Mixing Business with Pleasure by Eileen O'Finlan

 

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Near the start of September, I had the pleasure of doing a book tour in Vermont with my fellow BWL author, friend, and cousin, Eileen Charbonneau. Eileen was promoting her book, Spectral Evidence, while I was promoting The Folklorist.

A lot goes into preparing for a book tour. Presenters have to decide upon which aspect of the book they want to focus and either write a script or assemble notes (the former for me, the latter for Eileen C.) For this tour, we each created PowerPoint presentations to go with our talks. For us, it was an easy choice since Spectral Evidence has a strong connection to the Salem Witch Trials and The Folklorist to the New England Vampire Panic. Witches and vampires make a good team so we decided to focus on the folklore behind both that European immigrants brought to America. The title we decided on, "Witches and Vampires: When Old World Nightmares Invaded the New World" seemed to express well the essence of our presentation.

While working on our talks, we had to contact libraries and bookstores explaining our presentation and availability in hopes that they would agree to host us. We endured our share of "no thank you's" as well as a number of no responses, but were gratified to be enthusiastically welcomed by four Vermont libraries.

Once all of our dates were scheduled, extra book copies ordered (both the featured book and backlist), talks practiced, and arrangements made to stay with my cousin in Ferrisburgh for when we headed to the Champlain Valley for our last talk of the tour we were finally ready to go.

Packing boxes of books, swag, awards, table cloths, and whatever else might be needed along with my suitcase, that by the time I was through I could barely lift, into the car definitely qualifies as work. But once I was on the road headed up to Bellows Falls, Vermont, the pleasure part kicked in.

I should explain that Vermont is my favorite place as both of my parents came from that state and the very best memories of my childhood and teen years were made there during visits to grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Not to mention, the state itself is incredibly beautiful. The fact that I was on my way to stay with Eileen and her wonderful husband, Ed, only added that much more joy to the adventure.

All of our talks went well. Every one of the librarians were gracious and helpful hosts. We were delighted to meet and engage with interested readers. Chatting with attendees after our talks concluded was the best part for me. As is always the case, we encountered both larger and smaller than expected turnouts, but in either case, those who attended were enthusiastic and made us feel more than welcome. Overall, it was a successful book tour.

                                       

        Reading from The Folklorist at the                                              Presenting at the Rockingham                Springfield Town Library                                                             Public Library

Eileen O'Finlan and Eileen Charbonneau taking questions from the audience

In addition, there was the pleasure of spending time with Eileen and Ed. Whenever Eileen and I get together we always have a great time. I want to thank Ed for playing roadie for us, driving us to all locations, lugging all of our books, setting up our laptops and getting us online, and generally making sure we were ready when it was time to start. In addition, Ed did most of the cooking when we ate at their home - another bona fide treat! (Eileen, please let Ed know that I still want his recipe for lentil soup.)

While in the Bellows Falls area, we also made time to visit the local farmers market, hit up the Vermont Country Store in Rockingham, and enjoy a fabulous dinner at a French restaurant in Walpole, New Hampshire followed by dessert at Burdick's Chocolates next door, and take in the new Beetlejuice movie.

That was some good hot chocolate!

Once the first leg of the tour was complete, we headed up to my cousin's home in the gorgeous Champlain Valley. Two nights at her house with Lake Champlain in her backyard was heaven.

I was especially grateful that I got to visit with my 90-year-old uncle who is the last one left of his generation. I have been mining him for family history and stories ever since I realized that he's the only one left who knows them. Sharing them with me seems to be energizing him as he keeps supplying me with answers and requesting I ask him even more questions. 

With Uncle Harold and Aunt Theresa

It was a great trip that generated what I'm sure will be lasting memories.

Eileen and I have one more talk to do together, but this time she'll be coming to Massachusetts. On Tuesday, October 29th we will present at Tidepool Bookshop in Worcester at 5:30 p.m. The format for this one is a bit different. Instead of each of us giving a talk, we'll be interviewing each other about our books. If you're in the area, we'd love to see you there!

The Joy of Meeting Readers

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Every time a reader reads one of our books, it is made anew. Readers' life, thoughts, feelings, go into their experience of reading. Is it any wonder that most authors love meeting our readers?

I appreciate you reading this blog, and enjoy reading your  comments. I love when readers write or email. I have mail from readers as far away as Australia that I treasure. 

Best of all for me, is meeting readers. I enjoy doing book signings and talks, often based on my research. When possible, I love teaming up with other writers for this. I often partner with BWL author Eileen O'Finlan. After I met her, we also discovered we are distant cousins. What a nice bonus!

Eileen and I have done talks on the experiences of Irish immigrants to America, the subject of two of our books, her Kelgeen and Erin's Children and my Mercies of the Fallen and Ursula's Inheritance.

We're about to launch a new speaking tour here in New England, entitled Witches and Vampires: When New World Nightmares Invaded the New World. This revolves around our two 2024 novels. Eileen's The Folklorist is a marvelous dual time-line novel set in the museum world of the 1970s and the New England Vampire Panic of the 1830s. My Canadian Historical Mystery #7 is Spectral Evidence, set during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93. It's set in Newfoundland, where some survivor children are taking refuge with their Canadian cousins. So, I'm in charge of the witches, and Eileen, the vampires. We hope our talk is enlightening and enjoyable to our treasured readers.

And we hope to meet you someday soon!

 

Coming October 1, 2023 - The Folklorist by Eileen O'Finlan

 

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I am excited to announce that my next historical novel, The Folklorist, will be released on October 1, 2023, by BWL Publishing just in time for Halloween! Charlotte Lajoie, a young professional folklorist, struggling to build her career in 1973, is given the 1839 diary of her ancestor Jerusha Kendall. Reading the diary leads her to believe that Jerusha and her family were involved in what would come to be known as the New England Vampire Panic. And it seems that at least one of Charlotte's ancestors is still angry about it. 

Jerusha Kendall was only nine years old in 1832 when something awful happened in her family, but she has no idea what. She has grown up knowing that not only her family, but the entire village of Birch Falls, Vermont is keeping it a secret from her. By 1839, when she begins keeping a diary, she's determined to learn what happened that caused her mother to stop speaking to her dearest friend, isolate Jerusha from all but her own family, and withdraw from their close-knit community.

As Charlotte studies Jerusha's diary, she starts to believe that she knows what happened even if Jerusha never figured it out. Meanwhile, Charlotte has her hands full trying to juggle work for an insecure, infuriatingly sexist boss at the New England Folklife Museum, decide on the way forward in her own career, and find a way to bring peace to an aggrieved ghost.

If you're interested in finding out what folklore, ghosts, and vampires have in common, check out The Folklorist in October.

Legend Tripping and the New England Vampire Panic

 

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As I finish the revisions on Erin’s Children, the sequel to Kelegeen, to be released by BWL Publishing, Inc. in December of 2020, I’m already looking ahead to my next historical novel. It will be set in Vermont, moving between the 1830s and 1970s. One of the threads connecting the two time periods is an activity known as legend tripping. For those unfamiliar with this term coined by folklorists and anthropologists, it pertains to the adolescent rite of passage whereby a pilgrimage is made, usually at night, to a location where some horrific event occurred. If the site is rumored to be haunted, all the better!

During the 19^th century several New England states, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Vermont prominent among them, saw the odd phenomenon of what would later become known as the New England Vampire Panic. 

Tuberculosis was rampant at the time, but often not well understood especially in isolated, rural areas. The highly contagious disease ravaged families and, sometimes entire communities.old Tuberculosis, or consumption as it was called in the 19^th century, causes the victims to appear to be wasting away. Towards the end, they may cough up copious amounts of blood and complain that when trying to sleep it felt as though someone was sitting on their chest.

These symptoms put people in mind of a supernatural force sucking the life out of the patient. Folklorists and anthropologists believe that in their desperation to save a dying family member, people harkened back to an ancient European superstition, which claimed that a recently dead relative was returning at night to feast upon family members. The only cure for this was to exhume the bodies of relatives who had died of consumption to see if the corpse appeared fresh. If so, they had found the culprit! Removing the heart and burning it, then dismembering the corpse and rearranging it were believed to be the remedy as it prevented the “vampire” from rising from his or her grave.

Excavations have shown this practice to have been employed numerous times throughout New England in the 19^th century. Once this became known in the 20^th century, the graves of acccused vampires became obvious destinations for legend trips.

Interestingly, those who engaged in this practice rarely, if ever, used the word vampire. It wasn’t until this phenomenon was nearly over that Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published and became popular in the United States. Nonetheless, the notion was similar. Though it occurred mainly in rustic locales, the practice of exhuming and damaging a corpse for the purpose of stopping a vampire was well enough known at the time for Henry David Thoreau to mention it in his journal.

So how does this play into my next novel after Erin’s Children? Imagine a young woman studying for a degree in anthropology with a specialization in local folklore finding out that one of her own ancestors was one of the supposed vampires.

Nineteen year old Mercy Lena Brown of Exeter, Rhode Island aka 

"The Last New England Vampire"

Mercy Lena Brown's grave stone in

Chestnut Hill Cemetery, Exeter, Rhode Island.

Of all the supposed vampires, her grave became

the most popular with legend trippers.