Author's Final Notes

Warning: These notes contain vague spoilers for the plot of
Cadenza.

Cadenza can be found at:
www.geocities.com/hotsprings/8334/fic.html

Me:
First, let me apologize for not getting these notes together
when I first posted Cadenza last week. I had intended to post
it along with the last batch, but a sudden illness knocked me
flat for seven days and this is the first chance I've had to get
to it. There were many people I wanted to thank and credit
for helping with and influencing this fic novel.

Two Princes:
For a very long time I've wanted to write a story about a
classical musician, and the Mulder/other/slash genre seemed
the perfect place for it. I started to envision Mulder's lover as
a world-class soloist, someone who was never in one spot for
very long, just like our Special Agent. At first I thought of a
pianist....all that Rachmaninov...but then I decided there was
something so innocently sexual about a man playing a violin--
a delicate and powerful instrument. I had recently written a
story on the Contra Costa Chamber Orchestra and attended
their performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. I fell
in love with the violinist on the stage that night and the
memory of him carried over into the creation of my violinist
(who is also a combination of Evgeny Kissin and this Russian
tubist I knew in High School, and also, I'll admit to borrowing
some essence of Johnny Depp.) Joshua is all and none of
these people; he is his own person and has his own face, but
if you're wondering, I used an image of Depp from Sleepy
Hollow on my cover art for Cadenza.

Getting to know Joshua was an amazing experience. He first
came to me as a very guarded young man who was a bit too
used to the finer things in life. As we got to know one
another I realized most of that was an act on his part to
protect himself from strangers. As we spoke together he
began to tell me about his childhood, his mother, his father
and grandfather...and I knew I couldn't blame him for
wanting to feel safe.

Amazingly, I broke from my usual pattern of writing all out
of order and wrote most of Cadenza one chapter at a time,
*in order* so Michelle (my whip master and editor) could get
something new to read every two weeks or so and not lose
any of the plot. I'm glad I forced myself to write this way
because I think it helped me develop Joshua at a sensible
pace and allow him to get to know Mulder gradually as well. I
wanted this one to simmer.

Musical Influences:
I've been delighted by all the emails I've received from
musicians world-wide who have been drawn to this story
during its WIP stage and now in its completed form. I never
knew there were so many students, performers and lovers of
classical music in this fandom. I've been deeply moved by
their comments and expressions of appreciation and love for
this music art form. And if nothing else, I'm so very pleased
I've been able to stimulate curiosity and interest in classical
music through this novel. Many have written me to tell me
they got so excited about music they just bought their first
symphony tickets, or went out and bought their first set of
classical CDs, or pulled out their old recordings of Beethoven
and Handel that they hadn't listened to since they were
children. I thank everyone who has written to me for giving
the classics a second chance.

I'd also like to thank all my friends and fellow musicians who
helped me research this story. In particular, I'd like to thank
my immensely musically gifted brother, Steven, whose piano
virtuosity, composition genius (music theory and history),
instrumental knowledge (violin, piano) and years and years
of dedicated conservatory and private music study has
inspired much of Joshua's life and career. I also thank his
lovely fiance Masha, a Russian piano virtuoso in her own
right, for the Russian translations and history. Thanks to my
high school buddy, Robert, bassoonist extraordinaire, for his
knowledge of professional "gigs" and first hand experience
performing with most professional and semi-professional
orchestras in the Bay Area, and also for all the bad musician
jokes he told me while we played together in the Jesus Christ
Superstar pit orchestra.

As for my own love of music--I began on the clarinet at age
nine, switched to oboe at age 16 and have been an active
classical performer ever since with community and semi-
professional orchestras, bands, and chamber groups. In
addition to oboe, my chief instrument, I also play the cello,
flute and violin. I studied music history, performance and a
little theory in college winding up a few units shy of a music
minor. Over the last year I have had the amazing opportunity
to write for the performing arts (classical music, theatre and
dance) for various magazines, newspapers and programs in
the SF Bay Area--a job that happily gets me two free tickets to
everything. My cumulative experiences as a listener and
performer strongly influenced the music performances in
Cadenza, right down to the backstage mulled wine and
flashing reindeer antlers.

Truth:
Some aspects of Cadenza are fictionalized. Joshua's
schooling is based on my brother's experiences as a San
Francisco Conservatory student and his vast knowledge of
music composition, conducting and performance. The
Philadelphia Conservatory of Music and its professors and
program are fiction. Joshua's touring habits are also
fictionalized as most soloists represent themselves and
usually don't play more than one or two concerts a year with
any given orchestra. I needed him to be in SF for a longer-
than-usual period of time for the casefile, so I stretched it.
Joshua's personal life and habits are fictional, but based on
real life soloists I have performed with, grown up with, and
interviewed.

I borrowed and scrambled various popular Russian fairytales
for the fable of the questing prince--all of which I read about
in a book illustrating the Tales of Baba Yaga. The 10,000 year
old man is called Kashkay? The Deathless. I'm forgetting the
spelling, but his chained image stuck with me when I created
the Thin Man. The Lives of the Great Composers is a real
book, with Brahms on the cover, but I changed its author and
contents to fit Cadenza. I loved that book, especially the
story of Beethoven, but someone borrowed it and never
returned it to me.

The locations described in San Francisco and Napa and
Sonoma are real. However, some of the winery names are
changed to sound more interesting. The palace built into the
grassy hill does exist, but it's called Claire-something
vineyard. Not a very flashy name. It sits above the
surrounding Sonoma hills and it truly breathtaking. Auberge
du Soleil is a resort in Napa; it's about a lush as resorts get in
California.

Most of the professional musicians mentioned in Cadenza are
real people who I have had the joy of listening to live. William
Bennet *is* my favorite oboist; I was happy to include him on
the Bach. Nigel Kennedy did recently bring back the art of the
improvisational cadenza, and you really haven't seen
someone conduct a symphony orchestra until you've
witnessed San Francisco's phenomenal Michael Tilson
Thomas (MTT).

Erotic Influences:
Since I'm sadly not a man, I had to look for outside
influences and information to gain a hopefully somewhat
accurate understanding of sexuality between men.
Thankfully, I work in San Francisco and was strongly
influenced by SF homoerotic art and literature and yes, even
a little porn...okay a lot of porn . Among the books I
read, The Hite Report on Male Sexuality was VERY informative
and candid and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to
understand the sexual male better.

I was the most inspired by San Francisco's American
Conservatory Theatre's (A.C.T.) homoerotic production of
Marlowe's Edward II, directed by the brilliant Mark Lamos.
This play didn't leave much to the imagination (graphic sex,
nudity and violence between men) and I was completely
bowled over by the amazing performance of Malcom Gets in
the title role of the ineffectual, yet sincere king who lost his
rule and died a horrific medieval death (red hot poker up the
ass) all for the love of another man. I tried to drag anyone
who would listen to go see this daring production and despite
a PR nightmare for A.C.T., the play was an enormous success.
I would like to thank the cast and crew and producers of this
play for their genius and uncompromising vision. It was
something to see.

The Terror-Famine:
A few weeks before I began to think about writing Cadenza I
came upon a book at Barnes and Noble, Our Century. I was
flipping through the pages, 1930-40, and as I expected saw
those horrific pictures of piles of bone-thin bodies in mass
graves. I assumed I was looking at concentration camp
photos. I wasn't. I was looking at photos of Stalin's attempt
to eliminate the Ukrainian/Peasant population in an effort to
enforce collectivization. I read about the man-made famine
and the incredible death toll, nine million, and the
subsequent Soviet cover-up and wondered, "Why the heck
have I never even heard of this?" Maybe it's because I didn't
get much of a chance to study world history in college
(history was in the same core as my major--English--so I had
to take statistics and chemistry instead, blech) but those
haunting images stayed with me. I looked up websites on
Ukraine and the famine and found a wealth of information.
At the library I found a book written in the '80s, *Soviet
Collectivization and the Terror-Famine*, by Robert Conquest
covering the Revolution years and politics leading up to the
1933-34 famine. It wasn't the most pleasant book to read,
my stomach lurched at most of the details, particularly the
fate of the children, but it gave me a clear picture of how
people lived and died during those terrible years. Famine
references and depictions in Cadenza are taken directly from
this information--with the exception of the last scene in the
barn. Pagan practices were common among peasants back
then, but the scene I describe and the workings of the spell
are fiction.

In Honor of Cathleen Faye:
Cadenza would have never happened if it weren't for a
certain powerful, cutting edge, one-of-a-kind,
groundbreaking fic novel that hit the lists about a year ago.
Wind River by the remarkable Cathleen Faye hit me harder
than any work of fanfiction ever has before or since. Wind
River is a Mulder/Other romance that literally opened the
door to slash for me. I'd never read fic before in this
category. I took a look at Wind River after being pestered for
weeks and weeks by my friend Michelle who was just as
affected by it. I opened it up and was immediately swept
away. When I finished it I realized my entire understanding of
human erotic experience had been greatly expanded. I wrote
her one of the longest feedback messages of my life (a few of
them in fact) praising her to the highest and groveling at her
feet. I believe I even told her she owned my soul. I told her I
never thought I could write anything close to this type of love
story between two men, but she encouraged me and gave me
some tips and sooner or later I began to imagine my own
M/O romance. I was, and still am, heavily influenced by this
remarkable story. If you haven't had the chance to read it,
please do so. I can't recommend it enough.

The Giving of Gifts:
Cadenza is a gift, a labor of seven months of love and a
unique chance to develop a new character and work with a
20 chapter plot. I learned a tremendous lot from it and don't
regret a minute spent alone ignoring the rest of my life
(husband, job, friends) in order to write it. A writer writes,
and I'm completely addicted to it. I hope you will be as
addicted to reading it. And yes, it's completely okay to hate
it, too.

-Terma99