{"id":201,"date":"2011-08-14T11:48:09","date_gmt":"2011-08-14T18:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/blog\/?p=201"},"modified":"2012-05-18T14:01:30","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T21:01:30","slug":"how-star-crossed-came-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/how-star-crossed-came-about\/","title":{"rendered":"How Star-Crossed came about"},"content":{"rendered":"

Star-Crossed<\/em><\/strong> was conceived at the helm of the Endeavour<\/em><\/strong> Replica in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on the middle watch.\u00a0 Bob and I had signed on as voyage crewmembers for the incredible experience of learning to sail a square-rigged ship.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0HM Bark Endeavour<\/a><\/em>, a 20th century replica of Captain Cook\u2019s 18th century converted coal carrier from Whitby, England,\u00a0had been built in Australia and was circumnavigating with a small permanent crew aided by temporary voyage crew (willing lubbers like Bob and I) who participated in various legs of the journey.\u00a0 The three-masted Endeavour<\/em> is a floating museum, a veritable time machine and we were fortunate to\u00a0play our parts as 18th century ordinary seamen.\u00a0\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bob and I served on the vessel\u2019s three-week crossing from Vancouver to Hawaii in October, 1999.\u00a0 We were among 54 souls aboard; most of us students, retired professionals, parents and grandparents in our former 20th century lives.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We worked and slept side by side and learned the ropes in short order.\u00a0 We paid for the privilege of being pressed seamen and it was one of the most thrilling and difficult experiences of my life.<\/p>\n

A handful of us were women.\u00a0 In this 20th century egalitarian world we were expected to do everything the men were expected to do; from climbing aloft and out on the footropes of the yard arms to make and furl sail, heaving together on halyards, sheets, lifts and braces, braiding reef points, scrubbing decks, doing dishes, keeping lookout, and taking our turn at the helm.<\/p>\n

It was during my trick at the helm when the idea for Star-Crossed<\/em> (working title, Orion Rising<\/em>) was born.\u00a0 If I, a middle-aged woman, could do a man\u2019s work aboard ship then surely a younger lass would have no problem passing as a lad and going to sea, just like those picaresque accounts from previous centuries.\u00a0 Accounts that proved to have a basis in fact, I was to learn when I began to research the Period in earnest.\u00a0 Aboard Endeavour<\/em>, the character Patricia<\/strong> was born from my imagination, inspired by lack of sleep, fear, and\u00a0a close-knit commeraderie that quickly developed amongst us.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t yet know the plot but I was living the setting, I was imagining the character, her motivation, what drove her.\u00a0 I knew what she wanted, and what she feared.\u00a0 When I got off the ship in Kona I still had years of research ahead of me, but the character Patricia was vigorously alive and refused to be ignored.<\/p>\n

In 2006 Star-Crossed<\/em> was published by Alfred A. Knopf<\/strong> as a young adult book.\u00a0 My agent was Laura Rennert of Andrea Brown Literary Agency<\/strong>, and I am grateful to her for hooking me up with such an esteemed publisher.\u00a0 My editor, Michelle Frey<\/strong>, was also editing Christopher Paolini\u2019s Eragon <\/em>series.\u00a0 The day I signed the contract with Knopf<\/strong> was the highlight of my literary life, thus far.<\/p>\n

I wrote Patricia\u2019s story from the viewpoint of a teenager, never intending it to be a novel for young adults. \u00a0(Had I intended it for young readers I would have peopled it with vampires and wizards.) \u00a0Yet the New York Public Library<\/strong> chose Star-Crossed<\/em> to be among the Books for the Teen Age \u2013 2007<\/strong>. I was honored but still confused over the whole marketing issue.\u00a0 Is To Kill A Mockingbird<\/em> a Young Adult book because it is told from a girl\u2019s point of view? What about Salinger\u2019s Catcher in the Rye<\/em>? When I was young there were no YA books.\u00a0 At a certain age if you loved to read, you started reading adult books and adults read books written from the perspective of children and teens.\u00a0 These were called Coming of Age<\/em> novels.\u00a0 Yet my agent convinced me the YA market was the way to go.\u00a0 What did I know about marketing?<\/p>\n

After signing the contract it took a more than two years for Star-Crossed<\/em><\/strong> to be published. \u00a0A lifetime, it seemed.\u00a0 What was I to do while waiting to edit the final galleys?\u00a0 Write the sequel, of course!\u00a0 And so I wrote the first draft of Surgeon\u2019s Mate; Book Two of the Patricia MacPherson Nautical Adventure Series<\/em><\/strong>.<\/strong>\u00a0 Yet Knopf didn\u2019t want to publish a series or even a sequel, the initial sales hadn\u2019t been promising.\u00a0 My agent didn\u2019t see it as a lucrative venture either, and so Surgeon\u2019s Mate<\/em> languished \u201con the shelf\u201d for four years until Nautical Fiction maven David Hayes<\/strong> in England discovered me on Facebook<\/strong> and alerted Tom Grundner<\/strong> of Fireship Press<\/strong>, publisher of historical and nautical fiction about my yet unpublished sequel.<\/p>\n

Surgeon\u2019s Mate<\/em><\/strong> was published in April, 2011 as adult historical fiction, and is available in trade paperback and electronic editions from the publisher and through bookstores worldwide. \u00a0Now Star-Crossed <\/em>is going out of print and if Knopf doesn\u2019t want to reprint it, Fireship<\/strong> does!\u00a0 What luck!<\/p>\n

Patricia MacPherson is alive and well, struggling to get by disguised as a young man.\u00a0 She is keeping me busy, I\u2019m deep into book three (working title, Rogue\u2019s Island<\/em>) which I plan to have finished early 2012. \u00a0Thanks to David Hayes’ \u00a0historicnavalfiction.com \u00a0<\/a>and Fireship Press<\/strong> <\/a>I am to write a series after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Star-Crossed was conceived at the helm of the Endeavour Replica […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,85],"tags":[44,33,10,195,32,387,35],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women-sailors","category-writing-and-publishing","tag-books-for-the-teen-age-2007","tag-fireship-press","tag-historical-fiction","tag-historical-nautical-fiction","tag-hm-bark-endeavour","tag-patricia-macpherson-nautical-adventure-series","tag-star-crossed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1145,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/1145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}