Fiction Scribe

Hello and happy Friday, everyone.

Today I have an excellent interview by a woman whose name truly die hard Dallas fans will recognize, Camille Marchetta. She is here today to talk about her novel The River, By Moonlight. I hope you’ll join me in welcoming her to the site.

Hello and thank you for stopping at Fiction Scribe, Ms. Marchetta. Tell the readers a bit about yourself.

Hello. Please call me Camille. And thank you for your invitation, Jaime. Tell a bit about myself? Yes. Well . . . I was born in Brooklyn, one of New York City’s five boroughs. I went to elementary and high school there and to college just about thirty minutes farther north. A very romantic adolescent, I dreamed of being an ex-patriot, and though I made it almost to the Canadian border when I was about twelve (car trouble ended that holiday), I never actually left the country until after I got my degree. My first trip abroad was to the Grenadines, on vacation.

A few months later, I went to London, fell in love with it, decided to stay, and worked there as a literary agent for several years. (One of the many perks of my life at the time was that I got to travel in England, as well as on the continent, for business and for fun.)

When I decided I was ready to start writing, I went on to Los Angeles, where I had friends working in television. It took a while, but I did finally get a job, first as a scriptwriter, then as a story editor on Dallas (at the very beginning, as it happened), and after that my career was off and running. I wrote pilots for new series, a TV movie, worked as a writer/producer on other series, including Dynasty, and took time off in between to write novels. I co-authored two with Ivana Trump and, so far, have three of my own

What brought you into the world of writing? When did you start?

Writing was something I always wanted to do. My mother claimed that, long before I could read, I used to bang away at my father’s old Underwood typewriter, pretending I was writing a story. And I remember beginning my first novel when I was eight.

I never finished it, which – unfortunately – was the tale of my writing life for many years after. It was a matter of self-confidence, I think, of being too timid to try to elbow my way into a “club” that included Tolstoy, Wharton, Fitzgerald, so many writers I admired. But getting that job at the literary agency in London really was a stroke of good fortune. Working with my clients, I learned that all writers, at least from time to time, lose their confidence; and that it’s necessary to push past that, focus on the work, keep writing, and hope for the best. Now, that’s what I try to do.

You’re currently on virtual tour for your novel The River, By Moonlight. Could you tell us a bit about the book?

The novel is set in New York City and the Hudson River Valley, in 1917, just as the United States is about to enter the First World War. It deals with the death of Lily Canning, a talented young artist, and the effect of her loss on her family and friends. They are devastated by grief, tormented by questions of how and why, and if that isn’t enough, they’re all terrified that the coming war will cost them more lives, more loved ones.

How do we get beyond our pain and fear, how do we move on? These are among the questions raised in the novel. Each of the main characters has a different answer. Some of those answers are satisfying. Some are not. But I believe they’re honest answers and that, in the end, a case is made for the resiliency of the human spirit and the power of hope.

What inspired you to write The River, By Moonlight? Where did the idea begin?

Friends of mine went by chance to an exhibition of paintings by a young woman who had died in mysterious circumstances. They were very impressed by her work, enough so that they told me about it, and her. I couldn’t get her out of my head. Her story raised so many issues for me, about the importance of self-belief, about the limits of talent, about depression, fear, and grief, and how to deal with them.

Eventually, I decided to write a novel to explore those issues. But this isn’t a book “ripped from the headlines” or based on fact. The Lily Canning of my novel doesn’t much resemble the young artist who started me off on this journey. The setting is different. The characters are wholly invented, as is the plot. It’s a work of fiction.

What character do you relate to the most and why?

I think there’s a bit of me in all the characters. Rereading the novel, I find traits, attitudes, opinions of mine cropping up all over the place. I didn’t do it on purpose, but there they are. Still, if I had to chose, in The River, By Moonlight, I’d pick Nuala, the Irish housekeeper, who’s all of twenty years old. Not that I’m particularly like her, but I admire her level head, her capacity for hard work, and, above all, her gumption.

What is your favourite part of the book?

Honestly, I don’t have a favourite part. But I think the structure is interesting. All of the chapters (there are ten of them) are told from the point of view of one of the main characters, each moving the story forward. The book decided on its own (it felt like that, anyway) that’s how it wanted to be written; and, believe me, it was hard to do, but the end result, I’ve been told, are characters to whom readers seem to relate on a very real and personal level. That’s been very satisfying.

Are there any authors who have inspired you in your writing?

So many. But I think the two who are always there in the back of my mind when I’m working are Jane Austen and Scott Fitzgerald. What I love about their work, and aspire to in mine, is the lucidity of their writing, the deceptive ease of their styles, their ability to tell multi-layered and meaningful stories without a great deal of obvious fuss.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on this tour. And before that on getting the book published. I haven’t had much time for anything else. But I have been doing research, and making notes on two projects, one a memoir of my family, the other a new novel. I can’t tell you much about the latter. For one thing, I don’t know much yet. For another, I’m superstitious about it. I think that talking gets in the way of writing. Anyway, it does for me.

What are your dreams for your writing?

That it will keep getting better; that it will reach people who’ll get some of the same satisfaction reading it that I do shaping a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, a book; that I resist all temptations and distractions and NEVER stop.

When you’re not writing novels, what do you do? How do you find time to write?

A you may have guessed, I like to travel. I was in Sicily last March and in England in September. I go to the theatre, the ballet, to art museums, to films, and I read a lot, of course. And, in addition to friends on both coasts of the United States and in Europe, I have an enormous Italian family I love to be with.

It’s difficult to find time to work, but I do. In fact, I’m quite ruthless about it once I start a project. My best hours for working, I’ve found over the years, are in the afternoon, so I run errands in the morning, schedule nothing between one and six, and try not to go out in the evening more than twice a week (including weekends).

Do you have any advice for writers?

Loads, but I’ll confine myself to this: set easy and achievable goals. There’s nothing worse, nothing more deadening to the creative process, in my opinion, than feeling a failure. If you tell yourself you have to write, say, ten pages a day and only write five, you’ll be miserable. It will spoil not only the one day, but the next, and if you repeat the failure, you’ll just go on indefinitely feeling awful.

But set a goal of one or two pages (even a half, if that’s what works), and you’ll be amazed at how (sometimes) you can whiz past it to three or five or seven. Talk about bliss! You’ll be back at your desk the next day raring to go. And even at one page a day, at the end of a year you’ll have 365 – more than enough for a book!

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Jaime. I enjoyed it.

Camille Marchetta

CamilleMarchetta.com