Light the Way

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At the end of this strange, dark year, I wish you light. 

I thank everyone who has gifted me with light in 2020…

To the nurse who took the time to tell me how reading my Mercies of the Fallen had eased her out of her work in the middle of a pandemic to enjoy a love story held together by the notes of its hero’s penny whistle…

To my family for sending images of dogs frolicking on the Oregon shore and a baby reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? in sun-kissed California. 

To my community, for flooding an ancestor's mailbox with cards to celebrate her 100th birthday, and for for lighting up our town square in defiance of death itself.

Light a candle. Be the light. We'll get through this, together.

Clearly Working by Eileen O'Finlan

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My friend and fellow author, Jane Willan, has been renting office space at a place called Clearly Coworking to get away from all distractions so she could finish her lastest cozy mystery. Clearly Coworking offers multiple shared desk space as well as private offices and conference rooms. Mostly rented by people who would otherwise work from home, but who want to get away from distractions, it's a perfect space for professionals who need an office away from home. As it turns out, it's also a great place for writers to find a place of their own.

Jane became so enamored of the place that she got me a day pass, so I spent one Friday with her. It's only a few minutes from my house so I loved the convenience of it. When she told me the address, I also realized that it was formerly a funeral home so, of course I had to ask if it was haunted. Apparently, not. Oh well.

Interior of Clearly Coworking in Worcester, Massachusetts

We had the place mostly to ourselves as Covid has returned most of the renters to their homes. In fact, so many have pulled out that the owner has had to sell. It closed for good as Clearly Coworking on July 31st. Because it was closing, the owner generously allowed Jane to invite me to come write with her every day of the final week of July for free. It was fantastic! We spent the first part of the day writing, then around 2:00 we'd email what we'd written to each other. After reading, we'd go into one of the small conference rooms and critique each other's work. Lunch was another fun part of the day as we spent it chatting about various aspects of writing, marketing, and publishing. We also helped each other work out unruly plot lines or come up with that one missing piece that would make the story work.

I was there just long enough to fall in love with the place as well as the concept. With a full-time job, renting office space is neither affordable nor sensible for me since I wouldn't get much time to use it. However, I did come to find out a couple of very important facts:

 

1.) I could easily spend eight hours a day, every day writing and be quite happy. I am more convinced than ever that writing is my calling and that working towards becoming a full-time writer is my main goal.

2.) Having another writer as critique partner and brainstorming mate is immensely helpful.

I had already sensed both of those things to be true, but this experience cemented them for me.

Now that Clearly Coworking has closed, what will we do? Well, Jane has found another place in downtown Worcester called Idealab. She's already secured her spot. As for me, I decided to make my den/guest room into a home office/writing room. It took nearly two full days to get it set up to my liking, but now that it's done, I am enjoying the heck out of it. I used to write where ever I found a spot to set up my laptop. Now that I have a dedicated space, I've got that "room of one's own" feel and I am loving it.

As for mutual critiquing and brainstorming, Jane and I continuing to email our work to each other and meet on Zoom. Once the pandemic is finally a memory, we'll get together in person often for the same purposes. Best of all, we'll be able to reschedule the half vacation - half writing retreat trip to Vermont we were planning for this summer. Only the end of COVID-19 will dictate when that will happen, but when it does, I'll be sure to chronicle it in this blog.

A Jane Austen Christmas

                             

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On a recent trip to Ottawa, Ontario, I went to a play. Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, a new work produced by Ottawa Little Theatre. Fans of Jane Austen's classic novel, Pride and Prejudice, will instantly recognize the cues in the play's title. Pride and Prejudice is the story of the five Bennet sisters, living in early 19th century England, in search of husbands for fulfillment and financial survival. The novel's hero, Mr. Darcy, owned Pemberley, a great estate.

'Pemberley' in one of the numerous Pride and Prejudice screen adaptations

Christmas at Pemberley takes place two years after Pride and Prejudice. The play opens with Elizabeth Darcy nee Bennet admiring her newfangled holiday decoration, a Christmas tree. Mr. Darcy is appalled by the outdoor tree in his living room. Elizabeth's challenge to his conventionality is true to her character developed in Pride and Prejudice, but I find this domestic conflict lacks the zing of their verbal sparring in the novel. The problem with all Austen novel sequels is that once the lovers resolve their all their problems they become boring. That's why Jane Austen ended their stories at this point. But readers like me keep wanting more of the Bennets and Darcys.

The Christmas tree tradition came to Britain with King George III's German-born wife, Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz 

The heroine of Christmas at Pemberley is the overlooked middle Bennet sister, Mary. In the novel, Austen portrays Mary as drearily bookish, Mary also seeks attention by forcing her mediocre piano playing on hapless attendees at neighbourhood parties. The authors of the new play rightly realized that Mary's love of reading and music has a positive side. She wants more from life than her sisters. When the family gathers at Pemberley this Christmas, Mary meets her soul mate, Darcy's equally bookish cousin. It doesn't hurt that the cousin is handsome and rich.

But romantic complications and misunderstandings ensue. Most of them are initiated by Lydia, the selfish youngest Bennet sister who'd foolishly eloped with the scoundrel Wickham. Their hasty marriage has fallen apart and Lydia wants the rich cousin for herself.

I won't give away the rest of the plot, except to say that when Jane, the perpetually sunny oldest Bennet sister sympathizes with Lydia and treats her with kindness, Lydia changes. For me, this was the most surprising character development in the play. Who knew Lydia had it in her?

The five Bennet sisters

In the play, I also liked the guy friendship between Darcy and Jane's sunny husband, Bingley. After the men discuss the problems between Mary and the cousin, they agree they must do something to help. Darcy and Bingley jump to their feet and say, "Let's go to the sisters," instantly recognizing that relationship repair isn't guy territory.

Colin Firth, my favourite screen Darcy, with his friend Bingley

Calgary Playwright Eugene Stickland has said that writing a Christmas play is a practical move for writers because theatre companies across the country look for ones to produce every year. A good play for the season results in repeated royalties for the author.

This has got me thinking about Kitty, Bennet sister # 4 and the most overlooked sister of all. Austen portrays her in the novel as no more than Lydia's sidekick, lacking the pizazz of her younger sister. Kitty is absent from the Pemberley play's Christmas shenanigans, merely referred to as spending the holidays in London. This makes Kitty almost a blank slate for a modern writer. If Lydia can change, why not Kitty?

My Austen-inspired play would focus on Kitty emerging from the shadows of her colourful sisters and growing into her own person. Set at Christmastime, somewhere in Austen-land. Kitty will need a suitor who's right for her, perhaps a man who has also been overlooked. Plenty of complications and misunderstandings along the way will lead them to true romance. A winning Jane Austen Christmas.

   

Tracking details in the Historical Novel, by Kathy Fischer-Brown

cover photo © by Janice Lang

Over the years I’ve read about how different authors construct their novels, and I’ve tried some of their methods. I’ve used index cards and index cards in multiple colors (each character was assigned his or her color). I even downloaded computer programs that claim to be “everything you need in one application to plan, plot, write, edit, keep track of characters (complete with bios and photos), convert into any number of formats, write your synopsis, and on and on. (I don’t recall if they went so far as submitting for you, but I imagine that’s not a far-fetched concept.) But for some reason, they just weren't for me.

Every author who’s ever written a book has his or her own method of constructing their stories. In many ways, all share as many similarities as they do variances. In the end, all that matters is getting from point A to where you want to be by the time you type “The End.”

But what about writing historical novels, which present a unique and often frustrating set of conditions? You have characters who have made themselves known—often by keeping you awake night after night while they babble on and on about their lives, loves, and aspirations; distracted by their prattle while you drive to the supermarket; offering brilliant scenes and dialogue while your dog endlessly sniffs around posts and mailboxes for messages before taking that last whiz of the night; or those genius bits of dialogue while you’re in the shower. And, even if you retain half of that of that inspired magnificence, none of it ever translates onto the page.

So, there you have your characters…dressed and accoutered in authentic garb with tidbits of their surroundings and everyday details to flesh out their lives…while actual history is happening around them. You want them to cross paths with the army sweeping down from the north, or be in a particular locale where history happened, or interact at a dinner with some luminary from the past.

How do you do it?

When writing my very first ever historical novel, I stumbled upon a

method that has worked for me ever since: I use a calendar. Back in the days before computers, I discovered through a particular diary I’d been reading for research that a certain day of the week in 1777 fell on a Tuesday. I was then able to create a blank calendar by hand for that month and drop in the dates. Later on, I figured out how to use the macro feature in an early DOS version of WordPerfect to quickly design and print out calendars for the year in which my book took place. Today, there are plenty of sites (here’s one that I like: http://www.calendarhome.com) that give you the option of generating calendars for any year you want. In the eons since, I have found lunar and solar calendars (here’s one of my favorites: http://www.rodurago.net/en/index.php?site=details&link=calendar) that contribute to creating scenes where the moon was full (and what time it rose and set). Through diaries and other references from the period, I found when the weather was fine or rainy or anything in between, and I popped that information into the calendar for a particular date, along with the historical events (each with different colored ink). So, if I wanted a character to make a trek to visit an actual historical personage at a particular place on a rainy day evening during a new moon, I had that information right there on the calendar.

covers © by Michelle Lee

Of course, sometimes, you need to “fudge” the facts to coincide with the events of the book, as well as for dramatic effect. For example, in The Partisan’s Wife (book 3, "Serpent's Tooth" trilogy), I had envisioned a scene with Anne (the heroine) and her husband Peter riding in a carriage north along Bowery Lane in New York as a full moon rose over the East River. The scene was amazing to write, since, due to the number of modern high rise apartments and other buildings on the East Side of New York, I doubt many on the ground on the Bowery today have seen a sun or moon rise over the East River in over a hundred years. And anyway, the moon rise on that particular date was at around 4:00 in the afternoon, when the daylight was still in full swing.

This post is reprinted from the April 13, 2017 Canadian Historical Brides blog.

~*~

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire, Lord Esterleigh’s Daughter, Courting the Devil, The Partisan’s Wife, and The Return of Tachlanad, her latest release, an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her Books We Love Author page or visit her website. All of Kathy’s books are available in e-book and in paperback from Amazon, Kobo, and other online retailers.

REENACTMENT AT MONMOUTH

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I just went to the Battle of Monmouth last weekend in nearby NJ—although I was in no danger of being shot or impaled by a British dragoon. For a novelist, historical reenactments like this one are a unique kind of research. It’s one which, especially for the dedicated participants who volunteer their time to living history, functions as a full-on primitive camping trip, a personal exercise in experiencing the hard realities of “time travel.”

Kathy Fischer-Brown, who also writes the Revolution (The Serpent's Tooth Trilogy) did a lot of the work of getting us there, so she's the "we" and "us" in the following recitation.

At such events, you’ll find a group of dedicated history buffs portraying life as it was, in this case, during our now mythologized Revolution. These folks wear the clothes, made  of wool, muslin, and linen. They negotiate the territory wearing the one-shape-fits-both-left-and-right-foot shoes. After the “battle,” the men – and the women filling the ranks as foot soldiers--clean and oil their black powder flint locks, clean (puke!) the cannon. The “camp followers,” in reality, mostly poor women and their kids who would starve if they didn’t follow their soldier husbands, pluck chickens and scrape vegetables and use the cooking utensils—on the road, like this, mostly big black pots, knives, and iron cranes, to prepare their meals. Often, just as in the past, those big pots do double duty for food preparation.

At night they’ll sleep on the ground, with the marked exception of a few officers with camp cots. Washington, Lafayette and Joh Laurens are said to have slept under a tree together on the eve of this battle. On the British side, there will be tents and even the occasional officer’s lady/mistress, prettily parading at the encampment. On the American side, they’ll sack out in a group on hay strewn beneath a lean-to roofed with green branches. As much as possible, they walk the walk and talk the talk—and, this being summer in New Jersey—they sweat the sweat too.

Unlike the reenactment, the original Battle of Monmouth was not much fun. More soldiers are said to have died of heat prostration than bullets. And New Jersey was thoroughly beaten up in the American Revolution, marched and back and forth upon by both armies. (Only Massachusetts and Virginia may have suffered more.) The British Army, with a contingent of brutalized professional soldiers, plundered and raped indiscriminately. “…a day of rest and plunder,” is casually noted in the Visitor’s Center display, as the British Army who’d settled in the little town (then called Monmouth Courthouse) the day before the engagement. Don’t forget, though, that there was bad behavior by the Americans, too, under the cover of “Freedom’s Cause.” Violent militia groups with an ax to grind took advantage of local breakdowns of law and order in exactly the same way.  

This year at the Battlefield State Park, a young "soldier" reminded us that if you’d had a vote on The War of Independence—1/3 of the population would have been for it, 1/3 of the population against leaving the British Empire, and 1/3 just trying to stay the hell out of the way and get on with trying to farm their fields and raise their families. It must have been a long, dangerous, frightening eight years for all colonists.

However, June 18-19,  2016, was a great day to be at the place where all this history happened. Sunny skies brought out lots of people to take in the spectacle—the black powder display which seems to attract most of them.  They came in like a wave, and then, after the shooting was over and the acrid black powder smoke drifted away, departed.

After the crowd dispersed taking their small children, the hard core remains--folks like us who love history and the reenactors, who, I think, can lay claim to loving it even more. This is the time in which you may visit the encampments to observe and perhaps chat a bit while those in costume make their supper.  The reenactors Kathy and I have met are spectacularly devoted to their chosen task. (Calling it a "hobby" wouldn't be correct.) We saw entire families, from infants on up, at this “camping trip + time-travel”, everyone dressed appropriately.  Even little fifer boys of eight or nine are willing to play a part and give a history lesson.

Loyalist Rangers

One enjoyable facet of this reenactment at Monmouth was the number of young people enthusiastically and knowledgeably present.  Kathy and I enjoyed meeting the “smallpox survivors” who’d gone to the trouble of makeup to demonstrate active pocks, scaring, and boils.  Other young reenactors had constructed an ingenious in-ground cooktop, which conserved fuel and was less obvious from a distance than an open fire. (The reason, we were told, that you won't see this at a lot of other reenactments is that the Park personnel are usually not keen about folks digging holes.) Several pots of bubbling stew—a random assortment of vegetables and some chicken, with a bit of flour added, were being served, along with chunks of hearty bread.  

Laundry too "cooked" in a large "copper"—the heat and a bit of lye soap part of the sanitization process necessary for undergarments, this explained by the barefoot woman of the army busy stirring the pot. She and her sisters-in-arms were busy everywhere, all at work at some period appropriate task.   

In Sutler's Row, Lady Ellen showcases her talent as a seamstress; note what we'd call "mismatch."

BTW not a selfie in the background, but the heavy crook of her cane.

A pot full of chicken is seared.

         The in-ground cooktop/oven

Col. Hamilton was at Monmouth, an aide de camp who rode all day carrying messages around the battlefield for his commander-in-chief. (His doings, of course, brought about my original interest in the site.) Miscommunications and a lack of concerted movement by Gen. Charles Lee and Gen. George Washington turned the battle, begun so promisingly, into a kind of draw. This action, the longest single day's action in the war, was, nevertheless, an important moral victory for the Americans. Although the British continued on to their embarkation point at Sandy Hook, for the first time, the American army really stood up for itself against the military know-how of a far more mission-ready foe.

To close, if you write historical novels, there's a great deal to be learned at reenactments. Simply observing people wearing the clothing kick starts my writing process. Therefore, if you've never attended one, this summer would be a perfect time to start.

~~Juliet Waldron

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*With heartfelt thanks to everyone who participated in this marvelous day of living history, especially to the 2nd PA "The Regiment" The 43rd of Foot, who were so generous sharing their knowledge.