And our Sue's Clues Mystery Author is:

Our Mystery Author this round is C.W. Gortner.

His fascination with history, in particular the Renaissance, is a lifetime pursuit. He holds a Masters in Fine Arts in Writing with an emphasis on Renaissance Studies from the New College of California and has taught university seminars on the 16th century. In addition, he travels extensively to research his books. He has experienced life in a medieval Spanish castle and danced a galliard in a Tudor great hall; dug through library archives all over Europe; and tried to see and touch—or, at least, gaze at through impenetrable museum glass—as many artifacts of the era as he can find.

He has served on the board of the Women's National Book Association/SF Chapter, an organization that promotes literacy, and he's a regular contributor to the Historical Novels Review and Solander, publications of the Historical Novel Society. He is also a passionate advocate for animal rights and environmental issues.

Raised in Málaga, Spain, C.W. Gortner is half-Spanish by birth and fully bilingual. He currently lives in Northern California.  

(Bio courtesy of http://www.leonibus.com/)

1. Your bio states that you were raised in Malaga, Spain. How old were you when you came to live in the U.S. and what brought you here?

I was born in Washington D.C. My mother is from Madrid, and my parents decided to move to Spain to raise me and my brother. I returned to the U.S. when I was eleven, but then went back to Spain in my twelfth year for a summer with my aunt. I then came home and have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area ever since. My parents didn’t elect to come back. We moved to Spain during the last years of Franco’s dictatorship and upon his death the economy took a bad tumble; my father’s business failed and we had to return for economic reasons. It was a very uncertain time in Spain, and it took several years for the economy and for society to adjust to the end of a long dictatorship, under which arts and other aspects of culture had been suppressed. Of course, Spain is now booming both culturally and economically; it’s truly a different country from the one I grew up in—with the exception that people still have a great passion for life and socialization is an integral part of living.

2. . I imagine there are huge differences between the two countries, cultural and environmental. What are a few that stand out most to you? Do you miss Spain and, if so, in what way?

It’s taken me years to recognize the differences: I’m in my mid-forties now, and have returned to visit Spain quite often. Perhaps the most significant difference is that people in Spain are much more apt to go out; there’s a vibrant street life, with cafes and restaurants open quite late. A Spaniard’s day is defined by meals: we like to eat and we like to eat well. In the U.S., we are becoming more hermetic, more dependent on television and the internet. I don’t experience that as much in Spain, but then I don’t live there on a daily basis. I do have friends in Madrid, though, and they’re far more attuned to the latest restaurant or place to go dancing or simply a café where we can eat tapas and gather to talk. People love to walk; the plazas are full at dusk with families and couples. Oh, and bookstores: there are lots of them and lots of people in them! I was surprised by that at first. While here in the U.S., and in the U.K. to some extent, independent stores are struggling for survival, bookstores that have been open literally for centuries in Madrid are still thriving. One interesting statistic is that more than twice the amount of titles are published by major Spanish publishing houses than U.S. ones I’m not sure just how true it is, but judging by the ambiance in Spanish bookstores, reading is not facing the challenges it is here, where so many other entertainment options vie for consumer dollars.

I miss living in Spain very much; as I get older, I miss it more. It’s in my blood, I think. When I’m there, I feel grounded and free. It’s my country, really: I love the U.S. too, but I feel more at home in Spain. My partner and I are seriously considering six months out of the year there in the future.

3. . The bio also mentions interesting experiences you have had researching your books. Tell us about some of them—especially experiencing life in a medieval Spanish Castle.

Oh, there have been so many! Researching a book is always fun, if you travel to the places you write about. In Spain, I got to stay at a famous medieval castle that has become a parador, or high-end hotel. A portion of it has been renovated, but there’s another part that remains quite as it was in the 12th century. A friend of mine who used to run the parador invited me and I got to spend a few days living in the castle. Castles are not comfortable. They’re cold and echoing, and can be quite scary at night! But with candles lit at night and tapestries on the walls, with those narrow windows overlooking the landscape, it’s also quite an experience to feel how people saw the world from within those walls.

I also once had an unforgettable experience at Hampton Court in England. I’ve visited it several times; it’s one of my favorite places in the world and this time we arrived just as the guides were giving a tour of the great hall, which is much as Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII knew it. There was a demonstration going on of Renaissance dancing and all of a sudden the dancers called for volunteers. Most of the people in the guided tour shied away, as did I; but my partner urged me to try it. He said, “When will you ever get a chance again to dance in the same room where Anne Boleyn once danced?” So, I volunteered and the dancer taught me the rudimentary steps before we did one full round. It was quite amazing to look up at that glorious hammer-beamed ceiling and think five hundred years before, in this very hall, one of England’s most famous queens—and one of my favorite historical personages—caught a king’s eye.

4. What is it about the Renaissance, or history in general, that you find so attractive? So much so that you've based your career on it?

I can’t say for sure. It’s instinctual. As long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the era. I was asked a similar question recently by another interviewer and I mentioned that when I was in my mid-twenties I went for a psychic reading and the woman told me she saw two different past lives in the Renaissance. Quite eerie, as I’d said nothing about myself! Of course, she might have been assessing my gothic way of dressing at the time and drawn reasonable conclusions. A man who wears a cape in broad daylight would probably like the Renaissance, right? Still, it often feels as though I’ve been there before and my obsession with it is some type of emotional coping mechanism. I’m rarely as content as I am when I’m writing about the 16th century. The book may present a thousand challenges and drive me nuts but the scents, the tastes, the textures and hues of the time are always so familiar to me. I’ve had occasions when I couldn’t find a specific detail when writing and simply made a guess, making a note in the manuscript to return to it later and research it more; and when I do, I find my guess was accurate. It’s as though I know things about the era that I don’t know I know. If I believed in past lives, I’d say I had indeed lived in the Renaissance. I’m not sure if I believe in reincarnation, though I do think as human beings we carry echoes of the past within us and mine just happen to reverberate with the Renaissance.

History compels me. Though the past is a brutal, quixotic time, and we can never really know how it truly felt to be a 16th century person, as their era defined them as much as ours defines us, I seem to understand the Renaissance sensibility better at moments than I do today’s. The quest for a higher purpose in art; the sense that the world was opening in vast new ways, the amazing accomplishments of people: it represents the wealth of human experience, without modern contrivances. An artist like Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps the greatest artist the Western world has ever seen, can only have come out of the complexity and contradictions of the Renaissance. While I do not share the era’s misogynistic attitude toward women, the horrifying cruelty to animals, the religious persecution and condemnation of the free expression of sexuality, I don’t think these dark sides of human nature are unique to the time. Unfortunately, we need only turn on the TV or open a newspaper to find them in the 21st century, as well.

5. Your newest release, THE LAST QUEEN, has been receiving terrific reviews. You must be very excited. It's a bit different than the usual stories for the time period, which seem to usually be focusing of historical figures of England or France. How did your story come about? Any particular reason you chose to write about Princess Juana of Spain? A person many people probably have never heard of?

It may seem odd but Juana of Castile was part of my life growing up. In southern Spain my family lived near a ruined castle that had been a summer residence of her parents, the Catholic Monarchs Isabel and Fernando. I used to play in that castle as a child. I’d clamber up its crumbled turrets and gaze out toward the sea. I would think that Juana had lived here: she’d been young, then, and unaware of the life that awaited her. Juana is legendary in Spain; every school child learns about her at some point, but I always wanted to know more. I’d drive my history teacher nuts with questions: Did she really go mad over love? Who was she and what happened, really, to turn her into the iconic figure she became? Had anyone stopped to consider she might not have been mad at all? These questions haunted me as a boy. Much later on, when I began to write seriously, I decided to try my hand at a novel about her because I felt I was at a time in my life when I could finally tackle her complexity. And as I delved into her life, the questions I’d had since childhood were answered in unexpected ways.

6. Your first release, THE SECRET LION, was also well received. It is listed as being the first book of The Spymaster Chronicle. When might we have the pleasure of seeing Book 2 hit the shelves? And, if there are plans for a Book 2, can you tell us what it will be about?

I wish I had a specific answer! I hope soon. When I first published THE SECRET LION, I fully expected to continue with the series. I still do. I have the second book outlined in its entirety and had started the first chapters when my 2-book sale to Ballantine Books happened. I’m under contract with Random House, and so I have to fulfill my obligations to them first, which has meant undertaking editorial revisions to THE LAST QUEEN and writing my next book. In addition, I hold a full-time job. I’m wary of full-time writing as a career until I know for certain that I’ve a future in it. I fully intend to return to the second installment in the Spymaster Chronicles, and pray fans of that book will not forsake me for my tardiness. My agent has also expressed interest in selling the series to a larger publisher, which, if it happens, would be terrific, as that would definitely give me the economic freedom I need to take that plunge into writing as a full time endeavor. But there’s no specific time table, so I hope to eke out time this coming winter to return to THE LIONESS HUNT, the second book in the series, which takes place in Mary Tudor’s reign, a few months after THE SECRET LION ends.

7. I have the feeling that if you were asked what your favorite part of writing a novel is, you would say it was the research involved. Would I be close to right? If not, what is it?

The research is definitely up there. I do relish it, especially the traveling and the digging about in obscure archives for contemporary documents. There’s something magical for me to holding in my hands—or hold in white gloved hands!—a piece of paper written in the 16th century; to interpret the words and discover a clue to the story I seek to tell. But the truly favorite part for me of writing a novel is the actual writing. The research by then is by and large finished and I’m saturated in official facts. Now, these facts must coalesce into a story, and the crafting of the characters and movement of the plot itself become organic. If I’m doing my job right, I will lose myself in the story and become my character. It’s like acting, in a sense: the writer becomes invisible, so that the characters can speak. I never tire of it, even when the writing hits obstacles, as it invariably does. Writing, in a sense, is my drug.

8. You are involved as an advocate for several issues but the one I found interesting was that you had served on the board for an organization called the Women's National Book Association/SF Chapter. Can you tell us more about this group, how you became involved and how can others do to help?

The Women’s National Book Association was formed in 1917 when women across America awaited the Senate's vote on suffrage. A group of fifteen women booksellers who’d been excluded from membership in the all-male Bookseller's League met in New York to form the Women's National Book Association. Its unique characteristic was that membership was open to women in all facets of the book world, including publishers, booksellers, librarians, authors, illustrators, agents, and production people. The only criterion was that part of their income must come from books. Ninety years later, the WNBA has eight chapters across the U.S. Today, membership is open to women involved in all aspects of publishing and to men who subscribe to the Association's goals. In addition, the WNBA has been a Non-Governmental Organization member of the United Nations since 1959.

I became involved with the San Francisco WNBA Chapter through a mutual friend. The chapter had recently changed its board and was facing challenges. I went to a meeting of the new board and thought it would be worthwhile to help the chapter re-invent itself through the innovative programs that the new board president proposed. I volunteered as board secretary and served a full year. Today, there is a new board and the San Francisco chapter is thriving. Anyone who is interested in joining the WNBA should visit the website at: http://www.wnba-books.org/

9. Historical romance/fiction writers seem to be predominately female. Do you feel a male writer faces more challenges or obstacles than what may encountered by a female writer?

Yes, definitely. I think the genre has primarily focused on women readers and characters, and therefore male writers have a harder time finding their audience, particularly if, like me, their books don’t qualify as historical adventures. Some readers might feel that men cannot fully comprehend, and therefore write, about women, and mistrust the author even before they’ve read a word. That said, I also firmly believe most historical fiction readers are highly intelligent and savvy, with a passion for the genre that can overcome whatever misgivings they might feel toward a writer’s gender. The genre has become very popular again, after years of little notice, and new readers are also coming in, with less preconceived notions. Just as such talented historical fiction writers like Sharon Kay Penman, Margaret George and Elizabeth Chadwick can write insightfully from a male perspective, so can male writers do so from a female one. We just don’t see it as much because I think many male writers shy away from the challenge and publishers remain somewhat wary of the risk (which is why, I’m so indebted to Ballantine). Today’s market in particular, with so much cross-over into the historical romance category, poses particular challenges. Still, in the final say, it’s the author’s sensibility that should count. Writers must inhabit their characters to bring them to life. We should never be limited by gender or appearance. We should be invisible, with no limits other than our imagination.

10. Tell us about your work in progress about Catherine de Medici. I was very excited and curious to hear about this project. One of my favorite movies is Queen Margot, which portrayed Catherine as perhaps one of the coldest and most ruthless females of power history has ever seen.

Oh, I love that movie, too! It’s wildly inaccurate, but honestly, who can mind when you have Isabelle Adjani, Virna Lisi and Miguel Bose in the same film. I decided to write about Catherine by accident; I was reading a nonfiction work in preparation for research for a novel I thought I was going to write and her name was mentioned as the “instigator” of the Massacre of St Bartholomew. I went out and bought a biography of her in a second-hand shop and devoured it. It wasn’t very flattering of her—few of her biographers are—but I found her utterly fascinating. I’d of course heard of her before, and had read Dumas’s Queen Margot, but I found myself doing the same thing I had when I first started to explore Juana: Was the black legend true? Was Catherine truly a ruthless queen who let nothing and no one stand in the way of her power? Or, was there more to the story than we’ve been told? Once I start to ask those questions, I know I’m hooked. And as with Juana, I’ve discovered a very different Catherine de Medici than the woman of legend. Nothing in history is as it seems.

Thank you so much for taking this time with me. I hope you enjoy reading THE LAST QUEEN as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please visit me at http://www.cwgortner.com to learn more about my work, Juana and her world, and some special offers.