Extraordinary author, Stephanie Cowell, began writing at a young age and her amazing talents are still producing some of the most superb novels about historical figures to date. She started writing short stories as a child and continued writing until the age of 21. She then had some of her work published and soon after her attention turned to singing. She continued singing until the age of forty, when after a separation and with two sons to support, found herself again and got back into writing. She took an office job that gave her time to write in the mornings and evenings, and so she began to write novels.
As she explains on her website, “I was born in New York City to a family of artists and fell in love with Mozart, Shakespeare and historical fiction at an early age. I began printing stories in a black and white school notebook at about nine years old and in my teens wrote several short novels which remain in a dark box. I learned something though, because by twenty, I had twice won prizes in a national story contest.
Then I left writing for classical singing. I sang in many operas and appeared as an international balladeer; I formed a singing ensemble, a chamber opera company, and so on. The translation of a late Mozart opera returned me to writing once more and I now mostly sing while washing the dishes!
My first published novel was NICHOLAS COOKE: ACTOR, SOLDIER, PHYSICIAN, PRIEST, followed by two other Elizabethan-17th century novels: THE PHYSICIAN OF LONDON (American Book Award 1996) and THE PLAYERS: A NOVEL OF THE YOUNG SHAKESPEARE. In 2004, I returned to my musical background and wrote MARRYING MOZART; it has been translated into seven languages and optioned for a movie.
I am married to poet and reiki practitioner Russell Clay and have two grown sons (one in computer systems design and one a filmmaker). I am still living in NYC, a short walk away from all the impressionist paintings at the Metropolitan Museum.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE, the great author and spiritual leader who went to heaven a few years ago, was my mentor. I could always call her when I needed writing or personal help. She indirectly introduced me to my husband and when I married him, she gave me away. She read all my books and loved me and cheered me on. A book about her by the writers she mentored called REMEMBERING MADELEINE L'ENGLE: A CIRCLE OF FRIENDS has now been published by Lulu.com and may be ordered through her site. I miss her all the time.
Two other mentors, also always there for me, were the beloved author ISABELLE HOLLAND and the great Elizabethan historian A.L. ROWSE whose research inspired much of my Elizabethan novels.”
We spoke to Stephanie about the writing process and her great love of writing about artists and historical figures.
You obviously love writing about famous artists. How much research do you do on their lives before writing a book?
I do huge amounts of research before writing a book. I think I read or consulted about 75 books for CLAUDE & CAMILLE: A NOVEL OF MONET. These included historical books of Paris circa 1860, biographies, letters of all the impressionists, and books about painting. Everything I could find about Monet in his early years, but finding out about his great love and muse Camille was very hard. There were only snippets of letters about her from one of the other impressionists; as Monet kept neither letters to or from her. Then about 25 years ago a diary was discovered of an art lover who knew both Claude and Camille, and gave something of her charming character. With MARRYING MOZART, I had been singing Mozart all my life (I spent many years as a high soprano) and I read his family letters and listened to all the music he wrote during the period of the book, from the ages of 21 through 25. My earlier Elizabethan novels were always in my blood. Shakespeare’s England is so real to me that I can walk down a street that he walked along, in the old walled city of London, and burst into tears. I went to Mozart’s birthplace in Salzburg and cried. My husband follows me with tissues.
How historically accurate are they?
I’d say they are pretty accurate. Of course when you write fiction you have to have a dramatic line, a plot, and lives don’t necessarily have plots. Monet, for instance, may have had thirty good friends during the period of the novel and you have to cut it down to a few. Of course one never knows what people said behind closed doors, or did behind closed doors for that matter. If you look at that painting of Monet at 25, he was a pretty sexy guy. He looks a lot like Johnny Depp.
Do you hope to return to singing one day and how much has your singing inspired your writing?
I don’t expect to return to singing because I have not kept up my training and writing seems to take all my creativity. My writing is full of music, and I listen to music to inspire it. Right now I am listening to the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. Fiction is written in great sweeps of emotion and music inspires that. I however sometimes sing over the dishes and the plates do not get up and run out of the sink, so I guess I can still sing.
Where did your deep appreciation for these artists come from and did you always write about artists?
I guess I’d say I write about artists, musicians, writers, actors and spiritual seekers. Those are the things I am closest to, having been born to a family of painters and artists. I never, ever in my life, considered doing anything else but the arts. I have not been very practical, and my closest friends have mostly been writers, actors, opera singers or novelists, so I have been surrounded by their loves and problems. My younger son is a filmmaker; as he has not escaped the family possession by the arts. My older son however is a computer systems designer and builds robots.
Do you refer to other books about an artist before writing about them, or do you find that just distracts from the facts about an artist?
You have to read a lot and then let go. At one point you put your research books in another room and just write. In a novel you travel beyond facts to the heart of the man or woman. You have to show who they were, where their heart was, and what made them laugh and cry. Movies help me keep the story moving in a rising dramatic line. There was a recent movie I found very interesting about Queen Victoria and Albert. Thousands of things happened to them in the period of the movie, but the director picked a handful of incidents to show who they were, their place in life, and why and how they found they so needed one another and fell in love.
I am so fascinated with how great artists combined the ordinary needs and incidences of life (such as earning rent money, crying babies, and needing to be loved) with painting immortal paintings or writing great music or plays. I have a scene in an early novel about Shakespeare where he is running out of his house in London to meet someone who wants to be his patron and has to first drop his shirts off to the laundress.
I do all the research and writing of my books on my own and the whole process could take from 6 months to 5 years, depending on the book. There could be a lot of changes made along the way, but with Mozart there were very few changes. Although with Claude and Camille it was rewritten many times. The publisher will sometimes make suggestions for changes, such as how to make the story or the characters more interesting. Of course the ease of the writing can largely depend on the character I am writing about. For example, Beethoven was a very difficult person who had a bad childhood, and it was very heavy to be around him. Mozart however was a very good person, had a stable childhood, great sense of humor and was sexy as well. Once the book goes into what is called the galleys (when the type is set) you really can’t make any changes to it without a penalty. So you have to make all your page proofs beforehand and the publisher lets you see how the book will look before printing goes ahead. It is natural for all authors to be very self critical and want to endlessly make changes to their work.
The process of writing a book can take so much time and is so much work that you can’t think about it before you start writing. You just have to take the process in pieces and eventually it starts to build into a book. I usually write in the mornings for about 5 hours, as I find I can concentrate better at this time and before the necessities of the day interfere and become a distraction. I find I am still in a dream state during this time and my mind goes totally into the world of the book at hand. I like historical fiction, so I will continue writing these types of books. I have a lot of other ideas for books and I find people are very curious about these historical figures, reading about them and learning more about them.
No one had written about a young Monet before. People only know him as an old man and they wanted to know more about him and his life. It took five years of research and it was very hard writing about the young Monet. To write a novel about a person you have to have a gripping story in which fairly dramatic things happen, as people want to read something of interest. In my books you are reading about the growth of an artist but you are also reading the story of the person. In my book about Monet he met Camille when she was 19 and they fell in love. She left a very good home for him and he promised her everything but could give her nothing, and then she got sick and died. She haunted him even after her death at 32, and he loved her the whole of his life. This is a true story but is obviously filled with a lot of drama. It is easier to write about a historical Queen for instance that had a lot of trouble in her life. Queen Elizabeth I had an interesting and dangerous life. Anne Boleyn is another example of this and had she a fascinating life filled with betrayal as well as a dramatic death. Although everyone has drama in their lives, and everyone is tormented in their own ways, you sometimes don’t have to make up drama because you find it in everyday life.
To find out more about Stephanie Cowell and her wonderful novels visit her website at stephaniecowell.com
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