Interview with David Rocklin, author of "The Luminist"
Tracee Gleichner
November 14, 2011
About David Rocklin
David Rocklin is an attorney and a mediator. He graduated from Indiana University with a BA in Literature. He lives in California with his wife and children. The Luminist is his first novel.
You can visit his website at http://www.davidrocklin.com
Connect with him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drocklin or Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Luminist/197726206912766
Do you have a personal blog and/or website? - My website is at www.davidrocklin.com. I blog there occasionally, and also blog for Hawthorne (my publisher) www.hawthornebooks.com).
How much time do you invest in keeping it active? - Quite a bit! I have a wonderful web designer who is lightning fast when a new interview, article, review or book tour date needs to be added.
How beneficial do you feel they are to keeping the author in the public eye? - I think that in today's publishing world, social media is dominant and has greatly aided my novel's visibility.
When you are writing, do you base your characters on real people? - The main character in The Luminist is very loosely based on a woman named Julia Margaret Cameron, one of the first photographers. The other characters do include one or two who are very loosely inspired by actual people in Ms. Cameron's life, but most are imagined.
If your book was being made into a movie who would you see cast? - This is such a difficult question for me to answer! It's a bit like asking who would play my wife in the movie version - I think I'm too close to the story to really be good at casting it. After you and your readers read it, you tell me! I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Setting is such an important part of a book. What made you decide to choose the setting of your book? - It was the natural extension of the decision to write this story, as the character's time in Ceylon shaped her in ways that neither she nor I could have foreseen.
Being a writer can be a lonely profession. How do you keep from giving up? Who do you get your support from? - Jonathan Franzen said that in order to love, you need to be relentless. True of so many things, and especially so of writing. It's not in me to give up, though the notion really wasn't ever attached to being published or selling. It has always been about getting better at writing.
Do you belong to any writing organizations? - I wish I had time!
World-building requires the author to do a lot of planning and inventing. Can you tell us a little about your world and your process for creating it? - I keep a pad and paper with me at all times, and I ask myself a lot of questions in writing. I need to live in the world I want to write about for a while before I actually start writing. It needs to feel intimate, less like a story and more like a memory.
About The Luminist
IN COLONIAL INDIA, at a time of growing friction between the ruling British and the restless Indian populace, a Victorian woman and her young Tamil Indian servant defy convention, class, and heartbreak to investigate what is gained – and lost – by holding life still. Suggested by the life and work of photographic pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron, The Luminist filters 19th century Ceylon through the lens of an English woman, Catherine Colebrook and a 15 year old Tamil boy, Eligius Shourie. Left fatherless by soldiers, Eligius is brought as a servant to the Colebrooks´ neglected estate. In the shadow of Catherine´s obsession to arrest beauty – to select a moment from the thousands comprising her life in Ceylon and hold it apart from mere memory – Eligius transforms into her apprentice in the creation of the first haunting photographs in history.
David Rocklin is an attorney and a mediator. He graduated from Indiana University with a BA in Literature. He lives in California with his wife and children. The Luminist is his first novel.
You can visit his website at http://www.davidrocklin.com
Connect with him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/drocklin or Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Luminist/197726206912766
Do you have a personal blog and/or website? - My website is at www.davidrocklin.com. I blog there occasionally, and also blog for Hawthorne (my publisher) www.hawthornebooks.com).
How much time do you invest in keeping it active? - Quite a bit! I have a wonderful web designer who is lightning fast when a new interview, article, review or book tour date needs to be added.
How beneficial do you feel they are to keeping the author in the public eye? - I think that in today's publishing world, social media is dominant and has greatly aided my novel's visibility.
When you are writing, do you base your characters on real people? - The main character in The Luminist is very loosely based on a woman named Julia Margaret Cameron, one of the first photographers. The other characters do include one or two who are very loosely inspired by actual people in Ms. Cameron's life, but most are imagined.
If your book was being made into a movie who would you see cast? - This is such a difficult question for me to answer! It's a bit like asking who would play my wife in the movie version - I think I'm too close to the story to really be good at casting it. After you and your readers read it, you tell me! I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Setting is such an important part of a book. What made you decide to choose the setting of your book? - It was the natural extension of the decision to write this story, as the character's time in Ceylon shaped her in ways that neither she nor I could have foreseen.
Being a writer can be a lonely profession. How do you keep from giving up? Who do you get your support from? - Jonathan Franzen said that in order to love, you need to be relentless. True of so many things, and especially so of writing. It's not in me to give up, though the notion really wasn't ever attached to being published or selling. It has always been about getting better at writing.
Do you belong to any writing organizations? - I wish I had time!
World-building requires the author to do a lot of planning and inventing. Can you tell us a little about your world and your process for creating it? - I keep a pad and paper with me at all times, and I ask myself a lot of questions in writing. I need to live in the world I want to write about for a while before I actually start writing. It needs to feel intimate, less like a story and more like a memory.
About The Luminist
IN COLONIAL INDIA, at a time of growing friction between the ruling British and the restless Indian populace, a Victorian woman and her young Tamil Indian servant defy convention, class, and heartbreak to investigate what is gained – and lost – by holding life still. Suggested by the life and work of photographic pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron, The Luminist filters 19th century Ceylon through the lens of an English woman, Catherine Colebrook and a 15 year old Tamil boy, Eligius Shourie. Left fatherless by soldiers, Eligius is brought as a servant to the Colebrooks´ neglected estate. In the shadow of Catherine´s obsession to arrest beauty – to select a moment from the thousands comprising her life in Ceylon and hold it apart from mere memory – Eligius transforms into her apprentice in the creation of the first haunting photographs in history.
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