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Meanwhile Lucia's fans are tapping their collective feet while she finishes up her next novel set in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1917, Last Train from Cuernavaca. Actually, as of the middle of June, she has sent in the manuscript to her publisher. So that's one giant step closer to release.
Last Train from Cuernavaca
In the Christmas season of 1913, Grace Knight’s elegant old hotel on Cuernavaca’s main plaza is the place to see and be seen. Mexico’s landed elite, members of the foreign community, young army officers and their wives, and wealthy tourists flock to the Colonial. They arrive by train and in horse drawn carriages and horseless ones. Under the ballroom’s hundreds of twinkling electric lights, they dance to old Spanish tunes and to the new rhythm of ragtime. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ “Very Delectable, Highly Respectable” Captain Federico Martín loved everything about women, but this was the first time he had fallen for a pair of pale English hands. Their owner sat so upright and Anglican on the piano bench that it could have been a church pew, but her long, supple fingers harbored no piety. They chased the syncopated lilt of the “Maple Leaf Rag” across the keys like sprites on a spree. Her fingers were so sure, so swift, they flouted assorted laws of classical mechanics, gravity, drag, and human fallibility. A score of couples danced the Cake Walk and the One-Step under hundreds of tiny lights strung like stars across the 383-year-old ceiling beams of the Hotel Colonial’s ballroom and restaurant. The Hotel Colonial was one of the few places where Cuernavaca’s foreign community and its elite Mexican society mingled. Christmas of 1912 was more than a month away, but they were already celebrating the season in high style. Most of the dancers sported the latest fashions, but several men wore the gray-blue uniforms of the Mexican Army. Captain Rico Martín wore the same uniform, and he thanked his own lucky stars that Colonel Rubio had chosen the Colonial as lodging for himself and his aides. The colonel was a difficult man, to say the least, but now Rico counted himself fortunate to be one of those aides. This was his first visit to the hotel where he would billet while in Cuernavaca, and he liked what he saw. The glossy toe of his cavalry boot tapped in rhythm with the music, but he wasn’t dancing. With arms and ankles crossed, he leaned a shoulder against a tiled column next to the piano. He swirled a snifter of cognac in the palm of one hand while his dark eyes followed those runaway fingers more closely than the dice in a game of hazard. With her deft hands the piano player would make a fine thimble-rigger. She could have held her own among the shell game experts Rico had seen fleecing suckers in Harvard Square. He half smiled as he imagined her shuffling the three walnut hulls with such speed that no poor sap could guess which one hid the dried pea. What intrigued him most about her was the contrast of those devil-may-care hands with the ramrod line of her spine, the intensity of her concentration, and the gleam of two pearly teeth biting her lower lip. And such a voluptuous lower lip it was. Rico wouldn’t have minded nibbling on it himself. One of the waiters had referred to her as la inglesa, so he assumed she was British, and aristocracy too, by the refined air about her. She had hiked her long, narrow skirt up several inches, freeing her feet to work the piano pedals. Her slim ankles looked English enough, but a spatter of freckles across her nose and a mass of hair the dark amber of aged whiskey hinted at an Irishman somewhere in her family’s woodpile. Her hair had probably started the day pinned in a fashionable heap on top of her head, but a gaggle of locks had slipped their tethers. They danced around her neck as she played. He wondered if she was a guest here and if she was married. Not that the latter mattered. He had enjoyed the company of more than a few wives of careless husbands, but he had never laid siege to an inglesa before. A year ago the peasants had won the workers’ rebellion begun by Francisco Madero. With Madero installed as Mexico’s president, the prospect of peace gaped like a long yawn for Rico. Seducing la inglesa would provide an amusing diversion. Rico had no doubt about the outcome of his campaign. He didn’t have to see his reflection in the piano’s polished surface to know he was handsome. In his twenty-eight years uncounted numbers of women had told him so, beginning with his Zapotec nurse when he was all of three minutes old. But as the music frolicked toward a finale, he glanced at his ghostly image in the ebony lacquer and smoothed down a fractious cowlick. La inglesa’s right hand flickered through a long glissando before coming to rest, like a bird gliding in for a landing. The dancers applauded, then made their way back to the roast beef and parsleyed potatoes delivered by a bevy of white-coated waiters. “Joplin was right,” Rico said. “I beg your pardon?” She looked up and Rico saw that her eyes were as deep blue as delft porcelain and just as cool. His heart jilted her hands and fell boots-over-epaulets into infatuation with her eyes. He didn’t realize yet that his plans for seduction had turned on him like an ungrateful cur. Rico was taller than average, but when she stood up la inglesa could almost look straight into his own eyes. He noticed that most of her height was legs. “Scott Joplin,” Rico said. “He claimed he could ‘shake de earth’s foundations wid de Maple Leaf Rag.’” He expected her to exclaim in surprise that a soldier in the Mexican army not only spoke English, but American Negro dialect as well. Instead she gave him a smile that was cordial, but noncommittal. “And you are…?” “Captain Federico Martín at your service. “ Rico clicked his boot heels and bowed smartly. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Captain Martín. I’m Grace Knight.” Grace. Gracia. Perfect. God Himself must have named her. She extended her hand in greeting, but instead of shaking it he raised it to his lips and kissed her fingertips. That didn’t seem to surprise her either. Did men kiss her hand on a regular basis? If they did, he had a sudden urge to floor them for it. Her immunity to his charm caught Rico off-guard. He was trying to think of his next move when a crash came from the Colonial’s maze of back corridors. It sounded like breaking pottery, probably in the kitchen. Shouts followed, but not in any language Rico recognized, and he spoke six of them. The shouter’s gender was also a mystery. “Please make yourself at home here, Captain Martín,” said Grace. “Now if you’ll be so kind as to excuse me.” She nodded and hurried off toward the commotion. The long curve of her tight skirt looked like water flowing. Rico listened intently as he watched her go. He thought the distant shouting might be Chinese, but he still wouldn’t wager serious money on whether the source was male or female. And Rico would wager serious money on just about anything. “Rico! We’ve been waiting for you.” Another perfectly-tailored blue uniform with captain’s bars called to him in Spanish from the doorway of the Colonial’s cantina. “Hurry up! They’re ready to lose at cards.” From the bar came the rarest, most beautiful sound in Mexico, the chime of ice in glasses. Before he joined Juan, Rico glanced over his shoulder in hopes that Grace Knight would reappear. She didn’t. The piano looked like it missed her too.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ A writer friend asked Lucia how she does re-writes. Here's what she told him: Re-writes: I print out the rough draft as I finish each chapter and I stack them up. Then as I find more info or get a better idea I clip the note card or scrap of paper onto that chapter. Sometimes I just throw them on top if I don't know where to put them. By the end of the first run-through I might have a couple hundred cards in no order piled on top of the ms. When it's time to make the second pass I lay out all the chapters on the floor and try to put each card or scrap of paper where it belongs. For this book, I took the cards that were left over, divided them by subject and characters, labeled each packet and laid them on the floor too. So when I have a scene from a certain character's point of view I can mine those cards to help get a feel for them. I also have thousands of note cards, organized by subject, in the file drawers. They're in reserve for when I need additional info. For the re-writes I go back through the ms, listing each chapter on a legal pad by number, scene, month and year of the events, and chapter title (like "Picnicking on the Precipice," "Souvenirs and Incendiaries," "All's Fair in War and Tango") along with a brief description and whose P.O.V. the scene is from. Otherwise I would forget what was happening when and to whom. (When one's memory is as bad as mine organization is the key to survival). While I'm trying to improve the general quality of the prose I also adjust the chronology (Which can get really screwed up when writing about the Mexican Revolutions... there seem to have been several running serially and overlapping, and the major players changed sides more often than they changed their underwear). I try to fill in gaps in the plot, add pertinent info, make the characters more interesting, correct inconsistencies and errors, and generally make myself crazy. For however many months it takes, I have various drafts of chapters, piles of out-takes, note cards, paper scraps, books, internet print-outs, and legal pad sheets spread out on two desks, the office floor, the dining room table and on the trunk by the couch. I keep a legal pad by the bed for scribbling things down in the middle of the night, and a notebook in the car for when I'm stuck at traffic lights. It's like trying to ride a really large motorcycle. I never feel like I'm in control of the process. Although at least on a motorcycle I get where I'm going faster. Of course, with re-writes I'm not as likely to end up in traction. I don't know how other writers make sense of thousands of factoids and fiction bits, but this is what works, sort of, for me.
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email Lucia directly: looshr@aol.com ©Lucia St. Clair Robson 2001 - 2008
Website by: www.Sky-Bolt.com |
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While
you're waiting, here's an image of a soldadera to set the mood, 