Sunday Series: Michelle Cameron on Why I Write

In this Sunday Series, you’ll meet writers new and seasoned as they share what inspires them to put #PenToPaper. This week, welcome Michelle Cameron, a historical novelist, who sees the gift of discovering story in research.


Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Something about numbers mesmerized her, made the world fade away. The bustle of the ketubah workshop, the messiness of the artists’ desks, the fanciful decoration and sketch work she had no gift for were replaced by a world that seemed logical and fixed, firm around the edges.


This passage is from Beyond the Ghetto Gates where my heroine, Mirelle, contemplates her love of numbers, a love she employs daily to help manage her father’s ketubah (Jewish marriage certificate) workshop.

It’s ironic that I chose mathematics for Mirelle to excel in, considering my own lack of skill. I constantly mess up dates and the simplest of calculations eludes me. But I was able to imagine how someone could love them because of how writing captures me. So let me apply that first sentence to my own passion: Something about writing mesmerizes me, makes the world fade away.

When I’m in the zone, one world truly does fade away – our mundane present day – and is replaced by the world of my imaginings and the characters who speak to me, often taking the action in unanticipated directions. In Beyond the Ghetto Gates, I was transported to Italy during the period of the French Revolution. I loved bringing the harbor city of Ancona to life:

The walk to the cathedral was steep; it made Francesca, burdened by her pregnancy, gasp for air. The women rounded a bend in the road and paused, looking over the panorama spread before them. The red, white, and pink stone buildings with their red-tiled roofs were bathed in a golden glow. In the harbor, multi-masted cargo ships with furled canvases were anchored in the bay. “

In The Fruit of Her Hands, my previous historical novel, I entered medieval Europe and lived the lives of a Jewish family coping with mounting antisemitism; in my first published work, In the Shadow of the Globe, I stood backstage at the Globe theatre, watching my literary love, William Shakespeare, as he embraced a full-blooded Elizabethan life – all the while writing the masterpieces we still marvel at today.

As a historical novelist, I love delving into these different periods, figuring out what people ate, how they dressed, what they did to survive. Honestly, there can be a bit of terror associated with this, especially in the newest novel, where I describe Napoleon’s military battles. I know that someone, somewhere, will point out what I got wrong. But I reassure myself by recalling that I’m a novelist, not a historian. It’s the story that’s important.

But when I discover in the research ways to shape the plot, it can be an astounding gift. The ketubah workshop, for instance? That arose from a discovery that Ancona, Italy – the harbor city where Napoleon first demolished the ghetto gates – was also the world center of ketubah making. In fact, it was where artisans and scribes first illuminated these documents.

And as I learned more about the city, a strange tale came to light. It seemed – based on Vatican documents – that a portrait of the Virgin Mary in Ancona’s cathedral turned her head and wept. The devout took this miracle to mean that the Madonna would protect them from the French invaders. There was a particularly juicy anecdote that Napoleon himself, while looting the cathedral, faced down the portrait and was unnerved by it. How could any novelist resist such a story? Resist using it fictionally to inform her plot?

So why do I write? Well, any day when I don’t, I’m unsettled and deeply unhappy. Something drives me to the page, where I bring life to distant worlds and hear a chorus of invented people clamoring to be heard. Like my heroine above, I’m as consumed by words as she is by numbers.


MICHELLE CAMERON is a director of The Writers Circle, an NJ-based organization that offers creative writing programs to children, teens, and adults, and the author of works of historical fiction and poetry: Beyond the Ghetto Gates (She Writes Press, 2020), The Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz (Pocket, 2009), and In the Shadow of the Globe (Lit Pot Press, 2003).

She lived in Israel for fifteen years (including three weeks in a bomb shelter during the Yom Kippur War) and served as an officer in the Israeli army teaching air force cadets technical English. Michelle lives in New Jersey with her husband and has two grown sons of whom she is inordinately proud. Visit her website for more information.

You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. You can purchase a copy of Beyond the Ghetto Gates from IndieBound, Barnes & Noble, Indigo, and Amazon on Kindle or in paperback.


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Q&A with Julie Kibler, Author of Calling Me Home

The heart is a demanding tenant; it frequently makes a strong argument against common sense. ~ from Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler

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A favorite quote of mine comes from E. L. Doctorow in a lecture he gave on Historical Fiction at the City University of New York (CUNY). In this lecture, he says, “What is the past if not the present and the future?” I thought of this quote as I read Julie Kibler’s debut novel and historical fiction, Calling Me Home. Kibler’s novel ties past and present together, seamlessly, within the framework of an unlikely friendship between elderly Isabelle McAllister and young Dorrie Curtis.

As Dorrie drives Isabelle from Texas to Cincinnati for a funeral, Isabelle reveals how, as a young woman, she fell in love with Robert, a young black man and the son of her family’s housekeeper. Robert is Isabelle’s first and greatest love, and in 1930’s Kentucky–in a town where blacks were not allowed after dark–they struggle against racism of the times to stay together.

Julie Kibler’s Calling Me Home has taken off with great success because, I believe, fiction based in history often unfolds into stories that could just as easily happen today. Likely, there are still families who would make it more than difficult for couples of different races to be together. After all, racism isn’t dead. It’s all over the news.

I’m honored to host Julie here for a quick Q&A, where she talks a bit about the book and the people who helped shape the story. I’m also offering a book giveaway. Leave your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of her novel. Random.org will choose the winner on Tuesday, July 2nd.

Now welcome, Julie Kibler.

CC: In the Acknowledgements and the book’s dedication, you mention your grandmother. Can you tell us a little more about the role she played in bringing your novel to fruition?

Kibler_BPblog.102215117_stdJK: While I was growing up, my grandmother puzzled me. She wasn’t always very “grandmotherly” and seemed unhappy a large part of the time. Long after she died, my father shared with me that she had fallen in love with a black man when she was a young woman in Northern Kentucky, and that she wasn’t allowed to be with him. It seemed to provide an explanation of sorts for why she was the way she was. The way I figure it, this young man must have been her one true love, and her life must not have turned out the way she hoped it would. I thought about this a lot and for a long time, and eventually decided to write a novel—not her story, as I don’t know the specific details, but the story of a young woman in a similar time, place, and situation. I like to think she guided me in a way, almost as if she sat at my shoulder whispering to me of how it felt to be in love with someone when that relationship was forbidden for bad reasons.

CC: Much of CALLING ME HOME takes place in Shalerville, a Sundown town in which Robert and his family–and any other African-Americans–are not allowed after dark, a threat made clear by a sign posted at the edge of town. Though Shalerville may be a made up place, Sundown towns are an ugly reality of our American past. Was it difficult to research the existence of such place; did you find people hesitant to discuss them?

JK: Shalerville is made up, but it’s a composite of the small Northern Kentucky towns where my father and grandmother grew up—all sundown towns—and most like my father’s hometown. I didn’t know about sundown towns until I started questioning my dad about where he grew up. I’d visited his hometown and others over the years, and I knew them from from a child’s eye view or a more modern perspective, but I was really surprised to learn about the signs and the rules. My dad graciously shared the details he could remember of his childhood in a sundown town. While I was growing up, my parents were very open to people of all races and religions, and I think he, too, felt it was important that others knew what happened. There are few visible records, such as photographs. And yet there are still many, many towns in our country that are not open to people of other races. The signs are simply missing now. I’ve had conversations while meeting with book clubs where people relate stories of people excluded from small towns because of race in recent years.

CC: In this interview with Natalia Sylvester, you write about doubt, saying we worry too much about whether or not we should write a certain story or if we have the “right” to tell it from the perspective of a character whose experience is so different from our own. How do you know when you’ve not only conquered a bit of that doubt, but that you are indeed meant to tell the story?

JK: I think when a story haunts you so much that you can’t possibly NOT write it, when the characters are loud and clear in your mind, and in a way, demanding to be heard, you just have to sit down and write. Write it for yourself if for nobody else. And then, maybe you’ll be brave enough to show it to someone else. And when people read it and tell you it’s a story that needs to be seen, you send it out and see what happens. Sounds easy, huh? Maybe not that easy, but that’s kind of how it goes.

CC: What are you reading these days?

JK: I’m about to finish up Me Before You by JoJo Moyes. I’m really loving it, and I can tell it’s going to make me cry before it’s all over. I am not an extremely emotional person outwardly, but I have a strange love affair with books that push me there. I like movies and music and books that lead me to an emotional catharsis. I think it’s healthy to have a good cry now and then.

CC: What advice might you offer other writers on the road to publication?

JK: First things first. First, write the book. THEN worry about all the details getting it to publication. Without a finished book, your chances of publication as a debut author drop about 99.9%, by my purely unscientific calculations. And speaking of finished … I think aspiring writers too often send out things that are unpolished, and kind of … unRIPE. (Believe me, I have done it myself in the past! I speak from experience!) They haven’t done the work it takes to learn their craft. They are in a hurry to send out a rough draft the minute they type THE END. This isn’t smart. You lose a lot of chances—especially with literary agents—by doing this. Agents are looking for stories that aren’t just unique ideas, but are nearly ready to submit to publishers. As an aspiring writer, your competition is too tough to risk sending something that isn’t quite ready. Be patient with yourself and your writing, and that will more likely pay off. Try to think of writing as a marathon, not a race.

Next? Don’t assume that just because you write one book, the next one will be easy. I’ve learned that each manuscript I’ve completed has been written in a completely new way. There is no secret formula, as far as I can tell. Allow yourself to be open to new methods with each new story. This isn’t so easy for a writer with OCD tendencies, trust me, but it’s the honest truth.

Julie Kibler began writing Calling Me Home after learning a bit of family lore: As a young woman, her grandmother fell in love with a young black man in an era and locale that made the relationship impossible. When not writing, she enjoys travel, independent films, music, photography, and corralling her teenagers and rescue dogs. She lives in Arlington, Texas. Calling Me Home is her debut. Visit her website for more on the book, like her page on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter.

Don’t forget to leave your name in the comments for a chance to win a copy of Calling Me Home!

The Importance of Memoir and a Prompt

file4041257130846When I first set out to write seriously, I cranked out essay after essay, believing I could never make up an entire story from scratch, much less a novel, but I had plenty of life experience to share. Now, I write mostly fiction, more confident in my imagination and much less so in my own memory (and the amount of intrigue in my oh-so-exciting experiences). But, since I started my once-a-month creative writing class with Seniors, I’ve been diving back into memoir, flash nonfiction to be exact, and I’ve learned a couple of pertinent lessons.

Writing short memoir is damn hard.

Hard, not only because of the compact aspect of the genre, as the story must fit nicely within a small word count, but because every time I sit down to write a bit of my own self onto the page, it comes out clunky, dramatic, or flat. Or, maybe just dramatically flat. When I read my simple stories out loud to the Senior citizens at the table, I wonder what they must think; I can never match the extent of their tales from lives more rich in history. My gut reaction is to fall back on fiction, where I can dress up my experiences with more exciting details. But, here’s the other thing….

Writing memoir, in short or long form, is critical.

One of my favorite quotes right now comes from E. L. Doctorow in a lecture he gave on Historical Fiction at the City University of New York (CUNY) :

What is the past if not the present and the future?

Sure, he’s talking fiction, but this particular message rings true for memoir as well. I don’t need to tell you the importance of listening to the stories from an older generation. We learn much by studying and honoring people and events rooted in our past, more than revelations as to how much we’ve changed (or not, as the case may be). Bruce Feiler, in this New York Times essay, writes about the effects of family narratives on children, pulling from research by psychologists, Marshall Duke and Robin Fivush:

[C]hildren who have the most self-confidence have what [is called] a strong ‘intergenerational self.’ they know they belong to something bigger than themselves.

As humans, we need the stories from our past, from a family member’s struggle with mental health, to the birth of a first child, to the discovery of a father’s short stint in a band when you’ve never know him to be musical. Ever. Those histories belong to us. They teach us how to live life on life’s terms, how to embrace the unknown, and how to see others in new ways.

We, that is I, must take the time to unwind these memories, however difficult, however banal, and turn them into stories to share.

The Prompt

Long car rides. Pit stops. Getting lost.

This prompt comes from Hippocampus Online Literary Magazine and goes on to read:

There are many types of travel, but this wanderlust-filled issue will feature those that have one thing in common about getting from point A to pint B: Four wheels. Five, if you count the steering wheel.

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If, once you write this piece, you’re interested in submitting, the guidelines are here, and the deadline May 31st.

* Photo credit: [Man on beach] Shelling, by veggiegretz on Morguefile.com