Some time afterwards, I came across this extraordinary collection of pictures that captured the feeling I wanted to get across in the novel. The Prokudin-Gorskii photographs of Imperial Russia documented all sorts of aspects of life across a huge geographic expanse, and by means of an unusual color process that gives the alternate-reality feeling (like a higher-quality version of the nonetheless appealing planetscapes of the most recent Star Wars movies) that's very much what I prize. We're not used to seeing color images from this time period, and the quality of the color is also very distinctive and rather non-naturalistic.
Here's a good one:
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz4oTiw1CFVdVHrRzMT-7QvAh-vTH-JnhqLInhtt4Jt_AxWo2_SY0Cf5Gos5YpjDtyLOxmRkGQA7CAjuXJuByw6KLD9TKm0Wdy4-7bGCqBv6jWjs3R5MsI8ZP0OLoBBYP_lYG1/s400/Russia+picture.jpg)
Another visual inspiration--I'm hoping that some of this feel might be picked up in the book's cover design, but as a hopelessly unvisual person I certainly couldn't tell you what I actually want it to look like!--was the packaging for the kind of wireless radio known as a "crystal set" (my main character Sophie builds one to capture the voices of the dead). Here's a quite wonderful site with pictures of the tins in which one obtained the components (these desperately remind me of the little plastic bicycle-patching case in which I kept my oboe reeds as a teenager!).
The names are wonderfully evocative also, and it's hard to pick a favorite example since they're all so appealing, but this one gives a good sense of the aesthetic (the term "magical" has been on my mind a lot recently--more about this anon):
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC8mvjc_WTWIaU9fF_Tl3SFKpYcrpAFQ3HdIcjmaVKR_2dhS9BKh5CxPKkrUe4IMHwToJkyfYVUZKYQ3ESRIjelstGpx4VA0fXF7uJLAjFqCvJR625CZemO3sVqVLR0bnJ_I5B/s400/Magic_1.jpg)
AWESOME name, & awesome post-- I wanna hear more about all of those places! XX, LC -LuxLotus.com
ReplyDeleteLove the title also! I'm still struggling with mine....nothing seems right.
ReplyDeleteHow come writing a book is almost easier then coming up with a title?
Colleen
chasingray.com