AN AUTHOR'S DAY OFF by Margaret Mendel
My second novel PUSHING WATER, a tale that takes place in
Vietnam in 1939, had just been published earlier in the week. The PR end of
publishing a novel was next on my agenda. But before I got involved with what
that entailed; the blog guest posts, interviews and talking up the new novel
with strangers on the street (just kidding), it was time for a needed break.
It
was a perfect winter day. So I decided to go to the Orchid Show at the NY
Botanical Garden. The sky was brilliant. Not a cloud anywhere. The wind had
died down and patches of snow dotted the landscape making it a lovely day to
stroll through the gardens.
This
year marked the 15th instillation of the annual orchid show. The
exhibition, always a beautiful spectacle, displays hundreds and hundreds of
specimens from all over the world.
I
had every intentions of taking a day off from writing, but authors never stop writing,
not really. Even when they are not at the computer or sitting with pen and
paper in front of them, the writer is seeking characters, developing plots and hunting
new story ideas.
As I
read the tags placed in front of the orchids that told of the exotic countries
where the flowers originated, I found myself thinking about locations for a new
novel. Perhaps my next story could take place in a jungle. Or maybe it could be
set in a little known misty plateau above a Tibetan monastery.
It’s
hard to stop writing once a project is finished. The editing and revisions seem
to go on forever. As I stood in the midst of these beautiful flowers I couldn't
shut off the internal author. I played with a science fiction story when I read
that one orchid resembled a bee, a clever decoy to entice pollinators. The
orchid show was rife with fascinating possibilities for the SciFi author, with
plants that smelled of rotten meat in order to lure pollinators. There were
even orchids that trapped insects inside their blooms.
Orchids
are an ancient plant. Recently archeologists discovered a beetle encased in
amber, dating back 20 to 45 million years. It wasn’t the beetle that was the major
discovery, but that an entire eco system was so well preserved that the
scientists could visually identify that the pollen on the beetles planting
organ was that of an orchid.
Though
the orchid has been around for many millions of years it wasn't until the 1800s
that Orchid-mania, historically referred to as orchidelirium, took hold of the
world. Queen Victoria enamored by the beauty of these exotic plants set in
motion an era of flower madness. It all began in 1818, when the English
explorer William John Swainson used a raggedy form of moss and debris to pack a
crate of flora in a ship headed for England. When the crate was unpacked, the
debris had grown into a fantastic bloom.
This discovery gave birth to the professional orchid hunter.
From that point and for a hundred years, the intrepid, the fumbling and the wily
fortune hunter traveled the world seeking the illusive, valuable orchid.
A Czech gardener, Benedict Roezel, the most famous of these
orchid hunters, a one armed man standing 6'2" tall, became a trailblazer in
this endeavor. What a great character her would make. He traveled the world collecting
orchids. In the early 1800’s this was no easy feat. The job of an orchid hunter
was to scour the world's jungles, forests, and mountaintops to collect these
exotic flowers, and then ship the new specimens back to Europe. It was a highly
competitive endeavor. Often the orchid hunters would strip areas bare of entire
populations of orchids to prevent them from falling into a competitor’s hand.
Orchids sold like jewels, the more exotic the bloom, the
higher the price. A plant that may be the only one of it's kind could bring
untold amounts of money. But it wasn’t the orchid hunters who became wealthy
from these exotic plants, but the dealers who arranged the exploratory endeavors.
They were the ones who exacted the high prices and dangled in front of the breathless
collectors the prospect that their expeditions would bring back unimaginable
beauties from exotic locations. That was what kept the market poised and ready
to spend a fortune on one plant.
The orchids in some strange way exacted their revenge. The
exotic flower hunters rarely made enough money to live comfortably. They often met
with grim deaths. Wild animals ate some orchid hunters. An unknown number of
hunters fell to their death slipping off rocky cliffs. And then there were
orchid hunters who were murdered by indigenous people in the jungles.
Roezel, the king of all hunters, never carried a gun and
lived to be an old man.
I left the orchid show, my head swimming in possibilities
for stories. A character, perhaps Roezel-like, I wondered, might fit quite
nicely into the novel in progress that sits in a file on my desktop. The trip
to the orchid show wasn’t exactly a day away from writing, but then I don’t
think I ever do get far from my writing life.
VIETNAM, 1939. Sarah, an expat, working as an Archivist for
the French Colonial Government in Hanoi, is devastated when she finds a
Vietnamese co-worker murdered.
PUSHING WATER Blurb:
As Sarah seeks the murderer, she becomes more entangled in
the Vietnamese people’s struggle for independence.
When the Japanese using Vietnam as a base to assist in their
invasion of China demand the French Archives hand over important documentation,
Sarah realizes she can no longer remain on the sidelines.
Sarah’s life is further complicated by the arrival of an old
friend, Julia, who reminds Sarah of a past she would rather forget.
When a close friend of Sarah’s is arrested and executed for revolutionary
activities Sarah and Julia are heartsick. They decide to return to the States,
but their plans are thwarted as the world is heading towards the unimaginable
horrors of World War Two.
Margaret Mendel lives and writes in New York City. She is an
award-winning author with short stories and articles appearing online and in
print publications. Her debut novel, "Fish Kicker" was published in
2014. Margaret’s latest novel “Pushing Water” was published in February 2017.
She is a staff writer and
photographer with the online magazine Kings River Life. Many
of her photos have appeared in websites, online travel journals and book covers.
Several of her photos have been exhibited in Soho Photography Gallery in New
York City. Check out her photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/margaretmendel/
You can read more
about Margaret and her writing at: Pushingtime.com
FISH KICKER is
available here: ~ Amazon
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~ Bookstrand ~ Coffeetime
Romance ~ Smashwords
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