I met Gita Trelease at the New England SCBWI conference almost six years ago. I fell in love with her lyrical and vivid writing style right from the beginning, before her story became a full manuscript, let alone an actual book. Enchantée will be out in the world in only a couple weeks so I asked Gita share more about her book and her journey to publication with Winged Pen’s readers. She agreed.
Enchantée reaches from a humble 6th-floor apartment in the Paris slums to the glimmering Palace of Versailles. It’s clear from the story that you love both these settings. What was the most fun aspect of writing about Paris? Versailles?
What drew me to both the settings was the element of danger. In Paris, there was the danger of starvation, the possibility that Camille (Enchantée’s main character) would be forced to become a prostitute, and that every dark corner hid physical danger. The danger at Versailles was different—gambling, the chance that Camille could lose all the money she’d gathered to keep a roof over her and her younger sister’s heads, and the danger of her disguise being seen through by multiple people. That contrast was fun to write.
The physical contrast between the two settings was also really interesting to play with—the darkness of Paris and the glittering brightness of Versailles.
That contrast certainly shows through in the story!
What was the worst thing about writing these settings?
One thing that was both good and bad was maintaining historical accuracy. Say Camille goes from her house to the balloon workshop. How will she get there? What street will she take? It was difficult to find accurate maps and the monuments she might use to find her way. At times I worried about getting the details of Paris in 1789 wrong, but when, even after extensive research, I couldn’t get a definitive answer, I sometimes just had to go with what I thought the truth might have been.
This was true with Versailles too. I was constantly thinking about the entrances and exits of the palace and what they would have led to. How the characters would have moved from the palace itself—which is enormous—out to the gardens and other palaces located on the grounds. Sometimes it felt overwhelming!
Sure. And in the end, no reader wants endless descriptions of the transit, they want believable transition and to get on with the story!
Exactly.
I loved Camille’s magic dress as much as any of the other characters in the book! How did you create the rules for the magic of the dress?
The dress evolved over time. In the early drafts, the dress was there, but it was not as fully formed as it is in the final version. In the beginning, I knew it would take something more than the sorrow Camille had been using to work magic in order to get her to Versailles. It had to be riskier, bigger and more dangerous. At the beginning of “Snow White,” the queen is sitting by a window, doing needlework, and she pricks her finger. Three drops of blood fall into the snow and she makes a wish that she will have a daughter with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as the ebony window frame. I liked the idea of blood causing a wish, and that there was a small sacrifice involved in making the wish—a common trope in fairy tales.
As I revised, the dress becomes more of character as Camille nourishes it with her own blood to bring it to life. The dress has its own agenda at times, but it’s a good partner for Camille. It remembers all the women who have worn it over the last two centuries, and it reflects those memories back to Camille to help guide her.
I know one of your favorite scenes was the one with the hot air balloon. It’s not an obvious fit in a fantasy novel since it’s science, not magic. Why was this scene important to you?
The idea of the balloon came very early in my writing process. I was reading a book on 18th– and 19th-century science and one chapter focused on hot air balloons. I had a vague idea that I wanted to write something set during the time of the French Revolution, something with disguises and magic. When I realized this balloon mania, which started in 1785, was going to overlap with the time of my book, I got excited.
The book described a real-life event. An early balloonist was about to crash in a field and screamed out to the farm workers to help him. They all ran away, but a milkmaid ran to catch the balloon. I was fascinated by this. Who was she? She’s not named; she disappears into history. But I wondered: who would do something like that? I thought about bringing these two stories together.
In a later episode in the story, Camille and Lazare go up in the balloon. This scene speaks to the wishes of both characters to rise above where they are. They’re both in situations where they’re struggling. They want to see the world in a new way, to feel free. That moment felt important because it resonates both for the characters and thematically for a book about the French Revolution. The revolution was about new ideas and new systems and new technologies. There was a belief that science could save people, be a way to get out of the old, inherited systems of belief and set up new ones based on reason. So for me, the balloon is about hope and possibility.
Historic fantasy seems like one of the most difficult genres to write. I’ve seen your pile of research books and I think….no, never! Why historical fantasy?
As a kid, my mother loved history. She took us to temples and ruins and castles, especially in Europe. I would walk around and wonder, who were the people who’d lived there? It almost felt like they were still there. I’m interested in old things and the past—what it was like to live in another time. It’s like fantasy, I think. You want an experience where you go somewhere new. The people might have similar hopes and desires to ours, but their world is very different.
I also love magic. In this series, magic became a way for me to express the inner life of a historical character. Historical fiction can sometimes feel like contemporary people in old-fashioned clothes, or it can feel too distant, too wooden. The sorrow-fueled magic in Enchantée speaks to Camille’s emotional core: her wish to transform things, including herself. The magic is also a metaphor for the power structures in place before the French Revolution, because it’s associated with the aristocracy and the way it propped itself up on the suffering of the poor.
What advise would you give to authors trying to break into publishing historical fantasy?
My inspiration came from bringing together three things that didn’t seem like they would go together: the balloon, the Court of Versailles and a girl working magic. The friction of putting different ideas together and trying to make it work can take your story someplace new and different. It produces interesting complexity and makes the story feel fresh.
There’s a great interview with Suzanne Collins where she talks about coming up with the idea for The Hunger Games. I reference it in a post on Creative Cross-Pollination. She talked about channel surfing and going back and forth between news coverage on child soldiers and a reality TV show. These two things that didn’t seem to go together clicked in her mind and made a really interesting story, something different than anything we’d seen before.
Push yourself to add something new to your story, but something you’re passionate about, that only you would think about. No one else will have your perspective about what makes it interesting. If you can follow that passion and bring it into your novel, that will make it distinctive. Your passion will also keep you going through years of writing and endless revisions!
I’m not a historian, but when I think about the French Revolution, I picture guillotines and heads rolling. The revolution does heat up in Enchantée, but it doesn’t go there. Did you think that was too much for the YA crowd?
I think there’s room for almost everything in YA. The guillotines were actually another bit of science which emerged around this time, but the guillotine and the Terror (the last year of the revolution) were still years away at the time Enchantée takes place. It was important for me to set the story in the time period leading up to the revolution, to have Camille’s experience be that of a girl trying to make a life for herself in Paris and making her own judgments about the decadent world of the French court. To set it at the place where the era of aristocratic excess was ending and a new era was starting.
I’m writing the sequel to Enchantée now and at this point, aristocrats are starting to get scared of what’s coming, but the images of the revolution we have—of the stage below the guillotine being so slippery with blood that people are falling as they walk to their deaths— it’s still a couple of years away. My YA-aged characters would all age out before guillotines were actually used.
And now I want to hear more about the sequel! Congratulations on Enchantée’s publication! We’ll have to have you back to hear about the sequel soon!
Enchantée will be released on February 5th. You can read our full review of Enchantée. It’s not too late qualify for Macmillan’s special pre-order gift! You can also check it out on Goodreads or order from Indiebound, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble. If you want to start reading right now, there’s a free Kindle sampler!
If you’d like to read more about Gita’s journey to publication or writing advice, check out these links:
“The call” with Gita
Trelease
Writing
Historical Fiction, or Notes from a Time Traveler
Creative
Cross-Pollination
Perfectionism and
Pomodori
You can find Gita at GitaTrelease.com or on Twitter at @gitatrelease.
