My journey with the characters in Rue de Paradis, and the Semi Ramis: Queen of Heaven Series, started in 2006 with my project for Whitireia Community Polytechnic year-long Novel Writing Programme. I finished a first draft during that programme, and nearly 20 years later I’ve sent two of the original characters out into the world while I continue working on book two.
People often ask me why I wrote about antiques and whether I am an expert. I’m not an expert but my character Deco is, and you’ll meet him in book two.
The antiques started with Deco, I wanted him to have an obsession, a reason for him to steal. I thought about making him a drug addict, but after a discussion with two drug and alcohol counsellors, they convinced me that the only meaningful relationship Deco could have was with his drug of choice. I knew this wouldn’t work for the story I wanted to tell as he needed to have functioning relationships with others.
The house had got me interested in Art Deco so I contacted our local auction house Dunbar Sloane to ask if they could put me onto an expert in the field. They had someone inhouse, Anthony Gallagher who’d just joined the team. He was keen to meet for a coffee and his eyes lit up when I asked him what the Holy Grail of the Art Deco world was.
Our first home was a little Art Deco house perched on a hill in the suburb of Brooklyn, Wellington. If I was going to spend years of my life researching Deco’s obsession, it had to be something I was interested in too.
He told me about Demtre Chiparus and the bronze and ivory sculptures he made in the 1920s and 30s. My life was never the same again – in a good way – as I learned about Monsieur Chiparus and his wife Julienne and the foundries that made his pieces in Paris nearly 100 years ago.
After the course finished, I realised the first draft of the novel’s structure never worked as it was overly complicated with two time periods, and multiple character points of view. In the early days Elspeth Sandys and Renee Taylor mentored me while I worked on other drafts. .
Finally, I put it aside and worked on other projects. Deco wouldn’t let it go. I kept seeing life through his eyes, a Lalique vase, or a bronze sculpture I knew he’d love to ‘rehome’.
So, I attended a Digital Publishing series run by the Paraparaumu Library that was so inspiring, I tore the current draft apart and embarked on a trilogy.
In 2018, I went to Paris to ‘continue my research’ and get serious about writing this series. I was going to make Chiparus a main character in the first book, But fortunately for my characters Yvette and Steffan, Chiparus was just not that interesting, apart from a useful case study of a person obsessed with their work and a metaphor for the fading popularity of decorative arts in the 1930s.
As Chiparus’s fortunes declined, and the war in Europe raged around them, he and Julienne ended up living in a shack near the zoo. Julienne spent all day foraging for food and raising rabbits in the backyard so they didn’t starve, and Demetre would go to the zoo every day to sketch and sculpt the animals. He was sans-scandal, he just lived to sculpt, that’s all he did for nearly 18 hours a day. Anyone I talk to about Chiparus, recognises the miraculous focus of someone on the spectrum, and without that we wouldn’t have the legacy of his meticulous and detailed sculptures.
Lots of people helped with this book along the way. Members of the Pheonix Science Fiction Writers Group suffered through early versions of chapters, as did participants in our Frances Cherry writing workshops.
Our now defunct book group, which never had a name, but we set up to ‘read all the books we should have read, but never quite go round to’, read a first draft and gave me useful feedback.
More recently, Kathryn Burnett’s Writing Room’s kept me focused, and members of the feedback group have made solid suggestions for improving chapters I’ve presented. Kathryn agreed to be my writing accountability coach, and I barely lied to her about my progress. I’d recommend accountability coaching for anyone who is time poor or a bit slack but responds to making commitments to others. It’s a brilliant way to move your project forward.
Others I’d like to acknowledge are my first husband Mike Greer, my kids Leo and Bennie, and Glenda O’Connor. Glenda kept the wheels on our little family bus for many years, and I am grateful for her for going above and beyond.
I’d also like to thank Barbara Unkovic for her structural assessment of the draft, and Sue Copsey for her detailed and insightful edit of the manuscript.
But mostly I’d like to thank all the artists and writers who ‘just have to’. It’s the way we make sense of our lives and the world around us
