April 2022 Newsletter      sophiakouidougiles.com

April showers may bring May flowers, but today I am not going to rain on your parade.  Instead, I want to spring ahead to the business at hand and plant some thoughts, good seeds I hope. I think of days bygone, when practical jokesters placed calls to the Aquarium asking for Mr. Fish and April’s Fool’s Day was an opportunity for pranks. It takes me back to Greece where it was important to come up with small ways to fool adults, friends and  classmates and share our successes the next day. 

Some traditions are unique to specific days of the year and others are tied to specific places in the world. That is how these rituals and celebrations give special depth to stories. That makes me think about the relationship between place and culture. Place is an important element in writing a story. I know that as a reader, it is one element that I look for in fiction and non-fiction that adds color.  Whether the place is near and familiar or remote and exotic, ultimately it becomes as alive as  a character in the story. We learn about the interior of a home, an urban neighborhood, a bucolic landscape, the bottom of the sea, the night sky, an imaginary universe.

This dimension sometimes goes unnoticed and other times is underlined and bolded by the author. Still, the passengers/readers get on a train to a destination early on in every  story. It’s all done through the eyes of the characters who move in space, observe and react to the surrounding landscape using their five senses. They respond to a place delivering emotions, a sense of comfort, welcome or a feeling of doom and horror. Hints about time period are woven in, delivered by the objects (telegraph or cell phone, gas lamps or solar panels on roofs).  Thessaloniki, Greece is a place for which I have great affection and is the setting in my memoir, Sophia’s Return: Uncovering My Mother’s Past
 

Featured Guest

Working with place is a fabulous way to describe culture. Some authors identify the setting directly in their book title, as does my guest and featured author, Nicki Chen in her recent novel When in Vanuatu. She uses her own experience living in Vanuatu, located in the South Pacific.  She has also authored a second novel with the title Tiger Tail Soup. To my question, "How do you create a protagonist in your novels? Do you find them in real life, imagine them, or are they a blend of both?"  she answered: 

“My protagonists don’t come ready made. In the beginning, both story and character are hazy. Gradually they come into focus.

In my first novel, Tiger Tail Soup, the story takes place before I was born in a country in which I’ve never lived, China. So, you could say the protagonist, An Lee, had to be wholly imagined. My late husband was Chinese, though, and I knew various Chinese women. So, in the end, the protagonist was both imagined and a blend of people.

In my second novel, When in Vanuatu, the situation was quite different. My protagonist, Diana, was, like me, an American expatriate who lived in the Philippines and later in Vanuatu. Unlike me, she had trouble getting pregnant. She had her own problems, history, hopes, and personality. So, she too had to be a blend.” 

In the Sun and in the Rain aspires to bring you writing from many corners of the world, and introduce you to creative friends, their books to consider for your spring selections. Feel free to share this Newsletter with your reading and writing community and friends who can also subscribe.

Live long and prosper!

Best,

Sophia