed with Tudor History from childhood. Her novel about Anne Boleyn, the award-winning novel Dear Heart, How Like You This? (published in 2002), has been described as, “Seriously one of the best books ever written about Anne Boleyn”. 
Wendy is currently a PhD candidate at Swinburne University, where she also tutors in the Master of Arts (Writing) program. 

Unsurprisingly, her PhD artefact, The Light in the Labyrinth, is another Tudor novel, a novel that revisits Anne Boleyn in the last months of her life. A young adult novel, The Light in the Labyrinth will be published soon with Endtable Books.

Website - wendyjdunn.com


Sarah Kennedy

Sarah Kennedy is the author of the historical mystery The Altarpiece, Book One of The Cross and the  Crown series from Knox Robinson Publishers.  Book Two, City of Ladies, will be released on October 20, 2014.

Sarah has also written seven books of poems, including The Gold Thread, Home Remedies, A Witch’s Dictionary, Consider the Lilies, Double Exposure, and Flow Blue.  A professor of English with at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia, Sarah Kennedy holds a PhD in Renaissance Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing.  She has received grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts and is currently a contributing editor for Shenandoah.

Website - sarahkennedybooks.wordpress.com

Make sure you hop along to visit these three authors next week, 28 April, for more insights into the writing process.

The Mascherari - A Novel of Venice

A ravishing cover for a story that is very dear to me. I really hope you like it. 

The elements you see - from the intricate medieval border, to the tower, the dark moon, and the lady with the mysterious light - all hold a meaning that is essential to my upcoming novel, The Mascherari.

For this historical mystery set in 15th century Venice, I was wary of infusing the cover with symbols that have become synonymous with romantic tourism and post-Napoleonic Venice. 

And so I shunned - the canals, the cliche gondolas, the masked carnival revelers, the Piazza, the Basilica of San Marco - all that was readily associated with what we know of Venetian tourism today. While these do feature in my story and were certainly present in the 15th century, I preferred to delve deeper.  So I sought new symbols from those that have been lost to history or have been absent from modern media images of Venice.

With the medieval-inspired imagery, I hoped to conjure a period of Venice that preceded the times of Casanova. 

A mask is portrayed, but it is not prominent. It is a traditional bauta, one of the most common masks from the period. As for the city's lagoon, it is hinted to with just a blue patch of water beneath the cover title.

It will be difficult to expand on the historical meaning of each symbol without revealing too much of the story...so I will look at color only.

Why the gold? 

The original image (not shown), with its pale parchment and light coloring is even more suited to 15th century Venice, but it does not lend itself well to ebook covers. In print, it would look fabulous, so I will preserve it for the Paperback version of the novel. 

I reviewed three versions of the ebook cover before settling on the gold. I loved the green version, which is shown below. 

To me, this dark green held a nauseating and malevolent quality, reminiscent of the evil in the narrative. I also thought it evoked what some authors have described as the Venetian 'miasma' - this fetid air that remains suspended over the lagoon on humid days and from which even Lord Byron was thought to have suffered. 

But the best part of the green, if you do read the story, is that it evokes the emotions of envy and jealousy. How very apt, I thought. 

For now though, I decided on the gold. While also being relevant to aspects of the novel, the gold is vivid, eye-catching and therefore more likely to attract attention in the online sphere. This is an important consideration for a self-publishing author especially when there are so many gorgeous outstanding covers out there.

One last detail...

Engraved on the tower and the hovering moon, are two letters. Shall I tell you what they stand for? Or perhaps you already know. 

Aline Sitoé Diatta: the Joan of Arc of Africa

It is 1943. Colonial French soldiers have penetrated a coastal village, deep in the South of Senegal. The soldiers are looking for a young woman; a woman who, for some time,  is posing a great threat to the established French colonial order.

Some say she is a witch. Some say she can heal. What is certain, is that like Joan of Arc, she has acquired a strong following of anti-colonialists and is much revered. Like Joan of Arc, she has spoken against 'an invader', the French, and is leading a form of resistance against the colonialists. The young woman has such an influence, that following the death of their King, the Djola people of Casamance have made her their Queen.

By 1944, this woman, the Priestess Queen of the Kingdom of Kabrousse, who bravely chose to surrender to the French and spare her people from reprisals, will have endured ill-treatment in numerous jails from Sénégal to Gambia, and eventually Timbuktu in Mali. In less than a year, torture and miserable conditions will have broken her body.  Deliberately untreated by her jailers, abandoned to illness, the young woman will die in prison at the age of 24.

Who was this strong spirit, and why were the French so afraid of her?

Why does her memory endure in Africa today such that even 2008 Senegalese coinage exists with her face upon it and the bold inscription, "La femme qui était plus qu'un homme" - the woman who was more than a man.

Who was she?

Her name was Aline Sitoé Diatta. She was born some time around 1920, in the coastal village of Kabrousse in Casamance, a region of rich and varied flora. Her people, the Djola, who today contribute only 4% of the population of Casamance and 8% of Senegal's population, were traditionally rice cultivators.

Casamance is a sun blessed land that represents one seventh the size of Senegal. Through it, runs Senegal's second largest river. It is a green paradise of mangroves, lagoons, beaches, rice fields and sacred lush forests. Prior to the French, the Portuguese saw in it a great potential. From the 16th century, the Portuguese founded a commerce of wax, ivory, skins and sadly, slavery. In the 17th century, they created a port which will later become the region's capital, Ziguinchor. Long before the famed island of Gorée which US President Obama will eventually visit in 2013, Ziguinchor will have served as a major transit port for the slave trade.

It is in Ziguinchor, that the young orphan, Aline, arrives at age eighteen, to seek an employment. There, she is hired by colonialists to work as docker on the port. Life at home is a life of poverty, but the rudimentary conditions and the exhausting work of loading and unloading ships also take their toll on the young woman. Aline travels to Senegal's capital, Dakar, and is soon employed as a domestic by a French family.

When Aline is around 21, her life takes an interesting turn. One day, she hears a voice. The voice tells her to return to her village at once, and to free her people from the colonialists.
The voice adds that if she fails to do so, misfortune will befall her.

Aline ignores the voice. Four days later, she awakes paralyzed, possibly from a stroke, albeit, one that is rare for one so young.  Aline finally requests to be brought back to Casamance.  No sooner is she returned to the village of Kabrousse, that the paralysis leaves her. According to some, she will retain a limp from her ordeal.

Aline begins to take her voices seriously. Soon, she is encouraging her people to reaffirm their roots. This, she says, is the essence of resisting the influence of colonialists.

What are these Djola roots?

The Djola, or Jola, had no caste system. No griots (storytellers/historial class), no slaves, no nobility class. In terms of world cultures, theirs was a rare egalitarian society. They were highly respectful to, and integrated with nature, and were adept at herbal medicine. They were also a musical culture, their instruments playing a significant part in their many rituals. These rituals favored a strong sense of collective consciousness which aligned their political system to that of true socialism.

Djola women from Kabrousse

Rice growers, the Djola had developed a sophisticated form of rice preservation. In fact, the cultivation of rice was strongly tied to their identity, in as much as it bound them to the earth and to their religion and social organization.

But alas, the flavor of the day, at least, at the time of the French colonialists, is the forced cultivation of cash crops - namely peanuts. It is this that Aline is quick to denounce. She calls upon her people to stop growing cash crops, to return to growing rice instead.

Coming from such an egalitarian society as the Djola, one who has long resisted either Christian or Islamic conversion, Aline's indignation at the injustices perpetrated by the French rulers continues to fuel her quest. She goes further. She encourages her people to disobey French orders: they ought not to pay taxes to the French; they ought not to join the French army.

All in all, Aline urges her people to refuse the influence of the colonizers, to instead return to their own Senegalese roots. She explains that her message is a divine order.

At first her people only partly pay heed to her calling. There is, at the time, a great drought in the region of Casamance and the Djola have understandably more pressing preoccupations.

She is summoned to prove that her voices are divine. "Why not make it rain?" they ask. At this, Aline suggests incantations along with animal sacrifices.

Following these ceremonies, by some enchantment, and much to the surprise of everyone, water, at last, descends upon the rice fields.

And Aline is proclaimed a true divine servant. The message spreads beyond the region and her name finds repute. There is more, they say. It is told that she heals, and that by merely touching her, the sick are soon restored to health.

Delegations from all over Senegal, no matter their ethnic group or religion, make pilgrimages to meet her. They are touched and enlivened by her simple yet bold message: the return to tradition, the return to roots.

I, too, when I read of Aline, I became instantly touched.  Whether she was the Joan of Arc they say she was, it matters not.  There is in the Djola culture, and its kinship with nature, something that we can all learn from. It is something that, more than ever, should matter to us and that we are in danger of losing. There is, in the return to roots, and to Djola collective consciousness, something that we could be inspired by, if only to better nurture each other and learn to empathize again. And last, there is in Aline, a courage and conviction in the face of a tremendous opponent against whom she never had a chance, that serves as inspiration to all oppressed people. 

By her renown and her great influence, it is no surprise that Aline's name reached the French. Here was a woman that could rally the Senegalese against them.  Ironic, that at a time when France was itself faced with its own invader, Germany, it remained not only fueled by economic self-interest and a ruthless quest to maintain a hold on its world colonies, but also blind to the plight of those it had invaded.

For the French, it was clear. Aline had to be stopped. No, such a people with a history of independence as those of Casamance could not be silenced. She had to be eliminated, officially "for inciting rebellion and for refusing to submit to the established order."

And so she was.

I was saddened by Aline's treatment by the French. She was arrested on May 8, 1943. I read that colonial prisons did not necessarily cater to women in those days. In 1943, according to the National Archives of Senegal (ANS), the prison population of Senegal was 1,766 and rising. The number of females was sparse, rising to only 29 compared to 3626 male inmates in 1967.  Research (Konaté, 2003) argues that 'the female inmate's triple status as woman, convict and African, accounted for the colonial state's indifference and neglect towards that category of prisoners'.  Poor Aline. Even twelve years after it became independent, Senegal had no prisons for women.  It was only in 1972, that the first women's prison, The Rufisque women prison, was opened. 

Aline was perhaps an anomaly in French colonial prisons, but what she will forever be remembered for, is her defiance in the face of oppression, and her resolve to save her people's culture.

This page is an homage to her and her message.

References:

Archives Nationales du Sénégal. 3F/00133. (1942-44). Prison des cercles.

Direction de l'Administration Pénitentiaire (DAP). 1968. Enquête sur la criminalité au Sénégal année 1967. Dakar, Sénégal.

Konate, D. (2003). Ultimate exclusion: Imprisoned women in Sénégal. In F. Bernault (Ed). A history of prison and confinement in Africa (pp. 155 - 164). Porstmouth NH: Heinemann.

Aline Sitoé Diatta, reine rebelle et insoumise de Casamance. 

http://www.savoiretpartage.com/2011/05/25/aline-sitoe-diatta-reine-rebelle-et-insoumise-de-casamance

What I Learned From Publishing My First Novel

Readers are your best friends 

Yes, they are. Think about it, you are an unknown writer. It takes either love, a keen interest in the author, a commitment to helping other authors, openness, or else a genuine attraction to a book's premise and setting to dare read a novel from an unknown writer.

In the last eighteen months, I have been blessed with friends, some strangers, who have supported me in this, the beginning of a long journey, by simply daring to pick up my novel and enter an unknown world.

The number one factor in influencing book purchases is what psychologists call normative influence: a recommendation by a friend. This is why, having someone read your novel and enjoy it can be a catalyst for a chain reaction of events that defeats any form of marketing. Its value is priceless. Without the support of a massive marketing campaign to increase the author's visibility, or impress value in a potential audience's mind, the only real promotion a new author is left with is the reader.

So thank you to my readers. You rock!

Your cover needs to attract the right audience

Would-be readers who discover they chose the wrong book based on personal taste can be your worse enemy. I have received reviews that made me wonder, "well, what did you expect?" and again, some have made me think, "isn't it obvious that it would be THAT kind of book?"

Well no. Perhaps it was not that obvious.

As a self-published author, I take on the responsibility to properly promote the book so as to target the right audience.

How do you ensure you are attracting the correct audience?

The Ming Storytellers has an undoubtedly beautiful cover. Last November, it won a eBook cover design award and designer, Caryn Gillespie, will soon produce the cover for my second novel.
According to studies, aside from a friend recommendation, the cover is one of the most important factors in luring a reader to purchase a book.

So what went wrong?

I think the nature of The Ming Storytellers, with its multiple character points of view, its multiple narrative threads and its balanced set of male and female characters, would definitely seem 'boring' or 'too long' or 'confusing' for those readers who were inticed by the splendid Chinese female on the cover, and who imagined the novel might be set exclusively in the feminine sphere with a single point of view.

It could be argued- and I am doing so intuitively without any quantitative evidence- that the plurality of The Ming Storytellers may have been more strongly conveyed if the focus of the cover had not been on just one character. Truer still,  the 'epic' nature of the novel (to repeat the term used by many readers) would have been emphasized if the cover emulated the imagery in traditional epic novel covers...which ultimately are sort of boring anyway. Or less sexy!

I would not change this cover for the world. But I think in this case, the blurb of the book may require rethinking. It might be rewritten to better convey the important facets of this novel to a reader who may otherwise be misled by the imagery.  

Giving away your book for free is not always a good idea

I think giving away your book for free has advantages, the main one being to increase an author's visibility over a couple of days. However the volume of downloads does not convert as expected.

Sure, you'll generate thousands of downloads in a few days, but how many of those ebook hoarders are genuinely interested in immersing themselves in a 600-page novel set in the Ming Dynasty? With eunuch male characters? And with foreign names? Very few.

They will like the cover (and who doesn't), add the ebook to their shelves, increment the number of books in their social reading platform and, ta da - end of story.  I've had a sinking feeling whenever I have seen my book tagged in Goodreads as "freebie" or "free ebook". It likens my 'omnibus' (as described by a wonderful reader from India) to the worse junk that exists in the digital self-publishing world.

At worse, the impulsive hoarder's tastes will turn out to be horribly mismatched to your book.
And they will leave a review.
Just because they can.

And let's not mention the trolls - individuals who have produced nothing literary in their entire lives and whose sole sense of worth is derived from destroying an author's reputation by happily downgrading the said author's book ratings - at No cost! Do not indulge them.

Trolls exist. I thought they did not, but they do. I was naive.


Negative reviewers are poor psychologists

In life, you can choose to be happy and you will be... Or, you can choose to be miserable and that too, will be your lot. Your preconceived attitude will cloud your perceptions of others, your interpretations of events and, if that is not enough, it will horribly skew your sense of measures.

There are negative reviews that are genuine and humbling just as there are those that reveal deep seated issues in the reviewer. What remains perplexing about the latter is how they can feel so comfortable making certain judgments in public when the attitude behind their words is rendered so evident. I worry sometimes.

Nevertheless, considering the democratic nature of digital publishing's rating system, an author will always have to deal with the masses. And one does not need to be a psychologist or a historical novelist, to understand that the masses, often, are led by idiots.

If you publish to US audiences, don't be a freaking snob, use US English

I made the mistake of employing UK English for a full year with Amazon.com as my main distribution point, only to have a couple of reviewers rant about the spelling mistakes that were rampant. (This was simply not true.) Considering that the US is my primary market at the moment, I should have known better.

Living in Australia, where both spelling forms are known (or more or less known and accepted), I could not imagine how intolerant the majority of US readers are. The more educated would not complain but this was not the case for the majority.

In the end, I resolved the 'rampant spelling' problem. To be fair, I did identify 10 spelling errors that were genuine, but in a book of 600+ pages, I felt that the judgment made upon The Ming Storytellers as being 'obviously self-published' was grossly disproportional. My fellow indie authors will agree.

Again, reviewers are not the best psychologists. And they are not good at maths.

Your Best Reviewers are people who understand what you were setting out to do.

This encapsulates what I seek from reader feedback: to be understood. Not on the surface, not at the narrative level, but deeply and completely. When a reader has understood my meaning - not my words, but my intentions - I feel at home.

It gives such joy to strike a chord with a reader. It's like tapping into this collective essence that is humanity. When a reader shares their reaction and I deem it the 'correct' one based on what I sought out to do, there is this symbiosis, as though both our mirror neurons were activated in tandem.

Crazy analogy...
You must forgive the social psychologist in me. The writer in me would just say "fuck yeah".

For those moments, I am grateful.

I made mistakes

I take objective feedback seriously.

Some of this feedback related to the editing of The Ming Storytellers which might be slightly improved.
Yet further feedback related to the multiple voices within the narrative which jarred certain readers or rendered the novel more difficult to read for some. Then again, there were readers who enjoyed the novel's complexity and saw it as a challenge and a reward to complete.

All this, I take seriously.

According to the more objective feedback, The Ming Storytellers could have been slightly better edited...even though I spent a total of 6 years on it. It was not an easy task. Sure, I could do it again - revise the flow and complexity in certain passages, strip a couple of sentences, use alternative words... But I shall keep that lesson for the second novel which I can promise, as a self-improving author, will be of higher standard from an editing perspective. It will also be shorter.

As for plurality of voices- well, judging from George R.R. Martin's success, and his books' multiple points of view, I may not want to change my approach. I believe there are readers who enjoy multiple voices. I know I do. In fact it is what I most enjoyed in Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. Perhaps I might best apply this feedback to attracting suitable audiences by injecting more thought into my future covers.

Self-doubt is here to stay

No matter how pompous or joyful my Tweets, no matter if I rave about a five-star review, no matter the thought that I'm now published, still, the self-doubt is here to stay.

My partner, who has been a writer for over twenty years, and is a respected screenwriter in Australia and abroad, has many a times advised me that self-doubt is the lot of writers. But not just all writers: those who care about growing and those who are not complacent about their art.

Based on this, I am grateful for self-doubt and the motivation that it imparts to me. I also know, through the enormous talent I see whenever I pick up a book by my favorite authors- some of who are my friends-, that I still have much to learn.

Win The Ming Storytellers for Christmas

Adrift from the Ming Dynasty to delve instead on Late Medieval/Early Renaissance Venice for my upcoming novel, The Mascherari. The jump between cultures is always fascinating. In contemplating two different worlds, one can't help but compare and contrast. 

Here is a short multiple choice quiz for anyone wishing to win a FREE paperback copy of The Ming Storytellers. I will be giving away two copies in January 2014!

Simply leave a comment with your answers to each question. (You can also comment on the Facebook post here). Each question is worth a point unless advised. Answers will be posted the day before Christmas. Winners will be notified before NYE.
Good luck!

Question 1:
In the 16th century, which drink, referred to by many as "that Muslim drink" came to Venice by way of Constantinople?
a. Pu'erh tea
b. Oolong tea
c. Chai
d. Coffee
e. Rose water

Question 2:
The Council of Ten, Venice's security council, was among the first European government body to veer away from vellum and make use of paper. But paper, as we know it, originated from China. Which other places fabricated paper before it found its use in Venice? This question is worth two points.
a. Samarkand, Paris
b. Samarkand, Germany
c. Germany, England
d. Samarkand, Spain
e. Samarkand, England

Question 3:
The Ming Dynasty Chinese guarded their Astronomy knowledge jealously. Their knowledge, which was enriched by Arab astronomers, was thought to favor the Chinese fleet and its naval supremacy. But China is not the only country whose rulers have held tight to knowledge whenever it aided politics or economical gain. Which practice did Venetians hold secret?
a. Glass making
b. Mask making
c. Rowing a gondola

Question 4:
The Doge, Venice's figurehead and symbolic ruler had, in contrast with a Chinese emperor, very little power. But much like a Chinese emperor who was the only person permitted to wear the color yellow, gold clothing was the exclusive apparel of the Doge.
What was the other particularity of the Venetian Doge?
a. he was not usually permitted to leave the palace
b. he hired eunuchs to run the Pregado (the Senate)
c. he had concubines
d. he was only appointed for one year
e. he never sat in a gondola

Question 5:
Shoes! What is female culture without these exquisite creations? Ming Chinese women tell us that one had to suffer bound feet in tiny embroidered slippers. What was the peculiarity of female shoes in Renaissance Venice?
a. Women loved to wear slippers
b. Shoes were invariably made of glass
c. Women wore platform shoes
d. Women wore wooden clogs

Question 6:
Porcelain skin, shaved and drawn eyebrows, lips with a cherry pout, long black jets of hair curled into a bun - these are all hallmarks of Ming Dynasty beauties. Which of these is a definitive marker of beauty for a woman in Late Medieval/Early Renaissance Venice:
a. Olive Skin
b. Red hair
c. Shaved, receding forehead