Secrets from the past...by Sheila Claydon

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I've just read fellow BWL writer Susan Calder's blog post about near history and it took me right back to the time when I decided to research my family's past. The advent of the Internet has made this so much easier . No more trekking to city libraries or writing letters to the National Archives. Instead, information available at the click of a button, and so much of it.

I decided to start with my Father because the stories he told me as a child had always fascinated me. His own father, he said, was illegitimate, but because his very young parents were from rich families, possibly even nobility, his birth had been hushed up and he had been fostered by a Mr and Mrs Leigh, and educated until he was 14. This was at a time when most boys left school at 12 or even earlier. He was then apprenticed to a haberdasher, where he had to sleep under the shop counter at night. Of course my main aim was to find out who his parents were, and then I was going to try to track down the Leigh family. Well, what a surprise that turned out to be!

For a start I discovered that instead of being the Yorkshireman I had always thought he was, he was from Norfolk in East Anglia. So instead of my Father's northern vowels he would have spoken with what, to untuned ears, would have sounded like a rural accent.  The dialect of rural Norfolk is closely related to the accent of Eastern New England in the US, as many of the first settlers there were from Norfolk, whereas the Yorkshire accent is the closest we have to the Old Saxon language of the UK, with a good bit of Viking thrown in thanks to the Scandinavians who invaded England a very long time ago. To give you a flavour:

Standard English:  'How are you?'
Norfolk Dialect:      'Ar ya reet bor? How you gewin?' 
Yorkshire Dialect:   'How do?'

English dialects are not only fascinating but they change every twenty miles or so. Where I live on the north west coast I am assailed by up to half a dozen dialects on a daily basis, and if I travel just a few miles more I can up the count to about twenty. That, however, is a whole other story. Back to my grandfather. 

Having recovered from the shock of discovering that he was Norfolk born in the wonderfully named Little Snoring, a tiny hamlet of just a few houses, I then found out that he was brought up in Fakenham, a small town just a few miles away...by his grandparents!  Not by foster parents. And although his mother (my great-grandmother) didn't live with him because she was in service as a domestic servant, she saw him regularly. He had a brother too, older by 4 years, and also illegitimate. There is a whole other story there. Did she have a longstanding affair with a member of the local nobility? is that where part of the story came from? Was money made available for her children? I'll never know. 

What I do know, however, is that not only did my great-great grandparents bring him up but they educated him too because they could afford to on their own merits. I discovered that my great-great-grandfather owned a brick yard, and if you ever visit Norfolk and see how many old houses are built with red brick, you'll understand that he was quite well off. I've since seen the house and adjoining yard with its huge double gates, wide enough for a horse and cart laded with bricks to drive through.

Neither my grandfather's nor his brother's birth certificates named their father and despite a visit to Fakenham and to the Records Office in Norwich I failed to find any clues that might have led me to him. Nor did the Parish Chest (a repository for all sorts of documents relating to apprenticeships and other financial transactions) have anything of interest. I discovered, however, that a Drapers Apprenticeship was for 7 years and was only available to boys who could afford it, so I like to think that my great-great-grandfather stumped up the money for that too. 

I then discovered that, aged 21, my grandfather left Norfolk and travelled to London where, as a full member of the Draper's Guild, he worked in the city, and shared lodgings with a young man who worked with him. So far, so good, but the best bit was still to come.  I don't know when he met my grandmother but I do know they were married in Saint Margaret's Church, Westminster. This is in the grounds of Westminster Abbey on Parliament Square, London, and was, until the 1970s, the Anglican parish church of the British House of Commons. 

I have no idea whether you had to have important connections to be married in such an auspicious church, but I have since discovered that my Grandmother's father was a Professor of Music who had originally been in the Royal Hussars as a Band Master, so maybe it was a fancy wedding. What was more important though was the marriage certificate. By this time my great-great-grandparents were dead, as was my great-grandmother and two of her brothers, one of whom had never married. Whether he lived with his parents all his life I don't know, but I do know that he helped run the brick yard, so my grandfather would have probably seen this uncle almost daily. So what was he to do when asked to fill in his wedding certificate with the relevant details...certainly not own up to being illegitimate in front of his future father-in-law. Instead he put his uncle's name against father and next to it deceased. And under occupation owner brick yard. After all some of it was true, and everyone who knew the full truth was either dead or lived miles away, so no-one was ever going to discover his little lie. 

And then the Internet came along, and an inquisitive granddaughter! He died 15 years before I was born, but how I would love to know what made him tick. Why this stern and authoritarian Edwardian gentleman disowned his grandparents and mother, at least on paper. And how I would love to be able to tell my Father the true story too. Instead, one day I might use it as the basis of a book. In the meantime my book Remembering Rose has a different sort of hidden history...or as my writing colleague Susan Calder might say...near history. 

Inspirations

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I'm happy to report that I'm deep in the world of my second American Civil War Brides novel.  Seven Aprils' bride was Tess,  Book 2: Mercies of the Fallen's bride is Ursula. 

The title is inspired by Dar Williams' hauntingly beautiful song Mercy of the Fallen which begins...

Oh my fair North Star, I have held to you dearly,

I had asked you to steer me, 

Till one cloud-scattered night, 

I got lost...

Here are some of the images that inspire me as I write.  My hero Rowan is a sergeant in a New York Zouave regiment.  I love the Zouave uniforms... finding them dashing and colorful and comfortable, being of light weight cloth and easy to move in.  Regiments of both the South and the North wore them.

Zouave soldier 

I even found a photograph of a soldier who looked like my Rowan...

...although my husband spied this Civil War era photo and proclaimed I was actually inspired by our friend Paul in his youth, what do you think?

...hmmm, separated at birth?

My hero and heroine are both lost and damaged souls.  So I am looking to a couple of people I know to inspire the creation of supporting characters to bright some lightness to the novel.  

One is my dear cousin Monique, a delightful force of nature, full of what the French call joie de vivre. She is inspiring the character of Marie Madeline, a French Canadian wonder who, along with her two sisters helped raise Rowan into the loving, generous man that he is, despite his rough start as a survivor of An Gorta Mor, the Great Hunger in Ireland.  Here's my wonderful cousin and me...

be warned: if I'm looking at you like this, you're going to end up in one of my novels!

Another relative is helping me form my heroine's brother Jonathan, who is determined to see her free and n the road to finding her happiness.  He is a goofy, impatient matchmaker and I drew from my delightful, goofy son-in-law Teddy who loves winter and takes down Christmas trees with relish!

I hope you are finding inspirations daily!

What is Near HIstory?

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When my son was at university, he took a course in Canadian History. His final essay explored the 1968 federal election, which catapulted Pierre Trudeau to prime minister. I thought, this is history? It's my life. I was a teenager at the time and vividly recall myself and much of country getting swept away by the charming, sexy intellectual who breathed fresh air into the political establishment.

Trudeaumania

Recently, I heard the term Near History, for events that happened during your own, your parents' or your grandparents' lifetime, depending on your age. Many loosely define the period as mid-twentieth century, but the time frame seems to be creeping closer to the present day. At a writing event I attended this spring, an author noted that his novels set in the 1970s were borderline historical. He joked this was good for sales, since historical fiction is a popular genre. A few weeks later, I saw a call for submissions for historical stories. The magazine defined this as anything happening before 1996.

Why 1996? I wondered, although this was an important year for me. I moved from Montreal to Calgary that summer and my family got dial-up Internet. And the Net might be why the magazine chose that cut-off year. The Internet changed the world. Even those of us who spent our younger years in pre-cyberspace can hardly imagine life without it.

What are the benefits and challenges for writers working in the relatively recent past? While most of my writing is contemporary, I've written a short story set in 1976 and attempted one set in the 1930s. 

An obvious benefit of writing history you've lived or heard about from older relatives is that it requires less research. Many facts and emotions of the time are part of your consciousness. You're more likely to get them right. Near history might even be easier to write than contemporary stories, since your heightened memories have had decades to gel and assume meaning. You'll attract older readers looking for nostalgia and insight into the pivotal time of their youths. Younger readers might be interested to learn more about their parents' and grandparents' lives. 

The challenge is to make the story fresh and relevant to readers today. There's also a real risk that a reader who lived through the time will spot a mistake that will ruin their belief in your whole story. True, a historian or other expert might notice your error about Ancient Rome, but no living Roman will catch a detail or way of thinking or feeling that has been lost to time. 

Although the benefits seem to outweigh the challenges, I'll probably stick with writing contemporary fiction, for the most part. One the other hand, I'm writing my current novel-in-progress with chapters alternating between 2020 and the early 1990s. By some people's reckoning, 1990 is history.  

Pierre Trudeau slides down a banister in 1968 - will his son experience a slide in next month's Canadian federal election? 

  

Queen in 1990 - I loved Bohemian Rhapsody, last year's movie about the rock group Queen.

Family Histories by Karla Stover

                           


I belong to the D.A.R. on both sides of my family and love family histories. Of course, mine is special. 😊 On my dad's side, one of the great grandfathers harbored Jessie James and not long after, moved to southeast Oregon. The family homesteaded Warner Valley, owned all the water rights, and spent 20 years and all their money in court fighting off owners of the MC Cattle Ranch who wanted to take over the valley. My maternal great grandmother arrived from Cornwall on the 4th of July, heard the fireworks, and thought the Indians were attacking. Whenever her daughters came to Puget Sound to visit their sister, my grandmother who had relocated, they wrote first asking if the Indians were still peaceful. Anyway, the great grandparents settled in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and had quite a few children, mostly girls. Both sides of the family survived the 1889 Johnstown flood and my grandparents talked about it often. Maternal great grandmother led her children out an attic window and rode out the flood on the roof of the house. They were lucky in that a big barn floating by got lodged somehow so the house was saved. After the flood, paternal great-grandfather was walking by the river looking for survivors when he found a little girl named Bessie Sypes. He took her back to her father who had been telling folks, "we were all saved except little Bessie." Bessie never spoke again. Lucky me, my parents wrote all the family histories down.

Now, all this is by way of a conundrum I have. I live about five miles from a lake and a little community, both called Spanaway. And living on the lake is a 90-year-old woman who has been there all her life and wants someone to write her history. I could go over with a tape recorder, listen to what she has to say, and then type it up. But I don't want to and I feel guilty. It's such a shame that parents don't take the time to do this or that their children aren't interested until it's too late. If nothing else, talking to family has told me which funky genes (heart and low iron on Dad's side and lung and Alzheimer on Mom's side) came from whom. Unless they were the result of spontaneous mutations, like Queen Victoria's hemophilia.

Stephen King: My Favorite Teacher by Joan Hall Hovey

 

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     The year was 1984, a lovely summer’s day and I was sitting in the packed, buzzed audience waiting for Stephen King to appear.  To say I was excited is an understatement. Uncool? Totally. I’d bought my hardcover copy of his book Different Seasons for him to sign.  I wouldn’t be denied. I had all his books in hardcover – Carrie, Cycle of the Werewolf, Danse Macabre, Salem’s Lot -  there would be  many more to come. He was my hero in a time when I was already much too old to be star-struck.  I’ve read that it is mainly teenagers who are addicted to Stephen King’s work, and I was hardly that.  Though probably immature.  I’m at a much more more advanced age now and that hasn’t changed, and I hope it never does.  Stephen King was  the Elvis Presley of the literary world.

     I hadn’t had a novel published yet; that was still a dream, floating somewhere above the horizon. But I’d written and published some articles and short stories, enough to make me eligible for a travel grant through the NB Arts Council to London, England to the writers workshop at Polytechnic Institution  on Marylebone Road, aptly across the street from Madam Tussauds wax museum.  Stephen King would be a panelist, along with authors P.D. James, Robert Parker and some others.  I was eager to hear all the celebrated authors, but I’d flown all this way from New Brunswick, Canada to see and hear Mr. King.  

     He came into the large room through the back door and I swear I knew the instant he did.  You couldn’t miss the rising buzz of the audience, of course, the shifting of bodies as people turned to look, but I also felt the change of energy in the air. On stage, Stephen King joked about his ‘big writing engine’ and I had heard (within my third eye – yes, it can hear) its power, its purr.   Or maybe there’s more to it.

     As he talked to us about writing, he spoke about seeing with that third eye.  The eye of the imagination.  He told us to imagine a chair.  Then he said it was a blue chair.  I saw it clearer now.  He added the detail of a paint blister on the leg of the chair.  Now I saw it close up, with my zoom lens.  We hung on his every word.  He was funny and brilliant and entertaining, and we learned. Everything he said was not necessarily something brand new, but were reminders to pay close attention to details.  To always tell the truth in our writing.  I even got to ask a couple of questions.   And his answers to all our questions were thoughtful and insightful.   I try to pass along a few of those lessons to my own students.

     Stephen King has been teaching creative writing to aspiring and even established writers for decades, long before his wonderful book On Writing came out.  Such a gift to writers that is, regardless of the genre you write in.   I am gushing.  I don’t mind. It’s true.

     I have been fortunate to have had many highlights in my life –  an anniversary trip to Niagara Falls with my wonderful husband, the births of my children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren – a trip to the Bahamas with my eldest son – my own first novel published and several more after that - and I have to say that that workshop in London, England, where Stephen King spoke to us about writing, is right up there.  Thank you, Mr. King. 

     I want to leave you with a quote from an interview with contributing writing for the Atlantic, Jessica Lahey, published in The Atlantic,  Sept  2014.  She asked him if teaching was craft or art.
“It’s both,” he said.  “The best teachers are artists.

     Stephen King is an artist on every level.   He tells the truth.  In his fiction.  And in his teachings.

How do you get in the mood? By Rita Karnopp

How do you get in the mood?  By Rita Karnopp

Has it occurred to you that when you ‘feel’ like writing you do some of your best work?  I’m all about ‘setting the mood.’

 

How do you set the mood for writing – you might ask?

 

Surprisingly, it’s one of the easies and most rewarding thing you can do for your writing career. 

 

I believe we are in one of two states-of-mind.  #1 is our usual state-of-mind - the employee, the mother, the baseball coach, the wife, the craft master, or the confidant.  And #2 is the creative state-of-mind.

 

How do you flip the switch – you might ask?

First-of-all be aware of your state-of-mind.  If you can’t seem to concentrate because you can’t turn-off your usual state-of-mind – it will be a struggle for sure.  You must decide there is a time for your regular life and you deserve a time for your creative life.

 

Let everyone around you know when you are writing – that is your time.  Unless the house is on fire – do not disturb!  You must not only convince your family and friends of this – but you must also convince yourself you deserve this time to yourself.

 

I often told my family (then the kids were young – and the husband was new to the idea of my writing), I write for me.  All the other stuff I do for them – but I deserve some time for me.  They go it … and finally so did I.

 

Now that you’re in the right state-of-mind – what next?  Turn off all responsibilities – demands – obligations - and relax … it’s time to write.  My rule of thumb, after years of developing ways to ‘get me in the mood’ – to write – is to set the atmosphere first-of-all.

 

When I write – say 1800s historical – I read 1800s novels and historical documentary books.  I watch 1800s movies and documentaries.  I self-absorb myself in the 1800s – and sometimes it’s almost hard to snap back into the current year.

 

When I was writing White Berry on the Red Willow – I was so self-absorbed it felt like the future – and I struggled to come up for air.  Some may say this is extreme – but it’s normal for me.

I also ‘get in the mood’ by shifting my music or by playing 1800s video as background ‘mood’ ambiance.  I’m writing a scene in a Blackfoot village and Douglas Spotted Eagle is playing his flute or the Last of the Mohicans’s soundtrack is intensifying in the background will my hero races across an open field … two Blackfeet hell-bent on his heels.

 

Creating mood is so important … it keeps you in-tune with your surroundings … and the book take life because you can smell the trees pine pitch, or you can hear the rustle of the leaves in the trees, or you can taste the buffalo stew, or feel the softness of a ermine lined boot, plus you can see ahead two buffalo skinners who deserve the wrath of the Blackfeet behind him. 

 

Once you lock into the five sense of your story … it will take off like a wild fire.  You are surrounded with your character’s dialog and the action surrounding them.  Nothing else exists …and your fingers fly across the keyboard documenting everything they see, hear, feel, taste, and say.

 

I personally call this moment a ‘writer’s surge.  If you’ve never had one – you’re in for a treat when it happens.   I might venture to add – nothing is more exciting than a writer’s surge!  Nothing!

 

Never stop to correct grammar, sentence structure – the time for editing, revising, or proofreading your scenes is later. Get a drink later and never stop for a minute or so to check you emails.  Any disruption, break, pause, or intrusion –will snap you from the scene you’re writing – you’re snapped from the scene like a blast of cold air from an opened door in the middle of a blizzard.  The ‘mood’ is over!

 

A ghost on a military base? by J. S. Marlo

J. S. Marlo BWL Author Page

During the Second World War, HMCS Cornwallis (later renamed CFB Cornwallis) was the largest naval training base in the British Commonwealth. Built on the southern shore of the Annapolis Basin in Nova Scotia and commissioned in 1942, the military training base closed in 1994.

In the late 1980s, my husband and I enjoyed a three-year posting at CFB Cornwallis. During that time, we attended many functions inside the Officers' Mess. It was a beautiful building (pic on the left), rich in history, and haunted by the ghost of a young woman. I was fascinated by the sad story of that young woman who allegedly hanged herself in one of the upstairs bedrooms after her lover, a sailor in the British Navy during World War II, abandoned her to go back to his wife.

The legend of her ghost was very much alive. While I didn’t know of anyone who had ever seen her, there were reports of strange activities inside the Mess, but was her ghost really roaming the Officers' Mess and only showing herself to unfaithful married men?

Despite all the research I did, I couldn’t find any evidence that a woman ever killed herself inside the Mess, but the basement of the Base Commander’s Residence did shelter grave markers. The dead no longer rest in the basement, their remains were moved to a different burial site, but two of the markers still stand side by side, each engraved with the names of two young children. The four siblings—Edward (1 month), Amelia (1 yr & 6 months), Gilbert (3 yrs), and W.C. (3 yrs)—died between 1850 and 1858.

The legend of the ghost and the grave markers inspired me to write Misguided Honor, my latest novel which was released last week.

In Misguided Honor, Becca Shea sneaks into Cornwallis and travels back in time to 1941 where she meets the young heart-broken woman in the days leading up to her tragic death.

To bring the story of the ghost to life, I took some liberties with history. Among other things, I gave Cornwallis a fictional past as a private shipyard, moved the buildings around, changed their layouts, and delayed the closure of the base. I wish I had unearthed the origin of the legend, and though I didn't, I'm convinced something dreadful happened a long time ago in the Officers' Mess—or else the legend wouldn't have been born.

Happy reading!

JS

 J. S. Marlo's Website

Many Thanks to Worcester Resident, Randy Bloom

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As mentioned in last month’s newsletter, I’ve been researching Worcester history and the neighborhood in which some of the characters in the sequel would have worked and lived as domestic servants. Randy Bloom, a long time resident of the Crown Hill historic district of Worcester generously opened his 1856 home to me for a private two-hour tour.

Like the residents before him, Randy has kept the interior of his home true to its original. What a treat it was to meander through all those rooms – three floors in the main house plus a two-story carriage house – taking the original gas lighting fixtures and coal burning fireplaces, reproduction wallpaper perfectly replicating the original, the floor-to-ceiling windows and the French doors leading from the parlor to a glassed-in porch, which in the 1850s was use as a greenhouse to lengthen the growing season and as a solar collector to add warmth to the porch and parlor in the colder months.

As I walked through the house and grounds, I was struck with inspiration for exactly how this house will fit into the sequel. I’m not telling, though – no spoilers here!

Again, my gratitude to Randy for his generous hospitality!

Original gas lighting fixture in the dining room. The extra gas jet (visible at front center) allowed for an attached rubber tube to hang down and connect with a gas lamp in the center of the table.

Kindling and coal were burned in the basket at the front of this fireplace. Though the mantel and surround appear to be marble they are really soapstone painted to look like marble right down to the gold veining.