Just Talking with Carolyn Leiloglou
Just Talking is a series of conversations with authors I love.
Jennifer: Hey Carolyn! As you know, I’ve had the chance to read an advance copy of your book and will do my best to not give anything away, but of course, we will be talking about your book. Can you tell everyone a bit about yourself and your book series?
Carolyn: Sure! Besides being a children's author, I'm a homeschooling mom of four kids (one recently graduated). My husband is a pediatrician, and we live in central Texas. I also run a book review website, housefullofbookworms.com.
Beneath the Swirling Sky is the story of Vincent, a twelve-year-old kid who has given up on art after a painful experience, until he learns his family are the last of the Restorationists, a secret society with the ability to travel through art and the duty to protect it.
Jennifer: I'm a homeschooling mom of four too. Were you homeschooled as well? I was not, but I love homeschooling my own kids.
Carolyn: I was not homeschooled. I went to a Christian school and my husband attended public school, but we were both on board with homeschooling from the beginning and have loved it!
Jennifer: That is the exact same for us.
Ouch, Texas. I'm from Mississippi although I now live in North Carolina. I do not miss the Mississippi summers. My best friend lives in Texas, and she's been miserable this summer. I know you're ready for Fall!
Carolyn: Yes, this summer has been record-breaking hot!
Jennifer: Your characters are all named after famous artists? I love that. Can you share some of the ones you used?
Carolyn: Sure! My main character is Vincent named after my favorite artist Vincent van Gogh. His second cousin Georgia is named for Georgia O'Keeffe, and I have to admit, I selected hers more because I loved the name than the artist, but now having researched a lot of her work for book two, I've found a definite appreciation for O'Keeffe's work.
Vincent's little sister, Lili, is named after Lilias Trotter who I learned about at a Hutchmoot several years ago. She actually gave up a very promising art career to be a missionary in Northern Africa, though she never gave up painting.
Jennifer: O'Keeffe is the one who mostly paints flowers right?
Carolyn: I think a lot of her well-known pieces portray both flowers and bones together, and the title of book two will likely reference that.
Jennifer: You enlightened me about Trotter in your book. I knew her as an artist and then as a missionary. I didn't know she was the same person until your book ha. Whoops.
Carolyn: Awesome! It was fun inserting little educational tidbits into the plot and conversation where they were relevant to the story.
Jennifer: One thing I’m excited about is for us to read your book every few years in our homeschool. We are part of Classical Conversations which uses a three-year cycle. In Cycle 2, we study all the artists you mention in your book. It would be great to read during that year, and I can’t wait to share it with our community. We recreate Van Gogh’s Starry Night and draw self-portraits when we study Rembrandt and everything.
Carolyn: Oh that's so cool! I do think the book will have a strong appeal to many families pursuing Classical or Charlotte Mason-style education.
Jennifer: Young me identifies with Vincent. Vincent hints throughout the book that he used to like art, but something happened that made him run away from it. Growing up, I had a similar experience where I stopped doing a few things I loved because I got hurt by it. I imagine many middle-aged readers will have had a similar experience. Is it your hope that they feel encouraged to begin whatever it is they ran away from—whether it’s a sport, a hobby, or a club—again in a new way?
Carolyn: Absolutely! I drew from my own experience of quitting writing in middle school because I felt that I wasn't good enough. School came easy for me, and while I wanted to write, that was more difficult, so I assumed that I would never be able to do it. I didn't write stories again until after having children of my own, and I really regret all of those wasted years.
Jennifer: Right... I just took about a 4-year hiatus from writing for similar reasons.
That leads me to this quote from the book:
“Mom had told him that all people wanted to leave their marks and that some people thought that was the whole point of making art. But she believed the best art was created when artists forgot about themselves and just focused on the truth they were trying to capture.”
Further down you write:
“There’s a difference between making art and making a name for yourself. Making art focuses outside yourself, in the art itself and the people who will experience it. Making a name for yourself just focuses inward, on what the art can do for you.”
When I first began writing, the desire to make something great was so strong that I found it difficult to “forget about myself” in this way. Have you experienced this in your writing career? Now, I’m much more relaxed and focused on the story I want to tell and not the writer I want to be, but it took several (humbling) years to come to that point.
Carolyn: They say you write what you know, and I've certainly experienced that. I think most writers starting out feel that they have to prove themselves in some way, and I was no different. For years, no one beyond my immediate family even knew I was writing because I worried that if I told them they would ask about it and I wouldn't have anything to show for myself. And of course that's rooted in pride and fear, neither of which leads to good decisions.
Still, it's hard to overcome that hurdle of wondering if you're good enough without some kind of validation. I was seeking publication as a measure of success before I shared my writing, but I think a much healthier form is finding a writing community to share your work with, which I did eventually. That helps you focus on the work and making it better rather than solely on seeking that self-validation.
Jennifer: It's even harder now with all the data we're able to see right?
Can you talk about your family's background in art and how you were drawn to writing stories instead of creating art? Writing is a form of art creation, but you know what I mean.
Carolyn: I grew up around a lot of art. My mom was an art major in college and taught high school art for a while. But my grandparents were art collectors. Their home was full of paintings and sculptures. There was even an upstairs room with stacks of paintings they didn't have room to hang! It was a magical place to visit. Uncle Leo's house in the book is based on my grandparent's house, and that upstairs room became the jumping-off point for the story.
I enjoy art and feel like I have a good eye, but I was never really drawn to pursuing that myself. And I didn't feel any pressure to do so from my mom, though I remember her teaching me color theory and experimenting with clay. It was always writing and stories for me.
Jennifer: That sounds like sweet memories.
Can you explain framed paintings versus unframed ones in the story world? Every time they step into a painting, I think of the scene in Mary Poppins where they jump into the ones on the sidewalk and enter the fantasy world.
Carolyn: Nice! I hadn't made that connection before, but I like it. People usually bring up The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but I didn't even think about that when I was writing the book.
So in the world of The Restorationists, you can only travel into or out of a painting if it's framed. Framing a painting is like opening the doorway. Also, all the paintings of a particular artist are connected. So if you enter a van Gogh in New York, you could exit through another one in Amsterdam. And let me tell you, all those time zone jumps made things complicated to write!
Jennifer: Haha I bet. And I read you had to learn some museum layouts through Google.
Speaking of Narnia... Lili reminds me of Lucy. Have you thought about that?
Carolyn: Yes! I wrote the book during 2020 when you couldn't visit a museum if you wanted to! Thankfully, Google Street View actually has walk-throughs of several museums, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam being one of them. I try to depict things as accurately as possible. Museums move paintings around, but I've portrayed things as where they were at the time of research.
That makes me so happy! I hadn't really thought of that before, and you're the first person to mention that. Lucy is my favorite!
Jennifer: Don’t remind me of 2020…
Yea! Lili sees the best in everyone, is sympathetic, and wants to do the right thing which is very Lucy-like.
Carolyn: Aww! You made my day!
Jennifer: Yay!
I’m a big Audrey Hepburn fan, so I have to ask: Have you seen How to Steal a Million?
Carolyn: No, I haven't! But I'm a sucker for any kind of art heist movie. A recent one I loved was Red Notice.
Jennifer: Oh, you have to! Her father is a con artist, and when she thinks he will get caught, she breaks into a museum to get his counterfeit out. I haven't seen it in many years, so there's more to it that I can't remember off the top of my head.
Carolyn: That sounds like a lot of fun! I'll have to check it out!
Jennifer: It could be valuable research for the rest of your series.
In your book, you say this: “A true Artist can paint whatever they envision and have it come to life.”
Do you believe this is the same with writers and their craft? What makes a book come to life?
Carolyn: That's interesting. That quote is actually about the Restorationist Gifting of Artist and what they can do inside a painting. But yes, I do think good art of any kind has a life of its own that invites the reader/viewer/listener in.
A while ago, I was telling my husband about a book I read as a child that had these great detailed illustration in it. I wanted to show him, and since I knew I still owned it, I went and pulled it off the shelf. I didn't have any illustrations! They had all been painted in my mind from the author's descriptions so vividly that I was sure I had literally seen them! That's what good writing can do.
Jennifer: Ah, I see that now with the capitalization of "artist".
Carolyn: It was still a great question and made me think!
Jennifer: Wow, that's cool.
Lastly, a lot of my readers are homeschool moms like me. That means we have a lot of Green Ember fans of course! Is it true you edited some of The Green Ember books?
Carolyn: Haha. It's true. It's funny because when my kids tell their friends I'm an author, their friends think it's kinda cool, but when they tell them I edited the Green Ember books, their friends freak out!
So, I didn't have anything to do with the first book, but I became a beta reader somewhere early after that, and apparently, the kind of feedback I was giving was valuable enough that they transitioned me to a paid editor after a couple of books. I can't actually remember which one. But what's even cooler is that I've gotten to become friends with Sam and his brother Josiah, and they are both some of the kindest most generous people I know.
Jennifer: Yeah, I interviewed Sam before, and some of the kids I know freaked about that too haha.
Carolyn: I bet!
Jennifer: Okay, so what you're saying is I need to hire you next to edit my novel?
Carolyn: Haha! Well, as I'm sure you can imagine, the amount of free time I have for editing has drastically shrunk since signing the contract for this series, so unfortunately, I'm turning down most editing work these days.
Jennifer: I was about to say that. That says a lot about you though.
Carolyn: *blushes* Honestly, I think it was great training for writing my own novels.
Jennifer: Alright, that's all I have for today. Do you have anything you want to add?
Carolyn: Yeah, if parents are wondering how to take their kids to the next step in studying art, I have a Restorationist-style Picture Study Guide they can download. They can find it at therestorationists.com
Thank you so much for having me! Your questions were so insightful and fun to answer!