Welcome to February - the Month for Lovers

 

If you haven't visited our Canadian Historical Brides Blog 

February is the perfect month to meet all the Brides

Since February has long been regarded as the month for lovers, it seems only fitting that here at BWL we make this the month for celebrating our historical and time travel romances.

 

BWL PUBLISHING'S FEBRUARY RELEASES

Crafting conversations

She's lover shopping, and her new boss could never be the goods on her wish list

https://bookswelove/net/authors/brown-priscilla-romance 

My contemporary romances include quite a lot of dialogue which I always enjoy creating. Time spent working on a particularly significant exchange between the two main characters usually exceeds that taken when writing the appropriate same number of words for narrative.

An effective conversational exchange can move the story forward, divulge information including relevant elements of the characters' histories, illustrate personality, foreshadow events, generate tensions, and more. I like to think that one of the most important functions of dialogue is to establish communication from the characters to the reader. I want the reader to get to know them, their personalities and speech habits, to feel drawn into their world, to worry about them, love or hate them, laugh or cry with them.

When I've completed the first draft of a conversation, I read it aloud, listening for each character's word choice, sentence length and absence of complete sentences as is of course common in dialogue, tone, style, nuances. Do the speakers sound natural and distinctive from each other? (Or do they sound like me?!)  Is the conversation original?  Is the purpose of this conversation evident, or is it inconsequential chat? (Though sometimes 'chat'  has a place. In Class Act, Gina does talk a lot, and Lee jokes that she has a PhD in chatting.)  I must make clear who is speaking, so the reader doesn't have to pause to check or to re-read. Having fixed glitches obvious when read aloud, my critique partner reads it. Her comments reveal points needing attention which I hadn't spotted. Several drafts later, I'm able to construct a dialogue which satisfies me.

The lead characters in Class Act are experts in zippy repartee. In high school, Lee and Gina bounced banter off each other. Fifteen years later, with no in between contact, they've just started working together where he is the boss, and they're struggling to maintain the barrier between professional and personal. In this extract, Lee is playing saxophone in a jazz concert by the beach.

He unscrewed the wine, poured two glasses and handed one to her. "Only one for me." he said. "I've go to stay halfway sensible or I won't find my notes. You finish it."

 She took a sip."I really like this wine, but I wouldn't be able to walk back." 

"That's why I brought the blanket. The sand's soft, you can sleep on the beach."

"But the tide might come in and drown me, and I have to go to work tomorrow."

"I could tell your boss you've drowned."

"No, I wouldn't  dare not turn up." She shook her head. "You don't know my boss."

"Oh? Is he tall, dark and handsome? Tell me about him."

"He always needs a haircut, and he's fierce. I don't think he does any work because his desk looks like it's just come from the laundry, all clean, shiny and ironed. He just uses his office as a place to play the saxophone. I do all the work."

"What a lazy wretch. You should take your case to the fair work organisation."

"I already did. They said to have patience, because he's heading for an international career as a saxophonist, and then I can have his job."

He didn't respond. Had he taken seriously her last few words, that she wanted his job? She did, but not for a year or two. She glanced at him. Nah, no way was he thinking about work. His jewel eyes glowed. Their silver lights sparked, sending her a message in flashing neon. Trouble. Lee Wylde was going to be big big trouble tonight. Trouble she didn't know if she could handle. Or wanted to.

"Amazing how we still do it," he said softly.

"Do?" She wrenched her glance from the begging-to-be-touched wisps of black hair curling around the edges of his open shirtfront.

"Carry on like that. Like when were were at school."

Now I'm off to a cafe to do some secret eavesdropping, perhaps to add to my notes on conversations. 

Happy reading, Priscilla.

http://bwlpublishing.ca

https://priscillabrownauthor.com

P.S. I have no monkeys in any of my stories. I couldn't resist adding these two having a serious discussion.

 

Welcome to My Grandparents’ Village by Margaret Hanna

For Details and Purchase links for 

Our Bull's Loose In Town click this link

“Village of Meyronne and Hanna farm, ca. 1927"

I grew up on the farm that my grandparents, Abe and Addie Hanna, homesteaded in 1909 and in the farm house that they built in stages between 1917 and 1926. The village of Meyronne, Saskatchewan, only a quarter-mile south of the farmhouse, was carved out of the southwest corner of the farm when the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) came through in 1913.

Where is Meyronne? you ask.

The village – what is left of it – is situated on Highway 13 in southwestern Saskatchewan. The highway is officially known as the Redcoat Trail but it might be more correctly called the Ghost Town Trail. Drive along it and you are hard pressed to see many of the towns that used to exist. Now that almost every grain elevator is gone, what is left seems to disappear into the landscape. A few houses and trees. Possibly a church. Maybe an abandoned school or garage. Maybe a falling-in rink. Perhaps a gas station alongside the highway. Nothing more.

A hundred years ago, it was very different. Thanks to the Canadian government’s propaganda, everyone wanted a piece of Saskatchewan where all you had to do was throw the seed on the ground and sit back and wait for the bumper crop to put itself into the bins. Or so the brochures implied. The reality was somewhat different as the homesteaders soon discovered.

The place was booming. Farmsteads consisting of a house, barn, and granaries existed on almost every quarter-section. Towns were strung along the rail line like beads on a necklace, six to seven miles apart. Each town had elevators, churches, schools, town halls, hotels, banks and businesses, and upwards of 100 to 300 inhabitants, plus the surrounding farm population.

So many people settled in Saskatchewan in the early years of the 20^th century that some optimistic soul predicted the province’s population would soon reach 20 million!

Boy, was he wrong!

Today, Saskatchewan's population hovers just above 1 million. Most people live in cities. The surviving towns and villages are mere shadows of what they once were. They were emptied out as younger generations moved into cities where better education and job opportunities awaited.

I was one of those who left.

Meyronne has pretty much dried up and blown away. Only a few families still live there. Almost all lots are vacant.

“Meyronne Main Street, 1913"

It wasn’t always thus. At its height, in the late 1920s, about 350 people lived there. The village boasted three grocery stores, two hardware stores, a butcher shop, a druggist, three cafes (run by Chinese), a laundry (also run by Chinese), a shoe repair shop, a boarding house, two livery stables, three lumber yards, a post office, a pool hall, the Bank of Toronto, a blacksmith shop, three garages that sold either Chevrolet or Ford cars or Massey Harris farm equipment, a three-storey hotel complete with café and beer parlour, a lawyer, a doctor, the Royal North West Mount Police barracks, the CPR station, a confectionary (ice cream, anyone?), Knox Presbyterian (later United) Church, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, the public school, the separate (Catholic) school, the Memorial Rink with both skating ice and two curling sheets, a post office, a telephone office, five grain elevators, and a nursing home/hospital.  To the east was the sports ground, the cenotaph, and the cemeteries – one for the Presbyterians and one for the Catholics, well-separated by a fence.

Village and district gossip, as well as news from elsewhere, was disseminated via The Meyronne Independent, run by R. “Bobby” Johnson.

CPR Station, Meyronne, ca. 1920”

It was the junction of two CPR lines – one from Moose Jaw to Shaunavon, the other from Swift Current to Meyronne. The station master was busy with shipping and receiving freight, sending and receiving telegrams, and selling passenger tickets. The CPR section manager lived there; he monitored the rail lines and ensured the water tower and coal shed were full for the steam engines that passed through twice daily. Highway 13 ran through the centre of town.

It was a happening place.

Then came 1929. A combination of the depression and drought – the “Dirty Thirties” – hit  southwestern Saskatchewan particularly hard. It was essentially the end of Meyronne and many other villages in the area. The decline was slow but steady. By the 1950s, when I was growing up, the village was only a shadow of what it had been. It declined even more after Highway 13 was re-routed a half-mile north and when the CPR stopped, first, passenger service and eventually freight service. Today, only a few houses, the Catholic church and the cemetery remain.