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| Catherine Jaime |
How Catherine had time to speak to me on the Wizphone from Huntsville, Alabama is beyond me! Historian, writer, bookshop owner and scholar -PLUS a courtroom trainer and mother to a dozen kids!
But this extremely interesting woman and serious Leonardo de Vinci scholar was kind enough to take a break from her research for an hour to talk to us. Here's what she had to say!
Tell us a bit
about yourself. Who are you? Where are you from? Are you married with children?
Do you write full time etc.
Hi, I’m Catherine – wife, mom, teacher,
historian, writer, traveler and bookstore owner, in whichever order you prefer.
I currently reside in Alabama (in the southeastern part of the United States),
though I’m not really from here. Home is wherever I am living at the time – I
was born in Panama (when the Canal Zone still existed); I married a man who had
been born in Mexico; and three of our twelve children were born in
Germany.
Twelve children?
That's right, twelve! Plus grandkids on the way! I travel as often as I can – visiting Albania last summer
soon after the birth of my first grandchild, and Italy last month to do
research for my da Vinci books. I do not currently write full-time, though when
I am done homeschooling my two youngest children in four years, I would
certainly love to!
I don't know how you find the time to do all this! Assuming you do, what type of writer are you? methodical and
disciplined? Or wacky, freeform and bingey?
I wear so many other hats, I just write
whenever I can – while sitting at a soccer (NB: Football for our British readers - Ed). practice, in the car while someone
else is driving; whenever I can grab a few minutes, I am probably writing about
something.
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| Soccer! Alabama Style! |
I almost always have a notepad with me to take notes on, and/or a
copy of the latest book I’m working on. If I forget either of those, I just
take notes on my phone. When I really started writing more a few years back, I
figured out that I could come home from a long day of teaching, put my feet up,
and write for a couple of hours (when I had little energy for anything else).
So at home, I am likely to be found at my favorite chair, working on a book on
my laptop.
I actually go back and forth between writing
on the laptop and writing on a steno pad; it just depends on where I am.
I
coach at least two high school Mock Trial teams every year, and consequently
spend a lot of time in courtrooms waiting for their trials to begin.
You have Mock Trial Tournaments? That's amazing...
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| Mock Trial Champions 2011 - Tennessee! |
Yes we do. And I write in the dull parts! I’ve
written entire chapters on my legal pads while awaiting the beginning of a
trial.
Tell us about your Da Vinci work. I've
heard great things about your books.
Thank you, I hope you enjoy them when you get
a chance to read them. About ten years ago I decided to teach a ten-week class
on Leonardo da Vinci for our homeschool group.
I really knew little about
him at the time, just enough to know that he could make for an interesting
topic for my classes! I started researching about two months before the classes
started, and made myself take a break two months after the classes finished.
By then I had
put together my first book on him – Da
Vinci: His Life and His Legacy. I arranged the book the way I had taught
the students about him, with chapters on Leonardo the Artist, Leonardo the
Architect, Leonardo the Military Advisor, etc. For the next six or seven
years I taught short classes on da Vinci every chance I got. At the same time I
put together a series of hands-on lessons that became my next non-fiction book on
him, Doing Da Vinci for Kids.
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| Da Vinci Primer on the way for kids |
At that point all I had ever written was
non-fiction, on Da Vinci and a variety of other mostly historical topics that
interest me. I hadn’t thought much about trying my hand at a novel until
one summer when I was speaking with another novelist. He suggested that
if I wanted to write a novel I should write it on something I knew a lot about
– and clearly da Vinci qualified.
I went home and mentioned the idea to a
couple of my kids, and one of them suggested I start right away. I
literally started that night, and a month later the first draft of my first
novel was finished. It took me longer to find someone to proofread Leonardo
the Florentine than it took
me to write it!
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| First fictional novel about Leonardo |
As soon as I
finished that book I was hooked on writing historical fiction (which is also my
favorite thing to read, so I should have seen that coming!) A year later I
finished my second da Vinci novel, Leonardo:
Masterpieces in Milan, and my third Leonardo novel should be done before
October is over. I would like to complete an entire series on his life
eventually, but if I don’t pick up the pace, it might take me the rest of my
lifetime to complete it!
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| Second fictional novel about Leonardo |
Do you write in the first, second or third
person? What's your favourite writing style?
So far I’ve only written one novel completely
in first person, Failure in
Philadelphia? That one is about the Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and I tell it from the perspective of a British spy
who is keeping an eye on the convention and the delegates there.
First
person just felt right for that novel. I wrote another non-Leonardo
novel, York Proceeded On.
That one is told from the perspective of the slave that accompanied Captain
Clark on the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
For the Leonardo da Vinci books I started in
third person and will most likely continue to write those that way. For
the third book that worked out really well, because Leonardo was traveling with
someone else, and I could more easily switch back and forth between the two of
them.
For future novels I will most likely see which
way seems to fit the story best, though I can’t imagine it would be
second-person. That seems like a really difficult way to set up a story, so I
think I’ll be sticking to first and third!
My fourth book, Ultra Violence is written in Second Person Omniscient.
Is it?
Yes, it is. The method has its critics.
I can imagine it does, Wiz!
Anyway, enough about us writers! What are your favourite three facts about
Leonardo? Is there anything about the great man we won't know and really
should?
1. I am intrigued by the fact that he was
an avowed pacifist and yet worked multiple times as a military advisor,
including for the ruthless dictator, Cesare Borgia.
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| Handsome devil and renaissance bad boy Ces Fab...er Borgia |
In fact, Leonardo and
Machiavelli actually worked for Borgia at the same time. Many of Leonardo’s
sketches are for military weapons.
2. One of the many things “Leonardo the
Inventor” designed were locks, including one that I was able to see on my
recent trip to Milan. When I was researching the Panama Canal I found out that
his designs for locks were similar to what was used in Panama centuries later.
You Tube - How does a Canal Lock work?
3. Even though we think of him as a
painter and a great artist, he spent little of his time painting. It seems that
he often took on painting assignments just to help pay his bills. He preferred
to use his time studying nature, dissecting human bodies (and animals) to see
how they worked, studying architecture, and designing labor-saving devices.
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| The Enigmatic One. |
One other random note about him, he was never
referred to as Leonardo da Vinci during his lifetime. I visited his birthplace
while I was in Italy – he was actually born in Anchiano, a mile or two outside
of Vinci. But he wouldn’t
have been referred to as Leonardo da Anchiano, either. From my research, he was
always referred to as Leonardo the Florentine, at least after he left Florence
the first time - which is quite convenient, since that’s what I titled my first
novel about him – without even realizing it at the time.
That's amazing, Catherine. Thank you for that!
You're welcome Wiz
Okay. Torquemada and his crimson cloaked henchmen
burst into your living room as you type. The Inquisitor accuses you of being a
daughter of Satan, and later casts you horribly into a deep dungeon to await
your turn on the Rack. Your gaoler, however, is a kindly soul called Cedric and
allows you three books, two CD's and a DVD to while away the time. What would
they be?
The first two books I bought for my e-reader
last summer were the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Since the two
of those would keep me busy reading for whatever remained of my life, I would
probably only need those two.
I mentioned to my 14-year-old daughter that
I needed to come up with a third book, and she immediately said “Mauet.” Thomas
Mauet wrote “Fundamentals of Trial Techniques,” which is a book we refer to
often in our High School Mock Trial competitions.
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| Classic judge and jury blockbuster - a must for Catherine's dungeon sojourn! |
For the two CD’s – Any CD by Mannheim Steamroller
would definitely be one (I could listen to their music forever) and a dramatic
reading of Charles Dickens’ A
Christmas Carol. We’ve actually seen Dickens’ great-great grandson,
Gerald Dickens, perform that a couple of times, and we listen to his or another
performance every Christmas.
The DVD is an easy choice, my absolute
favorite movie is Disney’s classic, The
Happiest Millionaire. It is a musical, and it is fabulous. We
watched it with my Dad a few years back, and I had never seen him laugh so
hard.
A writer and another creative type arrive
on your doorstep with a bottle of Chablis and a bag of peanuts. Who would you
like them to be and what type of food would you cook for them - or would you go
out?
If the writer could be from any century, it would
definitely have to be William Shakespeare. I am almost as big a fan of
Shakespeare as I am of Leonardo da Vinci!
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| Billy S |
When I’m not writing historical
fiction, I’m teaching highschoolers that Shakespeare can be fun or I’m busy
trying to turn Shakespeare’s plays into novels. Two down and way too many to
go!
And he could
bring anyone with him he wanted to, it really wouldn’t matter. We would
absolutely go out – I cook as little as possible these days. I’m sure he
would get a kick out of Italian food, since he set a number of his plays in
Italy, so I would take him to the nearest Italian restaurant!!!
And finally! What do fans of Catherine Jaime have to
look forward to in the coming year?
The rough draft of my third Leonardo da Vinci
novel is actually being edited as we speak - so that should be coming out very
soon. I’m still working on a title for that one, so I can’t give you that
yet – but it covers his journey from Milan to Mantua and then on to Venice,
where he’s been invited to come as a military advisor.
Maybe I’ll get
da Vinci novel #4 done by next summer – that one should include the painting of
the Mona Lisas. (Yes, they are now debating whether he painted more than one
copy of the Mona Lisa. I have my own theories on that, but you’ll have to wait
for the novel to see what they are!)
I have a small booklet on Exploring Da Vinci’s Last Supper that I need to update soon, now that
I’ve traveled to Italy and actually seen his painting!
Hopefully the
second edition of that will be done soon.
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| Catherine's Latest Work -out soon! |
Those are the books I currently have in the
works, though I usually come up with new projects as I go along (which is how
I’ve gotten up to more than 70 titles on Amazon already!)
That's astonishing, Cathy.
I try to keep busy! Also, I try to keep my
personal website, www.CatherineJaime.com updated with my latest titles, but I
think it is constantly behind. I think I need to hire a personal assistant just
to keep up with those types of things!
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| Very distant Leonardo relative. Possibly |
Catherine, its been an absolute pleasure to meet you and I wish you all the best in the coming year!
Thank you for having me, Wiz!
Stalk Catherine at:
Daughter of the King, Wife of One, Mom of 12
Homeschool Author and Speaker
Books at www.CatherineJaime.com
Pdfs at www.CurrClick.com
E-books at www.Smashwords.com
Paperbacks at https://www.amazon.com/author/catherinejaime
Homeschool information at
