People often ask writers whether there's an underlying theme to their writing. Some profound truth or trauma the writer is working through, deep down.
In my case, a first glance would suggest a completely fragmented, unfocused, illogical body of work: a novel about the mythology of cacao, a user manual for an integrating cavity absorption meter, articles about
Hollywood,
healthcare and cars, white papers on all manner of high tech, and
poems.
Now, if you take away all the client work and focus on the literary
oeuvres, you're left with:
• a book about the Mayan calendar;
• a novella about an unjustly jailed doctor in Spain;
• a fictionalized observation of the hypnotic power of the Catholic religion;
• a short story about a Russian expat who gets tangled up in an underground casino;
• an allegory about a young photographer who grows up with seven cranes;
• a novella about humanity's relationship with Light and Time;
• a photography book honoring the 2004 Asian Tsunami; and...
• that novel I mentioned about the mythology and history of cacao.
Do you see any patterns now?
Hint: it's in the header of this email.
TIME. I'm obsessed with time. How we live it, how we experience it, what we do with it, and what it does to us.
Funny thing is, I didn't realize it until fairly recently. Oh, the irony.
But it's true. Every one of my works is about Time:
•
Bakaly: They say youth is wasted on the young. This story takes that to a whole new level.
•
Confession: What if a religion that has stood the test of twenty centuries finally confessed its darker secrets to its faithful?
•
The Serpent and the Jaguar: Living in Sacred Time: This one is perhaps the most obvious—this is the book about the Mayan calendar.
•
The Seventh Crane: Too many of us live day-to-day. This story teaches us to appreciate the totality of our lives regardless of our age.
•
Tsunami: Images of Resilience: Time heals all wounds, but it also erases memories. This book of photographs immortalizes the stories of resilience from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, so that the world never forgets.
•
Verse in Arabic: Most of us enjoy freedoms others only dream about. A respected doctor is convicted of murder in General Franco's Spain and loses 21 years of his life. On the eve of his release, he recounts his story, and the pain of living long enough to regain his freedom, to an American journalist.
•
The Visionary: Here Time stars alongside Light and Vision as one of the three pillars of the narrative. I consider
The Visionary as my (first)
magnum opus.
As for
The Jaguar and the Cacao Tree, it's historical fiction/fantasy, so there, again, we visit Time. But this is mythic Time, and it's intertwined with the history of cacao. This story certainly gives the phrase "take your sweet time" a whole new meaning...
I hope you've enjoyed
The Muse Welcome Package. Don't forget to
email me your birthday for a special gift on your day!
See you on the next orange Tuesday!
~ Birgitte
