Clarissa, an Asian/Caucasian young woman has lived in seven different countries and has no lasting connection to any place. She thinks it’s time to settle somewhere she could eventually call home. But where?
Welcome to one of the September 25th stops on the blog tour for The Golden Manuscripts by Evy Journey with iRead Book Tours (schedule linked.) Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, more author guest posts, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.
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Author Guest Post
The Naked Art of Writing
A few years ago, I did a large canvas painting for an art practice class.
Some artists talk about staring at large canvases and being frightened. How do you fill all that emptiness? I didn’t quite feel that way. In fact, I felt reckless—I can gesso what I create if it doesn’t resonate with something in me. Or cut up the canvas into smaller pieces.
Confronting the intimidating titanium whiteness before me, I selected a sketch of a model from a previous session of the class. I painted her almost smack in the middle of the canvas. The model stands firmly, but self-consciously. By many artists’ reckoning, the model as I painted her is not just nude. She’s naked.
Why naked, instead of nude? Presumably, because she looks vulnerable, ashamed of being totally unclothed. “Nude” is considered artsy, above all the shame and juicy connotations of “naked.”
Painting that first figure was a commitment that plunged me in a certain direction. I continued—adding background and more figures. Once finished, my work clearly contained themes that mattered to me.
We define ourselves throughout our lives around some central question we nuance endlessly. For me, the perennial question is what being female and an ethnic minority means in the society I inhabit at any given time. I’ve turned this question over in my head and answered it in many ways. So, inevitably, it crept into this painting.
I approach writing like I did that painting. A broad, empty canvas I’m free to fill with my words. Words that could expose me stark naked. (We never say “stark nude,” do we?) But like the painting, I could zap those words by tapping a key or two, if they go beyond my comfort zone.
The perennial question in that painting is also at the heart of my fiction. We’re all engaged in a continuous process of self-discovery that’s most intense in our youth as we’re trying to define who we are. Though that process changes across life’s various passages, to my mind, it never stops.
Love, in its many forms is at the core of most lives —from love for parents and partners to passions for things or ideas such as the heroine’s passion for picture books and illuminated manuscripts in The Golden Manuscripts. And inevitably, love happens in the context of how we live. Like my painting, my fiction is a naked art of exposing the hearts and minds of lovers. I relish probing into my characters’ complex psyche: insecurities and disappointments, joys and triumph; love/hate relationships with parents and lovers; instances of behaving out-of-character; and passages they go through.
I strive for satisfying endings because novels are often escapist fare. And since mayhem can reveal character or enliven a plot I weave in a twist or—as I do in The Golden Manuscripts—a generous helping of mystery.
About the Book
The Golden Manuscripts
Between Two Worlds Book Six
by Evy Journey
Published 2 April 2023
Genre: Fiction
Page Count: 435
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Clarissa, an Asian/Caucasian young woman has lived in seven different countries and has no lasting connection to any place. She thinks it’s time to settle somewhere she could eventually call home. But where?
She decides to live in the city of her birth. There, she joins a quest for the provenance of stolen illuminated manuscripts—a medieval art form that languished with the fifteenth-century invention of the printing press—hoping it would give her the sense of belonging she craves. But will it be enough?
For her, these ancient manuscripts elicit cherished memories of children’s picture books her mother read to her, nourishing a passion for art.
The trail of the manuscripts leads to an American soldier who served in World War II. Clarissa is anxious to know what motivated him to steal and keep the artwork for fifty years. But instead of easy answers, she finds bigger questions.
Immersed in art, but naïve about life, she’s disheartened and disillusioned by the machinations the quest reveals of an esoteric, sometimes unscrupulous art world. What compels individuals to steal artworks, and conquerors to plunder them from the vanquished? Why do collectors buy artworks for hundreds of millions of dollars? Who decides the value of an art piece and how?
The Golden Manuscripts: A Novel is inspired by the actual theft of medieval manuscript illuminations during the second world war.
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About the Author
Evy Journey writes. Stories. Blogs (three sites). Cross-genre novels. She’s also a wannabe artist, and a flâneuse (an ambler).
Evy studied psychology (M.A., University of Hawaii; Ph.D. University of Illinois) initially to help her understand herself and Dostoevsky. Now, she spins tales about multicultural characters dealing with problems and issues of contemporary life. She believes in love and its many faces.
Just as she has crossed genres in writing fiction, she has also crossed cultures, having lived and traveled in various cities in different countries. Find her thoughts on travel, art, and food at Artsy Rambler.
She has one ungranted wish: To live in Paris where art is everywhere and people have honed aimless roaming to an art form. She visits and stays a few months when she can.
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Giveaway Alert!
Enter to win $50 Visa Gift Card, courtesy of author of THE GOLDEN MANUSCRIPTS (2 winners) (USA only) (ends Oct 9)
THE GOLDEN MANUSCRIPTS Book Tour GiveawayDisclaimer: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Thanks for sharing about the book, it sounds good
Sounds like a good book.
Lovely cover