A life long artist, Arturo, now a senior, paces himself through a long day in preparation for his first solo art show that night. His thoughts pass through the events in his life that have led him where he is. And he waits for his wife's return from a long overseas trip, hopefully to arrive in time for the art show.
The extended multi-generational family's story then continues in "Slumming in Paris."
The Children characters are highlighted in a prequel-series of four short stories, "The Children (Shorts)" : "The Concert" - "Art Day" - "At the Beach" - and "Slumber Party."
Below is a little more about "The Old American Artist."
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A romance and an artist's story, how could it not be a love story?
We all love a story that shows how a loving pair, meeting obstacles in life, overcome that challenge, and resolve to love each other. But what happens during the "lived happily ever after" part? What are the details, what might the process be, achieving and living that post-crisis life?
This arc, from boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regains girl, morphs, in this first of three books, in the trilogy Triptych, into that fuller story of life, and love.
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Details
This is the first of several books centered around Arturo the artist, his wife Rosetta, and their family. That is of course, the simple layout. Complexities of relationships, living many years, and addressing meaning in life, are the more complex issues.
My own working preference, and manner of doing best it seems, is to concentrate a point of view from one character, with input from other surrounding important characters. So I do better, as a writer, creating three novellas, than trying to mesh together stories about the artist Arturo, his wife Rosetta, and all the children and grandchildren and the main characters' childhoods involved.
Thus, the first three books are, "The Old American Artist, a Love Story," "Rosetta," and "The Children."
Though the differing books' stories are not entirely concurrent, there is some overlap, producing, I believe, some interesting effects.
Also, in terms of scenic technique and narrative, the form I follow here is less linear, and more cinematic.
In the first book, and it appears in the second and third books as well, two timelines are used.
One is set all in one part of a day, Arturo's movement from the morning of his big anticipated art show that evening to that event.
This timeline is interspersed in scenes with the second time frame, which begins over thirty years earlier, and provides an interacting backstory to the events of that one day.
Almost all issues are resolved by the end of this first book, with hints of issues that are picked up and elaborated in the second book, "Rosetta."
I chose to call this a "love story" rather than a romance, even though, as per the Romance Writers of America, this book qualifies as a story about "a central love story and an emotionally-satisfying and optimistic ending."
The reason for that is because of the equally important story of being an artist, which makes this book a cross genre offering.
Romance and art. It had to be a love story. ;-)
Adan Lerma
July 01, 2012
View the original article here
