Category: Daughter of the White Rose

A Long Silence

Posted on by Diane Zahler

It’s hard to write about writing when the world is falling to pieces.

There’s a pandemic. There’s a war. We’ve even been visited here by a third Horseman, Pestilence, who gifted us with a grotesque infestation of spongy moth caterpillars that dangle from trees and leave welts on the skin of the unsuspecting.

 

 

 

 

We’ve lost so much:

Time

Money

Trust

Family, friends, loved ones.

 

But writing has been an escape for me, as I’m sure it is for a lot of writers. And I’ve kept on doing it, because — well, what else can one do?

My book Goblin Market will be published in August. I’ve seen an ARC, and the cover is beautiful. There’s interior art, which I love. It’s all very Polish, because my version of the story takes place in a fantastical version of Poland — for no real reason except that I visited there and was fascinated by it, and that it has storks, which are fabulous, and that it has a long history of goblin stories.

Wild Bird, my novel about the bubonic plague, is also moving right along. Another gorgeous cover, more lovely interior art, even a map. I do love a good map.

And Daughter of the White Rose will be published in paperback in August!

 

So life goes on, regardless. I hope you are well. But if it’s all too much, then another reality — an invented reality — might help.  Open a book. Take yourself out of the here and now. Exist somewhere, sometime different for a while.

 

You deserve it.

Zooming Around with Books

Posted on by Diane Zahler

I’m in Maine right now, enjoying the lake and the lobster and an astonishing crop of mushrooms (it’s been a little damp) and not enjoying the mosquitoes and the deerflies. But before I left, I was invited to be part of two online forums to publicize Daughter of the White Rose. The first was hosted by my beloved local bookstore, Oblong Books and Music, to celebrate the launch of middle-grade author Alysa Wishingrad’s fabulous new novel, The Verdigris Pawn. My agent Jennifer Laughran moderated as authors Rebecca Ansari (The In-Between), Heather Kassner (The Bone Garden) and I talked with Alysa about our books, our writing process (or lack thereof), and our lives as writers. After spending over a year in near-isolation, it was strange and wonderful to connect with people who weren’t close relatives (and challenging to speak in full sentences). You can view the whole video here (and yes, I know my lighting was terrible! But I improved it for the next event.)

 

The second was a Zoom session hosted by Symphony Space/Thalia Kids Book Club Camp, which has a book club for young readers that features an amazing assortment of renowned middle-grade authors. I was honored — and more than a little terrified — to be part of such company. I think it went well,  though — the kids were all really engaged, their questions were thought-provoking, and their responses to the writing activity I gave them were wildly imaginative. There’s a blog about the event here.

 

I know that a lot of people find Zoom events distancing and difficult, but I’m way more comfortable sitting in my writing nook in a comfy chair talking to a screen than standing in front of a group talking to their actual faces. I have a feeling I’m not the only one — many writers tend to be solitary, introverted types who perspire profusely when speaking to real people. Right? Or is it just me?

Cool and calm on Zoom
Perspiring in public

Daughter of the White Rose Sees the Light of Day

Posted on by Diane Zahler

February 16th was Daughter of the White Rose‘s book birthday!

It’s my first historical novel — and actually, one of the first novels I ever wrote. When I completed the earliest version of the book, it included flashbacks (now gone), a third-person narrator (now first-person), a prologue (gone, gone), a different title, and a different ending. Also, it was really pretty bad.

It took decades to whip the story into shape.  As I revised it or let it languish on a hard drive, I had a son — and he grew up. I moved twice. I lost both my parents. I found a fabulous agent. I had six other novels published. I despaired about getting this one published, and I figured out how to deal with the despair. I’m not suggesting that any writer should purposely take this long to publish a novel, but my experiences did, I think, enrich my writing, both directly and indirectly.

I love this book now, for so many reasons: its subject (Wars of the Roses! Imprisoned princes! a brave girl facing terrible danger!); the things it taught me about writing and revising; the opportunity it gave my husband at long last to say I told you so; the fact that it’s been a constant throughout my publishing life that I’ve returned to again and again, improving it, or so I hope, with each rewrite.

I’m excited to see how Daughter of the White Rose does out there in the world and how readers react to it. If you’d like to be one of those readers, you can buy copies here, or you can go to YA Books Central and try to win a copy in their giveaway (and also read an interview with me about the book). And please let me know if you liked it!

Goblin Market!

Posted on by Diane Zahler

It’s been a long, strange year.

But I’ve been writing, and I have some news to announce: my new middle-grade fantasy novel, Goblin Market, has been accepted for publication by Holiday House! I’m thrilled to be putting out another book with this wonderful publishing house (Daughter of the White Rose — see the cover on the left — comes out from Holiday House on February 16).

 

 

 

 

 

Goblin Market was inspired by the 1862 Christina Rossetti poem of the same name. It’s a tale of two sisters and what happens when the elder falls under a deadly enchantment cast by the goblins who sell their bewitching wares at the local market. The strange spell threatens her very life, forcing the younger girl to battle her own limitations to try to save her beloved sister.

Backwards up the mossy glen
Turn’d and troop’d the goblin men,
With their shrill repeated cry,
“Come buy, come buy!”

Christina Rossetti

 

 

Happy 2021, everyone! May it be a vast improvement over 2020 in every possible way.