Welcome to GIBBIN HOUSE!




When I first started this blog about the misadventures of a nascent author, I had only a small novel under my belt, titled Gibbin House. The building that bears the name is a fictitious postwar era safe-house, as many might have existed, and the London home of my motley crew of exiles. I could not anticipate then the degree to which I would join its ranks of writers and artists, but since publishing my book in 2011, I have had the greatest privilege of opening my own art gallery and of exploring my love of the written word through visual poetry and paper sculptures. Yet much like the girl who first started blogging two years ago, I suspect I don't know what I'm doing half the time. As such, Gibbin House remains a refuge for ramblings...and on occasion a haven for little triumphs.



Sunday, August 18, 2013

Carola Perla Author Interview @ MoonShine Art Spot

This month I had the pleasure to speak with MoonShine Art Spot in a special author interview, released in conjunction with the Summer Giveaway Hop 2013.   I had the chance to address my inspiration for "Gibbin House" and other personal experiences that made it into the book.  Here is an excerpt from the interview.  To read in its entirety, follow the link:
 
 
In your debut novel “Gibbin House”, the protagonist is a young Romanian woman who is forced to leave her home after the Second World War and start a new life in London.   Is this story of exile based on anything that happened to you?
To some extent, yes, although I was much younger than Anka when I left Communist-era Romania in 1979.  Five years earlier, my father had traveled from his native Peru to Timisoara, to study biology at the Polytechnic University.  He hadn’t been there long when he went to a party and met a leggy blonde with John Lennon glasses.  He barely spoke a word of Romanian, but he was beautiful and brilliant in after-shave and bell bottom jeans.  It was a typical hippie love story, but for the fact that the Ceausescu regime forbade relationships with foreigners... to continue...
 
Did you have your mother in mind when you wrote about Anka’s journey to London?
Naturally.  Here is this young woman – my mother - with an old suitcase and a baby in her arms, without a penny to her name, having never eaten spaghetti or watched a scary movie, in clothes she’s sewn herself, getting on a plane, and seeing her own mother, as far as she knows, for the last time in her life...to continue...
 
 
Do you see migration as a central theme to “Gibbin House”?
 
Certainly one of them.  I’m interested in how people find a ‘home’, what that means.  It would have been a very important consideration after the war, with so many homes destroyed, families separated, political boundaries redrawn, deportations forced on various ethnic groups.  How do people recapture ‘home’ after all that?...to continue...
 
Did any other personal experiences find their way into the book?
Like most authors, I write what I know, mostly in terms of relationships between people. Anka’s feelings in a new country are very familiar to me; her inability to speak mirrors my many months spent in silence every time I moved to a country where I did not know the language.  Her close connection with her mother is also something where I could inject elements of myself.   And of course there’s the romantic plotline...to continue...
 
 
To read the interview in its entirely, go to www.MoonShineArtSpot.blogspot.com


Friday, August 16, 2013

KONZEPTION: My New Literature/Art Project Unveiled!

Be the first to read up on my new series KONZEPTION, an unprecedented literature/art installation project, recently unveiled on August 10th, 2013 and scheduled to last through Summer 2014 with the completion of "Humboldt's Riches":

 
 
KONZEPTION – a cross-pollinating literary fiction and art installation project – aims to make a novel visually manifest by interpreting its creative process concurrent with its evolution, from inception to publication, through works of cut-paper sculpture and mixed media visual poetry installations.  The art works become inextricably linked to the written word with the novel’s opening lines, which are composed within the first piece in the series “Konzeption: Prologue”.  Subsequently, as the writing process continues, the novel’s themes and events inform new installations, while they in turn serve as springboards and incubators for later chapters. 

 KONZEPTION marries Carola Perla’s prose work with her sculptural ‘Lichtsprache’ – lighted cut-paper sculpture and visual poetry installations.  She created her first installation, “Off the Page” (2011), as a direct reaction to the hermetic process of writing her debut novel “Gibbin House”.  Her desire to visually celebrate the completion of this book led to further exploration in ‘lighted’ words and cut paper that incorporated published text as well as in situ ‘poetry chants’.  KONZEPTION  picks up where “Off the Page” left off, examining the birth of the novel instead.  The source here is the in-progress literary fiction novel “Humboldt’s Riches”, a semi-autobiographical Heart of Darkness that follows a young family’s escape from the remote Amazon region of Apurimac during Peru’s 1980 guerilla uprisings.

 
“Konzeption: Prologue”, written in a similar way to other ‘poetry chants’, sets the stage for this South American adventure story.  Breathlessly, it describes the dangerous task of driving in the Andes.  As a spontaneous composition, the prologue cannot be amended.  With no space for error, the artist is much like the Andean driver, maneuvering on a knife’s edge, aware that each carved word will irrevocably form part of the novel’s opening scene. Above the lines hangs the second sculptural element of the piece, a theatrical curtain that introduces this story.   Ruffled and fragile, with lace-like lattice cuts, the constructed white ‘curtain’ is meant to work simultaneously fragile as well as imposing and precarious in its weight and irregularity. Like an avalanche, with its frayed layers casting craggy shadows, the curtain portends the nebulous beginnings of something.

“Konzeption: Prologue” was unveiled on August 10, 2013, officially launching the KONZEPTION series that is projected for completion in summer 2014.  A special-edition photo book documenting the KONZEPTION project will be released as a companion to "Humboldt's Riches" upon publication. 
 
 
 

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Gibbin House Honored to Be Part of Prize in Closed The Cover's "Room to Read" Ebook Fundraiser Giveaway!


 
 
Support Girls Education and Literacy with This Great Fundraiser Giveaway!
 
August 15 - September 15 @ www.ClosedTheCover.com
 
A Small $5 Donation Enters You to Win a Prize Package that includes 
 15 free e-books  
by some of the best indie authors writing today

Follow the link to Closed The Cover' giveaway page to enter:
 

Closed The Cover is a superb book review website, dedicated to celebrating books and the written word.  It not only offers readers insightful and unbiased reviews, but also supports authors with opportunities like guest spots, interviews, and giveaways.  I've had the pleasure to be included on that front, and will always value the wonderful experience.

CTC's philosophy is perhaps most evident, however, in its  ongoing support of and campaigning for the "Room to Read" international child education program. 

This ebook giveaway is part of CTC's efforts to meet its 2013 fundraising goal of $500 for Room to Read, and I'm so honored to have been approached by CTC's founder Ashley LaMar about including Gibbin House as one of the ebooks in the prize package.

 I urge all my readers to support this worthy cause!!!
 

To learn more about ROOM TO READ, follow this link: www.RoomToRead.Org

 

 


To Find Ashley LaMar's review of Gibbin House:

Read my Guest Author Spotlight:








 

Friday, August 9, 2013

Are We in the Dark Ages?? What is Happening to the Safety of Women and Children Today...

Warning: Uncharacteristic Rant from a Concerned Artist

Dear readers,

As many of you will have done this morning, I watched the news report on the latest mass shooting in Dallas.

A tragedy indeed.  What stands out to me more than anything, however, is the fact that all the victims involved are women and children.  Just as they were a few days earlier in California, and so many countless times in recent months.  I don't want to think about how often my hometown Miami has made the national news in this regard in the past week alone...

Now, it would be easy to blame the guns involved.  As a fervent supporter of gun control, my first reaction is the same.  But this time, it feels as though this sad incident is part of a larger story.  I remember every other time my stomach has lurched in recent weeks, reading about virginity tests in Georgia, women being held captive in basements, teens unnecessarily tasered to death, girls kidnapped or bullied into suicide, torrential rape threats on Twitter for putting Jane Austen on a bank note...and that's just the stuff that made the news in July!

Well, I step back to look at this wider picture and I start to wonder: are guns are really the only key to this spate of violence?  And why aren't more people outraged?  How is it we are still debating reproductive rights in a presidential election in 2012?

I realize my opinion is neither novel, nor, in its presented brevity, very academic. I could go into further debate, but rather than dwell on the unacceptable state of affairs where the rights of women and children are concerned, be it in India, Afghanistan, Zanzibar, South Africa, Georgia, England, Canada, the United States, etc...I want to focus on the good being done, on the small steps of insistent people who believe change is possible in our cyber-isolated/mobile phone-tranquilized world...

Let's make these ladies proud...
Example #1: Kristen Gillibrand's Military Reform Bill on Sexual Assault

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/politics/2013/08/8532679/gillibrand-predicts-majority-and-maybe-60-her-military-reform-bill

Here's hoping Congress follows through.  I will make it a point on this blog, as I did at its inception, to highlight cases as  I come across them...

Monday, August 5, 2013

Moon Shine Art Spot: Book Hop GIBBIN HOUSE by...

Just a couple days left - Contest ends August 7th!

Moon Shine Art Spot: Book Hop GIBBIN HOUSE by...: Summer Giveaway Hop 2013 ~ Over 120 blog giveaways Gibbin House  by Carola Perola  (1 print copy autographed) “Gibbin House” a novel by C...

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Moon Shine Art Spot: Book Hop GIBBIN HOUSE by...

Moon Shine Art Spot: Book Hop GIBBIN HOUSE by...: Summer Giveaway Hop 2013 ~ Over 120 blog giveaways Gibbin House  by Carola Perola  (1 print copy autographed) “Gibbin House” a novel by C...

SUMMER GIVEAWAY HOP 2013: Win a Signed Copy of "Gibbin House" at MoonShineArtSpot!

Hi everyone,

Visit MOON SHINE ART SPOT  www.moonshineartspot.blogspot.com for the chance to win an autographed copy of "Gibbin House"!
 
Moon Shine Art Spot has been kind enough to sign us up for the Summer Giveaway Hop 2013, hosted by I Am Reader and Bookhounds, running now through August 7th, 2013.
 
In addition, the book review blog has posted a great candid interview with yours truly, along with lots of info on Gibbin House.  I'll be featuring parts of the interview in later posts, but for now, enjoy the book hop and good luck!