Delighted to welcome Linda Moore to the Spotlight this week to chat about her debut novel, Attribution
Author Name: Linda Moore
Book Title: Attribution
Book Genre: Literary Mystery, Contemporary Fiction
Release Date: October 11, 2022
Publisher: She Writes Press
Welcome, Linda! Please describe your novel, Attribution.
An art history graduate student leaves her grieving parents to study in New York where she struggles to impress her sexist advisor. She finds a painting in the university basement and desperate to succeed, she flees to Spain with the painting to prove it’s a Baroque masterpiece.
What sparked the idea for this book?
In 2010, I attended a lecture at the San Diego Museum of Art given by a young scholar who attempted to identify the artist of a painting at Yale University. I became fascinated with process of establishing the artist of an artwork that is hundreds of years old. Attribution involves both connoisseurship or the use of an experienced eye to view the work, and science, including analysis of chemical pigments, x-rays to see underpainting, carbon dating linen fibers and more. Disputes about attribution result in dramas between professionals, lawsuits from collectors and all manner of wonderful material for a good story. Like many elements of contemporary society, how does one establish without doubts, against skeptics, the truth?
How long did it take for you to write the book? Did you do any research?
I began writing in 2015. The research alone took me over five years sourcing archives in the U.S. and Spain and consulting experts wherever I could find them. I made discoveries I didn’t expect. For example, I wrote about a fictional mistress and later, I found references, sparse but enough to be believable, to a real mistress and even a bastard son. Of course, these discoveries shifted the story and emboldened me to imagine what else might be missing.
What are your interests outside of writing and reading?
I am a traveler and have visited all the continents, both the bottom and top of the world and over one-hundred countries. There are at least another hundred countries, depending on how you count, I have yet to see. I am fascinated by the richness of different cultures and by the things that are similar across the world. For example, parents love their children and protect them in all cultures. At least, I have not yet found a culture where that is not true despite differences in governments, political systems, religions, geography or other factors.
Are you working on a new project? Please tell us about it.
My next novel Five Days in Bogotá will be published in Spring of 2024. A recently widowed art gallery owner with two small children faces financial ruin when the life insurance company refuses to pay. Desperate, she travels to an art fair in Bogotá in the early 1990s at the height of the drug wars, to sell art to wealthy collectors. Strange characters swirl around her, a secret past emerges, and she finds herself being coerced by threats to her children to launder drug money by selling art.
Sounds fascinating! Where can readers learn more about you and your work?
www.lindamooreauthor.com On the Events tab, readers can find bookstore events, panels at writers’ conferences and upcoming podcasts and live interviews.
https://linktr.ee/lindamooreauthor
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59892387-attribution
https://www.facebook.com/Lindamooreauthor
https://www.instagram.com/lindamooreauthor/
Thank you, Linda! Attribution is out TODAY.
Attribution
When art historian Cate Adamson leaves her troubled family to complete her doctorate in New York, she finds herself dismissed by her sexist advisor and becomes increasingly desperate to salvage her career. When she finds a hidden painting in the university basement, possibly a seventeenth-century masterpiece, she takes the painting to Spain, against her better judgment.
There she meets Antonio, an impoverished nobleman working to restore his family’s legacy. They join forces to prove who painted the mysterious artwork as Cate struggles to change the course of her life.
Written with vivid prose and full of rich art references and compelling characters, Attribution is the story of a contemporary woman’s journey to understand the past, earn respect for the contributions of women and unlock her future. Attribution has been called “An engrossing debut about the importance and power of the truth.”
Author Bio:
Linda Moore is an author, traveler, and a recovering gallery owner. She studied art history at the Prado while a student at the University of Madrid and earned degrees from the University of California and Stanford University. Her gallery featured contemporary Hispanic artists and published award-winning exhibition catalogs. Her writing has appeared in art journals and anthologies. She resides with her book-collecting husband in California when she is not escaping to Kauai. Attribution is her debut novel.