In the Labyrinth

A New Undertaking: Leaping Hart Press

 

 

I am happy to announce that I have finally taken the plunge and created my independent small press, Leaping Hart Press. It has been an exciting process, watching as each requirement for an LLC falls into place (though not without some anxiety and middle-of-the-night worry.) I am now busy re-reading the original manuscripts and revising, editing, and correcting old mistakes as necessary. There is some joy in this process as I rediscover the work anew and remember who I was at the time of creating the novel. I wrote my first novel when my children were small. Subsequent books were written between driving the children to school, teaching at a high school, researching one magical year-long trip in Italy, and mourning the death of my father and, later, my mother. I see how many moments in the novels echo the events in my life.

But I also am not entirely done writing novels and essays either. Once the backlit is out and published, I look forward to a handful of new projects. Collected short stories (some old, some new), with permission, a collection of my Bordertown Stories, with one or two new ones to join the previously published novellas, and a sequel to at least one of my novels, if not two.

Ambitious? Probably, but not unreasonable, especially as I have terrific friends in the publishing community ready to offer assistance -- which is both humbling and helpful to know. 

 

Reorganizing Priorities: What to Publish After Hannah's Garden

I have been going back and forth, trying to decide which of my out-of-print novels to reissue after Hannah's Garden. The stand-alone novels seem easier, cleaner, less complicated, and at least well-edited. But how wondrous and strange it is that the Oran Trilogy, a barely edited three-volume sprawling series, continues to be the most asked for in my list. So be it.

With the help of a terrific editor and copy editor, I will spend the summer months re-reading and editing the original manuscripts. My greatest hope is that my readers will not notice the changes but rather sense the more cohesive narrative of the edited versions. It will be a journey backward for me, as it has been many years since I read the entire series. I look forward to experiencing it for the first time, not just as an author but as a reader.

 

I am pleased now to be able to show the gorgeous cover art for the trilogy, especially since the old covers were beyond awful. 

 

                                                                                                                   

 

The Shaping of Story: Working Through Ideas

 

My notes on re-reading Harold Scheub's work on oral narrative structures and performance. They have shaped the way I think of the fantastic in narrative and how it functions, and by extension, how those "electric moments" when the real and the fantastic are combined in narrative.

 

    Notes from Harold Scheub's Story: an evident and detailed understanding of how stories in the oral traditions become a focal point for harmonizing the different, distinctive experiences and histories of the members of an audience. These are performances, and the meanings of the tale, from didactic to metaphorical, occur in the performance as a reaction to the images and the aesthetic patterning of the tale to create a surface narrative from conflict to resolution. In contrast, meaning is generated by layering emotionally evocative and metaphorical imagery. Within the performance, the audience encounters what is familiar in the narrative and what can be interpreted and reinterpreted throughout the listener's life. (c.f. The child who hears the story, the young woman engaged in puberty rights, the new mother, wife or co-wife, the older woman who tells the story to audiences of mixed ages or just her peers.)

    The story combines image and emotions, narrative movement, form or patterning, and the layering of imagery that results in a report. The images are pulled from the inherited cache of emotionally evocative paintings, which are paired with contemporary, more realistic images, and their interaction in the story creates a flashpoint. It is not in the suspension of disbelief that enables meaning but in the moment of tension in the pairing ("electric opposition") of the contemporary realistic images with the fantastic, ancient photos that contain the most profound dreams, hopes, fears, and nightmares of a world experience. The storyteller organizes the images and the narrative in a surface movement from conflict to resolution while at the same time patterning the emotionally evocative images into tropes that allow the audience to discover the nature of the relationship and its significance and meaning. The principle objective of fantastic imagery is a poetic reorganization of the real -- and, by contrast, to provide a new layer of importance in the real.

    Fantastic images provide connections, transformations, and symbolic relations between the natural and the marvelous. Because many are inherited from a shared historical past, they will also contain fragments of history and ancient traditions that are reconstituted in a new way for contemporary understanding. Supernatural villains & helpers become manifestations of the struggle occurring to the protagonist. The fantastic elements are not an end but a means to push the story toward the symbolic. It becomes the engine of change, bringing the audience to where uncertainty exists and then back to the familiar. The tale's power does not emerge with a glimmering metaphor -- the performance of the story itself is the experience of metaphor, which is its power. Fantasy tales are a form of reasoning, a way of looking at events in the context of emotion. Combining the fantasy and the real in the stories provides a new measure of the real world. Blending the two, not just dreaming alone, is essential because, without the mooring of the natural world, the fantasy would be dull -- fantasy breaks our world into artificial pieces. As the storyteller combines the images of reality with the introduction of fantasy, reality finds itself within a fantastic context, forcing our thinking about those matters into new modes. 

    Fantastic images provide connections, transformations, and symbolic relations between the natural and the marvelous. Because many are inherited from a shared historical past, they will also contain fragments of history and ancient traditions that are reconstituted in a new way for contemporary understanding. Supernatural villains & helpers become manifestations of the struggle occurring to the protagonist. The fantastic elements are not an end but a means to push the story toward the symbolic. It becomes the engine of change, bringing the audience to where uncertainty exists and then back to the familiar. The tale's power does not emerge with a glimmering metaphor -- the performance of the story itself is the experience of metaphor, which is its power.

    Fantasy tales are a form of reasoning, a way of looking at events in the context of emotion. Combining the fantasy and the real in the stories provides a new measure of the real world. Blending the two, not just dreaming alone, is essential because, without the mooring of the natural world, the fantasy would be dull -- fantasy breaks our world into artificial pieces. As the storyteller combines the images of reality with the introduction of fantasy, reality finds itself within a fantastic context, forcing our thinking about those matters into new modes. 

 

 

 

 

 

Interlude in the Research: Call in the Clowns, Satyrs, Fools, and Nymphs.

 

Amid all this heavy lifting of my research notes, I re-read my essay, "A Chorus of Clowns and Masked Comic Theater" " written for Realms of Fantasy on the history of clowns, from antiquity to the Marx Brothers. It's funny, and I enjoyed re-reading it as it provides a comprehensive view of the different forms of improvisational theater. It is an excellent moment to add here as it describes the masks in action, wild, ribald, pranking, shouting, and generally enjoying themselves to our benefit.

From the essay:

"In the middle of winter, when it is so gray I can't take it anymore, I rent as many Marx Brothers movies as possible. Something about the zany interaction of these "clowns" creates havoc in a department store, a racetrack, or the stateroom of an ocean liner that brightens the day's dullness. Then there is that crackling, fast dialogue, most of it famously improvised, and the elaborate musical numbers, ridiculous dances, and absurd moments of slapstick. Perhaps because I know they are four brothers, I sense a kinship in their characters. Although each one wears a different costume and "mask," there is a synchronicity in their performance — for while each one constructs his own comedic business, they do not act alone but in a chorus of clowns.

"Watching them, I sense much older traditions layered beneath the surface of their film performances. It is easy to imagine Groucho with satyr's hooves or Harpo in the round,–mouth mask of an ancient Fool. Inspired by the antics of the Marx Brothers, I decided to review the roots of clowning in the early Southern European history of theater clowns — not the circus clowns — but those masked characters who rose out of early pagan cults and then developed into secular, irreverent tricksters and mirrors of human behavior...."

"...The chorus of clowns rips apart polite society and in that act, exposes our true feelings. In this joyful disorder, we remember primal emotions: we lust, we become envious, we are starved for affection and fame, and we long for an illusive, trouble–free happiness. We would rather sleep than work; we are clever and undeniably foolish at times. We are complicated and conflicted; no single character can carry the weight of many inconsistencies. We need a chorus of clowns to speak for us. Despite their secular natures, the clowns are still mythic to me. Humor is an old response to fear of the unknown and contempt for the familiar. For 3,000 years, somewhere, a chorus of clowns has misbehaved, and in their audacity, called down gods, heroes, and legends for a face-to-face meeting with humanity, offering laughter as a form of reverence."

Marginalia: Kissing Snails

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could publish our novels with such lovely marginalia? There is something so unexpectedly tender about these two snails meeting and kissing in the margin. Marginalia art has a vital life of its own -- existing side by side with text but not necessarily commenting on the reader. It's the mind reading and wandering a little bit, hearing the whispered words in the head, but delighting in the visual art that sidetracks and then returns one to the text, refreshed. And all in a matter of moments.

Art: Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, Ms 6881, detail of f. 72. Book of Hours, use of Chalon. 15th century.

Adrienne von Speyr on the Feast of the Assumption

Hannah's Garden Available in Kindle Edition

I am excited to see the first of my revised novels about to go live in a Kindle Edition. It has been a long journey for me (with more than enough roadblocks and frustrations along the way) but joyful, too, as my dream starts to come true. You can find the Kindle edition of the young adult novel here. 

 

 

Book Blurb: Seventeen-year-old Cassie Brittman was thrilled to be playing the violin solo in the Rose Bay Youth Symphony. But that changed with a phone call informing her mother, Anne, that Cassie's grandfather, Daniel Brittman, a painter living in Northern Wisconsin, was gravely ill. Cassie, Anne, and Gunnar, Anne's new boyfriend, quickly set out for the Brittman farm. On their arrival, they discover the farmhouse and great-aunt looters have ravaged Anna's gardens. Darkness hangs over the farm, and ghostly forms waver at the forest's edge. Soon, Cassie can't shake the feeling that they are being stalked by wild creatures or something much more dangerous.

Book Reviews for Hannah’s Garden

“A mystical spiral garden that is also a gateway to another world blooms at the center of Snyder's tightly woven fantasy, a potent blend of faery and family conflicts…Thanks to Snyder's gift for description, readers may feel as if they can hear the music or smell the fragrance of the garden's rare woodland species; the audience will be hooked.” Publisher’s Weekly

“Like the tales Cassie remembers her mother telling, this is “filled with wonderment and botany,” as well as music, deep relationships between generations, and complex, evocative magic-working.” Kirkus Reviews

“Inventive, beautifully written…Snyder’s use of language is especially poetic in describing nature, including the farm’s flora and fauna and the magical creatures of the Green Clan…a satisfying mix of real-life problems and lovingly described magic.” School Library Journal

“Compelling…This power and depth make it good for contemporary fantasy of all ages. Locus”