I'm very, very excited today to bring you a little peek into the world of writer Caridad Ferrer, who wrote
When the Stars Go Blue, an upcoming December 2010 title. (You can
read my review.) Caridad has a lot of fun things to say so enjoy!
1. The inspiration for When the Stars Go Blue is the famous opera, Carmen. What inspired you to tackle this emotional story?
I wish I could say that I'd come up with it all by myself, but that wouldn't be quite accurate. I actually had an editor contact me, saying that she'd loved my first novel Adiós to My Old Life and how I passionately I wrote about music and had I ever considered taking on the story of Carmen, since it was so iconic. The minute I read that, it was like the proverbial light bulb went off—I knew exactly the story I wanted to tell and the worlds in which I wanted to set it. There's just so much drama and passion involved in the world of drum corps—and it's such a beautiful, athletic, and artistic activity that I wanted to draw out into the light a bit. And when you have so many artistic personalities in such close quarters—sparks are bound to fly. It seemed just too perfect.
While sadly, the story didn't work for that original editor's house (although she, personally, loved it) thankfully, another editor—one with whom I'd wanted to work for a long time—jumped on it. Really, it's been a match made in heaven.
2. One of the aspects I liked most about this book was the relationships. I don’t want to spoil anyone but can you talk a little bit about how easy or difficult it was writing those nuanced and in some situations, very difficult, relationships?
It was really rough from the standpoint that I've never been involved in either the type of relationship Soledad has with Jonathan or the subtler one that develops with Taz. But at the same time, I know what it's like to pine for someone for years and feel as if they never notice you (and I never worked up the nerve to approach the objects of my pining!). The hardest part for me was to walk that really fine line between acceptable and overwhelming behavior. I think I managed it fairly successfully, but I also realize everyone's threshold varies. (And could I be any more vague?)
3. In the acknowledgements, you mention several different corps. Can you talk about your own experiences in a marching band/drum bugle corps?
Wow. In short, it comprised the majority of my life from age fifteen to twenty-three. I joined my high school marching band, which happened to be a competitive, "corps-style" band. That was my first introduction to that particular style of marching/show construction. A few weeks into the fall, some instructors from a local drum corps came to give us a recruitment talk—they showed us a video and that was it. I joined the Florida Wave and became a convert. I loved the discipline, the camaraderie, the hours spent perfecting every aspect of performance. Three nights a week were dedicated to band practice, Friday nights for football games, Saturday nights for contests, and then on Sundays, I'd go practice with the drum corps, joining the other kids who were oftentimes members of the area high school bands against whom we'd competed just the night before. But on Sundays, it didn't matter. On Sundays, we were all members of the Wave.
Once spring rolled around and high school marching season was over, then corps ramped up into high gear. A weeknight rehearsal was added to the Sunday rehearsals and one weekend a month, we'd have camps lasting from Friday to Sunday afternoons. All in preparation for the summer tour season where we'd pile into buses and motor across the country, rehearsing fourteen hours a day, sleeping on gym floors, and almost every night, going under the stadium lights to perform our hearts out. The three years I spent as a member of the Florida Wave were some of the most creative, exhilarating, amazing times of my life. One of the things I loved most about it was as disciplined as it was, it was also very egalitarian. We had members from age twelve to the age-out of twenty-one and while yes, there was a certain hierarchy in terms of veterans and rookies and designated leaders, such as the section captains, no one was ever looked down upon because of their age. You were considered on the basis of your effort and talent and at its core, who you were as a person. And there were all sorts of people in corps. All of the artificial constraints that existed at school didn't matter in corps. I think it served me really well when I went to college and ultimately, out in the real world. I didn't suffer the culture shock of being jerked out of the safe, homogenous environment of high school and thrust into the larger world of college.
Of course, in college, I was also in band, The Florida State University Marching Chiefs, 500+ strong and while different stylistically from drum corps (it was more what people consider a "traditional" band, a high step, different shows nearly every week rather than one show all season long) it was every bit as disciplined, practicing five days a week, plus the games on Saturdays (and the parties Saturday night, but shhh… we won't talk about those.)
Again, just a massively diverse group of people all bound together by a common passion. The members of Chiefs pulled from just about every major in the university with a relatively small percentage actually being music majors (I was one of them). I was only for one credit a semester, so it's not like we were advancing our academic careers forward. We did it because we loved it. And to this day, some of my closest friends are people I met in Chiefs.
Okay, reading back over my answer, maybe not so short, but trust me, there's so much I'm leaving out.
4. Is dance one of your many passions?
I absolutely adore dance, but it's not one of the arts in which I have a lot of personal experience beyond ballet classes as a little girl. However, one of my television watching vices is Dancing With the Stars because unlike So You Think You Can Dance, you're watching people starting essentially from scratch. People who (in theory) are accomplished in a different discipline or at least comfortable in the spotlight reduced to absolute beginners. I had to laugh when the "authordancing" hashtag swept across Twitter because I'd been saying the same thing about authors on Dancing With the Stars for ages. (For reals! I even posted about it on my old blog! http://fashionista-35.livejournal.com/548785.html) But yeah, I'd love to see an author get their shot. I'd love for it to be me, obviously, but I'm a realist. At the very least, I figure one of these days I'll screw up my courage and sign up for lessons.
5. Tarot plays an important role in this story. Do you have much experience reading the cards yourself?
Not at all, but I have a deep respect for the art and did my research to make sure I wasn't disrespecting it. I'm also lucky enough to have acquaintances who are accomplished readers. As with so many other things, it's something that fascinates me and I'd love to continue learning more about it.
6. From reading this book, you seem like a passionate advocate for the arts, whether that is music, language, or dance. How have the fine arts shaped you?
Well, you just got the saga of my experiences with band & corps, but my involvement in music goes much further back than that. I began playing piano at the age of four, I always loved singing, and began playing trumpet and French horn in junior high. To this day, music is just a huge part of my everyday life and permeates almost everything I do, from writing to cooking (I have iPod speakers in my kitchen and just zone out when I cook).
With reading and writing, I was a very early self-taught reader and began writing not long after, but perhaps even more importantly, I was a storyteller. I come from a culture (Cuban) where every story is made bigger and more dramatic and just… more. We're a very… verbose people (to put it mildly!). But because I was such a shy kid, I did a lot of living in my own head and that's where I constructed my stories. If I ran out of books to read, I'd entertain myself by making up stories—a habit that continued on into my days in corps and band where there were a lot of long bus rides (and no Internet). And then when I went to college, I'd be driving back and forth between Miami and Tallahassee (about eight hours, each way) through some of the flattest, most boring landscape you can imagine. So yeah, more storytelling with music as a background. Even back then I'd make compilation tapes, pop one in, and just go on autopilot. I have very little memory of a vast majority of those drives. (But don't tell my mother!)
One of those holdovers from those long drives is that to this day, I make soundtracks for all of my manuscripts and write with music that inspires me in the background. The right piece of music can tap into a deep well of emotion and allows me to open the emotional barriers that I tend to keep pretty firmly in place as a general rule. It's my touchstone.
Even the sport I was most involved with as a kid was something that was deeply arts-oriented since I was a competitive figure skater for a few years. Yeah, I know—Miami's not exactly a hotbed for figure skating, but I just loved it. It was strong and graceful and you were telling a story by yet another medium. I guess at the heart of it I just see the arts as a whole as different mediums through which stories can be expressed.
7. What three words best sum up Soledad?
Passionate, focused, determined (Hey look! A short answer!)
8. From your website, it is obvious you enjoy a variety of experiences and activities in your life. Have you had time to take up a new hobby or interest you’d like to share?
Photography. I can honestly claim at least passable ability in many artistic pursuits except drawing/sculpting/essentially anything visual. Drawing pencils see me coming and they break on purpose, you know? But I've always loved photography. The expansive, evocative images that photographers like Ansel Adams or Alfred Stieglitz are able to capture or the portraits that Annie Liebovitz or Bruce Weber take have always captured my imagination (again—I see stories in them). Additionally, I've always had a habit of looking at scenery or a setting and immediately freezing them in my mind as a photographs and I've always wanted to try my hand at capturing those images myself. So this past summer, my husband bought me my first "real" camera, a Sony NEX-5 that's not quite as advanced as a digital SLR, but it's more than your typical point-and-shoot, with a detachable lens and some manual ability. I took it on its maiden run during a cruise to Alaska and couldn't have been more thrilled that I could finally capture the pictures I would envision. And of course, with our recent move to Seattle, I now live in one of the most gorgeous places in the world—so I keep my camera handy and find myself reaching for it, just to take shots of anything that captures my fancy. (I've included a couple of shots that I was particularly pleased with.)
Lessons on how to best utilize my camera is next on the list.
[You can see on of Caridad's photographs early in this post.]
9. If you had to create a modern soundtrack for When the Stars Go Blue, what songs would make the list?
Funny you should ask this as I just blogged about this very topic. This was the base soundtrack I listened to as I wrote Stars.
Heat Wave- Joan Osborne?
She’s a Beauty- The Tubes?
Amor Gitano- Alejandro Fernández & Beyoncé?
It’s Amazing- Jem?
Breathe In Breathe Out- Matt Kearney?
You Give Me Something- James Morrison?
Extraordinary Girl- Green Day?
Believe- Lenny Kravitz?
Eres- Alejandro Fernández?
Come me mira- Fonseca?
El Tango de Roxanne- Moulin Rouge Soundtrack (NOTE: This was probably the single most important song on the soundtrack. Everything stemmed from this one piece of music.)?
Hazy Shade of Winter- The Bangles?
Please Don’t Leave Me- Pink?
Hide and Seek- Imogen Heap?
Love is a Losing Game- Amy Winehouse?
Cinderella Beautiful- Peter Cincotti?
Time is a Healer- Eva Cassidy?
Quiéreme- Alejandro Fernández?
Gravity- Sara Bareilles?
Wishing on Another Lucky Star- J.D. Souther?
I’ll Be Waiting- Lenny Kravitz?
Paso a Paso (Alternate Version)- Luis Fonsi?
By the Boab Tree- Ophelia of the Spirits?
Sueños- Nelly Furtado & Alejandro Fernández?
When the Stars Go Blue- The Corrs feat. Bono?(Of course)
My Heart Was Home Again- Josh Groban
So there you have it. Eclectic, kind of all over the place, because that’s just sort of how I roll.
10. Romance is such a wonderful part of your books. Do you have a really romantic moment in your past that helps inspire your books?
A romantic moment? Not really. But I have many, many, many of them. I'm lucky to be married to just the best guy on the planet (and I met him when I was twenty-one, so yeah, you can find them at an early age) and he continues to surprise me in so many ways. Like getting me the camera, knowing how badly I wanted to take "real" pictures. Like supporting me when I said I wanted to take on this crazy writing gig. Like making my favorite dessert (tiramisu) for my birthday one year and presenting me with the cookbook containing the recipe from which he'd made it. Like getting not only tickets to Robin Williams in concert, but getting a deluxe package that allowed us backstage so we could meet a man I've idolized for years.
He gets me and that, in and of itself, presents just a whole host of romantic moments, even if all we're doing is sitting around, laughing our heads off.
Beyond that, though, I just have an inherently romantic nature that I have difficulty expressing outwardly, so all those deeply romantic impulses find their way into my stories.
11. What have you been reading lately?
Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series (and she's just a delightful person, too), Alyssa Day's Atlantis Betrayed, Jennifer Echols' Forget You, Holly Cupala's Tell Me a Secret, and John Paul Rathbone's The Sugar King of Havana. Plus I'm rereading C.S. Graham's The Archangel Project & The Solomon Effect, in preparation for the November release of The Babylonian Codex. As you might guess, I kind of read all over the place.
12. Any hints about what books you will have coming out in the future?
I have a lot of works in progress, but no definitive plans at the moment. I'm kind of enjoying stretching my wings creatively a bit and trying some new things, so hopefully, that will pan out into something fabulous. Trust me, the minute I know, I'm sure everyone will hear the sonic boom!
13. The ending of this book gave me goosebumps of happiness. Did the ending write itself or were you changing it along the way?
The ending of Stars was a complete surprise to me if only because I'm such a linear writer, the endings don't always come to me right away. I might have a vague idea, but I just let the story play itself out and allow the ending to reveal itself. With this one, however, I saw the end scene like a film shot, starting out from a distance, then panning in close, then finally, drawing back to see the scene as a whole. I knew, almost from the beginning, exactly how it was going to be. I think as many manuscripts as I've written (and trust me, I have quite a few sitting on the hard drive) this is easily my very favorite ending. Still gives me little fluttery butterflies in my stomach when I read it, even after countless times reading it, so I'm guessing I did something right if it affects me that way after all this time.
Finally, if you want the chance to see a Drum Corps perform,
here is the 2005 Madison Corps performing The Carmen Experience (Carmen and West Side Story.) SO cool!
Thank you so much for talking with me today Caridad! It's truly been a great pleasure. You can learn more about Caridad and her books at her
new and improved website. And definitely be on the lookout for
When the Stars Go Blue releasing the end of this year. It's a book you won't want to miss!
Ruthless is the first book in Anne Stuart's new House of Rohan series. I've never been a big Anne Stuart reader by any means, but this series has been absolutely wonderful. I love, love the tension between the hero and heroine and how wicked the males are. These books are somewhat hedonistic and the guys are certainly overbearing in a major sense but it's also very well written and fortunately, the ladies are not wallflowers by any means. They stand up for what they want. The second book is Reckless and follows the son of the main hero in the first book. The third book comes out this October and I cannot wait to read it. I devoured these two books in a matter of days. I'm not sure if it's the best of what Anne Stuart has written, I really haven't read much of her backlist to make that judgment, I just know I've enjoyed these books immensely. They are historical but not set in the typical Regency period. They are also darker in tone, so if you are a fan of darker historicals I think these may work for you.
And I have been reading some YA books including Plain Kate. This book is very, very slow going for me. It's not that long and I'm not even half way through it. I may stop and pick it up at another time because I just cannot get into it. I enjoy the atmosphere of the story, the Russian like land that Kate lives in, and the Roamers (gypsies) but I am just not really invested yet. I've heard such great things about this book which may be part of the reason I keep trying to get through it. However, there is one YA book I'm enjoying. That is Nothing Like You by Lauren Strasnick. In the book, the main character's mom has died and Holly is kind of lost. She is falling into a bad relationship and well, has hopes for it despite the negative aspects of the relationship. It's compelling reading, seeing this girl try to find grounding in life again despite her grief. Really enjoying this story. I discovered it on one of Pop Culture Junkie's Hardcover vs. Paperback spotlights and I'm glad I requested it.
1. The inspiration for When the Stars Go Blue is the famous opera, Carmen. What inspired you to tackle this emotional story?
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