D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

memoir

Fantasy Memoir?

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Lisen of Solsta

Like most writers, I find my characters within my soul, and I distribute my personal attributes and flaws freely but not fairly to characters far and wide. Molding the magic that makes for an intriguing character can be a complicated process, but once I know them, they become companions in the greater quest of creating and telling a story.

Lisen, my first protagonist, made her debut in the process by introducing herself to me as “Ann.” “It’s the shortened version of my full name, Ariannas.” “Okay,” I replied and proceeded to produce a story and define a character around that declaration.

The problem was Ann was boring. She’d been raised in a co-ed monastery where the hermits taught her to be obedient and passive. But after many years of working the story, I finally discovered her name was Lisen, not Ann, and she’d spent time on earth before ending up in Garla. She was 17 years old and sassy. And I realized I hadn’t liked her much before, but I really liked her now.

Writing from the point of view of a 17-year-old was relatively safe. Seventeen-year-olds sometimes think like adults, and they can certainly talk like adults. They may make unreasonable demands, but you can, at the least, talk to them. And despite what some people think, not all main characters represent the author. In Lisen’s case, she was the woman I’d always wished to be.

I finished Lisen’s story about a year ago and found myself faced with a dilemma. What next? As I cleaned up the text and formatted the final book for publication, I pondered the possibilities and made notes. I’d always hoped to write a memoir. But I’m a very linear thinker, and memoir generally requires a willingness to write on topics as they occur to you and worry about the organization later. So, how about a fictional memoir? A YA fantasy fictional memoir? What could possibly go wrong?

Well, not much has actually gone wrong. I’m approaching the end of book 1, and Mari, my protagonist, is a 15-year-old me. Of course, the fantasy situations confronting her are not what I went through at that age, but her home life, her mother and the way she relates to others is ALL me. That’s scary. But equally as scary was her age.

Hart at 15

You may not realize this, but 15-year-olds live in a whole different world. Everything is more important than everything else, and they can be a little narcissistic without it being an actual psychological diagnosis other than “she’s 15 years old—come on.” On top of that, unlike in the Lisen of Solsta series where I switched POVs between nine or ten characters with every scene, the entire book is told through her eyes.

So, I have chosen to plunge myself into mid adolescence. Again. It was hard enough the first time. But a truth burns within me that must be told, and if I can’t do it as a memoir, I will, by god, reveal it in fiction. I’ve promised Mari I’ll make it work.

Farewell, California Contessa

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When we met, I, just a teenager at the time, gazed up in awe at this beauty in her prime. Her youth behind her, my parents convinced her that an alteration of attire would benefit her greatly, and so it did. She went from the entirely inappropriate coloring of pink accessorized by baby blue to a more stately, perhaps even regal off-white accented with warm green, her strong iron jewelry all in black. This matched her terracotta bonnet, and she complemented her entire neighborly entourage.
My family loved her fiercely. We groomed her inside and out, restoring all those little corners and great rooms in a soul that people sometimes misinterpret. After all, her conception had brought together all the best that creative humanity could offer at the time; we would recover all we could of where she had begun.
For over forty-five years we loved her, depended on her, trusted her. Sometimes she let us down, but in the end it was we who brought her to where she lingers now. Unkempt, disheveled, she stands on her hill, filled with memories, more ours than those of anyone else she’s known. I sit with her on Sundays as I prepare to abandon her completely, and I remember. Oh, my dear God, how I remember. It halts me in my work.
Here we once put the Christmas tree, in front of the great, paned window in the massive living room for all to see.
And there, we painted the master bedroom on March 15, 1964, my parents’ twenty-third anniversary and the day that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton married for the first time.
My balcony, a Romeo-and-Juliet balcony if ever there were one, turned out to be not nearly as well connected to her skeleton as it should have been. They had to tear up the floor in my bedroom and cable it to support beams in the far wall to make it safe.
Then there was the Sunday right before our first Christmas all together. I headed down to the basement to wash my hair and smelled the smoke. The Fire Department discovered the wooden framing for the cement catch below the fireplace, placed there thirty-five years earlier, had never been removed. An ember had caused the wood to smolder. The nice firemen put it out, then spent the next hour or so feeling walls for heat. Problem was that forced-air-heating ducts riddled the thick walls. Luckily we’d lived there just long enough to know where all those ducts belonged, and soon the gentlemen fire fighters departed, leaving my father to announce that not every kid gets a real fire engine for Christmas.
I feel her observing me as I think back. She remembers far more than I do, despite her dilapidated and slightly addled state. She watched as we moved in, and she’s watching as we prepare to walk away. It’s the right thing to do, I know. Her wounds and genetic defects will be healed once we are gone, and she will rise, a phoenix from the fire, unbearably beautiful in bright new feathers yet with a weathered eye. I will miss her terribly. I already do. But she will be the better for our departure. We have no money to maintain her. We cannot pay her taxes. It’s time to let her go.