BLOGWORDS – Tuesday 24 October 2017 – TUESDAY REVIEWS-DAY – NEW RELEASE FEATURE – THE SORROW STONE by J.A. MCLACHLAN
TUESDAY REVIEWS-DAY – RELEASE DAY FEATURE – THE SORROW STONE by J.A. MCLACHLAN
What if you could sell your sorrow?
During the middle ages, a mother mourning the death of her child believed she could “sell her sorrow” by selling a nail from her child’s coffin to a traveling peddler.
Lady Celeste is overwhelmed with grief when her infant son dies. Desperate to find relief, she escapes the convent where her husband has sent her to recover and begs a passing peddler to buy her sorrow. Jean, the cynical peddler she meets, is nobody’s fool; he does not believe in superstitions and insists Celeste include the valuable ruby ring on her finger along with the nail in return for his coin.
When Celeste learns that without her wedding ring her husband may set her aside, she determines to retrieve it—without reclaiming her sorrow. But how will she find the peddler and convince him to give up the precious ruby ring?
The thud of stones meeting flesh filled his ears. He felt, in his own body, the hot, burning pain as each one hit, tearing the thin fabric of her shift, digging into her bruised and bleeding flesh. It should be him there, not her. He could not move, speak, breathe…
Something shoved up against his leg. His breath emerged in a gasp.
“Mama!”
A girl of five or six squeezed past him. She pushed her way through the crowd till she reached the front, crying all the while, “Mama! Mama!”
The woman’s face was hidden, covered by her hair. The air was thick with stones. Again and again they struck her, but still she did not cry out.
“Mama!” the child screamed again.
The woman looked up.
“Mama!” She sprinted across the open ground. A stone whizzed past her ear. A second hit her back, flinging her to the ground.
The woman cried out then, a wild, animal shriek. It echoed, hideous and compelling, across the square.
She would be killed! The horror of it swept over Jean as he stared at the fallen child. No! He could not bear that! He shoved his way through the crowd, unable to look away from the woman, unable to escape the terror in her eyes as she strained against her bonds, struggling to reach the child sprawled on the ground. She shrieked again, a high, keening noise. Jean gritted his teeth to keep from screaming with her.
At the edge of the crowd he stopped. What was he doing? What in the name of Heaven had come over him?
Then the child moaned and the woman screamed again and Jean ran forward, unable to stop himself. The little girl tried to roll over as Jean reached her. He was no longer looking at the woman, but he felt her strain toward him as he bent down and scooped up the child.
A stone struck the side of his head as he straightened. He staggered, almost dropping the child. He regained his footing and turned to race back to the safety of the crowd.
“The adulterer!” a man cried.
Other voices took up the cry. He stepped forward, but the gap in the crowd where he had pushed through to get to the child had closed against him. A second stone hit his arm. There could be no mistaking that this one was meant for him. He saw the metal smith among the crowd, his arm drawn back, aiming. As Jean watched, he flung his stone.
It hit Jean’s shoulder with a stinging blow that took his breath away. He crouched over the child, holding her tightly to him, more aware of the woman’s anguished cries behind him and the child’s terror than his own pain. Two more stones came flying at him; one missed its mark but the other hit the child’s leg. She screamed and twisted, trying to burrow into him. A third stone hit her cheek, drawing blood. He wrapped both arms around her, leaving his own head exposed as he searched for an opening in the crowd.
rem: Hullo Jane Ann, and congratulations on your new story! If you could live anywhere in any time period, where would you go?
JANE ANN: If we’re talking “live”, I’d stay right here. I think we have it pretty good right now in Canada, and besides, all the people I love are here. I write very realistic, researched historical fiction of the Middle Ages. No one who is used to 21st Century comfort, health care, and hygiene would want to live there. But I wouldn’t mind a short visit to any number of eras.
rem: Yes, you DO write very realistic and authentic fiction! And I’m with you, I’ll go visit most anywhere, any time, but wouldn’t want to live there! Where did you find this story idea?
JANE ANN: I first heard the folk lore it’s based on at a lecture given by a midwife about pregnancy and childbirth in the Middle Ages. I knew I wanted to write about it right away. But it took years of research before the story emerged.
rem: Again, yes, the depth of authenticity in your story doesn’t come quick—or easy or cheap! And your writing shines for it. Who was the easiest character to write and why? The most difficult?
JANE ANN: Gilles. He’s a minor character who doesn’t show up until the end but when I started writing from his POV, the chapter just leaped off the page with life.
Celeste was the most difficult because when she sells her sorrow, she loses her memories (if she remembered she’d be sad all over again) and she loses her ability to feel emotions. It was very hard to write an unfeeling (literally) character and still make her sympathetic. She wants both back, but at the same time she doesn’t want them back, because her grief for her son was crippling. She’s a very complicated character, and it took a lot of rewrites to get her right.
rem: And you pulled it off, too, Jane Ann. I ached for her. Well, I wanted to flog her for running, too, but totally understand why she felt the way she did. What do you munch on while you’re writing / researching / editing?
JANE ANN: I chew gum. If I’m out of gum (and I try not to be) I chew my fingernails. When I have no more fingernails, I chew on a pencil. Once I chewed on a pen but I got a mouthful of ink. You can see why I try to never be out of gum.
rem: Note to self: send Jane Ann some chewing gum… What do you do to recover once you’ve typed “THE END?”
JANE ANN: I sew a quilt. Or go to a movie. Or read a book. But designing a quilt is best because it satisfies my urge to create something without requiring the mental focus of writing a novel.
rem: No kidding re the mental focus! I’d love to see some of your quilts sometime! What a lovely outlet for your creativity. Jane Ann, congratulations again, and thank you for taking time to visit with me on the blog today.
- A. McLachlan was born in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of a short story collection, CONNECTIONS, published by Pandora Press and two College textbooks on Professional Ethics, published by Pearson-Prentice Hall. She has been reading literary fiction, science fiction and historical fiction in equal measure all her life. Walls of Wind was her first published Science Fiction novel. She has two young adult science fiction novels, The Occasional Diamond Thief and The Salarian Desert Game, published by EDGE Publishing. And her first historical fiction, The Sorrow Stone, set in the 12th Century, is now available. She is represented by Carrie Pestritto at Prospect Agency.
http://www.janeannmclachlan.com
https://www.facebook.com/janeann.mclachlan
- At first he did not know it was a human being. She lay crumpled on the ground like a bundle of dirty rags tossed aside by some trader.
- She held out her closed left hand. “Buy it! For the love of God, buy my sorrow before I go insane!” Slowly she opened her fingers. A long black nail, slightly bent near the flattened head, lay across her small white palm.
- “I cannot remember,” she said. She had had this problem yesterday, but she had been certain a night of sleep would resolve it.
- Celeste’s eyes widened. She covered her mouth with her hand to prevent herself crying out. Was it true? She remembered the ring, the physical weight of it on her finger, knew it to be her husband’s marriage token. But she could not remember receiving it. She knew her husband’s name but could not visualize his face. He was like a silvered image in her mind, flat and cold, without any distinguishing features.
- Jean’s wife, Mathilde, had sewed a dozen silk handkerchiefs and embroidered crosses on them. They could sell profitably in their own right, but Jean tripled their value by claiming that they had been blessed at the Saint’s shrine in Santiago.
- She must confront the peddler alone when she found him. If Lord Bernard learned she had willingly given away her marriage ring, it would not matter that she had later retrieved it.
- “Lady Celeste? Do you believe God did not hear you?” Celeste looked up, shaken. Father Jacques was watching her, waiting for her answer.
- The door opens slowly, the quiet scrape of its movement ominous in the darkness. Her feet are frozen to the cold stone floor; she cannot even raise her hand to cover her face, although she cannot bear to see inside the room. The door is fully open now; she cannot breathe, her terror is so great. How small it is, so small it makes her ache. It only covers half the bench it rests on. She steps through the doorway, stretching her hand toward the little wooden casket—
- The donkey woke him, braying and surging to its feet. Jean was up almost as quickly, straining to see in the darkness. Several murky shadows crept between the trees, slightly darker than the surrounding gloom. He swung his staff up as the first one came at him, and heard a satisfying CRACK!
- Her memory was sparse and fragmented, like a length of cloth after the dress pieces have been cut away from it.
- It was one thing not to care for people; quite another not to care for God.
- They passed their sorrow onto others, the nobility. They shed suffering as a snake sheds its skin.
- To get the setting and period right in The Sorrow Stone, I flew to France and travelled the entire route Jean and Celeste take, including the Cluny Monastery. I drove local guides and historians crazy asking “Was this castle/monastery/building here in the 12th Century? What trades were practiced here then? What was the climate and vegetation like here in the 12th Century?”
- When I first heard the folk superstition about selling your sorrow, I was writing speculative fiction at the time, so I tried using the idea in a story, and it totally failed. A publisher, who liked the concept also, asked me, “Why don’t you just write it in the Middle Ages, where it came from?” (Duh, right?) It took years of research to do that, but I’m glad I did. (rem: me too!) Meanwhile, I changed the original story, got rid of all references to sorrow, rewrote it and found a publisher for it. Can you guess which of my novels it is?
- After I wrote Gilles’ chapters, I realized I really liked writing young adults, so I wrote three more novels with young adult protagonists. I still find teens the most fun age to write about.
- After reading The Sorrow Stone, a reader told me “You do tortured souls really well.” I don’t know if that’s a compliment or a personality flaw, but I realized that I have always been drawn to complex, conflicted characters and the authors who portray them. Here’s my list: The Idiot by Dostoyevski, The Chosen by Chaim Potok, Hamlet and King Lear by Shakespeare, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, The Gold Finch, The Hunger Games… I just realized this list could go on for ten pages.
- I once read every novel in my seven preferred genres at the local library, and had to find something else to do till they got more in.
- My seven preferred genres (not in any order) are: science fiction, historical fiction, literary fiction, contemporary fiction, women’s fiction, fantasy, young adult/coming of age fiction.
- I started out writing poetry, and had several of my poems published in anthologies while I was in university.
- I once wrote a story which my older sister accused me of plagiarizing from a picture book from the library. I was, like, 8 years old. It was unintentional, but true. I was so mortified at being accused of “cheating” that I quit writing prose altogether. Then, in grad school, I realized that ALL Shakespeare’s dramas and historicals were re-tellings of popular tales or histories. It’s not the tale but how you spin it that makes it original.
- Every author has favorites from among their novels. For me, it’s a tie between The Sorrow Stone and Walls of Wind. I’m not sure I’ll ever love another story of mine as much as I love those two.
- I love teaching and speaking, no matter the size of the audience. But there was a time I was so nervous about it, a friend asked me whether she should warn my audience to wear raincoats. It wasn’t my voice I was afraid of projecting.
Sorrow is a dark companion, a tormenting thing, driving us sometimes to madness.
Churning thoughts and vague memories torment Lady Celeste, pushing her to madness in her grief. Selling her sorrow, though, does not bring the relief she so desperately seeks.
The peddler, Jean, has no scruples and doesn’t believe the superstition. But his fate seems inexplicably tangled with the Lady whose sorrow he bought—and whose ring he helped himself to.
The conflict and agony that drives Lady Celeste is dark and frightening, and very real. The sense of dread—and guilt—that plagues her drives her away from the very place she would be safest. I longed for her memory to surface, no matter how horrible the thing she hid from herself. I longed for the peace of knowing, and accepting, what could not be changed. I fought with her against shadowed memories, and fought with her to cling to the sweet ones.
I wanted to throttle the peddler, while feeling an element of sympathy for him, for the life he lived, cruel and crude and harsh. I longed for his peace as much as for Lady Celeste.
Ms. McLachlan’s storytelling is impeccable, her details and knowledge of life in 12th century France evident on every page. The terminology and vernacular put the reader right on the road with the peddler, or in the abbey with Lady Celeste. The sights and sounds—and smells—come alive as the characters move through their paces. And the story, so tightly woven, compels the reader to keep turning the page.
Both main characters have their storyline, and Ms. McLachlan has interwoven them skillfully into one intricate story, bringing it to a gripping climax and fitting resolution.
I received a free copy of this book, but was under no obligation to read the book or to post a review. I offer my review of my own free will. The opinions expressed in my review are my honest thoughts and reaction to this book.
#Blogwords, Tuesday Reviews-Day, #TRD, New Release Event, The Sorrow Stone, J.A. McLachlan
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