Behind: “Uprisings at Cap d’Antibes”

There’s nothing like a good, old-school revolution to get a story going. Great or small, a lightning coup or decades in the making, needed change or epic tragedy. Revolution, for better or worse, is essentially human.

The idea of a revolution wriggled into my brain some time back. In my fiction usually a form of natural order wins out, often crushing a too-bold POV. Later I began wondering about the true insurgent. Sometimes the natural order wins out only because good hearts fight for it.

One idea grabbed me. Not just any revolution but the Revolution. Socialism turned to its extreme. Far too big a canvas for short fiction, unless a very personal uprising set against a revolutionary backdrop. And so, at a fictional tennis academy in the glimmering Cote d’Azur, a revolution begins.

I’m proud to announce my unabashed romp “Uprisings at Cap d’Antibes” is included with other terrific writing in Lowestoft Chronicle #17. It’s my second contribution to Lowestoft, after last year’s “La Upsell.” If you’re not reading Lowestoft, you should, but only if if you love to laugh through far-flung (mis)adventures. Consistently a wonderful read.

Back to the revolution. “Uprisings” goes back to 2011 brainstorming, insurgents overthrowing a neighborhood association. Say it was a gated community, and the association has become bloated and under the thumb of a busybody who frets over nits like shrub height. I even wrote a few thousand words of something called “May Day.” The main character came, a proto-Dasha freaked out over the revolution’s growing interest in her tennis star daughter when the new boss proved worse than the old boss. The story itself never took off,  a too-easy premise and riddled with darlings and design flaws. Point is, the kernel stuck, filed under Good Try.

Last year the idea came back in fits and starts. The opening scene to “May Day” was good, so much so that it bothered me not knowing how things played out for Dasha. The “A Ha!” finally came with seeing the revolution didn’t have to occur in a neighborhood. It could happen somewhere out of Dasha’s element or somewhere she wanted anything but instability. A place. A tennis academy. In France. The Riviera. Feliks the uber-wealthy ex-pro wouldn’t pick the gloomy north to set up shop. Make it Antibes, as swank as it gets, minutes from Cannes.

So. A revolution. Sergei the son and true believer ousts dad Feliks the communist icon turned capitalist mogul. But the story is Dasha’s revolution. Unlike the Karperovs, gentle mom Dasha wants a closer relationship with daughter Hailey (parallelism alert!). She’s a happy second fiddle to her banker hubbie (up parallelism alert level to Orange!) With some massaging, the story fell into line: Dasha must rise up (Parallelism alert code red!). Against Sergei, who wants to claim Hailey as his poster child. Against her jackass husband, who wants tennis stardom for Hailey at any price. Against her meek self, who thought she wanted to breeze through life as a socialite and in the reflected glory of a phenom daughter.

I hope readers take to Dasha. She was fun to write, somebody you’d welcome at a dinner party table. Loving, well-intentioned, wry, but quick to shelther inside her privileged lifestyle. Writing Feliks was a hoot. A man of faded but not lost capability, from whom no combination of words seemed over-the-top. And Hailey is way, way up there among characters I’m blessed to have found me. Machine-focused, except for when she glances needfully at mom in the bleachers. From the mouth of this predatory child could come one-liners and an insensitivity to the contradictions and cruelties around her. She is the monster Tom and Dasha have made. Dasha and Hailey’s mother-daughter moment–after all that it took them to get there–sticks with me as the story’s best moment, maybe poignant in its way. The scene surprised me writing it.

Not to instigate, but I hope folks check out Dasha and her uprising.

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