I am finished the manuscript of "Tintamarre!"
I got the idea in December 2012 when driving to my home in "Tintamarre" to visit my mother for Christmas. I was listening to a James Lee Burke talking book and was consumed with the character. I'd read all of the Dave Robicheaux series and felt the character's sense of longing for something lost. But hearing it spoken had me connect in a different way. I could see him as an Acadian long suffering from not being in the place of his Ancestors.
So I started working on an idea and by May - for my Mother's 97th birthday I was ready to start the formal researching and had even written about fifty pages that I knew would fit in somewhere. I met with the historians to whom I owe so much and from whom I learned things I had never known. They gave me some legends that connected the people of the time to me. And I made my long walk out on the dykes and found the shattered pottery of an Acadian's soup bowl from hundreds of years ago.
I was given a mission and tried as well as I could to tell the epic story honestly and with the beginning of an understanding of what it was like for Acadians then, and what it is like for them now.
I could have been finished four months ago, but I got taken away from it by the need to earn a living.
But it may have been for the best.
I went back to it four months later, and the story was new again. I rewrote what I had written and was stuck for an ending. But my sweetie, Katherine, and I had a cold drink and talked about it and next thing I knew... I knew. And I dashed off the last 15,000 words.
I made an ending that was at the same time tragic and triumphant. Which was what I had set out to do.
I hope hundreds of thousands of people learn from what I have written...
So I can write the sequel.
-- BLF
I got the idea in December 2012 when driving to my home in "Tintamarre" to visit my mother for Christmas. I was listening to a James Lee Burke talking book and was consumed with the character. I'd read all of the Dave Robicheaux series and felt the character's sense of longing for something lost. But hearing it spoken had me connect in a different way. I could see him as an Acadian long suffering from not being in the place of his Ancestors.
So I started working on an idea and by May - for my Mother's 97th birthday I was ready to start the formal researching and had even written about fifty pages that I knew would fit in somewhere. I met with the historians to whom I owe so much and from whom I learned things I had never known. They gave me some legends that connected the people of the time to me. And I made my long walk out on the dykes and found the shattered pottery of an Acadian's soup bowl from hundreds of years ago.
I was given a mission and tried as well as I could to tell the epic story honestly and with the beginning of an understanding of what it was like for Acadians then, and what it is like for them now.
I could have been finished four months ago, but I got taken away from it by the need to earn a living.
But it may have been for the best.
I went back to it four months later, and the story was new again. I rewrote what I had written and was stuck for an ending. But my sweetie, Katherine, and I had a cold drink and talked about it and next thing I knew... I knew. And I dashed off the last 15,000 words.
I made an ending that was at the same time tragic and triumphant. Which was what I had set out to do.
I hope hundreds of thousands of people learn from what I have written...
So I can write the sequel.
-- BLF
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