Dry Me a River by Karla Stover

 bwlauthors.blogspot.com

Here’s my idea for a mystery. The date is sometime in the mid-1960s. The place is New York. Someone murdered someone else and wants to dispose of the body. He / she loads up the body, drives for 6 or so hours, and dumps it in the Niagara River, near the falls. Safely back in Manhattan, the perp lets out that the individual was running from the law. There’s no body, no crime scene, and no evidence to shift through—EXCEPT—oops, the year is 1969 and the body shows up because that year the falls quit—well—quit falling. They went dry. And two bodies were found.

Nineteen sixty-nine was not the only time Niagara was dry. In 1848, a gale force wind began blowing off Lake Erie and caused thousands of tons of ice to jam up at the river’s mouth. For the next 48 hours, as the river bed dried and thousands of fish and turtles were left floundering, people flocked to the river. They couldn’t work because with the mill race was empty, and the mills and factories dependent on Niargara's water power had to shut down.

At first, venturing out on to the unexpectedly dry river bed was fun. People picked up bayonets, gun barrels, muskets, tomahawks, and other War of 1812 items. Some men with an eye to business drove a logging cart onto the bed and picked up 12-inch pine timbers measuring from 40 to 60 feet long. In as much as it could back then, the strange event became a tourist and media event. People walked from one side of the bed to the other, or crossed by horse, or in a horse-and-buggy. A squad of U.S. Army Cavalry soldiers put on an exhibition by riding up and down the bed. Downstream, some of the rocks which had been a boat hazard were blasted away.

But, then, it wasn’t fun any anymore. The more they missed the roar of the falls, the more people’s fear and anxiety grew. A Domesday scenario developed, and special church services were held on both sides of the border. Then, on March 31^st, the temperature rose, the wind shifted, and the ice jam broke apart, and the falls fell again.

The winter of 1847 – 1848 wasn’t unusually cold ,but the wind was the crucial factor. The Niagara River can only hold 2% of Lake Erie’s ice, and generally, 98% of the lake’s ice remains in the lake until spring weather melts it. The next time the falls stopped falling, it was a man-made situation. And two bodies were found.

April Coupon Specials at BWL Publishing Inc.

Books We Love Coupon Specials

Only .99 cents Click covers

For Smashwords Coupons
Copy and Paste on Buy Page

Coupons Expire April 30, 2018

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.

Visit BWL Publishing, Inc. for Links to All Gail Roughton's Books at all Market Sites

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

The Great London Fire by Katherine Pym

Buy Here

 ~*~*~*~

London Fire reached Ludgate, September 4, 1666

I understand this is a subject that may have been slightly overdone, especially since 2016 marked the 350 year anniversary of the vast destruction that occurred within a short 4 day timespan. To celebrate, London had a lovely old city effigy burned on a barge in the Thames. BBC had a television show on how it happened, where it started. It looks like Pudding Lane wasn’t quite where we thought it was all these years. The bakery was a block or so farther away. A marker that shows where it was is in a nice, clean street where cars now parallel park.

My current work in progress (WIP) takes place in London 1666. Since the fire was a big event in that year, I cannot not mention it, now can I? The reader would wonder why I’ve listed every other important moment but not that one, which to this day marks many souls as a living catastrophe.

In 1666, England was at war with the Dutch (fought entirely at sea). It was really a merchant’s war, caused by skirmishes over ports of call in the East and West Indies. The English felt the Dutch should share in the profits of spices, new fabrics (cotton), exotic fruits, differently manufactured furniture and fine pottery. After all, the Indies included vast areas of land and people. It wasn’t fair that one country take everything. 

 

Fighting fire with a 'squirt'. It held 4 pints of fluid, and took 2 men to operate.

Almost 18 months into the war, as the English fleet prepared to meet the enemy in a pitched battle, on September 1, 1666, a gale entered the Channel. A wind so strong, it felled the fleet. Sails ripped from masts. Bowsprits shattered. Ships collided and listed. Gun ports were closed to keep the seas from flowing onto the gun decks, swamping everything in its wake. The winds tore the fleet to shreds, then moved onto England. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, September 2, London winds whipped a spark and London began to burn.

The fire was so fierce, it created its own weather. Lightning slashed, thunder boomed. Warehouses along the Thames contained oils, pitch and tar, which burned fiercely.

People weren't this calm as they ran

Most homes were squeezed along narrow, dark lanes, cantilevered so that top stories were only inches apart. Made of half-timbers, wattle and daub, a material that if maintained did not burn easily, many houses were not maintained. Leased houses and shops were the responsibility of the renters. They had to fix anything that broke, burnt or toppled over. They were responsible for the walkway and road outside their doors. Not many followed these regulations. And with the winds so fierce, it was fodder for fire.

People took their goods to neighbors’, thinking the fire wouldn’t reach them. They took furniture and clothing to churches, thinking the walls were too thick for fire to burn them. As the fire moved west along the river and northwest through town, people removed what they had stored and moved them farther away, into a neighborhood they were sure would not burn.

Black smoke could be seen over 56 miles away. The city looked like daylight when it was nighttime. A contemporary wrote the firestorm sounded like “a thousand iron chariots beating on stones”. It was deafening. Stone facades exploded like bombs. Church steeples engulfed in flame toppled over onto streets and houses.

 

Booksellers lived in the vicinity of St. Paul’s Cathedral. They sold their wares in Paul’s Yard. Their parish church was St. Faith’s located under St. Paul’s church in the undercroft. They called it St. Faith’s under St. Paul’s. They took their presses, paper and books to St. Faith’s knowing with the massive pillars of Paul’s it would never burn. By the time the flames licked Paul’s outer walls, St. Faith’s was stuffed. St. Paul’s was filled with goods up to the choir loft.

St. Paul’s was in disrepair. Over time, the heavy, lead roof had spread its walls outward. Pillars were crumbling. Scaffolding supported some of the pillars and the outside of the church. Just a few days prior, a meeting had been held to discuss renovation of the building. 

The Burning of St. Paul's Cathedral

By 8 o’clock Tuesday evening (September 4), fiery debris had fallen on Paul’s roof. Shoddy repairs of timber caught and burned so hot, a gentleman who stood over a mile away saw the inferno.

“Large parts of the roof, both stone and burning timber fell in, and the Cathedral became a roaring cauldron of fire…”

“Molten lead dripped in silvery beads from the roof, raining down upon the broken stones and tombs that strewed the Cathedral floor, and there collecting, ran out into the streets in a stream.”

Paul’s choir and lower floor crashed into St. Faith’s. When St. Paul’s collapsed, the whole building exploded with an earsplitting roar. Burning papers and books sailed in the air, some of the pages landing miles away in the English countryside.

St. Paul’s was a mass of smoking ruins within an hour.

London after the fire. It poured beyond the old Roman walls into west London.

 

~*~*~*~

Many thanks to Wikicommons, public domain,

By Permission of Heaven, the True Story of the Great Fire of London, by Adrian Tinniswood, Riverhead Books, NY 2004

The Story of London’s Great Fire by Walter G. Bell, Butler & Tanner, Ltd., Frome and London, 1923

Outside my comfort zone by J. S. Marlo

J. S. Marlo BWL Author Page

What I’ll say next might surprise some people, but by nature, I am in introvert person. I don’t like crowds and I’m not comfortable speaking in public. When my publisher suggested I do a book signing for Voted Out at the local bookstore, I said, “Sure. Sounds like fun.” But deep down, I was scared. So I met with the manager, a wonderful lady named Jackie, a few months ago, and the first thing we did was to select a date. We picked last weekend Saturday March 24^th—as you can see I survived.

 

She ordered my books, which arrived in time for the signing, and told me she might be able to  arrange for an interview with the local newspaper and radio station. Again, I said, “Sure. Sounds like fun.” But deep down, I wasn’t just scared, I was now scared out of my wits. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans...they can go south in a heartbeat. An emergence arose for which I had to fly south on March 12^th and I wasn’t scheduled to fly back home until March 23^rd around suppertime. Then my returning flight was cancelled and I was re-booked on a later flight arriving at 11pm on the 23^rd amid the forecast of a snowstorm. The interviews never happened, but now I was terrified of missing my own book signing. Talk about irony!

Before I left, I had dropped posters at the bookstore so they could advertise the signing, and while I was gone I took care of some details. I had my nails done in romantic-murder-mystery theme, I got a sticky nametag with my name & logo, and I bought chocolate eggs for treats. I took all of these to the store along with business cards and novelty pens (pink, purple, and blue).

During the signing I was told it might help if I mingle with the customers, so lots of...Hello. How are you? What are you looking for? What do you like to read? Well, unless I was standing near my table, my nice nametag with my author name on it was mistaken for an employee tag. I received lots of requests for books and authors I had never heard of, but it also allowed me to suggest my book on a few occasions, and when I added I would also gladly sign it for them, they stared at me with a 'deer in headlights' look before asking, “You’re the author?” Then we would chat about everything, including my hair. Actually, many encounters started with a comment about my purple and blue hair. One lady even asked me to sign her book with the three pens so it would look like my hair. I wrote a lovely thank you for coming and nice chatting with you note inside her book, and each word was written in a different color. I regret not taking a picture...

90% of the people I met that day were strangers and I had an amazing time interacting with them. I was uncomfortable at first, but it got easier as the day when by. Some people came to chat without buying anything, some came to buy without chatting, and some came to chat and buy something. I was delighted to talk to all of them and I want to thank them all for coming and taking a few minutes to brighten my day.  It was so interesting and I had so much fun that I now wonder why on earth I was so scared.

See you next time!

JS

Note: I would also like to thank Jackie, Sarah, and all the staff at Coles in Fort McMurray for hosting my book signing. I couldn’t have done it without you!

 J. S. Marlo's Website