Writer

I began my writing career by telling stories to my younger sister every night, always breaking off at the most exciting point with the characters (usually two sisters) in deep trouble. The next evening I'd have to figure out a way to get them out of trouble and then into it again. I think that's why I still love story more than language in writing.

Writing Novels
I wrote my first novel at the age of thirteen. It was called Harlington Manor and featured me, my best friend, Elizabeth, and my favorite cousin, Michelle. It was a picaresque novel in which the three girls escaped from an orphanage and were then adopted by a wealthy family. But that got boring fast, so I had to keep coming up with plot devices (one was a coup d'etat—their wealthy adoptive parents had become the monarchs of a small European country) to plunge them back into trouble.

I learned a lot from that novel about what not to do. My second novel, written the following year, was a historical novel about a pioneer girl, Polly, and her family, who lived in a mining town near Mammoth Lakes. It was much richer, with subplots featuring her many brothers and sisters, and built to a most satisfying crisis (a mine disaster), although it sounded a lot like Little House on the Prairie (not yet a TV show).

Photo by Mark Morris, from the dust jacket of St. John’s Wood

JUST PUBLISHED!

Slow Time: Recovering the Natural Rhythms of Life

In high school, I wrote poetry. In college, English papers. It was only when my college best friend, Ellen Pall (now writing wonderful mysteries), sold her first novel, a Regency romance, that I took up novel writing again. Not wanting to seem like a copy cat, I wrote a Victorian Regency romance (a contradiction in terms since the Victorian period follows the years of the Regency) and sent it to Ellen's agent. After three rejections and a year under my bed, I revised the novel and sent it out again. Doubleday bought it as part of a three-book contract.

With my next novel, I planned to break out of the historical romance niche and write historical fiction. Unfortunately, this did not suit my publisher, Jove, and although they published Grover Square in paperback, they were not interested in my next book proposal. This rejection haunted me for the next ten years while I researched but never wrote a medieval novel set in 12th century Wales.

St John’s Wood, Doubleday, 1977

Mayfair, Doubleday, 1978

Chelsea, Doubleday, 1979

Grover Square, Jove 1984

Historical fiction is my first love, both as a reader and a writer. But I also love genre fiction, believing that structured stories, like the gothic novels I read in high school or the detective fiction I read now, provide a mythic pattern derived from the deep mysteries of life. My thesis for my Master’s degree in Educational Psychology was a Jungian interpretation of Gothic novels; it was later abridged and printed as an article in The Gothic Journal. I also researched and wrote an article on the growing interest in paranormal themes in romances for Gnosis.

“Exploring the Shadows: The Quest of the Heroine in the Gothic Novel,” The Gothic Journal, March/April 1993

“New Reality Romances,” Gnosis, Summer 1994

Writing on Seasonal Holidays
Meanwhile I satisfied my writing urge with non-fiction articles on seasonal holidays, a topic that has fascinated me since my Catholic childhood and which I studied academically while pursuing a Masters in Folklore and Mythology at UCLA in the 1980s.

In 1991, I compiled the columns I had written for a Seattle alternative newspaper, The New Times, into the first of a series of self-published books: Celebrating the Seasonal Holy-Days.

I was invited to become a co-editor of The Beltane Papers, a journal of women’s spirituality whose founder and my mentor, Helen Farias, had a special devotion to holidays. Some of my favorite articles, like “Speculations on Spurious Virgin Martyrs” (which suggests early Christian martyrs acquired the aspects and myths of the local pagan deities they replaced) and “Golden Apples of the Sun,” an article about the mythic significance of pomanders, were written for The Beltane Papers. After resigning in 1997, I began writing a column “Time to Celebrate” for SageWoman magazine. I also write a column, “Living in Season” for the Seattle alternative newspaper, Verve.

In 1993, I created a correspondence course based on the idea of living in season and produced another self-published book, Introduction to the School of the Seasons, to explain this concept. This was the genesis of my successful website, www.schooloftheseasons.com, which allows me to share the fruits of my research with thousands of visitors a day. Through the website, I’m offering my self-published books, plus a new series of holiday packets.

In 2007 I published a guide to living in a more natural relationship with time: Slow Time: Recovering the Natural Rhythms of Life.

I've also created a blog (www.livinginseason.blogspot.com) to publish my thoughts on living in seasonal time.

Writing Family History & Memoir
I’ve always been an avid reader of biography, autobiography and memoir but in 1995, I became interested in the blend of memoir and family history after participating in the 9-month certificate program in Genealogy and Family History provided by the University of Washington Extension. I wrote and self-published a small family history: Traveling to my Ancestors about the Fitzgeralds of Hartland, Minnesota and Chance, South Dakota. In 1997, I spent two months in residency at Hedgebrook, where I worked on a (still unfinished) memoir about domestic violence through several generations of my family.

I’ve also written personal essays, particularly focusing on my love for dance. My essay “Learning to Lead,” was published in 1999 in a small anthology of dance writings: Night Work: Writings About Waltz. I am currently working on a series of pieces about tango. Two of these poems were published in Raven Chronicles, Summer 2004.

In 2006, I created a calendar featuring photo and text on my mother's family, the Wittaks of Milwaukke. In 2007, I create a blog for the Wittak family so I could share my research with a wider audience. www.wittakfamily.blogspot.com

Back to the Novel
After many years of writing memoir and non-fiction, I decided to return to my first love: the novel. My seventh novel, Every Step You Take, is a detective novel, featuring Seattle PI, Rachel Stern, who learns how to dance while conducting a background check on her client’s mysterious new boyfriend.

I wrote a sequel in which Rachel goes undercover in a mysterious cult during Nanowrimo 2004. And during Nanowrimo 2005 I wrote a third novel in which Ravel investigates Sixties radicals.That version was completely revised during the Revision class I taught at Hugo House in Spring of 2006 and I wrote a new version of it during Nanowrimo 2006. I'm still revising it.

When I get tired of working on my contemporary detective novels, I work on one of my many historical novels in progress (one set in 16th century England, another in Victorian London).


Waverly Fitzgerald
Supporting you in meeting your writing goals
206.325.1452
waverly@waverlyfitzgerald.com

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“Celebrating Seasonal Holidays,” an eight-part series, appearing in The New Times, July 1990-May 1991

“Pomanders: Golden Apples of the Sun,” The Beltane Papers, Winter 1995

“Time to Celebrate: Holidays and Holy Days From Around the World,” column for SageWoman magazine, in each quarterly issue, 1997-present

“Living in Season,” column for Verve newspaper, 2002

Website:
School of the Seasons

Celebrating the Seasonal Holy-Days, Priestess of Swords Press 1991

School of the Seasons, Priestess of Swords Press, 1993

Thirteen Traditional Christmas Cookies, Priestess of Swords Press 2001

Holiday packets: May Day, Lammas, Harvest, Halloween, Priestess of Swords Press 200. Available at the School of the Seasons store.

Waverly’s great-grandparents

Travels to My Ancestors, family history self-published 1997
Residency at Hedgebrook, retreat for women writers, Sept 1997

“Learning to Lead,” Night Work: A Collection of Writings About Waltz, 1999

“Time to Write,” SeattleWriterGrrls webzine, Summer 2002, Issue 2

“Bad Timing,” a poem selected in the Metro Poetry Bus contest 1999