Careers for Characters by Victoria Chatham

 

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In my historical romances, careers, as we understand them today, did not exist for my heroines. Young ladies of quality were trained from a young age to look for an advantageous marriage, manage a household, and raise a family. However, my leading ladies all had a streak of independence and wanted more than being lady of the manor.

Emmaline Devereux followed in her father’s footsteps and became a spy in the Peninsular Wars. Juliana Clifton learned to swordfight because she didn’t want her brother to have all the fun. I knew next to nothing about sword fighting, so I watched several YouTube videos, but my understanding of methods and techniques with different swords grew to a new level when I attended some fencing classes.

Lady Olivia Darnley loved books and knew her way around libraries. One of my Regency belles, Hester Dymock, was an herbalist and healer. Charlotte Gray learnt map-making skills from her father and millinery from her mother. Phoebe Fisher grew up on a farm and became a competent horsewoman. My Brides of Banff Springs heroine, Tilly McCormack, became a chambermaid at the famous Banff Springs Hotel. The heroine of my new cozy mystery series is a sixty-six-year-old retired primary school headmistress.

I don’t recall having to create a career for any of them, as they all evolved organically. Charlotte Gray was the only one who gave me any trouble. As I saw it, Charlotte’s story was about being a lady’s companion in a quiet country home. I thought she might become the vicar’s wife, very genteel and respectable, but Charlotte wanted adventure, so that was what she had, and then some. It took me a while to figure out a connection between spying and map-making, smuggling and millinery, but once I built her backstory, it came together quite quickly.

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When we start writing, we are encouraged to write what we know. I knew very little about any skills my heroines needed other than using herbs and horseman(woman)ship. I’ve been around horses since I was five, and my life-long interest in herbalism at age nineteen. Spying during the Napoleonic Wars was rife, and the Duke of Wellington was rumoured to have a network of some four thousand spies. I have always liked maps, so it wasn’t too hard to work that theme into Charlotte’s story. The millinery, not so much.

As the author, you can choose any career for your character, but they will tell you what they like and don’t like, what they can and can’t do, and what they might want to learn. Authors may use their own experiences of a career, as John Grisham did with his legal thrillers, or let their imaginations run wild as J.K. Rowling did with Harry Potter. With judicious research, you can build careers for your characters about which you, the author, know nothing. Dick Francis, the author of over forty horse-racing-related thrillers, had many different careers for his characters, from a glassmaker to an art forger, a horse transporter to a meteorologist, a barrister to a movie star playing detectives on the big screen.

I needed to learn about ranching, cattle, and rodeo stock for my contemporary Western romances. One of my heroines was a lady rancher, another a photojournalist, and the third an interior designer. You might wonder about those last two characters, but those leading ladies became involved with ranchers, so they had to have their own careers.

Once an author has the career background, has done the research, and has begun writing, what emerges is as authentic as possible. However, I hope none of my future characters wants to climb mountains or be a trapeze artist, as I have no head for heights.  

Victoria Chatham

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Seeing the setting

 Each book in my Doug Fletcher series is set in a different national park or historic site. While there is information about all of the locations on the internet, there's really no substitute for having been to the locations. As fiction writers, we create a variety of towns, businesses, and people who never existed. One writer explained how she, and introvert, worked. "I create things that never happened, in places that don't exist, with people who were never born. All this while sitting at my computer. It's a perfect world for an introvert."

That's not an option when setting the books in national parks. They do exist, and readers know what they look like, even if the events and characters are fictional. In a few days, we're going to Kentucky where I plan to visit Lincoln's Birthplace National Historic Site. I've got an outline for a mystery I want to set at Lincoln's birthplace, and I need to experience the place before finishing the book. Being there, allows me to add "texture" to the setting that I can't get from Google Earth or YouTube.  My victim owns a fictional distillery, and his murder is related to the imminent release of the first batch of his new bourbon. 

I've really enjoyed the research about bourbon making (not sampling,,,internet research). The definition of bourbon requires the largest portion of the "mash" be corn, and that the liquor be aged for at least two years in charred white oak barrels. Kentucky is the birthplace of bourbon, but it can be made anywhere in the U.S. as long as it follows the rules. Beyond that, there are nuances in the grains, and aging that add flavor and mellowness to the liquor. Having some chemistry background allowed me to dig into the science behind the art. There are literally hundreds of ways to tweak the flavor profile on the final product, and my victim was a master distiller, who was making his competition nervous. 

That said, I may have to make room in our trip to visit a distillery, or two. Just to better understand the process and the feel of the facilities. Hmm. That may require me to sample some product. Hmm. Maybe we'll visit a couple of distilleries. I wonder if they have Uber in central Kentucky? I'd hate to be ticketed for oversampling and driving while doing my research. (Seriously, that will NOT be a problem).

Look for "A Bourbon to Die For" next summer. In the meanwhile, check out "Strung Out to Die" and the previous Doug Fletcher Park Service mysteries from BWL publishing.

Hovey, Dean Doug Fletcher series - BWL Publishing Inc.

Writers On War, JD Shipton

 The glorification of war can oft be found in books, on film, and throughout video games. Keeping the manageability of scope in mind, I'll limit my premise to the written word here, and we'll focus on books.  I've read several (fiction, for this enterprise) which were thematically based around war, and have found there to be a common ground in many of them which were written by veterans: Condemnation.  

 A sort of "what in the hell are we even doing here?" always seems to become the mantra as the story progresses.  We are given a daguerrotype of human suffering rather than a playbill for the honor and panache of armed conflict.  Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front does (in my opinion) the best job of this: highlighting the initial gusto with which young men go to war, then supplanting that with misery and despair and futility. Remarque would know, having spent nearly two years in the hellish trenches of WW1.  

The ultimately ludicrous nature of what is happening in the midst of war is best captured by Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, in the sort of stark human experience language and expression that he is uncannily capable of.  Having deployed with the 423rd Infantry Regiment to Europe in '44 as an advance scout, he really did have a first-hand perspective of the situation.  Given his sublime insight into the nature of the human condition, his account of the sheer folly of the whole endeavor should not be discounted by anyone.  

Occasionally there is represented a sort of justifiable violence- always perpetrated in the aide of comrades and brothers in arms, rather than for the goals of the state.  We see this in Flight of the Intruder when Coonts has his protagonist, Jake Grafton (essentially Coonts himself, who won the Distinguished Flying Cross, and flew 2 combat tours over 'Nam in the A6), fly one last renegade mission over Vietnam with the ultimate goal of saving future A6 jockeys from his own experiences and turmoil.  

While having never served in declared combat, I have deployed numerous times to numerous theatres, and found myself asking many of these same "what in the hell are we even doing here?" questions.  The answers one comes up with on the dark nights are not often conciliatory.  Who knows, maybe I'll write about it some day...

Is the sun shining?...by Sheila Claydon

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I've just realised that many of my books are either set in sunny countries or the protagonists visit them during the story. Kissing Maggie Silver is one of them. Is this because as an English person living in the northwest of the UK I want more sunshine, or is it just that I've travelled to the places I write about? And why am I thinking about sunshine, after all the UK is not known for it.

Indeed, people living in warmer climes mostly think of it as a grey, rainy island with erratic weather. Sometimes they are right. July can be cold and August wet and dreary, only to be followed by days of sunshine and soft breezes through September and October. Then another year gives us a long, hot and dry summer followed by an autumn of biting winds and snow on high ground. It isn't consistent and in many ways that's how we like it. It's why British people are teased for always talking about the weather. It's why, when we holiday, we can sometimes be overwhelmed at having to face the same sunny weather day after day. We seem to like not quite knowing what the following twenty-four hours will bring. 

When we take our dogs for their daily walk nearly everyone we meet comments if there has been a sudden change in temperature, or if it's dry after a week of rain and puddles. It might only be 'it's a bit cold today' or 'that cloud looks as if it's going to rain on us in a minute,' or it might be a five minute conversation about how great it is that we've had a whole week of sun. So given the erratic nature of British weather, why would we decide to have solar panels installed? Surely it can't be worth it.

We, however, have a friend who is a battery expert (quite what that means I'm not sure!) and he, after much discussion, has persuaded us otherwise, so now we have solar panels installed on our roof. It's been a noisy and busy week what with scaffolding being erected, then roofers spending a day installing the panels, followed by the scaffolding being taken down again. Initially the dogs made a fuss but then they seemed to shrug and give up, whether that was because the workmen were making more noise than them, or whether they just got used to it, we'll never know!

Anyway the panels are up and running and wow! Despite almost universally grey skies ever since they were installed, plus snow yesterday, the miracle of photovoltaic/solar panels and battery storage means that the house has been running almost exclusively on sunshine during the day, even though it was hidden behind the clouds. This is a bonus we weren't expecting. We knew when the sun came out we would get our free power, but we didn't expect much in November. 

Of course at this time of year the hidden sun isn't storing enough energy in our batteries to keep us going 24/7 but it's doing its best. Yesterday, as well as supplying the ongoing power for fridges, televisions, battery chargers etc., it saw me through using the dishwasher, the washing machine twice, the tumbler drier once, and cooking an evening meal before it reverted to online power. We are so amazed by the systems's ability to use the faintest of the sun's rays, that we have to keep going to look at the battery readings. And once the sun really starts to shine we will be able to sell any surplus power back to the National Electricity Grid, so a win win all-round.

And there is something very satisfying about it too.  It feels a bit like growing our own vegetables or, maybe a more apt example, foraging for fruit in our nearby woods, something we do every autumn, and which results in blackberry and apple pies, crumbles and cobblers, apple chutney, rosehip syrup and plum jam. Of course everyone likes getting things for free, but when nature is involved it is far more satisfying.  To know that our house will now be almost exclusively powered by sunshine is a fantastic feeling...and guess what, while I've been writing this the clouds have rolled back and the sun has come out. Happy days!

Cold Weather Changes by Helen Henderson

 

Fire and Redemption by Helen Henderson
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Harvests are complete, hay is in the barn, fruit and vegetables have been put up, and the cool temperatures of autumn are shifting into the cold of winter. All signs of changing seasons. 

Various sections of the country welcome temporary visitors they called "snowbirds," people who leave the cold, ice, and snow behind for warmer temperatures. As a child, my family had our own version of the "snowbird." She was called Grammy.

As soon as the first hard frost turned the ground white, it was time to move Grammy from her mountain bungalow.The bungalow was heated by coal and it was hard for her to feed the scuttles of black rock into the furnace or to remove the ashes. Snow covered roads meant the family could no longer make the two hours or more journey from their homes in the next state to the coal county of their kin. Grammy didn't drive, however that was not a problem in the summer when the grandchildren spent a week or two at a time with her. And the parents took the elderly relative to the doctor or shopping when the younger generation was swapped out.

The cold weather solution was to turn Grammy into a snowbird and move her south. Preparations would be to fill the coal bin, bring the porch swing inside, pack up any unused food from the pantry, and lastly, to drain all the water from the pipes to winterize the bungalow. Then the winter routine began. Grammy would spend three or four weeks with one daughter and her family and then a month or two with a son and his family. The periodic shifting would continue until spring, when like those who move to the warmer climes for the winter head north to avoid the heat, she would return north to the mountains.

Dal's kin in Windmaster had a similar means of surviving the weather. To set the scene, Dal and Ellspeth rescued a young woman from a group of evil monks, earning the cult's anger. When an invading force is sighted on its way to Dal's family's winter home, a decision had to be made. Fight or flee. Dal's mother chose to use the weather as protection and moved the clan to the mountain caves that was the clan's escape from the summer heat of the valley far below. Now it would protect them from those who meant to destroy all magic -- and anyone touched by it.

After Ellspeth’s light touch woke him, Dal sat cross-legged on the floor, his back against the bed leg. An emerald gemstone the size of a small egg lay in his hand, the stone’s facets catching the glimmer of moonlight that filtered from a crack in the shutters. A spark flared in the heart of the crystal. It brightened into a green-tinted image. Dal watched a line of horses and wagons slowly wind around waist-high snowdrifts. “At least Eilidh and the clan are safe,” he whispered. “They made it safely through the pass.” He closed his eyes and released the spells that had been controlling the blizzard and holding the clan’s pursuers at bay. How long he sat there he didn’t know. He felt the energy he used to control the weather slowly flow back into his body.

~Until next month, stay safe and read.   Helen

To purchase the Windmaster Novels: BWL

Helen Henderson lives in western Tennessee with her husband. While she doesn’t have any pets in residence at the moment, she often visits a matronly husky and a youthful feist who have adopted her as one the pack. Find out more about her and her novels on her BWL Author page.