Consider this an odd little literary coincidence:

I'm putting together my huge semi annual picture book round-up for the spring issue of Eclectica and recently read a really great biography about the early 20th century architect, Julia Morgan. In her lovely book, Julia Morgan Built a Castle, Celeste Davidson Mannis gives a nice overview of Morgan's life and the many struggles she had to overcome in order to become an architect. She was the only woman in her engineering class at Berkley and ended up being the first woman to earn a certificate of architecture from Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (in 1902). The really really cool thing Morgan did though was build William Hearst's castle in San Simeon. The castle, all 60,645 square feet of it, was part of a larger 90,080 square foot estate. It was all Julia's baby, even the 345,000 gallon Neptune Pool.

Setting aside the fact that Julia Morgan was wickedly cool and it's awesome that someone has written (and Miles Hyman has illustrated beautifully) a picture book biography of her, I recently read Kage Baker's short story collection, Gods and Pawns which includes a story set at the castle and starring Mr. Hearst himself. In "Welcome to Olympus, Mr. Hearst", we have Greta Garbo, a crazy spiritualist, a dog that goes for a flying leap (which would normally bother me but not at all in this case), Clark Gable, Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies and of course, those madcap Company cyborgs, Lewis and Joseph. (You loved them in Rude Mechanicals - in this story they have a lost Rudolph Valentino signed script and have an important assignment with Hearst! It's perfect!)

It's fascinating to me that within the span of only a couple of weeks I should encounter the same location and history in two books - and could the genres be any more different? Between a children's picture book biography and a Sci Fi story collection I have Hearst and La Casa Grande front and center both times. Stuff like this always makes me wonder if there's some message I'm supposed to be getting. I can't for the life of me think about why Hearst's castle should be significant in my life, but here it - bigger than life.

As it happens though, I'm reading Liz Hand's Saffron and Brimstone right now; I think I might have successfully escaped the pull of the publishing magnate with this one....