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Smoke Gets In Your Eyes...By Gail Roughton

Take a Trip Down Home!

Yep, it's that time of year down home here in the country.  That time of year when smoke gets in your eyes. And ears, and nose, and mouth, in your hair, and on your clothes...well, you get the idea.  It's raking time for my yard, which also means it's time to burn those piles and piles of leaves.  I know a lot of folks do that in the fall, but if we did, we'd still have piles and piles of leaves come spring. See, our trees are stubborn, they hang onto a lot of their fall foliage until the young leaves of spring literally push them off the branches.  Or maybe they're just modest and don't like being naked. 

Whatever the reason--and a lot of our trees are water oaks and therefore technically entitled to hang onto their branches till at least mid-winter anyway--a three acre yard accumulates a lot of leaves. Our house is actually built in the middle of a fifty acre tract of land we long-ago christened "Fern Gully" in honor of the banks and banks of wild fern gracing our woods, but the yard proper's about three acres, even though hubby likes to wave his hand toward our gorgeous untamed woods and tease our grandson we've still got a lot of ground to cover. We've devised a system, and generally can manage to rake and burn about half of one-quarter of the total yard per day.  Consequently, it takes about eight days to completely finish with our yard. The finished product's worth it, though.  

Fall's a beautiful season here at Fern Gully, and in fact the cover of Country Justice is eerily akin to the paths criss-crossing our acreage. 

See?  Told you so.  But so is Spring, full of the smell of newly turned earth and the promise of burgeoning green.  It's time to say good-by to the thick carpet of golden brown, time to run around the bottom catching a softball and kicking a soccer ball without fear of disturbing unwelcome guests very similar in coloring to those leaves. I don't mean to sound inhospitable, mind you, but those slithery unwelcome guests are hard enough to see without the camouflage of a leaf carpet, let alone with one. It's time for the ground to ditch its heavy blanket and bask in the sun wearing nothing but short grass, wild flowers and new earth.  

Now if I can just survive the smell of a few more fires...we've still got the last quarter of the yard to go.  But if any reader wants a trip to the country without the work of keeping a country yard, stop in and visit a while at the Scales of Justice Cafe, located right across from the Courthouse and right next door to the Piggly Wiggly, all three of which are located squarely in the middle of the pages of Country Justice.

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Writing Romantic Historical Fact Fiction by Rosemary Morris

Visit my BWL author page for information and buy links for all of my books

About Rosemary Morris

My large collection of fiction and non-fiction is kept in bookcases throughout my house.

 To bring order to my books, files and magazines I decided to use the smallest bedroom as a combined office and library. The walls are painted a honey-tinted cream, there is easy-clean laminate flooring and an oriental rug in which reds and cream predominate. When the cream Venetian blinds are raised, I look out of the window at my organic garden, beyond which is a green and a fringe of trees which border woodland.

Now, I am looking forward to the arrival of a custom made 6ft high 8ft wide oak bookcase and a desk.

I spend a lot of time reading non-fiction and making notes for my novels.

It will be about eighteen months or more until I begin writing Grace, Lady of Cassio, the sequel to Yvonne, Lady of Cassio, which is set in Edward II's reign. Before I write the first sentences of a new story I immerse myself in the era.

Today I read that in 1369, during the reign of Edward III, the Black Death broke out in England for the third time. Among those who died was the young Duchess of Lancaster - the lady Blanche wife of John of Gaunt, daughter of the great warrior Henry of Lancaster, the heroine of Chaucer's earliest major poem.

Froissart's description of her touches my heart. "Who died young and fair, at about the age of twenty-two years. Gay and glad she was, fresh and sportive, sweet, simple and humble semblance, the fair lady men called Blanche." 

Writing Romantic Historical Fact Fiction

There is a hypothesis that there are only seven basic plots. This should not deter new novelists, who need to devise their own special twists in the tale and write from the heart.

I write romantic historical faction fiction, which I shall focus on it in this blog.

You might ask, what is the classification of all genres of historical fiction? The Historical Novel Society’s definition is: ‘The novel must have been written at least fifty years after the event, described, or written by someone who was not alive at the time of those events, and who therefore only approached them by research.’

Historical novelists are under an obligation to readers to transfer them into another believable time and space, that need to be based on fact, even in, for example, time slips in which the social and economic history should be correct.

My characters, other than historical figures, are imaginary. Their backgrounds are researched to the best of my ability.

To ground my novels in times past, I weave real events into my plots and themes. To recreate days gone by I study non-fiction and visit places of historical interest, including museums, which are gold mines of information.

There are many excellent novelists who write, historical fiction, romantic historical fact fiction, and genre historical romance, etc. Unfortunately, there are other novelists who cause me, and, presumably, other readers, to suspend belief.

Once, I was torn between shock and hysterical laughter when I read a mediaeval romance in which, the hero, a knight in full armor, galloped to a castle with sheer walls to rescue the proverbial maiden in distress. Without putting aside his shield and weapons, he flung himself off his horse. The knight scaled stone walls that had neither handholds nor footholds. The author described him climbing through a window - impossible as a castle in that era only had narrow apertures through which arrows could be fired. When he gained access through the mythical window, the fair heroine, seemingly unaffected by her ordeal, asked: ‘Would you like some eggs and bacon and a nice cup of tea,’ as though she were offering him a modern day English breakfast. At that point, the sense of the ridiculous overcame me. I lost faith in the author and did not read on.

Of course, the above is an extreme example from a novel accepted by a mainstream publisher. However, I am frequently disappointed by 21^st century characters dressed in costume who have little in common with those who lived in previous eras. Over the centuries, emotions, anger, hate, jealousy, love etc., have not changed, but attitudes, clothes, the way of life and speech has.

To ground novels in historical periods, a novelist should study them and verify their research. Inaccuracy in any novel, whether it is set in the past or present, annoys the reader, and, there will always be someone who points out a mistake, or even tosses the book aside and never reads another one by that author.

Recently, I was enjoying a historical romance when an American author described the heroine admiring bluebells in bloom and simultaneously picking ripe blackberries in a wood in England. In the United Kingdom, bluebells bloom in spring, and blackberries ripen in the autumn. This is not the only novelist, who has jerked me out of a story with horticultural errors.

Misnamed characters also make me pause when reading. The first pages of a mediaeval novel held my attention until I reached the part when the heroine’s sister, Wendy, joined her. I sighed and went to make a cup of Rooibos tea. J. M. Barry first used the name in his novel Peter Pan.

When searching for a name, for example, suitable for a Tudor novel, the author might be tempted to call the heroine, Lorna, although R. D. Blackmore invented it in 1869 when he wrote Lorna Doone.

I’m sure that I’m not the only historical novelist, who agonises over character’s names. I recommend The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, an invaluable resource.

Since R. D. Blackmore wrote, a significant change in some published fiction has been the introduction of explicit sex, which is often gratuitous. In my opinion less is more. The impact of the scene in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, in the book and in the film, when Rhett Butler sweeps Scarlet off her feet and carries her to their bedroom, would have less impact with explicit details of how they made love.

In conclusion, a skillful historical novelist should hold the readers’ attention and take them into the realm of fiction on a factually accurate, enjoyable journey.

Yvonne Lady of Cassio

When Yvonne and Elizabeth, daughters of ruthless Simon Lovage, Earl of Cassio, are born under the same star to different mothers, no one could have foretold their lives would be irrevocably entangled.

Against the background of Edward II’s turbulent reign in the fourteenth century, Yvonne, Lady of Cassio, contains imaginary and historical characters.

It is said the past is a foreign country in which things were done differently. Nevertheless, although that is true of attitudes, such as those towards women and children, our ancestors were also prompted by ambition, anger, greed, jealousy, humanity, duty, loyalty, unselfishness and love.

From early childhood, despite those who love her and want to protect her, Yvonne is forced to face difficult economic, personal and political circumstances, during a long, often bitter struggle.

Novels by Rosemary Morris

Early 18^th Century novels. Tangled Love, Far Beyond Rubies, The Captain and The Countess

Regency Novels. False Pretences, Sunday’s Child, Monday’s Child, Tuesday’s Child, Wednesday’s Child.

Thursday’s Child will be published in July 2018

Mediaeval Novel. Yvonne Lady of Cassio. The Lovages of Cassio Book One

www.rosemarymorris.co.uk

http://bookswelove.net/authors/morris-rosemary