Around the Fire is chatting with international author, artist, and musician, J. Arlene Culiner.

​I love chatting around a campfire. This past weekend was spent in lovely Lancaster County Pennsylvania. Ronks to be more specific. Longtime friends joined us, and we talked about the familiar as well as found out things we never knew about them. Also, when that fire is lit you never know who will show up. We met folks from Maine to North Carolina and a few local campers too. Campers love to sit around and shoot the breeze. Today’s Around the Fire is welcoming back an old friend, J. Arlene Culinar all the way from across the Atlantic in France. Bon retour, mon ami.
Thank you so much, Donna, for having me back as a guest on Around the Campfire.
 
What can I pour as we spend some time conversing about life, love, books, and writing?
In the early evenings, I walk through a delicious green valley surrounded by prehistoric caves and end up in rather luxurious local hotel four kilometers away. There, I can drink the most delicious mojitos. This is my go-to end-of-the-day reward.
 
Well, my camper, 2Hoots is a little magic and I’m sure we can find the ingredients to do a comparison. While I rummage through will you share who are you other than your bio?
I tend to be a loner. I’m rarely chatty in a crowd. I prefer observing and listening for a while, then I always go home early. I love walking on my own, crossing countries on my own, doing intensive archival research, and traveling on my own. However, I do enjoy having a partner, and cooking for friends.
 
I respect that. I tend to be quiet in crowds. What interests besides writing do you enjoy? For instance, what do you read or hobbies you have?
As well as being a writer, I’m a contemporary artist. I create tiny sculptures and critical/satirical scenes of daily life, as well as cartoons. Although I’m no great shakes as a musician, I honk away with great determination, and play with different bands and orchestras. My instruments? The oboe, the English horn, the baroque oboe family (the taille, baritone, oboe d’amore), the tuba, the flute, and recorders.
 
How intriguing about the art! And wow about the range of instruments you play. Who is your network or support system? Who contributes to your writing career.
It’s a complicate situation. I write in English in a French-speaking country and this certainly has disadvantages. Bernard, my partner doesn’t speak or read English therefore, although I use him as a sounding board for much that I write, I have to translate. However, I do take his advice seriously when I’m tackling a manuscript and need news ideas, a different way of seeing situations, historical change, and complicated characters. For the rest, I depend upon my publishers and editors.
 
It's wonderful to have such a person in your life. Bonjour Bernard! Who or what books or authors are your inspiration?
I am particularly passionate about non-fiction writers: Robert A. Rosenstone, Kapka Kassabova, Jonathan Raban, Neal Acherson, Bill Bryson.

Now that we’re sipping Mojitos, tell us more about your neighborhood? Are there any places you frequent? What makes them special?
I live in a tiny village, and here are pictures of the countryside that I walk through every evening. In one photo, you can see a green lane. The European countryside is crisscrossed with these deep lanes that once ran from one farm to the next, and still lead between villages. This valley was inhabited by cave-dwelling people 25,000 years ago. Much later, local peoples used these green lanes to hide in before attacking Roman soldiers. You can imagine how historically thrilling it is to be walking here every day.

One day I hope to visit Europe. My husband and I often visit historical sites, but the history runs so deep over there. Let’s chat a bit about writing. What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?
I do intensive research in libraries and archives for all of my books. This is necessary when writing non-fiction, but it is also true for my romances. My book, A Room in Blake’s Folly demanded quite a bit of research for it to be historically correct, since it begins in 1889, and progresses to the present day.
 
How do you select the names of your characters?
They generally select their own names.
 
I’ve had a few do that. What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
Sitting myself down and actually getting work done! I’m very easily distracted (by playing music, reading, walking, talking to the dog, eating, reading, sitting around and thinking, reading, lurking, dreaming).
 
How long, on average, does it take you to write a book?
For non-fiction, it can take me anywhere from six to twelve years or more. For fiction, at least a year until I’m satisfied.
 
J. Arlene let’s do a quick Q&A to see your more personal side. If you could eat anything in the world right now, what would it be?
A Caesar salad. I could eat a good Caesar salad for breakfast, in the middle of the night or any time at all. I could eat two or three Caesar salads in one go. Of course, they’d have to be authentic, not made with bottled salad dressing, packaged parmesan cheese or other dreadful things.
 
Worst household chore?
I hate any household chore. Bernard and I have a cleaning blitz about once a month. The rest of the time, chaos runs my life.
 
Would you rather have unlimited international first-class tickets or never have to pay for food at restaurants? 
Food, please. I’m a slow traveler: I take trains, I go on foot. But I do love to eat.
 
What was your first job?
I was a camp counselor and I hated it. I hated taking care of kids, amusing them, watching them. I hated sports, I hated games, I hated communal singing, and I hated any enforced activities. In the end, my non-compliance was accepted, and I was allowed to go do things on my own. So I went to visit bears, found snakes to watch, and enjoyed myself. I’m really not cut out for the working world.
 
What was the best money you ever spent as a writer?
Buying an external hard drive and keeping it plugged in. My computers have conked out so many times, but I’ve never lost a manuscript.

I love our fireside chats. You mentioned A Room in Blake’s Folly . Can you tell us a bit more about it?

A Room in Blake’s Folly
by
J. Arlene Culiner
​Historical, Western and Frontier Romance

If only the walls could speak…
In one hundred and fifty years, Blake's Folly, a silver boomtown notorious for its brothels, scarlet ladies, silver barons, speakeasies, and divorce ranches, has become a semi-ghost town.
Although the old Mizpah Saloon is still in business, its upper floor is sheathed in dust. But in a room at a long corridor's end, an adventurer, a beautiful dance girl, and a rejected wife were once caught in a love triangle, and their secret has touched three generations.
Grab your copy today
Purchase Links: https://books2read.com/BlakesFollyRomance
Trailer for A Room in Blake’s Folly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt3VkYUTVNk
 
What others are saying.
Rich detail and scintillating dialogue transport the reader through the decades between 1889 and 2022 of this surprising saga. With flowing descriptive phrases ("... the walls had a yellowish hue that only time could bring") Culiner effectively intertwines the characters and descendants of Blake's Folly. And although overhunting and pollution mean environmental change, the charm of this old world community remains intact. Cheers for this book!
Lisa McCombs for Readers' Favorite
The author drops us off at various points over the past hundred-and-thirty years and allows us to meet some of the inhabitants—some are self-serving and devious—but all have the gritty determination that enables them to survive. The messages running through this saga are hope and resilience. And I'm left with a memory of the cigar smoke lingering in that top floor room of the Mizpah Saloon.
Whispering Stories
J. Arlene Culiner’s original historical novel A Room in Blake’s Folly is a delight. Through research or intuition (probably a combination of both), she manages to bring each era in Blake’s Folly to life, both via language and through period detail. Her characters are distinctive individuals, many of whom are somewhat at odds with society – outcasts, outsiders, and survivors. A Room in Blake’s Folly is a skillfully crafted tale about love and chance, history and family. I recommend it highly.
Lisabet Sarai, author

More about the Author
​Born in New York, raised in Toronto, Jill Culiner set out to have a life of adventure and discovery, not one of security and comfort. She has since crossed much of Europe on foot, travelled, by bus, train, car or truck throughout North and Central America, Europe, and the Sahara, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave-dwelling, on a Dutch canal, a lonely, and a very haunted stone house on the English moors. Such a lifestyle has meant staying flexible and taking up any sort of work that presents itself: belly dancer, fortune teller, b-girl, translator, fashion model, storyteller, radio broadcaster, actress, social critical artist, photographer, and writer. She now resides in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village of no interest and protects all creatures, especially spiders and snakes. She particularly loves incorporating into short stories, mysteries, narrative non-fiction, and romances, her experiences in out-of-the-way communities with their strange characters, and very odd conversations.
Follow the author
www.j-arleneculiner.com
www.jill-culiner.com
Storytelling Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/j-arlene-culiner
Author Links: https://linktr.ee/j.arleneculiner