I leave for the Whirled Fantasy Convention in Austin on Thursday and probably won’t have much time between then and now to blog much. Dry your eyes.
If you’re going to World Fantasy and you’re reading this, be sure to say hi. The programming at conventions is usually decent, but I mostly go to meet folks.
I finished “Miss Pavlichenko” last night and it weighed in at a hefty 13,800 words. Happily, it breaks down the middle into two equal parts. The first half is Lyudmila’s wartime experiences, the second half is her post-war experiences.
The story may not entirely work in this form, but there’s a *lot* here to mine. It could spawn several shorter stories (like her American tour with Eleanor Roosevelt) or it could easily double in size, or even become a novel. Currently, it’s a series of episodes spanning a forty year period and the gaps in time are conspicuous in the second half, sometimes jumping decades. On the other hand, I’m skipping the time she’s working as a research assistant in the Soviet Navy, so there’s not much fodder for story there.
With the material I’ve dredged up, the story practically writes itself. Patience is the key with this one. I also realized yesterday that I probably would have given up on it had it not been an assignment for class, so kudos for school.
Current Mood: Busy Busy | 
3 Comments
Would you be willing to share information you might have about Lyudmila Pavlichenko? What she married? Did her husband die at Sevastopol? What was his name? Did she remarry or have children?
Surprisingly, I can find very little information on Pavlichenko. Two sources (both on the Internet) state that she indeed had a husband. One account was from a woman who saw Pavlichenko on tour with Eleanor Roosevelt. This account alludes to a husband and children murdered during the war, and a husband and possibly children after the war:
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1992/2/1992_2_26.shtml
Another site said that Pavlichenko’s husband was killed in Sevastopol but does not mention children:
http://www.pww.org/past-weeks-2001/Woman%20defended%20Sevastopol.htm
The idea of her having a family life before or after the war doesn’t mesh with my highly fictionalized account of the Pavlichenko of my story so I didn’t pursue it. In my (albeit limited) research at the library, there’s a lot of information on Lyudmila the sniper but nothing on Lyudmila the person.
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