THE GREAT AND THE TERRIBLE: A Simple Plan

On brand for me: Poldark

I’m an unabashed word nerd and history lover. PBS-Masterpiece-watching, Scrabble-playing, historical-photos-instagram-account-following multipotentialite (look it up). Guilty as charged. I also love writing for kids. So it’s not surprising that all these coalesced into my new book THE GREAT AND THE TERRIBLE: The World's Most Glorious and Notorious Rulers and How They Got Their Names (Running Press Kids).

My idea for THE GREAT AND THE TERRIBLE started with a simple premise. I’d look for rulers throughout history who were remembered by a single adjective—a nickname, a sobriquet, a cognomen, a posthumous name. It seemed like such an elegant way to be remembered—one word to sum up a whole life, a life, a portfolio of accomplishments. Was it possible that a single word could capture it all? What would be lost in the process? 

Catherine the Great: Making a comeback

The sobriquets GREAT and TERRIBLE were the starting point. There were no shortage of ‘greats’ to choose from, people I’d never heard of before. Sargon the Great? Canute the Great? At the top of the list of terrible was the name we’ve all probably heard: Ivan. Then there’s his countrywoman Catherine the Great

I was off down the delightful research rabbit hole, unearthing hidden histories, like that of Roman emperor Heliogabalus, referred to by at least one historian as Heliogabalus the Horrible for his wicked deeds, such as (allegedly) suffocating his guests by releasing onto them a raft of rose petals so weighty that it cut off their oxygen supply. Or Fredegund the Bloodthirsty, a Merovingian (pre-French) queen who killed her own daughter by luring her to a trunk of jewels and then snapping the lid down on her neck!

The Roses of Heliogabalus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1888

A terrible mother: Fredegund the Bloodthirsty

But history isn’t just littered with baddies. There were previously unknown-to-me acts of greatness, such as those by Taksin the Great, king of Thonburi, in the area that is now Bangkok, known both as a great warrior and a champion of the arts and education. And Hatshepsut, the great ‘female pharaoh,’ whose jealous successor tried to have her erased from history. Then there were also a lot of leaders who are remembered only with regrettable or sometimes just humorous nicknames: Italo the Cabbage, Pippen the Short, Alfonso the Slobberer. 

The remarkable Nanyehi, Cherokee Ghigau or “Beloved Woman.”

As I dug deeper, I discovered how many gaps there are in the history that most of us learn, the  rich and interconnected nature of cultures from around the world. The extraordinary number of women with incredible accomplishments who have been overlooked, one just miles from my own home! (Nanyehi, the “Beloved Woman” of the Cherokee). In THE GREAT AND THE TERRIBLE, I hope to shine the light on them.

 I first came up with the idea for THE GREAT AND THE TERRIBLE over 10 years ago. I saved one of the rejections I got when this book was sent out at the time. The editor said she didn’t think kids wanted to read about ‘a bunch of foreign rulers with hard-to-pronounce names.’ Times have changed and I hope kids want to explore the rich tapestry of leaders who made history because of their deeds. I’m looking forward to introducing them!

bnTeen Blog conversation with liz kessler

AUTHORS LIZ KESSLER AND JOANNE O’SULLIVAN TALK HAUNTINGS, HURRICANES, AND HOW TO FIND THE STORY

by Melissa Albert

Authors Liz Kessler and Joanne O’Sullivan Talk Hauntings, Hurricanes, and How to Find the Story by Melissa Albert Liz Kessler is the author of Haunt Me, out this week, about a girl whose life in a new town comes with a delicately drawn supernatural love triangle, as she falls for the spirit of boy who lived in her room before her and then meets his grieving brother. Joanne O’Sullivan’s Between Two Skies centers on expert fisherman Evangeline, a small-town Louisiana girl about to lose her way of life to the rising waters of Hurricane Katrina. Recently the two spoke about their latest books, their craft, and their inspirations. Read more here.

The Reading Life with Susan Larson: WGNO Podcast

This week on The Reading Life: We'll be talking about the Vietnamese community in Louisiana in fact and in fiction. Mark VanLandingham talks about his scholarly study, Weathering Katrina: Culture and Recovery Among Vietnamese Americans. And Joanne O’Sullivan, author of the young adult novel, Between Two Skies, a story of a a Cajun girl who falls in love with a budding Vietnamese bluesman in her home town of Bayou Perdu.Read more here.

From Nerdy Book Club: Can a Place in the Heart Find a Place on the Shelves?

Like every aspiring fiction writer, I spent a lot of time reading advice articles as I sought to break into the field. I compulsively read the Publishers Weekly rights report to find out what was selling. I absorbed and extrapolated from articles on trends in children’s lit. “Go to a bookstore and see what they stock,” was a piece of advice I received. Fantasy, retellings, thrillers and x meets y seemed to dominate the shelves of every YA section I visited. What was selling? Everything except what I felt compelled to write, it seemed. And yet, what moved me—what kept bringing me back to the page—remained the same: a desire to burrow into those innermost chambers of the heart and its most tender feelings; to explore that moment in life when the future approaches and we have to decide how we will greet it: with jaw clenched or arms open.

As I started querying my manuscript for Between Two Skies, I started to notice a trend in responses. Yes, the writing was good—beautiful, even. The voice was compelling, the characters well drawn. But the story was a quiet one. And there was a judgment attached to that. To succeed in writing for teens, the message seemed to be, you need to roar, bluster and boom. Lower your voice, and they just can’t hear you.

 In a battle for teen attention, conventional wisdom says, there are proven winners. A   breakneck pace crosses the finish line first. An edgy plot edges out the others. A strong girl character is a must, but she must kick ass. She must be a bad ass. There’s a lot of focus on girls’ asses. But what about their wits and hearts? A female character can be strong and tender, can’t she? Isn’t history full of them, before Katniss arrived on the scene? For every Joan of Arc, there’s a Rosa Park, described by those who knew her as having a “quiet fortitude;” whose act of rebellion was not slaying a dragon, but refusing to be diminished. Don’t we have room for female characters whose hearts outflex their biceps? Whose power comes from within, not from a weapon or a secret, inherited ‘gift’? Isn’t there space for stories haunt even in the absence of ghosts; that vibrate with emotion, not explosions? Read more here.

On Kirby Larson's Friend Friday: Should Conflict Avoiders Write Fiction?

I was sitting on the couch of a Very Famous Novelist, interviewing her about her upcoming book for our local newspaper. “I love coming up with new ways to torment my characters,” she said, with unfettered delight in her eyes. She spoke with relish about dreaming up fresh perils and pitfalls for her heroines to face. “I never want my readers to be bored,” she added.

Her words were a revelation to me. Torment! Peril! These were levels of drama I never rose to in my writing. No wonder I’ll never be a Very Famous Novelist, I thought to myself. Writing: I’m doing it wrong.

“You have to really make your main character suffer,” came back the beta reader notes on one of my first drafts of what would become Between Two Skies. “Throw every obstacle you can in her way.” I imagined calamities: car crashes? Fist fights? That didn’t feel true to my story or to my character. “More tension!” another reader demanded.

According to every personality test I’ve ever taken, I’m the peacemaker, the mediator, the one who values harmony. Let’s work it out is my default over let’s duke it out. When I heard the words conflict, tension and suffering, all I could think of were big, dramatic elements: painful deaths and villainous plots. But I write stories that are a bit more down to earth. Let’s face it, I thought, novels are about conflict. Without a sustained series of setbacks, a novel isn’t a novel. Given who I am, should I even be trying to write a novel?, I wondered. Read more here.

Melissa Roske's Ask the Author Blog

The Proust Questionnaire, popularized by the  French essayist and novelist Marcel Proust, is said to reveal a person’s true nature through a series of probing (i.e., nosy) questions. In the hot seat today: Joanne O’Sullivan, author of the YA contemporary debut, BETWEEN TWO SKIES (Candlewick Press, April 25). 

What is your idea of perfect happiness? 

I’m going to borrow from one of my favorite travel writers, Freya Stark: “To awaken in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.” I love having time to explore an interesting place I’ve never been before with absolutely no schedule to adhere to. Read more here.

From Writer, Writer Pants on Fire: On Finding Inspiration

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today's guest for the WHAT is Joanne O'Sullivan author of BETWEEN TWO SKIES. Joanne is a journalist for the Asheville Citizen-Times. She lived in New Orleans for several years and returns to southern Louisiana frequently. Between Two Skies is her debut novel. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband and children.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

I tend to pick up threads for several places and weave them together. When Hurricane Katrina hit, I tried to understand the full impact it had had on the people in an area I love. I started to draw a parallel between the people displaced by Katrina and the characters in one of Louisiana’s most iconic stories “Evangeline:” an epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow’s “Evangeline” starts in Acadia (what’s now Nova Scotia) at the time when the French-speaking population is being driven out by the British, becoming refugees and eventually settling in Louisiana. It struck me that there was a new exodus of people leaving Louisiana. They were called “Katrina refugees” and like the Acadians (the original Cajuns), many ended up far from home. My mom is an Irish immigrant, and I grew up listening to old Irish ballads filled with heartache and longing for a home you could never return to. I think those songs subconsciously supplied a melody for my story in a way, while “Evangeline” supplied a bit of the lyrics.  Read more here.

Patricia Bailey's Author Spotlight Blog

T Please tell us a little bit about your book?

Most kids her age can’t wait to get out of tiny Bayou Perdu, a fishing town way, way down in Louisiana. But for sixteen-year-old Evangeline Riley it’s home. She has her best friends, Kendra and Danielle; her wise, beloved Mamere; and back-to-back titles in the under-sixteen fishing rodeo and above all peace that only comes when she takes her skiff out to where there is nothing but sky and air and water and wings. Then Hurricane Katrina comes, and everything changes. Exiled to Atlanta, she longs for home. But when she meets—and falls for—fellow “refugee” and budding bluesman Tru, she has to decide if home is a person or a place.

What inspired you to write this story and/or these characters?

I went to college at Loyola University in New Orleans and that area holds a special place in my heart. After Hurricane Katrina hit, I really wanted to do something to help. However, I was expecting my son, so I wasn’t able to volunteer for rebuilding. Instead, I read a lot about what was happening: a lot of first-person narratives. I was struck by the teens whose lives were interrupted by the storm. School had either just started or was about to start for many. The year that they though they would have—and for some the life they thought they would have—never happened.

I first read Wordsworth’s “Evangeline” when I was in college in New Orleans. This sweeping, melancholy love poem tells the story of a girl in Acadia (now Atlantic Canada) separated from her true love Gabriel on the eve of their wedding as the British forced French speakers out of Canada and they resettle in Louisiana. She relentlessly searches the frontier of the US for him, only to find him when it’s too late. The heroine of this story, Evangeline, is legendary in Louisiana. Read more here.

PW's Shelftalker with Leslie Hawkins

Over the last couple of years, I’ve had the pleasure of a front row seat as long-time Spellbound customer Joanne O’Sullivan made the journey from submitting a manuscript to celebrating the publication of her debut young adult novel. We’ve had a lot of conversations about the joys and frustrations of the whole process.

A few years ago we were chatting outside a local radio station, where her son Finn had just reviewed a book for Spellbound’s weekly kidlit radio spot, when Joanne told me that she had a manuscript ready to submit and was really nervous about it. Months later, Joanne’s daughter Maeve was attending a poetry workshop for teens at the bookstore when I heard the fabulous news that her book had been bought by Candlewick Press. And all along the way we’ve chatted about the learning curve for a first-time author, from getting used to waiting (a lot) to pulling together an author platform to market yourself and your book. But all the work—and all the waiting—have paid off, and now Joanne’s debut novel Between Two Skies hits the shelves this week.

Not only that, it’s hitting those shelves with a resounding bang thanks to starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist and designation as an Okra Pick by SIBA, our regional booksellers association. Oh, and it’s also a Junior Library Guild selection, which I know from my school librarian customers is not only a big honor, it’s also a huge influencer on library sales.

Between Two Skies is the story of a 16-year-old girl living with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Not just the physical aftermath, but the emotional and even sociopolitical aftermath of the storm. The sense of place is captured beautifully. Joanne lived in New Orleans for several years and returns to the area frequently.

Since moving to Asheville, Joanne has been an important part of the local book scene as a journalist covering the literary beat. I asked her recently about whether her work covering authors and book events for the newspaper prepared her in any way for her experience as a debut author. Read more here.