SmartGirl Authors

Corisande

by SG Author Erika

Corisande Amaury is a 13-year-old in the 1800s, and she is from Austria. Her excellent piano skills are scouted out by Madame Beauregard, who offers to let her play piano for a very prestigious ballet school in Paris. At the school, Corisande meets two German sisters, Florr and Lora, who dance and play the flute. But then, Lora is myseriously poisoned and dies. Florr is devastated. Corisande is determined to investigate. Who poisoned Lora?

Author Foreword

Now you can buy Corisande in print version, revised and newly entitled Beneath the Cobblestones.

Corisande by Erika is dedicated to her grandmother D. M. Turner, lover of the piano.

Since I was six, I have wanted to be an author.

Since I was six, I have written millions of stories.

Since I was six, never have I wanted to be something other than an author.

I started to read when I was four. I read little picture books by Robert Munsch and those tiny cardboard books so babies didn't chew on them. Either way, when I was four, I still tried.

When I was five, I read longer books, but with writing of point 36
or bigger!

When I was six, my mother got a huge surprise. Sure, I read the Junie B. Jones books she had given me, but I was always engulfed in a Harry Potter book. There was no way I would live on Junie B. Jones, where Junie B. talked like a baby. Instead I was curled up on the couch reading Harry Potter ALL BY MYSELF! Of course my mother was amazed, and by the time I was eight, my relatives had all sent me the first three books of the Harry Potter series.

At school, I was at the same level as everyone, since I was learning French. Now, though, I get an average of 101% in grammar, verbs, and vocabulary in French. I'm not bragging! But, at library, we could choose one book in English and one book in French. Three years before school I was halfway through the Junie B. Jones series, and I was eagerly awaiting the fourth Harry Potter book and was re-reading most of the Junie B. Jones series while all my new school classmates had just started reading Junie B. Jones. Sadly, some of my classmates still read those books for fun.

To tell the truth, if any of my friends read this, I've been lying to them for a whole year. Don't get mad! Sure, the Twilight Saga is okay, but seriously, it's phony. Okay, if you like that series, it's (a) because you really, really, REALLY, truly like it, or (b) because your friends like it and you don't want to be different. I chose (b) a while ago. I own the books and I read them time to time and I try and find the patience to even read a page. No, really I do. Sometimes, at parts, it is good, but the rest is slow, and I get the feeling Stephenie Meyer is just famous for many people who chose (b).

What does this have to do with my foreword? Well, on a How Well Do You Know Erika quiz on Facebook, I asked, "What is my favourite all-time series?" The Harry Potter series was listed there along with the Twilight Saga. Some people thought I preferred the vampire novels to some magical dude who defeated a mutant, insane character. Wrong-o. I would much rather read about "some magical dude who defeated a mutant, insane character", than about a vampire who "cannot stand his true love's blood, but for her, he stays strong" and they live happily ever after. The End. Ha, life isn't like that. Or immortality or whatever.

Before Corisande, I'd written a novel called the Guild of Trees. It is a terrible story (coming from me) and I never, ever want to have anything to do with it ever again. I wrote it when I was ten, and sometimes I go back to read it and fix up some things, but I don't think I'll click on that story for a long time. Maybe one day I'll go back and re-write it, but for now, I'm going to fix up Corisande. I hope that one day, SmartGirls will see me out there on the shelf of a bookstore and say, "Wow, I read that story on the SmartGirl website!" Maybe they will buy it, maybe they won't--depending whether they liked the story of not.

"Why did you want to write Corisande?" I have been asked so many times by my friends. First of all, I play the piano. I never really excel in it, so I dreamed up a girl who could play the piano well and was really good at it. Secondly, I speak French. I decided to incorporate the language in my story, so the location of my story ended up, naturally, in Paris, France. The name Corisande means "chorus-singer" in Greek. In the beginning of the first chapter of Corisande, it says that Corisande had named her piano Calliope. Calliope is a Greek mythology name meaning "beautiful voice". Don't you think a piano has a beautiful "voice"?

I'd like to thank a few people before I end this. Thanks to my friend Jennie for always supporting my stories and telling me my stories are great even if I think they are terrible. Thanks also to my good friend Laura for always supporting my stories even if she's only read a bit of them. I would also like to show gratitude to my class teacher for helping me expand my French vocabulary. Last but not least, I would like to thank my great-grandmother for whom this book is dedicated because she is my piano inspiration. Even though she has forgotten who I am, deep down I know part of her remembers.

If you are a writer yourself, don't copy other people to be like them; and if you are an author and copied a person to be an author, don't do that. Be yourself and follow YOUR dreams, not others'.

Yours,
Erika

P.S. I have a secret: the name Florr in my story isn't German at all. Do you think of ‘Flora' when you read that name? It was actually a typo I made while typing the word ‘floor'. Funny how authors get inspiration, don't you think? LOL