Column by co-authors Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne
Lee Kelly is the author of City of Savages, a Publishers Weekly pick and a VOYA Magazine “Perfect Ten” selection, A Criminal Magic, which was optioned and developed for a television series by Warner Bros., and With Regrets, as well as The Antiquity Affair and The Starlets (forthcoming in 2024), both of which are co-written with Jennifer Thorne.
Jennifer Thorne is an American author of books for adults and young readers who writes from a nineteenth-century Cotswold cottage in the medieval market town of Minchinhampton alongside her husband, two sons, and various other animals.
There’s a surreal convergence of setting that occurs with any author collaboration, especially an ongoing, historical fiction-focused endeavor such as ours. With Lee in New Jersey, and Jenn all the way across the Atlantic in rural England, our frequent work calls and video chats create a sort of perennial magical corridor between our two homes. Our kids pop in to say hello and show each other their latest gadgets and toys. When we take a break to grab coffee, we have to fight the urge to offer each other a cup through the computer. And we most definitely celebrate wins by virtually high-fiving through the screen.
Now add to that dreamlike mixture the settings we’re creating in our books, and you’ve got even more elements at play.
- One, the real location itself, the place as it exists in the present day.
- Two, the setting as it would have been in the time period we’ve set our story.
- Three and four, each of our separate imaginings of this setting, aligned closely enough that the story continues to function.
- And five, of course, the imagery created by the reader themselves based on their own memories, expectations, and fantasies.
Maps
When setting our scene in an actual place–say Cairo, as for our first collaboration, The Antiquity Affair; or Rome, for our latest novel, The Starlets; or New York City, for our current work-in-progress–we begin with maps, drilling down to neighborhoods, streets, and city corners in an attempt to get as specific and accurate as possible. Where along the riverfront was the original Cairo Museum, near what bridges and landing points? What avenue in Rome would you drive along to get from Cinecittá Studios to an airport–one that existed in 1958? Where in New York City did the fashionable set live during the Gilded Age, and what route might they have taken on a sleigh ride through Central Park? (Google Maps’s “drop the man” function is particularly helpful for these specifics.)
History and Location
As history naturally comes to bear upon all our story settings, we frequently find ourselves comparing and contrasting contemporary maps and the renderings of yore–antique photographs, sketches, and paintings, all of which create translucent layer upon layer over the current landscape. For example, we wrote a scene in The Starlets in which our two bedraggled movie stars need to arrive discreetly in Monte Carlo aboard a period-specific speed boat, then set off on foot to the Palais des Princes up on the hill. It was a tall order to chart their path realistically: the footpath that exists today is bisected by busy highways and tunnels, but back then, likely not. To rewind the footage, as it were, we needed to use our imaginations, as informed by our research of the city as it existed in the 1950s, while still following the landscape as it exists today. Eventually, we have our starlets reach the gates of the palace–patrolled, of course, by guards wearing the correct uniform for 1958.
Visits
Often–okay, we’ll admit it–-there’s a hefty wish fulfillment aspect to the settings we choose. We do tend to pick places we’d really like to take a joint vacation to, perhaps even a writing retreat in the sun: the French Riviera, a pastoral Italian island, Cairo, and the Valley of the Kings. Our joint knowledge of these places comes into play to varying degrees: we’ve both visited Newport, Rome, and France, and have lived in Manhattan and Los Angeles for long stretches. (Neither of us have been to Egypt, alas, but the city is most certainly top of our bucket list!)
When we visit real-world settings only after having depicted them in our books, however, a fascinating (and sometimes sheepish) disorientation creeps in. Upon visiting Cinecittá, for example, Jenn was struck by how enormous and industrial the studio was–monumental in an entirely different way than she’d initially imagined. Her vision of what it must have looked like in 1958 was altered then and there. Upon revisiting Paris, we’ve found that neighborhoods we routed our characters through are much farther apart in reality than in our pages. We see the things we’ve gotten wrong, of course, but what’s interesting is that the feeling of the places we’ve imagined still remains to a strong degree. Distances may have been conflated but the essence remains.
Maybe that tells us we can pat ourselves on the back for a research job well done? Or perhaps it’s actually our imagination that creates a layer over reality itself–what we dream, invent, and inhabit through reading becomes its own reality. That’s the idea we like best: that books are a magical corridor all their own, from our world into others. Perhaps our readers, after riding along with the misadventures of our starlets Lottie and Vivienne, will go on a European escapade themselves, and upon arriving in Monte Carlo will think, “Yes. This is just how I had imagined it.”
The Starlets by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne
In the summer of 1958, actress Vivienne Rhodes arrives on a remote Italian island expecting to star as Helen of Troy in a major epic, only to be upstaged by her rival, Lottie Lawrence. Tensions escalate when the actresses uncover a deadly criminal operation using the film as a cover, forcing the bitter enemies to team up to expose the truth and stay alive. As they race across Europe, their uneasy alliance is tested in a high-stakes showdown that could save their lives, careers, and the film itself.
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