Alisse Lee Goldenberg
  • About Me
  • Books
    • Lucky At Bat
    • Jay & Shilo
    • The Ghost in the Garden
    • The Sitnalta Series >
      • Sitnalta
      • The Kingdom Thief
      • The City of Arches
      • The Hedgewitch's Charm
      • The False Princess
    • Children of Colonodona >
      • The Wizard's Apprentice
      • The Island of the Mysitcs
    • The Dybbuk Scrolls >
      • The Song of Hadariah
      • The Song of Vengeance
      • The Song of War
    • Bath Salts
  • Events/Press
  • Other Projects: Stage & Screen
    • Jay & Shilo
    • The Princess of the Tower
    • There Is No Maybe
    • Forty-two Questions
    • Sitnalta: the Musical
  • Author Visits
  • Blog
  • Contact Me

The City of Arches, and CHAI Montreal

12/8/2014

0 Comments

 
So NaNoWriMo 2014 has come and gone. I finished my first draft of The City of Arches and am quite happy with how it turned out. I started this post many times and it didn't work. My kids got sick and it is always difficult when this happens. It seems that with having triplets, once one gets sick, the others shortly follow. They are at the age that they don't understand how to stop the spread of their germs. I also have no self-control. When I see them all sickly and miserable, I have to cuddle and coddle them. Then, of course, I get sick. Ah well.

This book was extremely difficult for me to write. I kept second guessing everything I was doing. Chronologically, it takes place before the events in Sitnalta, yet it is definitely the third book in the series. I kept reading and rereading everything that I had put into Sitnalta and The Kingdom Thief to make sure I wasn't contradicting what I had previously written. Yet I kept having ideas for great plot elements that I could not do. I know that readers are very good at finding inconsistencies in writers' work. 

Another thing was that I kept questioning whether or not readers would WANT to read something that takes place before the events they're already aware of. I kept calling my brother Brian and asking him "Are you sure?" "Is this really a good idea?" He kept telling me to go on, and as my foremost Sitnalta fan and cheerleader, I believed him.

In other news,  I was just interviewed by Lisa Winston the host of the radio programme CHAI Montreal, their Holiday Spirit Show. The interview airs this Sunday at 10:00 p.m. and you can listen live to it on their website: CFMB.ca (just click LISTEN LIVE). We talk about writing, folklore, family, The Hadariah Chronicles, and Sitnalta. (PS. Books make awesome holiday gifts!)
0 Comments

NaNoWriMo, Book News, and Other Things...

11/24/2013

2 Comments

 
I did it! It's just over 51,000 words, and it's done a week early! Granted, I scrapped the majority of what I wrote before NaNoWriMo started, and I had a little prewritten (making me a NaNoRebel), but it's finished! I have completed the final instalment of the Hadariah trilogy that starts with The Strings of the Violin, goes on to The Dybbuk's Mirror (coming out September 2014), and will finish with (the tentatively titled) The Dybbuk's Revenge. It is so weird to be done writing about these characters. I have had them living in my head for so many years now, from when I first came up with the idea for writing a book based on Jewish folklore, to today. It's strange to me to have this sense of completion. I know that I still have edits to do, and more edits, and submitting it to the publisher, and then more edits etc. But for me, the hard part is over. The series now has a concrete beginning, middle, and end. It feels bittersweet. It's odd to no longer have to return to these people's lives and add more to it, because I feel there is no more for me to tell. I'm at a bit of a loss right now. 

In my other worlds: Sitnalta's sequel is chugging along nicely. I have the playground of Colonodona still to visit. I'm doing well there. I'm also adding up my list of cons and fairs that are to be attended this coming year, and it looks to be longer (and possibly American in some cases)! Bath Salts is offline temporarily. This is exciting news! Severed Press is doing an epic rerelease and relaunch with a brand new cover, and bells and whistles (sold separately). We will be appearing on Bathtub Bran's webcast in celebration.

My own celebration is as follows:

Picture
I'm ginger now!
2 Comments

Holidays and The Word on the Street

9/20/2012

2 Comments

 
This week was the Jewish holiday of Roash Hashannah. This marks the start of the Jewish new year, and is also the day the G-d opens the gates of heaven and accepts our prayers and apologies. This is a time for introspection, where we examine the kind of person we were this past year. We make amends, and promise to do better. We also gather with our families and have wonderful dinners, and time together. I have a minor confession to make: I really enjoy going to synnagogue. I like the way the cantor sings the prayers. I like eharing the rabbi's sermons. I find something comforting in the way it stays the same every year. I like being able to go and sing the same tunes every Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur. There is something soothing for me in the ritual. I know many people who find it boring, and I can understand perfectly why that is. And that's fine. But I like it.

Any way, next Tuesday evening, Yom Kippur begins, and we sing the Kol Nidre, where we ask G-d to let us out of our vows and promises we couldn't keep. The gates will close, and we will be either forgiven or not. So, I state here, that if I have done anything this past year to offend any of you, or have wronged any of you, I assure you that I didn't mean it. I am sorry. What I look forward to on this day is the fact that I do dinner for my whole family before we walk to synnagogue for the Kol Nidre. This service also marks the beginning of a fast day. My mom traditionally does the breaking of the fast meal the night after. Once again, it's a great time to see all the cousins and friends that you don't get to spend a lot of time with the rest of the year. I love it.

*    *    *

In other news, this weekend I will be sharing a table at Toronto Word on the Street. Who will I be sharing it with? Why Angelwalk Theatre! So I will be there with the incomparable Jonathon Shaboo from Angelwalk, and I will be selling copies of The Strings of the Violin. So come on down to see us. Pick up a copy of my book. Find out about Angelwalk's awesome season this year. This book festival should be amazing. I hope I can find some time to walk around myself. It looks great!

Anyway, for those interested, here's a video of cantors singing the Kol Nidre.
2 Comments

Why write

1/23/2012

0 Comments

 
The folk lore of Eastern Europe is rich with magic and fanciful characters. It is on these things that I write. My world of Hadariah is populated with the skillful and helpful shretelech, the mischievous horse loving kapelyushniklech, the bridge guarding lantech, talking animals. witches, sages, giants, golems, and dybbuks.

While not all of these are in The Strings of the Violin, we will meet many more of them throughout the novels that are in the works and take place in Hadariah. I find it a sad thing that if I were to speak about most of these beings, people would not know what I was talking about. Golems and dybbuks are better known than most, thanks in part to a fairly popular X-Files episode entitled "Kaddish", and dybbuks were brought back with the recent horror film The Unborn starring Gary Oldman as a rabbi. I love the stories and lessons contained therein that came from such countries as Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the magic and superstitions that are peppered throughout are fascinating to me.

I remember being told things like "Don't have the foot of the bed face a doorway or the dybbuks will steal your soul in the night." "Don't put shoes on the table or you will invite the dybbuks into your home." "Sew red thread into your clothes to ward off evil." If I did anything good, or worthy of praise, my bubbie would spit three times to keep bad thoughts and evil at bay. She would tell me stories of how certain people in the towns where she grew up would believe in these characters. I learned of the Golem of Prague, of Asmodeus and his dealings with poor and rich alike.

I want to give these stories a new life and bring these creatures and characters to a new generation of readers. I do not hope to reinvent the wheel, rather what I write is out of love for my background and of where my family came from. I hope you get that from my stories.
0 Comments

Two Posts in One Week!

1/6/2012

1 Comment

 
This is either me being very productive, or procrastinating doing edits on the first draft of the sequel. I'll pretend it's the former (but we all really know it's the latter). So, here's the news: I got the first draft of my press release and made some changes to it to make it better reflect what I want people to get out of my book. It's so funny to hear what other people say about your work. What they feel is important is sometimes quite the reverse of what you thought was the point of what you were writing. This is not to say that you weren't clear, it's just reading and writing are so subjective. For example, I thought that the fact that my story was based around Jewish and Eastern European folklore was something that set it apart from most other fantasy novels. The people in the press department thought that the fact that my protagonists were all girls was most important. Huh. So, we decided to add a line in their 'Yay! Girl power!' press release to say something about the folklore, and now everyone's happy.

In other news, the boys were mad that so far only Hailey made it into my blog. They feel they have important things to say as well. Here they are:

Phillip:
Picture
Yay! My mommy wrote a book. Y'all should read it!
Joseph:
Picture
This xylophone mallet totally makes me look like a wizard smoking a pipe. Right?
1 Comment

Story Time

12/14/2011

0 Comments

 
For this blog post, I have decided to talk about some of my favourite folktales. I grew up hearing all sorts of stories, some of which were written in my school books, such as the stories about the Village of Chelm. This village was said to be located in Eastern Europe and all within its borders operated on a kind of backwards logic. If problems were to arise, they would strive to solve it, and usually did so in the most convoluted way possible. In honour of this holiday season, I will tell one of my personal favourites:

Winter in the Village of Chelm was a very special time for its citizens. All would wait for the upcoming holiday of Channukah with baited breath, anticipating the candles, latkes, and dreidel games with much excitement. But for the mayor of Chelm, his most favourite thing of the season was the first snowfall. How he loved looking out his window to see the ground covered with a pure unblemished blanket of clean white snow! One morning in early December, the mayor got his wish. He woke up to look out his window to find the ground glittering and white. He jumped out of bed and ran to pull on his clothes. He raced to the front door of his house and stopped short.

"Oh no!" he thought. "If I go out for my morning walk, all this beautiful snow will be disturbed by my footprints. I can't have that. Whatever will I do?" He sat and thought, and could come up with no solution. He sent for his council of wisemen and they all came running to his home. He sat them down and told them his dilemma. They joined him in thought mulling over the problem of getting the mayor to go out for his walk through town without his disturbing the snow.

Much time passed and many ideas were proposed and swiftly discarded. He could not use snowshoes, for that would cause larger prints than his feet would. He could not fly, as he was a man. Finally one of them had an epiphany. What if they could make it so the mayor could fly over the snow, with his feet not touching the ground at all? A chair was quickly fetched, and the council gathered around, hoisting the seated mayor up onto their shoulders. Thus, he was carried out of his house and paraded around town, not touching the snow at all with all praising his wisdom.
0 Comments

    Archives

    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011

    Categories

    All
    Bath Salts
    Folklore
    Literature
    Mirror
    Ouroboros
    Revenge
    Sitnalta
    Strings
    Theatre
    The City Of Arches
    The Kingdom Thief
    Triplets

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly