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| To read the book that made the rest of my hair fall out, click here! |
My first book with Books We Love,
Ghosts of Gannaway, was a sprawling pseudo-historical
thriller, romance, and ghost story set during the depression in a small Kansas
mining town. Never before had I tackled such an undertaking. I spent two months
alone researching. Whew.
I swore I’d never do it again.
Yet here I am currently tackling another
period piece for Books We Love. This time when I jumped into the Stuart R. West
time machine, I only ventured as far back as 1965. It wasn’t nearly as tough to
research as Ghosts, but this book,
too, had its pitfalls and traps.
Again (repeat after me): Never again!
Why’d I set my current book in
1965? The story’s a nostalgic, small town mystery and ghost story. (I ain’t nothing’
if not ambitious). By definition, nostalgia always takes place in the past or is
at least a remembrance of days gone by. And, personally, my favorite ghost
stories always take place in the past. Much more resonance than, say, a haunted
Smart Phone.
But there I go again, breaking my
vow to myself by going all old timey.
Here are the biggest problems I
have while writing period pieces:
Getting the lingo right is tough.
In my 1965 set book, I have a character--a real hep cat--spouting such slang
as, “Whoa, daddy-o, you’re out of your tree! Your old man’s squaresville,
absolutely nowhere. Let’s percolate, beat feet, get to the nitty-gritty!” I
know, right? It’s really easy to overkill once I dig into the slang of the time. Granted,
the character in question is a mop-topped, dangerous, cool kid, but sometimes I need to
rein it in. Just a smidge, daddy-o!
Speaking of overkill, sometimes
research threatens to eat my tales alive. While investigating all kinds of
topics for Ghosts of Gannaway, I
learned more than I could ever possibly need to know about the depression, the
way men and women spoke in the ‘30’s, what happened to the Midwest Native
American tribes, what folks ate, ore mining, and lots more. Anyone wanna know about the
hazards of brass carbide mining lamps? No? Me neither. (But I do.)
You should’ve seen the first
draft of Ghosts of Gannaway. Be
thankful you didn’t. I tried to shoehorn every bit of research (and I had pages
and pages of teeny-tiny, hand-written notes) into the book. There was a twelve
page dissertation in the middle of the narrative about how the white colonialists
drove the Native-Americans out of their lands (thank God I came to my senses,
and pretty much chucked the entire sequence).
I suppose my thoughts at the time
were, “Hey, we’re talking history! And I spent a heckuva long time researching
this stuff to the point of having mining nightmares, so everyone’s gonna enjoy
the fruits of my labors!” But I saved you a dull history lesson.
Another blockade I’ve banged my
head into is racial and sexual issues. Face it, our world’s attitudes have changed
a lot regarding racial equality and sexual activity. We’ve all heard the
derogatory and racist terms. Yet in these sensitive and politically correct times, you’re still gonna
find a reader who’ll take umbrage over the racist epithets, even if they’re historically
accurate. In Ghosts of Gannaway, I constantly questioned whether I should use accurate,
yet highly insensitive name calling. I steered
away from the Big No-No Word, but everything else was game. And even though I live
in Kansas, no one’s been by to lynch me yet.
Finally…sex! The big taboo! Back
in the day, of course, sex between consenting, loving adults only happened between spouses. But you know what? Hollywood would have us believe differently,
so what’s good enough for Hollywood is good enough for me! Let the sex begin!
There you have it, daddy-o, my
bag of hang-ups regarding gone, baby, gone period writing. (I need to put this
hep 60’s lingo to use somewhere.)
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