Said and Unsaid

I was thinking about dialogue on the Greyhound bus ride home the other day. I have borrowed many a good line from strangers on public transport—the gem of that trip was 'Have you been to the bathroom in Baltimore? I felt safer in prison'—and sometimes these lines are so good they sound like they HAVE to have been made up.

Here's an example. I wrote the following, and my editor asked me to change it because she couldn't imagine anyone actually speaking this way:

Every so often I get a craving for the kind I can’t find at night. You know the sort of man I mean: a vegetarian Buddhist in thrift-store corduroys, doesn’t drink, rarely pays a visit to the barber. Last time I found one I was coming home on the PATH train at half past six on a Sunday morning; he boarded with a friend, both with twelve-speed bicycles in tow. I knew I had to have him when I heard him say, “You know when you’re riding down a country road and come upon the skeleton of a barn? I love that.” He didn’t notice me then, but I made sure he left his pocket journal on the train...

Yes, I heard a guy say that, word for word. I loved how much that offhand remark told me about his personality, and the well cared for bicycle at his side reinforced my impression. I didn't go home with that boy, but Eve sure did.

What can really make good dialogue, though, is all the things that go unsaid. Here's another exchange I scribbled down on Monday afternoon:

HE: So...are you going to be around long enough for us to go out?
Something about being on a Greyhound bus gets me really horny. You'll do.

SHE: I don't think so. I'm too old for that shit.
I'll talk to you across the aisle, but there's no way in hell I'm going back behind the dumpster with you at the next pit stop.

HE: Yeah, I don't do the bus thing either.
[a moment later] But I can cook up seafood better than you can buy it at the harbor.
I'm gonna pretend like you didn't just shut me down. In fact, I'm gonna give you one more chance, because I haven't met a woman yet who could resist my crabcakes...

This reminds me of nights in the study room back in grad school, when Seanan would write two lines for every one line of dialogue he composed: one for what was coming out of the character's mouth, and the second for what he was actually saying. Dialogue—reading it, writing it, overhearing and 'appropriating' it—is one of the most delightful aspects of being a storyteller, and doing it well makes it just as satisfying for the reader.

Blurbs and other fun stuff

Fun book stuff is starting to happen! Petty Magic recently got a couple of lovely blurbs from two of my favorite authors:

A charming curiosity shop of a novel, packed to bursting with secret histories and glittering marvels. With Petty Magic, Camille DeAngelis has given us a glimpse into a strange and enchanting world. It's dangerous good fun, and well worth getting lost in.
—Jedediah Berry, author of The Manual of Detection

Love, magic, history, witches: it's all here, between the covers of this lovely book. Updike might have written it, if he'd had a better sense of humor.
—Daniel Wallace, author of Big Fish and Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician

(Also, in case you missed it, you might want to read my post about how Daniel has inspired me.)

The other exciting thing is this profile published Thursday in my local newspaper, the Burlington County Times!

I'm also working with the designer of these two fabulous websites to come up with a brand-new blog; more about that later.

Operation Mincemeat

World War II offers us far more interesting, amusing and subtle examples of intelligence work than any writer of spy stories can devise.

—Admiral John Godfrey

In Petty Magic, I refer to a couple of the most spectacular World War II hoaxes, both of which were part of a larger deception plan, Operation Barclay—constructing sham army camps to fool Nazi reconnaissance, and planting phony intelligence documents on a corpse in uniform. It took several incredibly imaginative, 'corkscrew-minded' intelligence officers to hatch each of these plots, and in my novel I give all the credit to my magician-spy, Neverino. These hoaxes were first devised not by a magician, but a novelist!

The hoax involving a corpse in uniform was codenamed Operation Mincemeat (Churchill had forbidden the use of obvious or jokesy code names, but apparently no one listened to him), and it's the subject of a riveting new book by British journalist Ben Macintyre.

To begin regaining control of Europe in the summer of 1943, the Allies first needed to take back Sicily—and the Germans were just as aware of its strategic importance. Taking advantage of Hitler's 'Balkan fixation' (because the Third Reich got most of its raw materials from Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia), the Allies would convince him that they were planning to invade Sardinia and Greece instead, and that Sicily was the phony target.

Human agents or double agents can be tortured or turned, forced to reveal the falsity of the information they carried. A dead body would never talk.

So here's the gist: the corpse-with-phony-identification idea originated in Basil Thomson's novel, The Milliner's Hat Mystery, published in 1937. Ian Fleming, the naval intelligence officer who would later pen the James Bond novels, was a fan of Thomson's, and he included it in the "Trout Memo," a list of possible hoaxes that was distributed among the intelligence chiefs at the very beginning of the war. Two other officers in MI5—the eccentric, unassuming Charles Cholmondeley ("Chumly") and the supremely confident lawyer Ewen Montagu—developed the idea and saw it to fruition.

Once the higher-ups at MI5 consented to the ruse, these two officers embarked on an elaborate planning process. St. Pancras coroner Bentley Purchase informed them that the body of a homeless Welshman, Glyndwr Michael, had just been brought in, and Cholmondeley and Montagu spent the next couple of months (with Michael in deep refrigeration) inventing his alter-ego, Major William Martin, complete with love letters and photographs, hotel bills, and snippy missives from his father and bank manager. Cholmondeley and Montagu spent so much time inventing him that they began to feel as if Martin had actually been a friend of theirs.

Cholmondeley, Montagu, and the other planners knew how the Nazis thought—their two biggest flaws (with regard to military intelligence and espionage, anyway) being 'wishfulness and yesmanship'—and if they could allow those phony documents to fall into the right hands, thousands of lives would be saved on both sides.

The operation got off as planned, and by the time 'Major Martin' arrived in Huelva, Spain, he stunk so bad the local forensic pathologist dismissed the inevitable anomalies (the corpse's face and the face on his ID card didn't quite match up; the body was too decomposed to have been in the water only a few days, as his documents attested) in favor of getting the heck out of the room. The body was laid to rest in a Catholic cemetery, and the suitcase and its contents got lost in a maze of Spanish bureaucracy and intrigue before the Nazis finally got their hands on it. The rumor of a Greek invasion spread, and thus began to substantiate itself; Hitler was convinced, and the ruse was complete.

The material is fascinating regardless, but Macintyre does a great job of bringing to life each character involved in the plot of Operation Mincemeat—from the aforementioned jolly coroner of St. Pancras ('He loved Gilbert and Sullivan operas, toy trains, boiled eggs, and his model piggery in Ipswich. He never wore a hat and laughed loudly and often') to the brave submarine commander assigned to the dispatch of 'Major William Martin', Bill Jewell, who only begins to fear for his life after falling in love with a Wren in Algiers. We get a keen sense of each player's desires and ambitions, their private histories and their miserable working conditions.

So why are so many details of the planning of Operation Mincemeat only now coming to light? After the war was over, there was still the possibility of a political backlash were the full story of the hoax to come out. British diplomats had conspired to deceive Spanish officials, so the revelation would have no doubt damaged Anglo-Spanish relations; furthermore, back at home, those who had orchestrated Operation Mincemeat had obtained the corpse by not-strictly-legal means, and exposure would have caused quite a bit of trouble for the coroner and other government offices involved in that particular aspect of the deception.

So, in The Man Who Never Was and on the international lecture circuit, Ewen Montagu spent forty years telling a story that was hopelessly incomplete—for the above reasons, and because Cholmondeley and several others abided by their MI5 oaths of secrecy for the rest of their lives. Macintyre had access to Montagu's personal archives, and along with information that has become available only in the last twenty years or so, he was able to write the most complete account of Operation Mincemeat we'll probably ever have. Its unputdownability is a testament to Macintyre's prowess as a storyteller. Highly, highly recommended.

[Edit: Since I wrote this I found there's another book on the subject that's also come out this year called Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat by Denis Smyth. It'd be interesting to compare them.]

What's a beldame?

Waterhouse's painting after Keats' poem, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci."

When people ask me about Petty Magic, I usually use the word 'witch' even though my narrator hates that word with a red-hot fiery passion—just because 'witch' is quicker to understand. (There's an old-school witch on the cover, too, spiriting a little girl away on her broomstick—but this is ironically appropriate.)

Think of us as sibyls or seraphs—fearsome, oh yes, but more or less benevolent.

Eve and the other beldames in Petty Magic live at least twice as long as ordinary women but age half as quickly. They can turn themselves into animals, travel thousands of miles in a twinkling, or render themselves invisible, but they get worn out and need to sleep and recharge just like anybody else. They can be sweet and solicitous like fairy godmothers, or...not. And they tell lies, so they say, only to keep the men in black from locking them up.

Because Eve is more superwoman or benign enchantress than vindictive old hag, I wanted a different word for her. In Coraline, Neil Gaiman refers to the 'other mother' as a beldam, as in 'crone' or 'witch' (the word comes from Middle English—bel, grand, and dam, mother, grandmother being the original meaning). In the dictionary 'beldame' is only listed as an alternate spelling, but in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (written in 1819, revised in 1820) Keats's beldame is from the French, a 'beautiful lady'—that is to say, a sorceress.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes--
So kiss'd to sleep.

And there we slumber'd on the moss,
And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd—"La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

The belle dame is a dangerous woman—a fairy, or a sort of banshee—who, in medieval legend, would lure men into an enchanted forest and make them lose all desire for anything else, even to go on living. The poem harks back to the chivalric tradition, in which 'women were to be loved from afar and to be considered unattainable.'

Another version of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" by Frank Dicksee.

Archetypes aren't terribly interesting unless you can somehow subvert them (or better yet, subvert and reinforce). Can a 'dangerous woman' have (mostly) good intentions? Maybe not Keats' beldame...but definitely mine.

Witchcraft, Magic & Alchemy

It's high time we had some more witchy stuff on here!

Witchcraft, Magic, and Alchemy by Grillot de Givry has got to be the weirdest book I have ever cracked. The publisher's product description is somewhat misleading:

From raising the dead to foretelling the future, this historical tour of the occult offers a captivating exploration of sorcery and ceremonial magic. Prepared by a noted French historian, it ventures into virtually all of the classical arts, with 375 rare black-and-white illustrations derived from paintings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and architecture.

The author doesn't actually approach the material with the objective eye of a historian; he writes about necromancy and love philters and suchlike as if he actually believes in all this stuff. I can't decide if he's brilliant or cuckoo.

It is also very easy, according to several Black-books, to become invisible by carrying the heart of a bat, a black hen, or a frog under the right arm. A more elegant method is to wear the Ring of Gyges on your finger; you can then become visible or invisible at will simply by turning the stone inward or outward. This ring must be made of fixed mercury; it must be set with a little stone to be found in a lapwing’s nest, and round the stone must be engraved the words, “Jésus passant ✠ par le milieu d’eux ✠ s’en allait.” You must put the ring on your finger, and if you look at yourself in a mirror and cannot see the ring it is a sure sign that it has been successfully manufactured.

How nutty is that? There's plenty more where this came from, but I left the book at Seanan's when I was moving out of Galway and forgot about it while I was in Tipperary, so further excerpts will have to wait.

I ♥ Shaye

Something really crappy happened in the publishing world last week.

Let me back up. From the day I got my Mary Modern book deal (14 March 2006—can't ever forget a date that important), I felt really happy to be a part of Shaye Areheart Books. Shaye and Sally (my editor on Mary Modern) always made me feel not only that they loved my book, but that they cared about me personally. I got the impression that it wouldn't make one bit of difference to Shaye if I never made a bestseller list, so long as I kept telling good stories.

Now, this sort of thing happens quite a bit—CEOs and other folks in lofty positions occasionally get ousted in publishing just like any other business—and I don't want this to turn into an anti-corporate rant or anything. (Well, all right: I composed the rant, and have just hit 'delete'.) I just wanted to ask that when you pick up a hardcover copy of Petty Magic this fall, stop and look at the colophon on the spine. It ought to have been a steaming coffee cup, with SHAYE AREHEART BOOKS written underneath.

Galley giveaway winners!

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest! I drew names over coffee on Friday morning, and the winners were @AngelaPardue, @angelynnodom, @eheinlen, @melistress, and @chickwithbooks. The galleys are going in the mail today.

(That's my WIP bucket bag from MadebyLoumms. Their bags are ADORABLE and very well made!)

Petty Magic Teaser & Galley Giveaway

The galleys have landed!

Petty Magic goes on sale on October 5th, and is now available to pre-order on Amazon.com! From the back cover:

Petty Magic:

Being the Memoirs and Confessions of

Miss Evelyn Harbinger, Temptress and Troublemaker.

In this brilliantly imagined tale of adventure and timeless romance, acclaimed novelist Camille DeAngelis blends WWII heroics with witchcraft and wit, conjuring a fabulously rich world where beldames and mortal men dare to fall in love.

Evelyn Harbinger sees nothing wrong with a one-night stand. At one hundred and forty nine years old, Eve may look like she bakes oatmeal cookies in the afternoon and dozes in her rocking chair in the evenings, but once the gray hair and wrinkles are traded for jet-black tresses and porcelain skin, she can still turn heads as the beautiful girl she once was. Can’t fault a girl for having a little fun, can you?

This is all fine and well until Eve meets Justin, who reminds her so much of a former lover, and one night is no longer enough. Eve spends more and more nights—and days—romancing Justin as her younger self, and noticing the many peculiar ways in which he is so like Jonah, her partner behind enemy lines in WWII and the love of her life. Experts in espionage, Jonah and Eve advanced the Allied cause at great personal sacrifice, and Jonah lost his life. Now Eve suspects that her Jonah has returned to her, and despite the disapproval of her coven, and the knowledge that love with a mortal man can only end in sorrow, she can’t give him up. But can she prove it’s really him?

I have five galleys to give away. Here's what we'll do: to enter, just tweet (or re-tweet) about Petty Magic. If you re-tweet and follow me (@PettyMagic), you'll be entered twice. Of course, if you are already following me on Twitter then you get two too. (Yep, doing it old-school—I'm picking names out of a hat.) If I happen to draw your name twice (or if you've already been promised a galley), you'll just get the one; not that I wouldn't love to give you an extra to pass along, but these things are in short supply.

I'll draw the names on Friday morning. Isn't this exciting?!

Bizarre Love Pentangle

I have had an official request for more fun witchy things, in anticipation of the publication of Petty Magic in October. So here's a gem—I rediscovered this newspaper clipping from 2007 in my notes, from a newspaper Ailbhe brought with her when she came to New York for the Mary Modern book launch.

How to win over an Elizabethan woman with a frog, an ant hill and a ring

Daily Telegraph, 26 June 2007

As a sure-fire way to win a woman's love, it lacks credibility and could lead to a charge of animal cruelty.

An incantation that surfaces at an auction next month in a unique handwritten manuscript of magic spells advises late-Elizabethan males: "Take a frog and put him in a pot and stop it fast."

The anonymous author then advises the love-seeker to bury the pot in an ant hill at a crossroads for nine days. Then the two bones remaining should be put in running water.

"One of them will float against the stream ... Make thee a ring, and take the part that swum against the stream and set it in the ring, and when you will have any woman put it on her right hand ... she shall never rest till she hath been with thee."

The obscure "manuscript grimoire", written between 1590 and 1620, contains a vast range of conjurations, incantations, signs, portents, spells and folk remedies. It was found among the effects of the artist Robert Lenkiewicz, who died in 2002, aged 60.

The painter once faked his own death and kept the embalmed body of a tramp in his studio for 20 years.

Now the slim volume, which includes angelic seals with coded messages, is expected to fetch up to £12,000 at a Sotheby's literature sale in London on July 13.

Dr Gabriel Heaton, a manuscripts specialist at Sotheby's, said yesterday: "This is a richly illustrated Elizabethan anthology.

"Much of the text is set within a Christian framework - but there are also signs of an older and darker tradition in the use of blood rituals and, on one occasion, a reversed pentangle."