A year and a half ago, as part of my M.F.A. from Fairfield University, I began writing my novel, Cities of Women, in earnest. A month ago, I completed a first full draft.
What’s it about, you ask? Well, here’s a very short synopsis:
Cities of Women is a work of historical literary fiction inspired by research on the medieval life and times of the proto-feminist, Christine de Pizan, the first European woman of letters to support herself as a writer. Moving between past and present, the story evokes the spare joys and monumental pitfalls facing medieval women artists, and a woman who studies them.
Verity Frazier, a disillusioned professor of history, risks her career when she sets out to prove that the artist responsible for the illuminations in the medieval manuscripts of Christine de Pizan was a remarkable woman named Anastasia. As Anastasia’s story unfolds against the richly evoked 15th century backdrop of moral disaster and political intrigue, yet extraordinary creativity, Verity finds little evidence of the artist’s existence, while discovering the missing pieces to make her own life whole.
I’d felt the idea for this novel percolating slowly in my brain for many years. I spent more than a decade, on and off, researching medieval manuscripts until I was able to understand their production enough to write convincingly about them.
One of my writing mentors, the terrific Eugenia Kim, suggested consulting the Guide to Literary Agents (2020) and I’ve been gathering nuggets from the gold mine of information in its pages. The submission requirements vary widely from agent to agent, so it’s been important to keep a log of what I sent to whom and when.
It’s esssential, painstaking, time-consuming, somewhat mind-numbing, work to get the book into the world.
Here’s hoping I get a nibble sooner, rather than later.
Meanwhile, I’m outlining my next project….
AVANTI!