Author: Emma Vanderpol

Victor Hugo is Annoying, But…

~ Emma Vanderpol ~ Leave a comment

Well, it has been a while, hasn’t it? Alas, I have moral and rational objections to excuse-making, and so can but apologize for my online indiligence. Having returned, I will tell you that I plan to be more returned, with this summer’s posting plans including, perhaps, some short fiction and excerpts from my 11th grade exam. Yes: 11th grad exam. Good gracious! I have only one more year of homeschool between me and college… oh dear, oh dear, oh dearie dear.

But no more dithering. Here is one of my Literature exam compositions, fruit of probably the most successful forty minutes in my exam, with its prompt:

  1. Write a note to a friend to encourage them to attempt the challenge of reading Les Miserables.

My dear friend,

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Notre Dame

~ Emma Vanderpol ~ 3 Comments

Thanks be to God: it was not all lost. But yes. Notre Dame burned yesterday; it was with a voice near tears that Mom told it to us over breakfast. After that, with the queer, helpless, sick feeling that one has about a tragedy one feels deeply but cannot do anything about, a tragedy furthermore which is developing, and which one can learn about the progress of, but cannot predict or affect, we read and looked and followed the news and tried to comprehend it. Before lunch, I think, the spire and roof fell. In the afternoon, we were warned that the cathedral might not be saved at all. One of the two great rectangular towers had caught fire. After dinner, we read with relief that the cathedral was saved. The fire is out now.

Yet it still does not seem real. It seems out of place, out of proportion. Notre Dame has seen so much, has been through so much. It seemed thirty-six hours ago as if Notre Dame had been around for ever so long, and would be around for ever so long: one, five, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred years from now, we or our children could simply go and see it. It would be there. But yesterday—yesterday we faced the very real possibility that it might not be there. That this beautiful work of man’s subcreation, raised to the glory and the worship of God, might no longer be more than a heap of blackened rubbish. It was a strange and horrifying thought, a reminder of our mortality and the mortality of all earthly things.

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Prince Gabriel: My First Quest

~ Emma Vanderpol ~ Leave a comment

Seven is an important number. There are seven sacraments, seven deadly sins, seven virtues, seven gifts of the holy spirit, seven days of the week… and as of this month, it’s been seven years since I wrote my first fantasy story. Covering six sheets of lined paper in a big, messy handwriting, and dated 4/17/12, this fairytale never properly had a name. (I find “Prince Gabriel” the handiest thing to call it.) I could say that this is the foundational work of all my later writing, the first full story that I wrote, and that it was a remarkable achievement for a ten-year-old—but I’d rather say that I now find it very amusing.

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Skiing and Freedom Only When Bound

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Photo credit: Grandma Dianne

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV

Today at least, these lines of Donne’s are profoundly countercultural. Our idea of freedom is to be ourselves; and quite rightly. But our idea of being ourselves is to eat, drink, play, live, and love however we want, no matter what anyone else or any of their rules tell us to do. We are to follow our hearts, which, too often, turns out to mean whatever impulse we are under at the moment. We are, in short, free to enslave ourselves however we want. But while wrong freedom means bondage, the right bondage means freedom.

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An Uncommon Dozen: Commonplace Quotes from October-March 2018-19

~ Emma Vanderpol ~ 2 Comments

Well, it’s been entirely too long since I posted commonplace quotes! And it appears that I have read entirely too many good books since then: I have collected one hundred and twenty-eight quotes since that post. So, let’s see what if I can pick a favorite dozen… which is like to be a hard task, considering that I picked those hundred and twenty-two as just so many gems of writing, the best things I encountered while reading. First, though, I’d like to share what my physical commonplace book looks like. October’s quotes, as it happens, are not copied into it—I am a hundred and forty-one quotes behind in it—but I’ve been having fun with writing in it, which makes catching up more enjoyable. Instead of page after page of none-too-elegant printing, it now looks more like this:

While the hand-lettering here is very imperfect, I enjoyed doing it. Maybe someday I’ll be good enough that I can write directly with a pen without making mistakes… but on to more recently captured quotes!

As we did last time, let’s start with a little common sense:

“This above all: to thine own self be true.”  That’s William Shakespeare, right?  Correct.  And also, of course, radical relativism. But what I failed to recognize (even as I and my classmates were embracing this relativistic phrase as our personal motto) was that Shakespeare never said that.  He wrote it, yes, but Polonius said it.  And Polonius is a blithering idiot.

Professor Joseph Pearce in a WCC commencement speech for the class of 2018
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An Interview with the Author: Emma Vanderpol of Genevieve of Alea

~ Emma Vanderpol ~ Leave a comment

Today, I’m excited to be sharing a very special post with you—an interview with Emma Vanderpol, author of Genevieve of Alea, a fun new novel with a joke-cracking princess heroine, a noble hero, a brave dog, a huge black dragon, a realio-trulio villain, and the villain’s griffin sidekick. I was very glad to learn that Emma could do this interview with me! I’ll use italics in our conversation, and Emma will use plain face.

Thanks for joining me for this! Let’s just start with: What was your favorite part of the book to write?

The thanks are to you—I’m really glad to be on here!

I had a lot of fun writing the scene in Chapter Seven where Jenny’s trying to figure out how to get out of the wood and lists a bunch of possibilities. (“Modification to possibility C: use a smoke signal so that people would know where I was, and then wait until I got rescued. Refutation to the modification to possibility C: a fire? That would be really nice! Maybe, while I was waiting, I could even make strawberry pudding in a bark pot and serve it to my rescuers when they arrived.”)

What was the hardest thing about writing this book?

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The Light Missing from Tacitus’ Darkness

~ Emma Vanderpol ~ 3 Comments

Tacitus’ Annals make for a rather depressing read. They tell of wicked person after wicked person, of men and women consumed by lust for pleasure, power, and wealth, caring nothing for what is right. Private murders and murders through false legal cases abound. Those in authority are either corrupted in their own right or so weak, like the emperor Claudius, that they allow others to be the real rulers. Vice and greed seem to be the norm, from the imperial palace through Rome and out to the eastern provinces and subject states. I have recently read of very, very few upstanding figures in Tacitus, and they are far overshadowed by the bad ones. Oh, how fallen, how changed, the Rome of the Annals is from the Rome of Livy’s early History. Where is Horatius now? Where Mucius? Where Cloelia? Where Cincinnatus?

Livy’s history, indeed, has its dark spots as well as its light. His noble, brave, virtuous characters are needed because of base, cowardly, vice-filled actions. To Lucretia there is Sextus Tarquin; Brutus’ own children turn traitor; and I think there are few things more against the Roman honor and ideals than the young men going up into the capitol and leaving their aged and unnecessary fathers behind them to welcome the barbarians. But even in his darkest places, Livy gives us examples of virtue to love and rejoice over as well as examples of vice to abhor. Tacitus’ Rome, on the other hand, seems to be made up only of Tarquins and Tullias.

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Chapter One, Attempt One

~ Emma Vanderpol ~ Leave a comment

You can’t just write a novel once—I can’t, anyways.  It takes a whole lot of removing and rewriting and editing, especially if one wants one’s book to be a decent one.  I wrote almost two whole drafts for Genevieve of Alea, but within that some sections saw more drafts than others.  Chapter One was one of these sections, counting four drafts altogether.  This is Chapter One, Draft One, written over April 14-22 of 2016.  Some of it is surprisingly good, surprisingly to me anyways.  You’ll notice that some of the book blurb is from this.  However, it’s also very bad!  I’ll just note that my heroine does now enjoy dancing; and that I would rather you read the final Chapter One to decide if you want to read this, than the other way around.

My great grandmothers are named Isabella, Eleanor, Dawn and Rapunzel – but you might know them better as Belle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and, well, Rapunzel. Also, my Grandma Bianca is Snow White, and Grandma Adeline and my mother were the beauties of ten kingdoms. That honor now belongs to my eldest sister. All these fairytale heroines in my family may not seem like a bad deal at first glance, but all that princess-ness creates expectation that the daughters of the royal house will live up to their foremothers. It’s not like they’re long gone legends of centuries past, either – all of them are still alive, and have aged very well. In fact, they are all remarkably beautiful elderly ladies with personalities to be reckoned with. The lovely-princess expectation is not limited to a vague and indirect ‘society’; my mother and father, and grandmothers and grandfathers, and great grandmothers and grandfathers, and even my four sisters, all expect each of us young princesses to be models of royal perfection. I’m the only one left out in the cold.

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Genevieve of Alea, Chapter One

~ Emma Vanderpol ~ Leave a comment

All I wanted for my seventeenth birthday was to go out riding by myself.  That was all.  No big party, no ball, no jewels, no stuffed peacock, no obscure manuscript.  Well, that was because I knew that my grandfather had collected all the obscure manuscripts there were to collect.  Still, the point remains.  I didn’t want anything fancy for my birthday.  Nothing outrageous.  It wouldn’t even require any effort from anybody else.  All it would take would be for me to go down to the kitchen, early in the morning, armed with my father’s approval, and get some food.  The cook’s fetching bread and cheese for me would be the climax of other people’s involvement.  Then I’d go out to the stable, get my horse, groom her, put her saddle on, and ride off.  I wouldn’t even trouble a groom.  So effort was not an objection.

No, objections were made about propriety and safety.  Which I thought—and said—was ridiculous.  After all, I was seventeen, or would be by the time I was taking a ride on my birthday.  True, I was a girl, and a princess, but that wasn’t nearly as important as everyone in the world except me seemed to think it was.  To my knowledge, not a band of robbers, not a pack of wolves, not an assassin, had done anything very notable in Alea for at least twenty years.  And that was a lifetime!  My lifetime, anyway.

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Fireworks Proclamation: Genevieve of Alea is Published!

~ Emma Vanderpol ~ 2 Comments

Dear friends and family:

Maybe, in the last two and a half years, you’ve asked me “What are you working on?” or “What do you like to do?”

If you have, I’ve probably said something like “Well, I’m trying to write a book…” after which which I would try to explain what it was about with varying levels of detail, clarity, and awkwardness.

But now, I get to tell you: it’s done!  After two and a half years, four grades, two drafts, something over 150,000 words,  and much writing growth, it’s done.  (About the 150,000—don’t worry, the final book is under 67,000 words)

It’s done, and it’s published—I chose to self-publish through Amazon, so now you can get Genevieve of Alea either for Kindle or in paperback.

Here’s the official blurb:

She would rather read than sew, ride a horse than look in a mirror, and quote old poetry than new gossip.  Jenny is a princess who loves the idea of adventure—and adventure, it seems, just might be the present she gets for her seventeenth birthday.

Forty ells of black scales
Cut men off from telling tales.
Wings of iron, claws of steel,
Make wounds none can heal.
Eyes of fire full of ire,
A snake’s tongue with poison hung,
A heart of hate that governs fate,
Spines of horn, laugh of scorn,
Fire breath and iron teeth,
The dragon will be brought by Death.

Jenny has always longed for adventure—but can she handle as much adventure as the mysterious message will bring her?

Find out on Kindle or in print!

Thank you all so much for all your love and encouragement throughout this long adventure!  Whether you’ve given me a few encouraging words or read one of the story’s iterations, all of your kindness has really helped me reach this point.