While
preparing for seven weeks in Europe, I’ve invited the versatile and talented
Carole Buggé (C. E. Lawrence) to entertain you with one of her lively travel
stories. Carole has nine published novels, six novellas, and a dozen or so
short stories and poems. Many of her works appear in translation. Winner
of both the Euphoria Poetry Competition and the Eve of St. Agnes Poetry Award,
she is a two time Pushcart Poetry Prize nominee and First Prize winner of the
Maxim Mazumdar Playwriting Competition, the Chronogram Literary Fiction Prize,
Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Award, and the Jean Paiva Memorial Fiction
Award. She was a finalist in the McClaren, MSU, and Henrico Playwriting
Competitions, and nominated for a New York Innovative Theatre Award.
Her plays and musicals have been widely presented in New York City and
internationally.
BOOK BLOG: Lee
Campbell “Silent” Thriller Series
Hi Everyone!
The experience of
writing this series about serial killers was interesting, because I wrote most
of it in a secluded cabin in the woods of Ulster County. My “security” consisted of a feeble hook and
eye lock that a five year old could pry off with a screwdriver. My Home Protection System was a fat, indolent
tabby who was more interested in chasing chipmunks and coming home smelling of
skunk than warning me of intruders.
My beloved cabin
is part of Byrdcliffe Art Colony in the Catskill Mountains, where I slaved over
a hot manuscript for several summers, researching by day and writing by
candlelight. I put in requests to the
Woodstock Library for every book they had on serial killers, forensics, and
other sordid topics. The first book was
written during the Bush administration, so I’m surprised they didn’t flag my
library card – I kept expecting a Lincoln town car to pull into my driveway
with two Men in Black wearing Ray Bans and ear pieces. I imagined being whisked away by the FBI or
the NSA to languish in an Egyptian prison, where I would finally give up the
names of my “handlers” – Pia and her colleagues at the Woodstock Library, where
they don’t charge late fees, because, according to Pia, “We tried it once, but
it was too much trouble.”
Such is the spirit
of Ulster County at its best, and such were my summers, where recreation was playing
an old upright piano (formerly owned by The Band), in between death matches of
killer ping pong in the barn with fellow writers. The closest I came one summer to real danger
was the hike I took in the Catskills with Byrdcliffe colleague Alexandra
Anderson and painter friend Lucy Nurkse.
We entered the woods at about ten in the morning, thinking we’d be out
by tea time. Our Three Hour Tour turned
into a Death March that had us staggering out around sunset, covered with
mosquito bites and poison ivy, down to our last bottle Evian. I’m not sure which of us was Ginger and which
was Marianne, but I’m pretty sure I was Gilligan. We’re still not sure why our copious maps led
us astray, but I learned something that day:
The woods takes no
prisoners.
So I came back to
my cabin, settled in with a bottle of ibuprofen and a cup of coffee from Monkey
Joe in Kingston, and worked on my manuscript.
I had a first draft by the end of the second summer there, and the rest,
as they say, is silence – as in Silent Screams.
I wrote the sequel
at Hawthornden Castle, an international retreat for writers in Scotland where I
was a Writing Fellow (I love saying that). The castle is a medieval structure which
provided shelter to William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and Bonnie Prince
Charlie, during their rebellions against the British crown. I hiked through the glens to Wallace’s Cave,
where he allegedly camped while in hiding from the English. The castle was later owned by poet Lord
William Drummond, and now is a retreat for writers owned by the heir to the
Heinz corporation. So every packet of
ketchup sold by McDonalds helps support working writers.
In Scotland, I
learned to eat haggis (notice I didn’t say “liked”), took long hot baths in a
tub the size of the East River, and was taken very good care of by the
wonderful Scottish staff. They kept tea
out for us at all times, which was good, since the Scots apparently don’t
believe in central heating – Scotland in January will freeze your tatties off.
Words can hardly
do justice to a landscape that, even in January, brought tears to my eyes daily. The glens are as romantic and craggy as I had
hoped they would be, and the Scottish people were as friendly as their
landscape was rugged. My fellow writers
included two wonderful British poets and a lovely Russian writer who spoke no
English. We communicated through a
computer translator program, which was rather like being on a bad episode of
Star Trek.
Ah, Scotland! Ah, Ulster!
I long to return to you soon . . .
Visit C. E. Lawrence’s website:
http://celawrence.com/
http://celawrence.com/
