Farewell to Andalucia, Spain, the land of Flamenco.

Hello all!

Well, my 5-week Grand Tour is just about over, and very soon I will be winging it home, ready to face lots of work and the challenges of a new year. I am spending the last week in Spain, visiting Morocco, then 2 more days in Paris, then I fly home. Thank you to those of you who followed my travels both here on my blog and/or on facebook.

In honour of Spain where we've spent a total of 2 weeks this visit, I thought I'd post about flamenco. Andalucia, the region where we've been staying, is credited with being the birthplace of flamenco. I caught a wonderful show in Madrid on a previous visit, and this time I was fortunate enough to catch a show here at the resort on the Costa del Sol. The music is wonderful, the costumes are so unique and colourful, the dancing is so energetic, made more so by the throbbing, thrumming guitars and boot slamming. It brought back memories of a story I wrote for RomanticFridayWriters for a prompt in 2012 - The Perfect 9.5, which I decided to re-post today with a few edits. I hope you enjoy my story, inspired by a visit to Madrid in 2011.

The Perfect Dance

The women danced. Their dresses, bodices decorated with jewels, shimmered in the semi-dark. The movements began slowly, the dancers moving like fish floating across a luminescent ocean. Soon the slow dance became a crescendo of whirling, twirling patterns across the barn-like room. This was excellence, the best of the best.

Jose cast his eyes to the stage. The musicians stood tall, their faces gleaming, sweat dripping from their black curls. They played the trembling guitars, stroking the strings with a thrumming like a thousand fluttering winged birds, softer now, then louder. Their white shirts were blue under the light, their tight black high-waisted trousers gleamed and shone. Cowboy boots were glittering glass as they stamped to their own beat.

Mirrored lights swirled over the dancers, silvering the sequins on the flounces of skirts as the frills vibrated with the dancers’ steps. It was a kaleidoscope of red, purple, yellow and white, checks, polka dots, stripes. Jose counted the heavy, clacking beats as the black dancing pumps met the timber floor, shaking the room. A hundred shoes in perfect time as the dancers followed the thrum of the five flamenco guitars.

But there was only one dancer on the floor who set his blood boiling.

Her auburn ringlets, her lithe body clad in a slash of brightest red, her waist an invitation for a man to span with joined fingers. His Angelique. Her lower body kicked yards of frills, revealing slim legs in satiny black stockings. Her arms held above her head, the clicking fingers, were a perfect sculpture of beauty and tension. His eyes followed her every movement. How could the judges fault her? Did she miss a beat? No, every call of the sobbing guitars was met, every whirl perfection, every stamping foot in perfect timing.

Source*

Soon it was only a competition between two – Angelique and a fiery redhead who looked imperiously at the judge’s table each time she shimmied by, daring them to eliminate her. She was perfection herself, her body screamed. Find a fault if you dare! I’m the perfect 10!

Angelique was asked to leave the floor. How could they send her away? Only he saw the tear she brushed from her eye. He half stood in his seat, mortified.

‘9.5!’ The judges score his Angelique.

‘They might give you a less than perfect score,’ he thought to himself, ‘but to me you’re the perfect 10’.

Photo my own, taken in Madrid 2011.

Please join me and several other enthusiastic writers/authors, who will be posting to the NEW BEGINNINGS prompt at Write...Edit...Publish on January 22 - a bit earlier or later is fine. Sign up in my sidebar, or visit Write...Edit...Publish.

Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises - Travelling with Ernest Hemingway - and eating a meal in Paris' Latin Quarter.

Happy New Year!!

'You are all a lost generation.' Gertrude Stein

'One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever...The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down and hasteth to the place where he arose...The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually...All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.' Ecclesiastes

The above taken from the forward pages to The Sun Also Rises.

I like to travel with a novel that says something about the country I'm seeing. Last trip to Paris I used Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and followed his walks around Paris. I also learned that he always put his writing first. He claims he wrote every day from 5 am - 12 noon, when he put down his pencil (but not until he knew what would happen next), then meandered downtown to meet literary luminaries such as Gertrude Stein, Scott F Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Ezra Pound et al, and discussed his work/their work, helping each other's art. (Pretty cool critique partners!)  

My critique partners aren't travelling with me, but nothing suits my travels better than a Hemingway novel. Not everyone is a Hemingway fan - heck, he didn't write fantasy, sci-fiction, steampunk etc, genres that have huge followings today and are of the type many bloggers like to write. He wrote mainly chronologically, with sparse back story. He said he sweated over every sentence, every chapter, ruthlessly deleting any superfluous words. Some find his style sparse, but if you read and re-read his carefully-crafted stories you continue to find layers you previously missed. This is well expressed by the Evening News when they reviewed The Sun Also Rises -

'Hemingway captures atmosphere by reticence and breathes life into his characters by pages left unsaid...It is American; it is literature; and it is a first novel by a genius.' 

Hemingway stuck to realism with a dash of dystopian. I'm no huntin', fishin', hard drinkin' kinda person, but Hemingway's always been my favourite author for reasons I can't possibly articulate. He's real and gritty with no frills, which I'm sure he learned from his journalistic days and his passion for the short story. He wrote about the world he knew, the world in which he lived and played. It is hard to separate him from his characters. I find Jake in Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises, impossible to separate from Hemingway himself. As they say, many early novels are partly autobiographical.

I decided to make this novel my current travel companion, as it stars Paris and the louche characters that moved within its bars and restaurants, planning their next big adventure. The big adventure in this novel is, of course, the 'fiesta', the bullfight, in Spain. I've taken more notice of the bullrings in Spain this trip, and listened to the bullfight history enthusiastically propounded by locals and tour guides. In my ignorance I thought bullfighting had been banned, but it turns out it's only banned in Catalonia, capital Barcelona. The 'fiesta' is alive and well in the rest of Spain and the year seems to be dictated by where/when the next fiesta takes place. Madrid, the main bullfighting city, has a whole month of fiesta. 

I've photographed many bullrings, but I don't know about you, I'm sure I couldn't stomach attending a bullfight.

To the main point of this post...in the excellent how-to writing guide - Manuscript Makeover - the author suggests as a writing exercise to find a paragraph from your favourite novel/author, and re-write it your way...

I was reminded of this exercise when I read a few paragraphs in Chapter 19, p.204, of The Sun...when the main character Jake is having dinner in Paris. I decided to re-write it using my own experience of a dinner in Paris in the Latin Quarter...with apologies to Hemingway and vegetarians...

'The restaurant was all reds and blacks. It wrapped its dark arms around me, welcomed me back after a long absence. The meal was typically French - plain peasant's food - mussels marinated in red wine which were dealt with quickly, then I was eating onion soup with soaked garlicky bread and long, stringy cheese which stuck to my chin. But what could beat the shot of sweet onion fragrance on a bitter winter's night? I wanted to live in the bowl, to be revived by the nourishing juices.

The waiter offered a free cocktail. I held the tiny jewelled glass against the light. Then I held it close to my nose, took a sip. It tasted of rose perfume, a sweet flavour that clashed with the onion. I pushed it aside and ordered a rosé  to accompany the Beef Bourguignon which was delivered to my table. The sharp aromas of tiny roasted onions, carrot, and rich, red beef...my stomach danced. The onion soup was already a distant memory. I adjusted my linen napkin on my lap and inhaled before I lifted my fork and speared a cube of tender meat. The flavour of the red wine mixed with onion and herbs revealed to me, if the mussels and onion soup hadn't already convinced me, that I was back in France.

It was pleasant beyond words to be drinking good wine and eating excellent food - a bottle of wine and a plate of comforting food is always good company.

The attentive waiter saw I was immersed in my food and drink and left me to my joys.

It was good to be back in France.'

I enjoyed writing this and it proves that I do actually write while travelling, but apologies to Papa who would have slashed and burned many of my descriptions. To give you an idea of what I tried to emulate -

'I went in and ate dinner. It was a big meal for France but it seemed very carefully apportioned after Spain. I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was a Chateau Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company...' etc

How are you travelling? I wish you a wonderful 2014. Whether you make New Year's Resolutions or not (I don't), I invite you to join me in writing or illustrating something that could be classed as New Beginnings for Write...Edit...Publish's first challenge for the year. Sign up anytime from now until the 22nd...

Does travel make our stories better? Paris, Italy, Hugh Jackman...er...Outback Queensland anyone?

Ah...ever since a family friend kept me supplied with cartons of Mills & Boon novels when I was about 13, I've been hooked--on exotic places. At 13 I wasn't so much thinking about boys, but the M&B stories certainly made me hard to please on that front, (not too many Italian Counts or French Dukes in Oz), but I was more hooked on the novels' settings.

SETTINGS! Yes! These handy little books took me to islands in Greece with sparkling white houses and brightly-painted blue doors dazzling in the sun--took me to lakes in Italy, chateaux in France bursting with vineyards, castles in England, haciendas in Spain. All of these were very exotic to a teenager who'd grown up in country Queensland. My state was only 100+ years old--we'd never build chateaux, our vineyards were well in the future, our 'haciendas' were plain old cattle properties with falling-down homesteads where women cried over lack of water to grow flowers.

So...I couldn't wait to finish my education and hit the road to places unknown...and that's a journey that never ends for me. But coupled with my love of soaking up new cultures, new lands, I find so much inspiration in exotic places that it turns up in my stories, it often is my story. I've just sent off a micro fiction hoping it will be one of 14 chosen to be printed on a cushion at the Queensland Writers Festival. It was influenced by Paris. My LETTERS story still under construction for the current RomanticFridayWriters challenge is set during the war on the Western Front near Ypres, Belgium. (Yep, been to the Flanders Fields, what a privilege!)

No! No! No! I can see you shaking your head--you don't have to travel to find exotic settings--your homegrown setting is exotic to everyone but you, and no one can write about your local area like you can, and I love reading your stories set in the places you inhabit. Look at Kittie Howard and her Louisiana stories. Roland Yeomans and his New Orleans' stories, Joy Campbell and her Jamican stories, just for starters! Love them! Now Harlequin Escape is actually asking for stories set in Outback Queensland! So my state has finally become exotic enough for readers! Nothing like dust, horses, snakes, with a few handsome, rugged stockmen and station owners thrown in, is there? (Think Hugh Jackman in Australia, the movie --okay, had to get him in somewhere. Much better than a foppish French Duke IMO).

Now, what's that picture of Paris bits and pieces doing here?

Those who travel a lot have their favourite places, and as most of you know, mine is Paris. If I see 'Paris' in a book title, or it's mentioned in the blurb, I must have it. Murder in Paris, Lunch in Paris, Rats in Paris Sewers...whatever...Browsing one of the excellent indie bookshops in West End on the weekend (Avid Reader), I see a little gift from Edward Rutherford.

Italy comes a close second to Paris--why do I devour each of Donna Leon's Commisario Brunetti books? Because Venice is the main character. Once you've been to Venice and have lost yourself in the backstreets, the canals and the bridges, reading about these in a great story is the next best thing. I've just picked up her latest, Jewels of Paradise. Looks like Brunetti doesn't feature for once. Okay, how come I can read so much? Well, I don't sleep much, sleep is over rated.

But be prepared to cop flak if you add objects to your settings that aren't actually there. Tourists to Corona, Italy, (the setting for Under the Tuscan Sun), complain vehemently when they can't find the fountain which featured in the touching La Dolce Vita scene in the movie. I've been to Corona, and nup, it's not there! But the villa, Bramasole, is.

So...where is this going? In future posts, I'm going to hopefully snaffle some authors and get them to tell us all how travel has enriched their stories or how they've played their local setting for all it's worth. Hope you'll pop by to hear what they have to say.

Meanwhile, you can also make money by selling your travel stories to magazines. Sometimes they pay money, sometimes they pay with a subscription to the mag, sometimes they gift you with travel-related gadgets or luggage. All good.


What do you think?

• Do you often/sometimes choose books just because of the setting? 
• Do you write books as a result of your travels? Or do you think of a preferred setting then travel for research?
• Do you prefer settings that no amount of travel provides -- sci-fi land, fantasyland, steampunk??

What I did on your Summer Vacation - September 23. I went to South Korea, Madrid, San Sebastian in Spain and Biarritz in France, just for starters...

If you're looking for my #RomanticFridayWriter story, it's here today.

Well I know you guys in the Northern Hemp are saying goodbye to summer's tornadoes and floods and saying hello to winter's snows and winds, but down here in the Southern Hemp we're just saying goodbye to winter's beautiful weather and hello to spring which is actually like summer already. So I had to do a think about Michael's Summer Blogfest, but then, aha, I remembered I actually visited the Northern Hemp this summer, so let's grab out a few of the, ahem 30,000 or so pics and post them! Done!

My followers would know that during the southern winter, northern summer, I travelled to Spain, France - (country and Paris), Andorra and Morocco. I'll post a few pics from each country. I must say except for Spain and Morocco, summer seemed to be strangely absent. It was the same temperature in Paris' summer when we flew out as it was in Australia's winter when we landed at Brisbane airport.

First stop, Seoul, South Korea. Always strange not to see bright blue skies. Here is Songdu City, a new satellite city out of Seoul, where everything is new, green, and strangely empty. I was intrigued how they prop up their trees. Must be a story to that, maybe simply very strong winds.

One of those lucky breaks - happened on The Walk of the Royal Family at Incheon Airport. The South Korean national dress is gorgeous. Pity I can't show more, but...

Welcome to Madrid, Spain, the gypsies sang! They were just so great I stood for ages and listened, clapped and smiled. And yes, Alex, I gave them money!

Blue skies again you'll note! We just happened on a multicultural food and music festival in the Grand Square of Madrid. Here a Bolivian band struts their stuff. Madrid is alive with music! All day, all night! The people own their city!

Did I tell you the Bolivians are tres colourful? We were really blessed to be part of this festival with like a million or so others. Was very hot summer weather so these guys must have been frying. We enjoyed strolling around drinking real cidre (cider).

Watching the flamenco dancers in sumptuous settings and eating sumptuous tapas and drinking sumptuous wine was a treat just up the street from our hotel in Madrid. Went on into the early hours of the morning, then we had to pick up a hire car and get ready to drive north to San Sebastian , heading into France via Biarritz and Bordeaux.

I think I've used up my quota for this 'fest and I didn't even get out of Spain. Never mind, you can always check them out on my other blogs. I've left links to more below, but really, I haven't even started yet!

Ah, what the heck! One more. It is a summer blogfest after all, so I'll leave you with a photo of the carpark at the stupendous hotel we stayed at in San Sebastian, looking north to Biarritz and France. Woo hoo, here I come!

And in case you're too busy/lazy/uninspired to check out my snaps on my travel and Paris blogs, I just want to tell you Biarritz, France, is drop-dead gorgeous! Can see why it used to be a surfie mecca in a past life. It's just being regenerated now and regaining some of its past glory.

And we haven't even gone to Morocco  yet! Well it's hard to beat this for a summer pic. On top of the Sahara Desert in Morocco looking towards Algeria (7 hours by camel) with my 2 Berber guides and smelly, snorty camels who're no fun really to ride, but boy is it a great experience to see the sunset after the climb! I've already posted some Morocco pics on L'Aussie Travel and have just posted more on my Saharan Desert climb. I've just downloaded this memory stick and are there ever some stunners here!

All photos are private. Please enjoy but don't steal. See my copyright warning! 

If you've really enjoyed my pics, I've been posting photo essays on both my L'Aussie Travel Blog and Pichets in Paris blog since returning from my travels. Go there for more deliciousness if you wish.

If google says it, it must be so...my hymn of praise to the mighty google

My fingers pummel the keyboard into submission. I'm plum out of words. The muse has deserted me. NaNoWriMo is past the halfway mark and I'm behind in my word count - should be well over 25.000 words by now, loser!

I take out my frustration on my keyboard and hurl it against the wall. Silly hunk of logitec plastic just shredded itself. Now what am I going to do? Let's try pen and paper. Cramp! Not used to that, RSI already! Botheration! Now what?

Aah, I lie down and dream of...Barbara Cartland. Where's my chaise? Let me lie here and dictate my words to a lesser mortal. But, even now there's a problem...what could possibly be wrong now? I've got everything - the pink hair, the pink frilly frock, the pink chaise, the pink fingernails, the pink drink with its pink umbrella, the pink dog, the pink ribbons, but...


 
I need more research! Now! Right now! I shouldn't have smashed that bit of not-so-useless plastic after all because it can do what not even Barbara Cartland could do - google google!
 
Why am I desperate for my google fix? Because I need to know a few more facts/names/places and what better way to find out? Better run off to my local JB Hi-Fi and grab another logitec, maybe one with light touch keys this time. 


Well I drowned myself in so many pre-NaNo writer's guides, most of which frown on pantsers like me, so I tried, I really dd, to get my outline together, my story idea fleshed out from start to fini, and my character profiles...blah blah. Trouble is, my outline was out the window on the second day as my headstrong characters snatched the reins outta my hands and trotted off in another direction or three, bolting away with my story and leaving me hanging on tight and gasping for more...research...

My writer's guides said to get your research done beforehand  - it may take months I read - hello? Who's got a month, even, to research for NaNo? So I've taken to pen and paper and have been trying to keep ahead of my bossy boots characters - Need to Know This, Need to Know That, lists, lists, lists...

I'm a firm believer in not in writing about what you know, but about what you would like to know. I therefore rely on the big R - RESEARCH! To make it harder on myself (and more interesting too!) I've set my story mainly on Nantucket island, MA in the mighty US of A. The queries I've made for this story say it would work best in America, so go figure. Not too hard - it's the R capital of the world. Therefore lies a passel of problems - language, settings, accents, dress, beliefs, police procedures - how different are they from country to country! We all have our own lingo and don't we chuckle knowingly when we read a book by a writer who's obviously never been in our country tries to give the character our voice and we fall down laughing 'cause we'd never speak like that, fair dinkum'!

So, I don't want American readers (and I hope I get some!) falling down laughing/guffawing/cracking up/going hysterical at my Americanisms, so I've been tapping into Stephen Fry's America (where he has a list of British words and their
American counterparts,) reading a lot of books set in Nantucket, but most of all I've been googling!
I've run out of things to say!

How easy is it to soldier on! For example:

I NEED TO KNOW;

1. How do the cranberries get harvested on Nantucket?

• No problem - here's a video, watch it in awe - here's the history, here's the manager blah, blah...

2. What's the name of a cafe where my MC could meet her beloved?

• No problem, here's a video - and a review or two -and the menu - anything else?

3. Ah, what do houses look like on the island?

• No problem - take a virtual tour of all the properties for sale/rent on Nantucket. Now go inside. Lookie there! Here's some further info...ready...there is a strict building code...only built in shingles...blah blah...

4. What do they call police in Nantucket? Sheriff, Inspector, Officer, Cops, Pigs?

• No problem. Take a virtual tour of the new, just-opening-soon, police headquarters. Here's a list of the officers' names and ranks. Here's the address. Now go inside and take the lift - there is the Chief of Police's office - there is a blah blah...What else can I help you with?? Oh, and Sheriff Wyatt Earp (not his real moniker) just got stood down coz he liked to wave his piece/gun/weapon/firearm/Magnum/Glock/ around...

Get the drift? Just gotta say how much more thrilling research is in the google days. How could we live without such instant gratification?

Now I can finally throw away my dream of being Ernest Hemingway - the running with the bulls is on in Pamploma, Spain. Like let''s go and get plastered and watch a bit of the excitement, but you didn't think I was going to be sober enough to run ahead of a mob of maurauding beasts with big horns, did you? But I'll write a great book about it - well, it's not just about the bulls, but it makes a cute interlude...

.The Sun Also Rises 

Now I can google all the silly bull I like, unless they've banned all the fun and games by now...better get on google and find out...lol...

Happy NaNo-ing, and more sane writing all!

Denise :D

All images thanks to google images - gotta love it!

This blog entry is part of the NaNo"WriMo blogline.

Disclaimer: The words and phrase in this post may confuse you as they confuse the author being as they are a conglomeration of Australian, British and American English. Can you tell which is which?