Monday, October 4, 2010

First Lines and Heidi's Story

Welcome to Novel Adventurers, the blog that celebrates the great cultural diversity of our planet. We are four suspense novelists whose books and stories are set in locations around the world, from Turkey, Iran, and South America to Russia, India, and New York. In the coming weeks and months, join us for lively discussions of the cross-cultural adventures and misadventures that inspire our books. We will showcase our favorite travel destinations and review international movies, books, and plays. And don’t miss Fridays, when we invite guest bloggers to tell us about their own journeys off the beaten path.

All this week, you will meet each of us in turn as we talk about ourselves and our books. Because it’s Monday, I get to go first.

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My idea of a dream vacation never included lying on a sunny beach in Cancun with a frosty Margarita in hand. You’d be far more likely to find me hiking alpine trails in Switzerland, climbing the steps to the ruins of Persepolis, once the residence of ancient Persian kings, or quizzing bazaaris at the Tehran spice market on the best ways to use his fragrant wares.

I’ve lived in Salzburg, Austria, where I subsisted on big rounds of sourdough bread purchased from monks in the cellar bakery of a Franciscan monastery. Studied linguistics in Leipzig, East Germany, during the height of the Cold War. Later, I taught English in a Mexican public school whose custodian locked the doors at nine sharp (tough luck if you were five minutes late to class). Until one day, the students went on strike, occupied the building and shut the teachers out.

These days, my travels usually take me to Iran, where I have a special pass to the very heart of the culture: my husband’s extended family. Twenty years ago, I married a Tehran native and have been studying the culture, cuisine, history, and language ever since. I’ve heard it said that the only way to fully understand this intensely private culture is from inside the family. Maybe that’s true. Maybe not. It’s the only vantage point I have ever had. And my explorations of Persian culture have inevitably found their way into my novels and stories.

Currently, I’m writing a mystery/suspense series featuring Leila Shirazi, an Iranian-American P.I., who struggles to reconcile her independent spirit with the traditional values of her conservative Muslim family. Her story begins in Frayed Silk, where she’s hot on the trail of a rare seventeenth-century Persian carpet until the bodies start piling up. Returning to her native Tehran in Bad Hejab, Leila is immediately caught in the web of her journalist cousin’s murder investigation. When the killer, protected by a powerful government ally, goes free, Leila seeks a way to bring him to justice.

Museums filled with a country’s art treasures are fine for a start. But afterwards, I want to sit in an outdoor cafĂ©, pen and notebook at the ready, recording sights, sounds, smells, snippets of conversation, and the imagined stories of people moving in and out of my line of vision. It’s the routine of ordinary life in extraordinary places that sparks my imagination.

In the weeks and months to come, we will be sharing our thoughts and observations about all things cross-cultural. We hope you will stop by often and tell us about your own adventures.

17 comments:

  1. Heidi, you're off to a great start. Congratulations.

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  2. Thanks, Patricia! Hope you enjoy the blog.

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  3. This is really great! I'm looking forward to meeting all four of you and reading your posts. It is wonderful to get perspectives from so many cultures. We need more of this to further our understanding of each other and eliminate fear.
    Thank You.

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  4. Welcome to Blogging World. With all of your worldly experience, the blog should be a great success and interesting to the public. Stop over to http://writerswhokill.blogspot.com and join the fun. Wishing you well, and hope that blogger.com doesn't give you too many troubles. I always have copies of my blogs in case something gets dropped. Good luck!

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  5. Dropped by to say hi. HI! Do wish that I could claim a bit more travel experience (or at least a fraction of yours Heidi). That's got to be beneficial to writing internationally based stories.

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  6. Thanks, E.B. I enjoyed reading your blog. Thanks for sharing the link with us.

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  7. Glad you stopped by, Ricky. Come back again and you can travel the world with us and never leave home!

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  8. I'm trying to limit the number of blogs I read, but darn this one looks so good that I'm going to have to add it into my list of must-reads!

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  9. Great start to what promises to be a fantastic venture. I'll be a loyal follower!

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  10. Thanks, Gigi! That's high praise, indeed. There are a lot of excellent blogs to tempt us away from our writing.

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  11. Glad you stopped by, Gerhard. We'll make sure you want to keep coming back!

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  12. A sunny beach and a frosty Margarita in hand never made it for me either. Even in Paris, I could eventually get a little bored as ridiculous as it may sound. But not on the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul and never in a Jordan Bedouin camp :)

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  13. Great introduction, Heidi! Your book sounds even better now then when I first heard of it. Wishing you the very best success in this new venture.

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  14. Lina, bazaars are endlessly fascinating universes of their own, aren't they?

    CJ, thanks for stopping by. My story is the same, I'm just getting better at describing it. :) Looking forward to reading your book, Vampire Vacation!

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  15. What a fun new blog! I'll add it to my list and be sure and drop in often.

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  16. Thanks for stopping by, Kaye! Hope you drop in again and share some of your own adventures!

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