Themes That Rocked - Historical Travels with Carrie-Anne Brownian!

Today we welcome Carrie-Anne Brownian, author of historical fiction set mostly in Europe and Asia. The locations and towns she featured were truly amazing and a great lesson in history and geography.

Your theme this year was geographical-historical locations in your books – what made you decide on that theme?

I felt like it might be more accessible to a wider range of readers, with more obvious interest than my prior two themes, characters I’ve created and chapters I’ve written. Not everyone is so interested in a theme revolving around someone’s writing, but many people are interested in travel. I’m also a Sagittarius, known as the Traveler of the Zodiac.

What city or location was your favorite?

I think my favorites were Kutaisi, Georgia, and Isfahan, Iran, both beautiful cities which have been continuously inhabited for thousands of years. I’m very eager to visit both of them someday, and to see beautiful places like the Bagrati Cathedral and River Rioni of Kutaisi, and Isfahan’s breathtaking Grand Bazaar and Khaju Bridge. It also meant a lot to me to positively feature two Iranian cities, since my family were dear friends with an Iranian family when I was growing up, and I know from my own experience that these are good, intelligent, modern, hospitable people, not xenophobic terrorists.

What letter proved the most difficult?

In terms of finding a wide sample of pictures to use, the most difficult letters were U (Uelen, Russia), O (Odžaci, Serbia), A (Abony, Hungary), and F (Fereydunshahr, Iran). In terms of finding a wide variety of information about the cities, A, O, and F were also among the most difficult letters, and V (Vratsa, Bulgaria) also proved to have somewhat of a dearth of in-depth information available. Many people have problems with X, but once I found the two cities I wanted to use (Xánthi, Greece, and Xanten, Germany), I was overwhelmed with both pictures and information.

Emotionally, the most difficult letter was Z (Zagreb, Croatia), whose post I put off and wrote very last of all. Croatia committed massive war crimes against Serbs, Jews, and Roma during World War II, to such a degree that even the Nazis found them too sadistic. And many modern Croatians have celebrated or downplayed those atrocities. That shouldn’t be swept under the rug. However, I had to keep thinking of Ivan Vranetić, a young Croatian who rescued many people (including his future wife) because it was his second nature to do the right thing, and of my characters Zvonko and Mirsada. Entire peoples are not evil.

Yerevan, Armenia was fascinating – have you been there? Want to travel there?

At the moment, the only countries outside the U.S. I’ve been to are Israel and Austria (and I was only in Austria physically, due to an emergency middle of the night plane landing for a sick passenger). Someday I’d love to see Yerevan, one of the world’s oldest continually inhabited cities. I only hope I can make myself understood, since the bits and pieces of Armenian I’ve taught myself over the years are Western Armenian, and Armenia’s national language is Eastern Armenian. There are a number of important differences between them, beyond the pronunciation of some letters.

You did a lot of research for your posts – what were some of your sources?

Some of them were sources I’d used before for my writing, and I referred back to old print-outs or had to hunt them down again. I know the place I tracked down the information from some of my print-outs on Lille, France wasn’t where I’d gotten it from in 2002, but at least it had been transferred to a different website in the years since. I also used Jewish Virtual Library for information on a number of my cities, such as Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and Xánthi, Greece.

I know this is generally frowned on in serious research, but I used Wikipedia as a jumping-off point in a number of instances. It’s important to follow the links to outside, more scholarly sources, which in turn often leads you to other good sources of information. Many cities also had official websites for tourism or about their histories.

During your research, what surprised you the most?

One of the big surprises was finding out how some of these cities had been destroyed, sometimes more than once. With some cities, such as Tartu, Estonia, there isn’t much left of the historic buildings, due to so many fires and so much warfare. And yet these people kept rebuilding.

What was it like visiting Israel?

It’s truly a land of miracles and wonders, where old coexists with new, and every stone is steeped with deep, rich history and stories. My three favorite places are the Old City of Jerusalem, with its thousands of years of history and so many different cultures; Haifa, Israel’s best-integrated city, where members of all five of the country’s major religions live together peacefully; and the Galilee, an idyllic, peaceful, generally quiet region.

What theme do you think you’ll tackle for next year’s Challenge?

It’s once again going to be a theme related to my writing, but not directly related. It deals with one of my areas of greatest historical expertise, and two of the subjects I’ll be featuring were discussed during this year’s Challenge. I also included photographs related to a few of the other subjects to be featured. As a final hint, it’s going to include subjects from places including Bulgaria, Armenia, Ireland, Albania, and Bosnia.

Awesome! Look forward to your posts, Carrie-Anne.


Co-host Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh is the author of Amazon Best-sellers CassaStar, CassaFire, and CassaStorm, and his blog can be found HERE

What Your Visiting Behavior Brings to the Blogging Table #atozchallenge #roadtrip

You know those movie scenes where someone shows up unexpectedly on the doorstep of distant relatives, friends or lovers who are so overjoyed to be visited by another human being? In my experience as a blogger and two-time (or three-time…hard to recall right now) road tripper, this is similar to what someone feels like when you visit his or her blog. 

That is why your continued participation in the A-to-Z Challenge Road Trip counts the most; (most of) the blogs you missed way back in April are still cranking out the same, if not better, material that is worth a look-see. Even if you visit one blog a day from now until April roll around again, that will mean a lot for the bloggers who are operating those online entities. To them, it’s more than a visit. What you do (or don’t do) and what they see mean the difference between whether the blogosphere remains buzzing with activity or goes stale.

When you visit blogs, they see that some activity exists where there was once none. This traffic motivates a newbie blogger to put up a new post again. This is all that’s needed to get the ball rolling. The views you bring also keeps a seasoned blogger alert with an urge to grow his or her readership by putting one’s best foot forward.

When you read blogs, they see that their efforts were not made in vein because someone, somewhere, is paying attention. Not only did you stop by for a visit, but you're actually listening to what they have to say. This is especially evident in cases where bloggers have inspired a post on another person’s blog or ignited discussions around one particular topic. Anyone can visit but it takes an interested individual to read a blog post from beginning to end and then respond to it in a way that comes by total surprise. 

A few years ago, a Canadian blogger who I favored for some time had been featured in my local newspaper. She likely would have never even knew about the feature if I didn’t contact her about the article. So, someone in the states read her blog and thought it provided enough valuable information to warrant a mention in a newspaper. Who knows how the feature got from point A to point B – it could have been recommended from one friend to another, a magazine editor could have been doing research on one specific topic and just happened upon her blog. The possibilities vary but all it took was for someone to read this woman’s content.

When you comment on blogs, they see that there are people behind those visits and views; people with varied opinions and experienced; people who might share common interests; people who are an example of how big the world is compared to our little universes around us; people who also help us in creating and joining little universes within the larger one. You stopped by for a visit, were all ears for what was on their mind and either had a cup of coffee with them or brought some of your own to share. 

Bloggers see a reader who is willing to interact with them and enjoys further discussion on the content presented in a blog post. They see someone who is cooperative enough to step out from behind the shadows of the blog pages where he or she once lurked, and become a part of something that could turn out to be fun.

When you participate in the Post A-to-Z Road Trip by visiting, reading and commenting on blogs from the A-to-Z sign-up list, the people behind these places see that our A-to-Z community stretches far past April. They see a community that is like a gas station – open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They see how being a part of the A-to-Z Challenge can help them reap long-term benefits by the very nature of attracting new readers and hopeful friends to learn, laugh, cry, vent and celebrate with for as long as the effort is put forth on all sides.

How many new blogs have YOU visited this week?

Can you describe the most favorite or most interesting blog post YOU read this week while visiting new blogs?

A-to-Z Challenge Co-Host Nicole Ayers provides some insight on films that need to be on your radar at The Madlab Post. She is a proud supporter of the American Red Cross and is usually up for some brief Twitter (@MadlabPost) conversations.  

The Moon is round

It's full moon tonight, and it'll be low enough in the northern sky to shine through my bedroom window when I'm asleep.  I explained why in my blog yesterday.

I like moon-gazing, in fact I like all sorts of natural phenomena, which is why I'm working on making that my theme next April. I'm a long way from being the only moon-gazer, and the moon has played a huge part in our folklore and mythology.  Csenge is a better person to tell you about that than me, and then, of course, there are all those other stories with reference to paranormal influences from the moon!

Whenever I see the phrase "The Moon is round" I think of an old game that was in a book of 'Wonders' I had as a kid, showing various party games to mystify your friends.  The idea was that you had a stick (or pole, or rod) which you used to draw on the ground a circle (representing the moon), then adding two eyes, a nose and a mouth with dots and a line.  You recited "The Moon is round, and he has two eyes, a nose and a mouth" followed by passing the stick to the person on your left and asking them to do it exactly as you did it.  Most of the time the person would not follow your actions perfectly, and you said "No, try again", or passed on to the next person.  Anyone that did it exactly as you had you congratulated, which mystified the rest of your friends even more.  The secret was that you drew the moon with one hand, but passed the stick into your other hand before passing it on, and most people never changed hands.  Silly, but a fun (or infuriating) way to pass the time - especially with nothing more than a stick to play with.

If you're still wondering about a theme for next April's A to Z Challenge, you could look at games, children's games, folklore, or your preferred science.  If you cover any of these things in your blog, why not add a link in the comments below.

Jemima Pett writes scifi-influenced stories for children and adults, including the Princelings of the East books - mystery with a time travel twist - and her new series about asteroid miners caught up in a freedom fight.
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