Answers to questions provided by authors Shannon McKenna Schmidt (SMS) and Joni Rendon (JR )
What has been your favorite read this year?
SMS: Ireally enjoyed The Lace Reader by Brunia Barry, which I was intrigued to read because of its setting:: contemporary Salem, Massachusetts. I had the chance to visit Salem to research a chapter in Novel Destinations about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables, whose inspiration is a seaside residence in Salem.
JR: My favorite is one I just finished reading, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. It’s an epistolary historical novel about a writer in London who develops a correspondence with the residents of the English Channel isle of Guernsey, who lived through wartime occupation by the Germans. Through all the hardships they endure, the residents became united and uplifted by a shared passion for books.
What a fabulous idea for a book, where did the idea for NOVEL DESTINATIONS come from?
SMS: A trip I took to Louisa May Alcott’s home in Concord, Massachusetts, three years ago with my mother, my sister and my niece is one of the events that helped inspire Novel Destinations. Around the same time I was visiting Orchard House, Joni—who currently lives in London—was planning a literary weekend in Dublin. We were talking on the phone one day about our trips, and we realized we had a literary travel theme going and that there might be a kernel of an idea for a book.
JR: Our idea then really came to fruition the following year when we took our first literary trip together to Brontё Country, the Yorkshire Moors in northern England.
How many of the places in the book did you get to visit personally?
SMS: Between the two of us, we’ve been to a couple hundred of the sites featured in Novel Destinations, including author houses, hotels, restaurants, and walking tours. And we’re working on the rest! I recently went to Key West to visit the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum. Joni researched Key West for Novel Destinations, and I was inspired to visit after reading her chapter about it in the book.
JR: This fall, I’m looking forward to a dream trip to Russia, where I’ll be visiting the plethora of author houses that exist across Moscow and St. Petersburg. I can’t wait to follow in the footsteps of Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and all the Russian greats I studied in college.
How do you pack? Are you a “carry on, or a send the luggage through”, kind of traveler?
SMS: Interestingly enough, while our work and writing styles mesh, our travel styles are very different, as we discovered early on in the research process! I’m a carry-on kind of traveler. Airlines are so unpredictable these days that I’d rather not take the chance on lost luggage ruining a trip.
JR: And I’m the one who has to pack everything but the kitchen sink, including a minimum of at least ten pairs of shoes and matching accessories for every outfit.
What is the best story/experience you can relate from doing the book?
JR: Probably our trip together to explore literary Paris, as it happened to fall during Shannon’s birthday and we got to celebrate together at Le Procope, a very famous and posh three-hundred-year-old restaurant where writers like Oscar Wilde, Voltaire and Victor Hugo have dined throughout the centuries.
We also spent a lot of time relaxing at some of the city’s famed literary cafés and paid homage to the dozens of writers laid to rest in the awe-inspiring Père-Lachaise Cemetery. (Though we didn’t leave our lipstick prints on Oscar Wilde’s tombstone like hundreds of other zealous fans have done!) While visiting Victor Hugo’s elegant townhouse, we did get into a bit of trouble for trying to find a secret staircase that was said to have been used by his mistress. (Alas, our detecting skills turned up nothing.) Shannon braved the Paris sewer tour to relive the experience of Hugo’s protagonist in Les Misérables, Jean Valjean, but I opted out of that one.
Do you have a favorite destination from inside the pages of the book?
SMS: A place I loved was the Chateau de Monte Cristo, a small castle and grounds on the outskirts of Paris built by Alexandre Dumas and named for his novel The Count of Monte Cristo. He really used his imagination in creating the place, which is reached by walking along a wooded path, through man-made caves, and past a waterfall. It’s an off-the-beaten path gem that’s not typically found in more traditional guidebooks.
JR: I would say Dublin because there’s such a wealth of literary things to do there, from visiting an old stone tower on the southeast coast where James Joyce once stayed to checking out the wonderful exhibits at the Dublin Writers’ Museum, to having a bit of lighthearted fun on the city’s popular literary pub crawl. And seeing the book of Kells—an illuminated manuscript that dates back to the 9 th century—at the Trinity College library is worth the trip to Dublin in and of itself.
What books are on your nightstand?
JR: As usual, I’m in the middle of reading three books simultaneously! I love books with a strong sense of place, so right now I’m traveling through Venice in Donna Leon’s Death in a Strange Country, through India in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, and across the south of France in Chasing Matisse, a memoir from a writer following in the footsteps of his favorite painter.
SMS: I’m currently reading Murder in the Bastille, the fourth book in Cara Black’s AiméeLeduc mystery series. Each story takes place in a different quarter of Paris. Behind that waiting to be read is A Long Fatal Love Chase, one of the novels written by Louisa May Alcott before she gained fame with Little Women.
What author or location was your number one choice for inclusion in NOVEL DESTINATIONS?
SMS: That would have to be Brontё Country, the place where we took our first literary trip together. We both have a passion for the works of the three talented literary sisters who grew up on the Yorkshire Moors, and we had such a memorable time on our trip reliving their youthful experiences—including exploring the atmospheric landscape that serves as the setting of Wuthering Heights.
Where is your favorite destination?
JR: That’s a tough question as I have several favorites that are constantly evolving, but my ideal vacation is one spent at any beach, preferably in as remote of location as possible, where there’s nothing to do but lie on a sun bed and read. I love having a guilt-free week devoted entirely to indulging my favorite pastime and can usually manage to get through about ten books. My favorite beaches (so far!) are in French Polynesia and the islands off Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
SMS: A new favorite destination is the Grand Canyon. This summer I went on a six-day rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, which was an amazing experience. I did tie in a literary connection, though, by taking along Mark Twain’s entertaining travelogue Roughing It as my trip reading.
Which literary figure in the book would you most like to spend the day with?
JR: I’d love to spend a day sitting by the pool with Hemingway at his Key West home, sipping Papa Dobles, his namesake drink.
SMS: For me it would be spending the day with Edith Wharton at her estate in the Berkshire Mountains, hearing tales about her travels to places like France and Morocco.
Did you succumb to souvenir shopping from each site?
SMS: Yes! Many of the shops at the author houses and museums carry a wonderful and varied selection of items. And of course it’s hard not to walk out with more books to add to my shelves.
JR: I definitely lost all fiscal sense and sensibility in the gift shop at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. I now own every version ever made of all the movie adaptations, as well an Austen-themed tea cozy, cross-stitch kit, and book of Regency recipes. I stopped short of buying the Regency straw bonnet kit!
Have you googled your name and or book, since it was released?
SMS: Yes! It was gratifying to see the number of mentions grow for Novel Destinations as it was discovered by like-minded literary travelers out there on the web.
Do you have a favorite item of literary gossip?
JR: In Novel Destinations we highlight behind-the-scenes stories about writers’ homes and haunts, and one of our favorites is about Ernest Hemingway. He often lodged at the Gritti Palace hotel while visiting Venice, and in 1954, he was recuperating there after surviving two near-fatal plane crashes during an African safari. His death had been falsely reported in headlines around the world, and with typical Hemingway bravado he sipped champagne on the hotel’s canal-side terrace while chuckling over his obituaries.
If your week magically turned from 24/7 to 24/8, what would you do with the extra time?
SMS: Read (or re-read) more classics.
JR: I’d try to squeeze in more reading too, but it would also be wonderful to spend more time doing yoga, which really calms my overactive writer’s brain down.
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