I'm sitting here at my computer in the middle of the night, exhausted and exultant. First draft of RAV HISDA'S DAUGHTER is complete at 34 chapters and approximately 150,000 words, including an ending that brings tears to my eyes. Now comes the fun part, the editing - cutting and adding, rearranging and removing, shaping and improving, and hopefully, perfecting. I've always enjoyed editing more than writing, so it's a great relief to have reached this juncture. Hallelujah!
These days, I probably get fan emails about once a week [thankfully, complaint emails are only a few a year]. I make it a point to answer them all, but most fan letters are similar and thus I can send a rather generic 'thanks for your kind words' type of letter. Every once in a while a really special email arrives in my inbox, and it really makes my day. The one I got this week was not only from an unusual source [not an American Jewish woman, my typical fan], but so cheered me that I had to share it.
It came from Dhanayshar Mahabir, an economics professor at the University of the West Indies:
"Dear Mrs. Anton, I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed Joheved. I am an unlikely reader a non-Jew (Hindu), 52-year-old male economics professor (A one kitten Economics Chacham). I have always been fascinated with Jewish history since my interaction with Jewish friends in Montreal where I did my Graduate work. The role of agricultural productivity in scholarship in the middle ages is something I find very interesting from an economics perspective. I look forward to reading about Miriam and Rachael and I thank you for your research and the lucid style of writing."
Don't you just love his expression "one kitten Economic chacham"? And if you don't get it, you should reread the opening scene in Book 1 - JOHEVED. I must say that we could use some 'ten-cat economic chachamim' right now to help fix the mess the world's economy is in.
People keep asking me if RASHI'S DAUGHTERS is available on Kindle, which it is, in addition to B&N's Nook and Apple iPad. And then they ask what I think about e-readers. In short, I have very mixed feelings about e-readers.
Good: my fans [and fans of historical novels in general] tend to read a lot of this genre, but typically only once per book, so e-readers allow them to buy copies more without the problem of storage, plus the ability to take as many novels as they like on a vacation and to order more if they finish them. They're convenient to read in a place where the lighting is poor, and for my some of my 'older' readers, the ability to adjust the font size larger means the difference between reading or not.
Bad: e-readers are expensive and what are the odds that current models will even function in 10 years [remember floppy disks]? They're definitely not as easy to recycle as paperback books, plus they put one more nail in your local bookstore's coffin. And let’s face it, reading off a screen is just not the same as reading from an honest-to-goodness paper page.
Ugly: But as an author who gets a higher royalty on e-versions of my novels than on paperbacks, I'd be biting the hand that feeds me to reject them. Here's a link to the Chicago tribune article that started this discussion:
This post is somewhat a continuation of last week's. As I mentioned then, Tisha B'Av is fast approaching, and in an unusual coincidence, Hisdadukh [Rav Hisda's daughter] was about to observe the Black Fast in the ruins of Jerusalem in the scene I was writing at that time. One week later, with Tisha B'Av even closer, my novel-in-progressed has moved ahead much faster than reality, to the point that I'm writing a scene where she celebrates Pesach with Rabbi Avahu's family in Caesarea, seat of the provincial governor for Roman Palestine.
"Seder" is not what my characters in the 3rd-century would have called the Pesach festive meal, the word 'seder' being used for the first time in the Middle Ages. Indeed, scholars today are not at all sure how Jews observed Pesach in those first centuries after the Temple was destroyed. We know from the Mishna [Tenth chapter of tractate Pesachim] how the rabbis did it, or perhaps more accurately, how the rabbis wanted [or imagined] it done.
But what the average Jew did is not so easily ascertained, and that's the research I'm currently immersed in. So far, the only place scholars agree is that on the first night of Pesach, Jewish families celebrated with a festive meal that included unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and meat [maybe roasted, maybe not]. They drank wine, retold the story of the Exodus from Egypt, and chanted the Psalms that make up Hallel, as were sung in the Temple. Maybe there was discussion that resembled a Greco-Roman symposium.
The subject is complicated because many, perhaps most, Roman Jews did not follow the rabbis, plus there were Jewish-Christians and ex-pagan Christians, all of whom were developing new rituals [and discarding old ones] for this ancient Biblical holiday. For early Christians, differentiating Easter from Passover was an important goal, yet the two were inextricably linked.
I wish you Shabbat Shalom and an introspective Tisha B'Av.