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Elizabeth Bell, Author

Undeniable Love. Unflinching History. Unforgettable Fiction.

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    • Lazare Family Saga, Book 1: Necessary Sins
    • Lazare Family Saga, Book 2: Lost Saints
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    • Lazare Family Saga, Book 4: Sweet Medicine
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meaning

On Second Thought…

January 1, 2022 by Elizabeth Bell

"Ring out the old, ring in the new…"
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850)

In November-December 2021, I completed a new edit of the entire Lazare Family Saga. I am a perfectionist; I could honestly go through these long books every year and find things to change. But I shall endeavor to be satisfied with Version 2021. My primary purpose was to make certain I was happy with the text of all four books before they become “set in stone” in audio format. This should happen in 2022, depending on how long it takes me to find a narrator and his or her availability.

As for the ebook and print editions, the beauty of being an indie author is that I can make changes at any time. These edits weren’t substantial enough to qualify as a revised edition; they were mostly a scattering of line edits for clarity.

I did tweak some scenes with Joseph and David. I have always loved these characters, because—not in spite of—their flaws. But I’ve realized that some readers find them difficult to like, so I’ve tried to soften some of Joseph and David’s reactions to keep them more sympathetic. One of my earliest readers said I have a tendency to “turn it up to 11,” referencing the hilarious film This Is Spinal Tap. And yes, yes I do. Teenage me who conceived these characters wasn’t satisfied with wounded heroes; they had to be profoundly screwed up so that their redemption was as dramatic as possible. But I sometimes crossed the line into melodrama. So I’ve tried to rein in my over-the-top impulses while retaining Joseph and David’s authentic Catholic/Victorian wounds.

I also realized that a scene between Clare and Verily was more focused on the heroism of White mistress Clare teaching her enslaved Black maid Verily than it was on Verily’s agency and desire to read. This was a holdover from an earlier draft and a less socially conscious version of myself. Shame on me, regardless. So I tweaked that scene too.

The other significant edit I made was in changing the first name of the English-born plantation steward Mr. Cromwell—most characters use his last name—from Byron to Lucas. He’s a tricky man to name because of his duality. (HERE BE POTENTIAL SPOILERS.) Cromwell is gorgeous and brilliant—and ruthless. Multiple characters mistake him for a good guy, even a romantic figure—which is exactly what he wants them to think, because he’s actually a villain.

What would you name this man?

This model is a decent physical match for Cromwell, although his attire is more Regency, a few decades before the 1850s when the character appears in my story.

(Image source: Servian Stock Images via Depositphotos)

In my early drafts, Cromwell’s first name was Lyndon. I liked the idea that “a boy named Sue,” a young man with a “weak” name, became tougher because of it. But in a pivotal scene in Book 4, Cromwell forces a female character to say his first name, and I didn’t want something “wimpy” in this context of sexual threat. Since Cromwell is Byronic—”mad, bad, and dangerous to know” in the immortal words of Lady Caroline Lamb—I changed his name to Byron. But I was never really happy with it; Byron was too on the nose, and it was “de trop” to name him after two larger-than-life English historical figures. (“De trop” = excessive, literally “too much” in French.)

The Cromwell half had to stay. In fact, this is the only character name that hasn’t changed over the course of three decades. As I explain in Book 2, this name is meant to recall the ambitious and ruthless Oliver Cromwell, “the butcher of Drogheda” (the real place in Ireland, not the fictional one in Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds). I also love the sound of Cromwell, the harsh opening and the soft conclusion—back to that duality.

I needed a first name with more subtlety, but I couldn’t find it. Then I listened to the audiobook of Courtney Milan’s A Kiss for Midwinter in-between December 2021 edits, and the name of one of her supporting characters lit a lightbulb in my brain: Lucas! It was perfect! It recalls both Lucifer, a traditional name for the Devil, and Luke from The Thorn Birds. Yet Lucas also sounds proper and sexy. Thank you, Courtney Milan! (Seriously, check out her books. She’s awesome.)

Changing Byron to Lucas created a small domino effect: I had to make sure that my find and replace function didn’t eliminate the times I still wanted to say Byron (the poet). I also had to change the name of a minor character in Book 3 who was called Luke, and I had to make sure that find and replace didn’t eliminate the times I still wanted to say Luke (the saint). Oh, the joys and challenges of being an indie author with technology at my fingertips!

An update to my formatting software, Vellum, also allowed me to add this lovely background image to the first pages of each chapter in my print editions: roses with falling petals. The symbolism is perfect for my garden-inspired love stories.

Please note: although all of these changes are now live on Amazon, they’ll take a few weeks to show up in the copies you can buy from other places like Bookshop.org. It’s complicated! And if you buy a used copy of my books, none of these updates will be present. (I the author and publisher also won’t receive a penny of compensation from such a purchase.)

Why didn’t the name Lucas—or any of these other text changes—occur to me earlier in the three decades I’ve worked on this series? I can only quote the saying: “Hindsight is 20/20.” I’ve been so close to this series for so long, I had whole passages memorized. It’s difficult to edit in such a state. Only several months’ distance and a larger pool of reader feedback have provided me with the perspective I needed.

I do apologize to any readers currently in the middle of The Lazare Family Saga who are tripped up by these changes, in particular Byron Cromwell becoming Lucas Cromwell. Hence this explanatory blog post. As Joseph would say, “Mea culpa.” You have witnessed the imperfect and dynamic creative process. 🙂

Filed Under: Going Indie, Historical Fiction, Publishing, Writer's Life, Writing Tagged With: editing, inspiration, meaning, saga

What’s a Claire-Voie?

December 3, 2019 by Elizabeth Bell

On the spine and back cover of my paperbacks and on the title page of all my novels, you’ll see my logo above the words “Claire-Voie Books.” What’s a claire-voie, you ask? It’s a gardening term borrowed from French that originated in the 17th century. A claire-voie (pronounced klair-vwah) is a window or opening that either looks onto a garden from outside it or that allows a person in one garden “room” to look into another part of the garden.

A claire-voie often features wrought iron openwork. I first came across the term in a blog post about Charleston, South Carolina, where the majority of my fiction takes place. Here are two examples of claire-voies in Charleston, windows onto private gardens (my own pics).

  • Claire-voie on Lamboll Street
  • Claire-voie on Meeting Street, next to the Branford-Horry House

My character Tessa has a claire-voie that is set into the garden door of her Church Street house, half-hidden by climbing roses. This opening allows someone walking down Longitude Lane, say a lovelorn priest named Joseph, to peer into her garden. Tessa’s claire-voie was inspired by these real-life garden doors on Longitude Lane in Charleston:

Joseph and Tessa, two of my central characters in Necessary Sins and Lost Saints, are both gardeners. It’s how they initially bond. Tessa’s garden door with its claire-voie is important to their relationship, and it will be important to her daughter as well. Joseph has French ancestry, so he knows the term. If you’re paying attention in Chapter 38 of Necessary Sins, you’ll discover that claire-voie also has a more risqué symbolism. Nobody does unconscious double entendres like a repressed Victorian priest.

I’ve been a Francophile for as long as I can remember; I took seven years of the language and lived in Aix-en-Provence for a semester. Literally, claire-voie translates from the French as “clear-way.” (Claire needs an e because voie is feminine.)

If claire-voie reminds you of “clairvoyant” (clear-sighted) that’s because the two terms have similar linguistic roots. I named my imprint Claire-Voie Books in order to evoke both. I designed my logo to symbolize Tessa’s claire-voie, among other meanings.

A claire-voie symbolizes my work as a writer as well. In my most recent newsletter (November 2019), I talked about my creative process and how I’ve felt my stories already existed in some nebulous other world. In order to tell them, I’m peering through a claire-voie into that other world and taking notes. I also talked about the spiritual dimension of my writing, how I hear my characters’ voices. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “clairvoyance” as “a supposed faculty attributed to certain persons, or to persons under certain mesmeric conditions, consisting in the mental perception of objects at a distance or concealed from sight.” The Encyclopedia Britannica defines clairvoyance as “knowledge…not obtained by ordinary channels of perceiving or reasoning.” When I’m “in the zone” and writing, when my characters are speaking to me, I do feel like I’m in a trance, as if I’m seeing things with my “mind’s eye.”

In addition to “clear,” the French word “clair” also means “light,” as in Debussy’s beautiful piece of music “Clair de Lune” (Moonlight). Claire-voie has a second meaning in French: a clerestory, the upper windows in a large church or cathedral that let in more light. Since most of my characters are Catholic and Joseph is a priest, this meaning is also appropriate to my work.

Nave of the Church of Saint-Aignan, Chartres, France, showing the clerestory (upper windows) by Poulpy on Wikimedia Commons

I’d like to think that in my historical fiction, I’m shedding light on truths that are too often concealed. As to why I needed my own imprint to tell these stories, that’s a tale for another blog post!

Filed Under: Going Indie, Interpretation, Publishing, Writing Tagged With: ironwork, logo, meaning, symbol

What’s That Symbol?

October 27, 2019 by Elizabeth Bell

You may have wondered about the ornate, round design I use as an avatar. It’s a logo I created to symbolize my historical fiction series, the Lazare Family Saga.

Claire-Voie Books logo

I was able to pack a great number of meanings into this design, significance both complementary and conflicting. Paradoxes are at the heart of my work; rather than either/or, I choose and. To quote Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1892):

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

The shape was originally inspired by the historic wrought iron of Charleston, South Carolina, the setting for much of my saga. Here are just three examples of Charleston ironwork, limited to circular designs, my own photos from a research trip in April 2018.

  • Joseph Manigault House
  • Market Hall
  • Private home on King Street

With the help of a designer on Fiverr (a lengthy, frustrating, but ultimately successful endeavor) I created my own pattern by combining elements from two particular wrought iron gates in Charleston.

One gate stands on the campus of the College of Charleston at the 1846 Knox-Lesesne House (14 Green Way). I love this gate so much, I bought a necklace based on the pattern from Charleston Gates on Etsy.

I wore this necklace while I wrote much of the Lazare Family Saga’s penultimate draft. During my 2018 research trip, I was able to view the Knox-Lesesne gate in person, but it was obscured by a poster.

The other Charleston gate that inspired me is located at a private home on the Battery (the area near the sea wall). I first discovered this gate on Pinterest. Here’s a beautiful shot of it on Alamy Stock Photo. When I visited, it was obscured by a sign but enhanced by a friendly canine.

Within their circular designs, these two gates contain “hearts and flowers,” symbolizing both the romance and the gardens in my work. But there’s a lot of additional symbolism to unpack.

The four-petalled central flower represents Charleston’s rich botanic history and the fact that two of my central characters, Joseph and Tessa, are gardeners. Throughout my saga, but especially with these two characters, I use the Victorian Language of Flowers (a subject for another post).

Those could be the four showy bracts of a dogwood, a Southern favorite with special significance for Tessa. You’ll have to read Necessary Sins to find out why. 😉

The central shape could also be a four-leaf clover, evoking Tessa’s Irish homeland.

The shape at the center is a quatrefoil too. That’s a Latin word meaning “four leaves.” Quatrefoils were often used in Gothic cathedrals because they symbolize the Four Gospels. Thus the shape evokes my characters’ Catholic faith and Joseph’s priesthood.

  • Quatrefoils in the pointed arches of Lincoln Cathedral
  • Quatrefoil stained glass window in Canterbury Cathedral
  • Quatrefoils above the doors of Reims Cathedral

Yet my logo also signifies Native spirituality and the Western parts of the Lazare Family Saga. To the Zizistas (Cheyenne Indians), the number four is holy because it represents the four directions and the Sacred Powers who reside there.

A circle divided into four quarters recalls a medicine wheel, a native symbol of rebirth. The four parts are the four phases of a person’s life and his growth in wisdom. My character Ésh has a quilled medicine wheel on the medicine pouch he wears around his neck. In Book 4 of my series, Sweet Medicine, I mention a giant medicine wheel made of stones on the High Plains. Such medicine wheels still exist, and they are sacred places to Native peoples.

  • A modern interpretation of a medicine wheel.
  • A miniature medicine wheel
  • The Medicine Wheel in Bighorn National Forest, Wyoming

Many ancient cultures consider circles holy because they have no beginning and no end. Likewise, my logo reflects and repeats itself. Rebirth is a motif in my saga; it’s why I named the central family the Lazares, after the Biblical figure of Lazarus.

Around the outside of my logo, the heart shapes signify the importance of love in my work. But the shapes also resemble sankofas.

Sankofa (from Deposit Photos)

A sankofa is a symbol from the Akan tribe in what is Ghana today. This region of Africa is the homeland of many people fated to become American slaves, including a character introduced in Book 3 of my saga, Native Stranger. He’s an enslaved blacksmith named Shadrach, and he makes a sankofa pendant for his beloved.

Literally, sankofa translates to “Go back and fetch it.” The symbol is about going back in order to go forward. To Shadrach, a sankofa means “Learn from the past so you can change the future”—even when that past is painful. To me, a sankofa also represents historical fiction, the importance of remembering and making the past come alive in the present.

Between the hearts in my logo, the triangular shapes are veined leaves radiating from the central flower.

Claire-Voie Books logo

But if you consider those “veins” in the three dimensions of wrought iron, they would be spikes, evoking chevaux-de-frise. These were a nasty defense mechanism installed around some 19th-century Charleston homes to defend from invaders, especially rebelling slaves. Chevaux-de-frise survive on the fence of the Miles Brewton House on King Street.

These spikes counterbalance the potentially gooey “hearts and flowers” elements in my logo. They say “There is romance here, but there is also danger—even suffering.”

Or are the spikes just leaf veins after all? Don’t get to close, or you might find out… Is this the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, or the sacred Tree of Life?

These may not be circles, but they are spheres!

I would argue that love is both Knowledge and Life, both Death and Rebirth. Remember I said my work is about contradictions?

Speaking of forbidden fruit and rebirth, the ouroboros is another circular symbol featured in my books: a snake eats its own tail and thus sustains itself for all eternity, creating an infinite loop. Likewise, the events in my saga are often cyclical, echoing from one generation to the next. For the Lazare family, is the loop fulfilling or destructive? Or both?

An ouroboros (from Deposit Photos)

Speaking of double-edged swords, my amazing editor, Jessica Cale, saw something in my logo I didn’t: four swords. The sword points are the “leaf veins” or iron spikes that begin between the lobes of the quatrefoil. The sword handles are ornaments I borrowed from the Battery gate (the one with the dog). I thought these ornaments simply gave the design flair and helped to suggest wrought iron.

Claire-Voie Books logo

In Book 2 of my series, two characters do pretend to “cross swords,” though they’re actually tree branches. Later, the Battle of Turkey Creek (a.k.a. Solomon’s Fork) between the Cheyenne and the U.S. Army is decided when the white soldiers draw their sabers. And there is a Sword Gate House in Charleston, named after its famous ironwork.

This home was once an elite girls’ school run by Madame Talvande, a Saint-Domingue émigrée who is a minor character in Necessary Sins, Book 1 of my series. So my subconscious put those swords there. 😉 Another happy accident: my logo also suggests a compass rose, symbolizing my characters’ travels.

By Vloeck

As a whole, my logo reminds me of two things: a rose window and a wagon wheel. A rose window neatly brings together both Catholic symbolism and floral symbolism.

  • Rose window interior
  • Rose window exterior
  • Wagon wheel

The wagon wheel recalls the emigrants on the Oregon Trail, the settling of the American West by Euro-Americans and the destruction of the Native Americans’ way of life (another double-edged sword). My designer and I are currently working on the back cover of Lost Saints, Book 2 in my series, which will feature a wagon wheel. It could also be a stagecoach or train wheel, methods of transportation my characters use in later books.

One of my favorite pieces of historical fiction, the 2005 TNT miniseries Into the West, follows a white family and a Lakota family throughout the turbulent decades of the 19th century. The writers use both the wagon wheel and the medicine wheel to symbolize these cultures’ values and the conflict between them. The white family is even named Wheeler.

So those are most of the meanings packed into my logo. The symbol is also a claire-voie. What’s a claire-voie? Follow this link to my next blog post!

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: ironwork, logo, meaning, motif, symbol

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