Art In Fiction

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Kate Mueser, author of The Girl with Twenty Fingers, listed in the Music category on Art In Fiction.  Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jch0608GqlA Premise for the novel: after a disastrous recital ends her dream of becoming a concert pianist, Sarah lands in Munich playing Mozart duets with a grouchy elderly widower and uncovers secrets from his wartime past and...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Louise Fein, author of Book of Forbidden Words, listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction.  Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/XGECvUgXmO0 Premise for the novel: in Tudor England and 1550s Paris, a coded manuscript holds ideas dangerous enough to get its author burned at the stake, and in 1952, a former Bletchley Park codebreaker stuck in McCarthy-era s...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is J.C. Corry, author of The Storyteller's War: Geoffrey Chaucer, Reluctant Spy, listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ATuNBbQ2na8 Premise for the novel: a genesis story for Geoffrey Chaucer. In his mid-twenties, he's drunk, unpublished, and desperate to win Pippa, and sent to Spain under cover of the wine...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Bonnie Blaylock, author of The Water Women , listed in the Textile Arts category on Art In Fiction. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oQagNFbwEzI Premise for the novel: three generations of Sardinian women guard the ancient craft of byssus weaving, golden "sea silk" harvested from a mollusk, until a 1942 wartime secret changes what gets passed down the...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Jillian Forsberg, author of The Porcelain Menagerie , listed in the Decorative Arts category on Art In Fiction. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-c1T9q46_Ys Premise for the novel: how a king's obsession with "white gold" porcelain drives two intertwined stories set decades apart. Fatima, a stolen Turkish handmaiden turned royal mistress, is put i...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Kerry Chaput, author of The Secret Courtesan, listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/fkX-QqvmnQg Premise for the novel: how a marble Venetian sculpture, surfacing after 400 years and credited to a male artist, sends Mia, a modern-day arts authenticator looking for the woman she is sure had carved it. Kerry found d...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Nancy Burkhalter, author of The Education of Delhomme, listed in the Music category on Art In Fiction. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/RNohgRLMv4c Why Chopin needed a piano tuner: how Nancy, tuning pianos herself while listening to Chopin, realized he "had to have" one, and that's how the novel's narrator, Delhomme, was born. Blending fact...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Lynn Cullen, author of When We Were Brilliant, listed in the Photography and Film categories on Art In Fiction. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/86MVn-3LjhY Eve Arnold, the only woman Marilyn Monroe ever let photograph her: who she was, why Lynn had never heard of her either, and the shock of discovering that among all of Marilyn's photographers, there wer...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Kate Whouley, author of The Maestro and Her Protégé, listed in the Music category on Art In Fiction. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Fr_fJ9t9G_o Nadia Boulanger, the most influential music teacher of the 20th century: who she was, why she matters, and how Kate first encountered her by way of her terrifying theory professor when she was a music student. Inventi...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Elisabeth Storrs, author of Fables and Lies , listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lCJfOypSQr4 The genesis of Fables and Lies : how a 30-year obsession with Priam's Gold and its mysterious disappearance after the Russians took it from Berlin led Elisabeth to create Freya, a young German woman working at the...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Caroline Woods, author of The Lunar Housewife, listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0nJmxXJcrQQ How Caroline discovered the CIA's secret program to fund and shape American literary culture during the Cold War, including its involvement in the founding of the Paris Review, and why she saw a novel in it. The...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Aimie K. Runyan, author of Mademoiselle Eiffel , listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction. View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_JcFmRQ4PcQ Why Aimie chose to write about Claire Eiffel rather than her more famous father, and the surprising role Claire played in running Gustave's household, social life, and business from the age of 14. The...

Send us Fan Mail This week on The Art In Fiction Podcast, I'm doing something a little different: a solo episode about my new novel, The Choir , listed in the Music category on Art In Fiction.  View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/SHb4USfSeE0 The family mystery at the heart of the novel: a great-great-grandmother who left her husband with six children in Victorian England and went on t...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Maryka Biaggio, author of Marjory and Me , listed in the Spiritualism category on Art In Fiction.  View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xK3aC6WBKr8 How Maryka discovered the true story of Margery Crandon, Boston socialite, celebrated medium, and the woman who took on Harry Houdini. The bold structural choice to narrate Margery's story through Walter,...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Herb Williams-Dalgart, author of Jingle Boys listed in the Music category on Art In Fiction. View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/azuaBStafaI Herb's personal origin story behind the novel: named after his grandfather who died in WWII, a man he never knew, which sparked a lifelong fascination with the era. How the role of music in wartime, harmony vers...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Chanel Cleeton, author of T he Lost Story of Eva Fuentes listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction. View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/FN2q5JDLLEk Chanel's inspiration for the novel as her love letter to books and a celebration of the power of reading. Her passion for exploring more about Cuban American history and her own heritage as the...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Barbara Stark-Nemon, author of Isabela's Way listed in the Textile Arts category on Art In Fiction. View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/R-0wUhdrD00 How Barbara got the idea to write a novel set in the 17th century during the Inquistion: inspiration resulting from a cycling trip in Portugal. History of the Inquistion in Europe and how it was not forma...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Stephanie Cowell, author of The Man in the Stone Cottage: Novel of the Brontë Sisters   listed in the LIterature category on Art In Fiction. View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/eYPoIKk9pOk Why Stephanie decided to write about the Brontë sisters in The Man in the Stone Cottage ; how she first read and loved  Wuthering Heights when she was a young girl. How...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Tea Gudek Šnajdar, author of Following Van Gogh listed in the Visual Arts category on Art In Fiction. Here's a summary of the podcast: Inspiration for the novel that combines travel writing with a thriller. Fascination with the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh and how his color palette changed as he moved from the Netherlands to Paris to Arles. The "what i...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Louis Bayard, author of The Wildes listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction. View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ukomPza-Oh0 Why write about Oscar Wilde through the lens of his family life? Inspiration for the novel from the memoir of Vivian Wilde, the youngest of the two sons of Oscar and Constance. Challenges of writing about one of the great...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Alka Joshi, author of four novels listed on Art In Fiction including Six Days in Bombay listed in the Visual Arts category. View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/eYPoIKk9pOk Inspiration for Six Days of Bombay and its relationship to the real life story of artist Amrita Sher-Gil. Background on Amrita Sher-Gil and how her personality and sometimes shocking ac...

Send us Fan Mail My guest today is Christine Ma-Kellams, author of The Band listed in the Music category on Art In Fiction. View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZopqRgR9xG4 Inspiration for  The Band and its relationship to pop music, K-Pop, and popular culture. Motivation for writing  The Band  as a commentary on what may be happening behind the scenes of a successful K-Pop boy band. The no...

Send us Fan Mail I'm speaking today with M. A. McLaughlin, author of The Lost Dresses of Italy listed in the Textile Arts category on Art In Fiction. View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rDe_rXrLC2k Overview of the story of The Lost Dresses of Italy as a dual time novel taking place in 1947 and 1864 and inspired by a three-week trip to Italy taken by Victorian poet Christina Rossetti P...

Send us Fan Mail Join me as I chat with Ana Veciana-Suarez, author of Dulcinea listed in the Literature category on Art In Fiction. View the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BKX2HsA43_c Overview of the story of Dulcinea as being about a wealthy Barcelona woman called Dolça who is cast as the fictional muse of Miguel Cervantes Use of the dual-timeline narrative in the novel Ana's family back...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I'm chatting with Mark Baker, author of The Needle of Avocation listed in the Textile Arts category on Art In Fiction. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BKX2HsA43_c The genesis of The Needle of Avocation as the third book in the Cuthbert series Creation of the "It" girl of the 8th century, the heroine of the first two novels in the series, led to t...