The Differences of Research data: Mata Hari by Katherine Pym

Mata Hari Performing

As an author of historical fiction, I spend a lot of time researching. Usually, my research centers on London in the 1660’s. Once and awhile, though, I run across some information that doesn’t center around my time of expertise, but find it too interesting not to share.

NOTE: The source I am using differs from most, especially Margaretha’s early life but I cannot ignore this, which gives more dimension to her character. I will let you decide which to take home to your family by making clear the variances in the below text.

Mata Hari was born in Holland on August 7, 1876 as Margaretha Geetruida Zelle. Her parents were religious; she grew up Roman Catholic and was sent to a convent at the early age of 14. Other sources say: “Her mother dead and her adored father bankrupt, teenage Margaretha was sent to train as a kindergarten teacher, only to be seduced by the headmaster.” And another source: “Following her mother's death, Mata Hari and her three brothers were split up and sent to live with various relatives.”

At 18 while on holiday in The Hague, Margaretha met a Scotsman named MacLeod and married him. He was a drunk and a wife abuser. He did—well you know—the typical things brutal men do to women so I won’t bore you with them. Other sources say: “Disgraced and bored, the girl answered a newspaper ad to meet and marry a career colonial officer twenty years her senior who would be soon returning to the Dutch East Indies.” My source continues: He took her to Java where he continued his savagery plus he was a bounder and unfaithful.

Margaretha in Java

No longer a wide-eyed, postulant schoolgirl, her experiences caused Margaretha to deviate from her chaste background. She studied books in the art of sensual love performed in Buddhist temples. She was also introduced to the evocative ritual dances that eventually made her so popular. (Some sources don’t mention this at all.)

Usually, life takes strange turns we never expect. Margaretha endured the savagery of MacLeod, studied sensual love—it’s not recorded if she used this on him or anyone else for that matter while in Java—as her husband gadded about with other women. Some were jealous he was married. One was their nurse who took care of Margaretha & MacLeod’s young son. MacLeod rejected her and in revenge the nurse poisoned their son. Another source: “The marriage dissolved in a nightmare of drinking, gambling, and vicious hatred following the death of their son...”

From now on, I will continue with my source.

Margaretha emerged from this a changed woman. She never showed outward emotion but went forth in life with a face etched in steel. She hated men and she hated MacLeod whom she blamed for the death of their son. Without remorse she reportedly strangled the nurse.

Back in Europe, Margaretha lead a life of the narcissistic.

In France, Margaretha became Mata Hari, a woman born in “...India within the sacred caste of Brahma”. After the birth of two children, her body wasn’t the svelte one of her youth, but that did not stop her from performing naked on stage in Paris. She spoke in a soft, seductive voice and danced erotic dances, some graceful, others lewd, only before seen in Buddhist temples.

She was a sensation throughout Europe. Men begged to have her in their beds. She would oblige them for no less than $7,500 a night. Her lovers listed in the Who’s Who of the times; prime ministers, princes, high up men in their governments.  She demanded luxurious apartments in Paris, had milk baths to keep her skin young and supple. When her influential lovers lost their money, she would kick them to the curb and take another.

She enjoyed sex and would visit brothels (probably not for $7,500) even as she hated the men who bedded her, using them for her gain. She was vain, self-indulgent, cruel and ripe to be approached by the Germans. They sent her to spy-school in Lorrach and gave her what is now known as a pre-war code number.

Mata Hari was relentless. She slept with men then betrayed them. She learned of their plans and sent those plans to the Germans. The figures speak for themselves. It was declared by the judge at her trial she was considered responsible for the deaths of 50,000 allied troops but this number seems trivialized. Other sources say the number is closer to 100,000.

In the end, the Germans betrayed Mata Hari, but she did not think she would die. Too many of her lovers told her of their plans for her escape. When those failed, it was suggested she plea pregnancy, but by now realizing her doom was fixed, Mata Hari refused to see the doctor.  

Vincennes: At the age of 41, Mata Hari was tied with "crimson ropes" to a young tree stripped naked of leaves and branches. She refused the blindfold, did not wince or show emotion when the firing squad cocked their rifles. Several of her lovers watched from the sidelines, some perhaps part of the squad.

She did not utter a sound, but smiled when the major barked the final command to fire. Mata Hari, once a postulant in a convent, her name Margaretha Geetruida Zelle died at 5:47 AM on October 15, 1917, a hated and loved legend of her time.

Many thanks to:

Main source: The People’s Almanac by David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace, Doubleday & Co., Inc., Garden City, NY, 1975.

Penn State Science: http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2007-news/Shipman7-2007.htm

bio.o: http://www.biography.com/people/mata-hari-9402348#early-life

All pictures come from WikiCommons Public Domain: his media file is in the public domain in the United States. This applies to U.S. works where the copyright has expired, often because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1923. See this page for further explanation.

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PLOTTING AND DEVELOPMENT - HISTORICAL ROMANCE - MARGARET TANNER

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HOW DO I COME UP WITH  A PLOT AND DEVELOP MY CHARACTERS

Because I love Australian history, in fact all history, plots abound in my fertile imagination, but I do seem to get my best plot ideas in the middle of the night. I write them down, (pen and paper by my bed), so I won’t forget them. I usually take a historical event to use as my main background and then manufacture some catastrophic, life changing event for the main characters. What could they do to stop it? How will it change them and those around them?

I develop my characters to fit in with the era I am writing about. I normally don’t write character profiles, except for the briefest of outlines, but I try to walk in their shoes so to speak, and to get inside their head.

My heroines are resourceful, not afraid to fight for her family and the man she loves. I want my readers to be cheering for her, willing her to obtain her goals, to overcome the obstacles put in her way by rugged frontier men. For my heroes, I like them to be dark and tortured. They might be seeking revenge, trying to consolidate their fortunes, but all of them will have something in their backgrounds, some dark deed that has tainted their lives. As for my villains, I like them to be evil with no redeeming features. I want the reader to dislike them like I do.

If a reader contacts me to say how she despises some villainous beast of a man in one of my stories, it pleases me. I don't know why, but the villains in my stories are mostly men. Perhaps it is because men in the eras in which I set my books, had total control over their daughters, sisters and wives, and many of these men used their power to dominate the women in their lives. Sad but true. But, never fear, in my stories the hero always comes to the rescue of the damsel in distress.

FALSELY ACCUSED

1820’s England. Robbed of his birthright and falsely accused of murder, American Jake Smith, is exiled to the penal colony of Australia.

Margaret Tanner’s Website:  http://www.margarettanner.com/

http://bookswelove.net/authors/tanner-margaret/
           

LIFE ON THE FRONTIER by Shirley Martin

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Frontier can mean many things. As I use the word here, it refers to the settling of western Pennsylvania after 1760.

The early settlers who came to western Pennsylvania were tough, resilient people. They had trudged from the eastern part of the colony through the gaps in the Allegheny Mountains with all of their belongings and perhaps a cow. They came to unsettled country where there was nothing and no one to greet them.

We have a tendency to romanticize historical periods, but so many challenges and hardships faced the early settlers that a man and his wife were worn out and exhausted by age thirty-five. Wolves might devour their cows and pigs. Squirrels and raccoons ate their corn crop.

In a historical novel I read years ago and whose title I've forgotten, there is a scene where the male protagonist plans on taking his new wife to the recently-opened Ohio country. His mother instructs him on delivering a baby. This must have happened many times on the frontier, whee pople lived in isolated cabins, and a man had to deliver the babies.

Life was indeed primitive for the early settlers. Until their log cabin was built, they lived in the open. Their log cabin was usually twenty feet by thirty feet and two and a half stories high. The interior of the cabin was dim, relieved only by the gray light through the one greased paper pane, and in summer, by the sunlight that came through the open door. Rats and snakes were frequent visitors.

In the better equipped cabin there were gridirons, skillets, broilers for rabbits and small game, braziers and waffle irons. Pots and pans and all other utensils that didn't hang from hooks were very long-handled to protect the hand from the heat.  Until 1834, the only means of making fire was by flint and steel struck together.

For the most part, the men of the frontier adopted the dress of the Indians. They wore hunting shirts made of jean or linsey or deerskin. In cold weather, he wore linsey in preference to deerskin since deerskin was cold and clammy in winter weather. All through fine weather people went barefoot. In the winter they wore shoepacks.

Any finery was impractical for women. They wore dresses made of homespun linsey-woolsey. Clothing was so scarce that old dresses were re-dyed again and again and often willed to another generation. Every pioneer woman could spin, knit, weave and sew.

Indian corn was a staple crop for the settler. The men hunted deer for venison and fished for pike, perch, and trout in the rivers. They also hunted wild turkey, grouse, and quail. Everyone, adults and children alike, drank whiskey.  Bread was a rare commodity.

Housewives began their day early, around four in the morning.  They built the fire in the fireplace, hauled water, gathered ingredients from the kitchen garden and slaughtered and cleaned food.  There was little leisure time for the frontier housewife. Unless she had a candle mold, making candles was an arduous all day affaie.

Indian attacks were an everpresent danger. The primary tribes of western Pennsylvania were the Shawnee and the Lenni Lenape.(Delaware.)  The Shawnee was especially fierce. When a brave returned to his village with a captured white man, one of the women greeted him by saying, "You have brought me good stew."

We are naturally sympathetic with the Indians.  The land was theirs; they had lived on it for centuries. On the other hand, the settlers had originally come from Europe--mostly the British Isles and Germany--where only the aristocracy owned land.  In times past, a man could lose his oculos et testiculos for poaching on the lord's land to feed his starving family. Here in western Pennsylvania, a man could acquire land for virtually nothing.

As the settlements grew and people came to know their neighbors, often a frolic would relieve the monotony of their days. The frolics usually occurred in the fall, after the crops were in. In my time travel romance, "Dream Weaver," which takes place in 1763, I took a bit of literary license and placed the frolic in early summer. The fiddle and flute would play the music, and young people danced to lyrics such as this:

     If I had as many lives
     As Soloman had wives
     I'd be as old as Adam
     So rise to your feet
     And kiss the first that you meet
     Your humble servant, madam

In time, the settlements of western Pennsylvania grew, creating the major industrial center of Pittsburgh.


Born near Pittsburgh, Shirley Martin began writing historical novels centered around that area. Later, she blossomed out to paranormal and fantasy novels. Her books are sold online and at Barnes and Noble.

Please check out my website here:  www.shirleymartinauthor.com
My Books We Love page:  http://bookswelove.net/authors/martin-shirley
My FB page:  https://www.facebook.com/shirley.martin716970
And Twitter:  https://twitter.com/mshirley1496

Early Civilizations by Eleanor Stem

Artificially Elongated Head (Painting by Hollar)

While in the throes of a new novel, I’m making an attempt to write a different story of early earth. As a result, I’ve been reviewing ancient civilizations, folklore, and religion. What I’ve learned is through archeological technological advances, old digs become new; little known peoples with shallow histories become complex.

Take for instance the Paracas Skulls. They come from Peru where so many unexplained structures still stand; where strange peoples resided then disappeared. Scientists have found evidence of man not linked to our species buried in the Pisco Province of the old Inca realm.

Lewis and Clark wrote in their journals of meeting along the route to the Pacific Northwest native groups who pressed boards against the heads of young children. They left the boards there until their heads were elongated. This deformity was apparently appealing to the eye. They were called Flat Heads.

Other civilizations around the world decorated their bodies with ink, or extended their lips with flat insertions. I should think this distortion would make it difficult to eat or drink. Some cultures allowed their aristocrats to grow long fingernails, forming them into spirals and decorated with jewels. Once their nails were in this position, they were incapable of doing the slightest task and had to be helped by another. In other places, female necks were stretched from clavicle to chin with metal rings. Once their growing stopped, if the rings were removed, their necks would not support their heads.

How did cultures come about with these ideas? What caused them to think these deformities had worth?

Well, let us look at the Paracas find...

Skeletons have been discovered in South America whose heads were elongated, but not purposefully done. Their heads were this way by natural design. Does this mean somewhere along our ancient, shadowed history, our ancestors came upon people with naturally elongated skulls? Here's some pics.

The large Paracas burial site was discovered in 1928 and filled with approximately 300 skeletons, all with deformed skulls. Peruvian archaeologist, Julio Tello, believes these remains have been buried about 3,000 years. The craniums excavated are 25-60% heavier than the ones you and I possess. They also contain one parietal plate as opposed to our two, another reason that suggests these skulls come from an unknown source.

Mr Juan Navarro is the owner and director of Paracas History Museum that houses several of these remains. Recently, he allowed samples of the skeletons to be DNA tested. “...samples consisted of hair, including roots, a tooth, skull bone and skin... documented via photos and video.”

The geneticist who received these samples had no idea what he had prior to his testing. Brien Foerster who authored several books on people of South America revealed the data from this DNA testing.

Unless data comes forth from other sources as a comparison, these tests show the specimens are completely separate from any evolutionary species on our earth. If there is an association with humanoids, then it happened in the far distant past.

The initial results are impressive even as scientists are not done testing. What will happen when more of our world is exposed due to the melting ice sheets? What else will we learn of our earth and its “far far away” distant past?

Of course, you’ll find a plethora of nay-sayers. They are all over the internet, like this one. But what if they are wrong? I contend over the centuries we have lost valuable information that would explain so many mysteries. What about the Library of Alexandria that was purposefully destroyed over a period of years, the first attempt by the Julius Caesar. They say the loss of ancient information is incalculable.  

We think none of the above will happen now, that all our collected data is safe. Wars couldn’t obliterate it, fires or earthquakes. More and more information is being electronically accumulated and stored.

Who reads paper books these days? Who goes to a bank? We can retrieve reading material, money and data from outside sources that go directly to our smartphones, our computers.  We have backups, and backups on top of that. Somewhere there would be a record.

But what if our earth was struck by a strong electromagnetic pulse that wiped out our electronic data? This sort of energy could destroy all our stored records, the information that shows who we are. If anything of us remained, later peoples would consider our culture primitive.  

Many thanks to:

The website Ancient Origins:
http://www.peruthisweek.com/blogs-calm-down-the-paracas-skulls-are-not-from-alien-beings-102258

All pictures are from Wikicommons, Public Domain (This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923.)

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NEVIS, A 1957 Visit

It was 1957 when Mom and I traveled to Nevis.  It was January, which is the best tourist weather in the Caribbean, with lots of sun. We flew up from Barbados to Antigua and then on to mountainous St. Kitts on the old British West Indian Airways in a DC 3. We boomed along slowly, carefully skirting majestic cumulus clouds.  Flying was a less exact process in those days, and deep in the innards of those big clouds rough weather could be hiding.

I was pretty excited, because we were going to see the place where my hero, Alexander Hamilton, had been born.  Mom said there probably wouldn’t be much to see but the island itself, however, she too was curious about this (then) rarely visited speck in the West Indian sea. Honoring Hamilton, I knew, was a kind of family tradition. My Grandfather Liddle always spoke highly of his great achievements as a Founding Father. So, after a foray into the musty interior of a used book store, my usually critical mother had been approving when I’d arrived at the cash register with Gertrude Atherton’s 1902 “dramatic biography” of Hamilton in hand.    

Mrs. Atherton had studied her subject with care. She, being an adventurous woman (and probably well-heeled), had traveled in the 1890’s to both Nevis and St. Croix, another island where Hamilton spent part of his youth, to do research.  All her skillful, ardent Edwardian prose went straight to my head. By the time I finished her book, I was convinced that Alexander Hamilton was the most romantic--as well as the smartest, hardest working man--among that crew of geniuses who’d shaped our early republic.

Mom and I stayed overnight in St. Kitts.  I remember that as one of the coldest I ever spent in the West Indies. There were shutters, and although we closed them tightly, the wind whistled through our room all night. Our plane was supposed to leave in the afternoon for Nevis—there were two ways to get there—on a ferry or in a small plane—but I was famously sea-sick. The plane would be small, completely full with four passengers and the pilot.  

We arrived at the airport –which was just a tin-sided, palm-frond-roofed shelter—and then waited and waited. The little plane (probably a modified Super Cub) was in parts in a shed next to the runway, because “somethin’ was not right”. My mother and I both grew anxious, as you might imagine. I sat on a wooden bench cradling Mrs. Atherton’s book.  I was by now well on the way to memorizing it.

Finally, we took off, even though the sun was going down. The adults, used to the vagaries of West Indies travel, made graveyard jokes, but falling out of the sky into the ocean didn’t really seem possible to me, not when I was on the verge of my Hamilton epiphany.  Half an hour later, we arrived—landing on an island which is little more than a mountain whose cloudy head juts from the sea. 

The runway was a grass field. Men holding poles with flaming, kerosene-soaked rags wrapped about their tops illuminated our landing area.  A couple of bounces later, we were down. Then another wait, until a couple of taxis appeared to take us all into Charlestown.  

At the guest house, lit by kerosene lanterns, the gray-haired proprietress, looking as if she’d stepped out of the 1920’s in her dowager’s ankle-length dress, took one look at me and said she didn’t allow children—“especially not American children” in her house. Looking around the room, with lots of antimacassar-backed chairs and delicate-legged side tables, every surface of which was covered with china figurines, I had a notion of what she was worried about.  Mom put on her most glacial demeanor and said that I was a perfectly well-behaved only child who spent all her time reading and who would certainly never enter the good parlor unless invited to do so.  “And besides,” she added, “I have brought her all this way from New York State to see where her hero, Alexander Hamilton, was born. Show her your book, Judy.”

I held out the beloved book for the old woman’s inspection.

“Ah,” she said, examining the cover. “Why, it’s Mrs. Atherton! Do you really like it?”

“Very much,” I said. “I can’t stop reading it. Hamilton goes with me everywhere.”

For the first time, the lady smiled. She extended her hand and said, “Come with me, my dear, and I’ll show you my very own copy of that book.” 

And sure enough she had one, the only other copy I’ve ever seen “in person.” Who could have predicted that this would be the thing that would convince her to let us stay?. Our hostess then explained the kerosene lamps.

“It’s after six o’clock now. From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. we have electricity, after that we use these. It makes for early nights.”

On the very next day, we contemplated a heap of stones by the harbor which were said to be the remains of the Hamilton house. We did a lot of one-of-a-kind things there. We bathed in the hot springs in our swim suits, everything very informal. You just paid the man who hung around there, and he walked along with you to the hollows where the water steamed, warning you first about which pools that would scald you. These gravel-bottomed pools were shaded by a grove of towering palm trees. The tall ferns and delicate flowers clustered about the “baths” were the lushest and most beautiful I’d ever seen.

Another day, we traveled up the mountain to see the ruins of sugar mills. We particularly admired one that had been turned into a hotel where we met the owners and enjoyed lunch. There were always clouds gathering around the top of that mountain every afternoon. We were up so high that day that these gray clouds enveloped us, eventually bathing everything with a surprisingly cool tropical rain.

On other, more ordinary days, we swam from a beach of brown sugar sand, but it was often cloudy,  more so than the other islands we’d visited. We weren't keen to swim too far out into that mysterious gray-blue water, either, as there was often not another soul around for as far as the eye could see.  

It's been a good many years since that visit, but Alexander and his beloved Betsy are still with me, as well as so many treasured memories of that lovely, mysterious, cloudy-headed island. It was hard to let go of a story I've been writing off and on and for ever so long, but here, at last, Books We Love has published it.  

~~ Juliet Waldron

A Master Passion, a novel of Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler

Available at:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=A+Master+Passion%3A+The+story+of+Alexander+and+Elizabeth+Hamilton

 

https://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/a-master-passion-the-story-of-alexander-and-elizabeth-hamilton-1

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http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-master-passion-the-story-of-alexander-and-elizabeth-hamilton-juliet-waldron/1122329571?ean=9781771453851

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Profiling ~ Getting to Know Your Characters By Connie Vines

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pro·fil·ing

ˈprōˌfīliNG/

noun

1. the recording and analysis of a person's psychological and behavioral characteristics, so as to assess or predict their capabilities in a certain sphere or to assist in identifying a particular subgroup of people.

It's always a good idea to get to know your characters before starting your novel.  Of course, little quirks and warts always show up as the story progresses.  However, I feel it is a good idea to 'get to know' your main characters before jumping into to your story.

How, exactly is this possible?  Our characters are not 'real' people.  Perhaps they are not 3-dimensional people``but as a writer, my characters must be 'real' to me and to my readers.  Otherwise, I do not have a novel or a believable story to tell.

So. how exactly. do I go about 'profiling' my characters?

Here are a few things which I implement:

See what he/she will share with you.  What he hides, what motivates him, and what he really needs.

• Basic Information:  What is the character's age, sex, ethnicity?  Describe his physical appearance (include unique features, scars, dimples).  How does he dress?  What about his clothing speaks to the kind of person he is (carefully pressed/rumpled and stained).  What item does he carry about with him.  What is it he can't live without?

• Voice:  Does the character speak quickly or slowly?  Does he overuse any verbal tics?  Are his sentences choppy or rambling?  Is he well educated? Working class?  If you were blind folded, could you pick-out your character's voice in a room filled with people?  Why?

• Education and Finances:  Is he naturally intelligent, clever, witty, or shy?  Is he book-smart? Self-taught, or experienced in a specific field?  Is he barely scraping by, allow him to live comfortably?  Is his job a job, or personally satisfying?

• Special Skill and Talents:  Day-to-day skills?  Computers, mechanical, green thumb, cook?  Talents?  Name on unique talent the character has that no one knows about, and one talent he openly shares.  Are any of these skill a pride or and embarrassment?  Why?

• Family and Family dynamics.

• Morals and Ethics:  Is is always of particular interest to me because most of my stories deal with social issues.

• Identity vs. Persona:  What five words would your character use to describe himself?  What 5 words would his best friend/family member use?

• Secrets and Fears:  What is your character's biggest secret? His biggest fear?

• Backstory and Wound: Thinking about that fear and secret, the once your character doesn't want to reflect on or admit to. . .what event in his past caused the very thing he feared come to pass?  How this event sent him on a new life path?

• Needs, Desires: What is your opening moment--the start of the story?  What makes this day any different from any other day?  What does he think will make him happy? What does he care not wish for?  What would allow him to face any challenge/hardship?

Now to but it all together!  The more you know about your character(s) the better you story.  Of course, not everything you discover ends up in your story.  However, it certainly makes the journey more vivid for both the writer and the reader.

My characters are all very different, and lead very different lives.  Yet, I trust each is unique and vivid to my readers.  Each story is a mini-world filled with love, heartache, adventure, and always,always--a happily ever after!

Happy Reading!

Connie