Plotting with history’s constraints, by Diane Scott Lewis

 

 

Writing historical fiction is not for the disorganized. I intended to specialize in one century and prefer the eighteenth century. I read numerous books on that period in preparation. However, my first novel was so complicated, and covered such a long period, I had to create a chronology of the years people were born, died, had children, and so forth, so I’d know how old people were and what event in history might be in the background.

I relied on libraries and reference books I'd collected. I studied so much on this time-period, I can pick out inaccuracies in other authors’ works, but I’m sure I’ve made several myself.

Now, with the internet there are so many sites, blogs, and documents that cover the Georgian era, it's much simpler.

I had a superb on-line diary to consult, written by a man in the eighteenth century, which told of government activities, agriculture, when the price of sugar soared, and so on. Then the web hosting service, GeoCities, was discontinued, and I lost that valuable resource. If it’s in their Archives, I can’t find it.

I have post-it notes all over my computer and desk to remind me of things to add to my various novels. I send myself emails from my phone when an idea strikes me and I’m not home.

When I started my story on New Brunswick, I began with my usual method—a pantser not a planner. No outlines for me! I write by the seat of my pants, then I go back and see what my characters require, because now I know who they really are. For this novel, I read the history of the colony and decided where to place who and which events would shape the characters in 1784 and a couple of years beyond.

Often you write something, then discover it couldn’t have happened at that time. I’ll mention a city, then find it wasn’t developed until twenty years later. New Brunswick has long, harsh winters, and I needed to work around that. I’m originally from California, where things rarely freeze, so it was a learning experience for me, and my bride, Amelia, who comes over from Plymouth, England. And poor Amelia has no central heating, electric blankets, or other modern conveniences. She doesn’t know how to gut animals for eating, and there are no supermarkets with fresh food. Still, I like that my characters can’t grab a cell phone to call for help; they must learn to use their wits, develop courage, or perish.

Just recently I realized I couldn't use the fort I'd chosen for an assailant to have been stationed. It hadn't been built until twenty-two years after the "assault". I dove in for quick rewrites.

As my writing continued, more ideas came for the story arc: what huge event would rock her world, historical or otherwise?  Which man will catch her fancy and change her life?

I have websites bookmarked, a map on my desk, books stacked up, and Nancy Bell to help with all the research required to sound authentic.

 New Brunswick’s history is fascinating and I hope I gave the colony a proper showcase as well as keeping readers entertained.

 

 

For more info, please visit my BWL Author Page

or my website: www.dianescottlewis.org

Drawing Closer through Research

His Brother's Bride was a journey for me. The premise if based very roughly on my maternal grandparent's story. From my grandfather I learned compassion for all living things. He taught me how to pick up a bee in a cloth and set it free outside, and how to bathe kittens sore eyes with tea bags. Recently, I received my great-uncle's WWI records as well as my grandfather's. Seeing their Attestation Records with their signatures on it and the stark reality of the notation "missing after action" followed a week later by "killed in action" on Uncle Joe's papers highlighted how senseless war is for me. My grandfather was his only family, I can only imagine how Grampa felt when he got the letter from Uncle Joe's captain. Grampa was in France as well with the Train Corps where he was a Sapper.

I grew up on stories of life in the Ontario bush when my mother was a child. How the wolves would come to the door in the winter and scratch and howl. The black flies swarming in the early spring, neighbors falling through the lake ice while drawing wood, horses and people lost. Life was hard, but it was also good.

Below is a poem I wrote to honour my Grandfather.

Grampa P

I was young when you left us
But I remember still your quiet ways
The way you bore the scars of the Great War
That stole your health and your youth
Not to mention your brother, Joe

I have the pencil written letter on crumpled paper
From his captain telling you of his death
You never spoke of it or the war
I can still see you picking shrapnel from your cheek
As you stood at the sink shaving

You taught me by example
That all life is sacred
From you I learned to nurse the sick and wounded
Animal, plant and human
And how to catch a bee in a cloth against the window pane
Carry it to the door and let it fly free again

I was only young when you left us
But thirteen is old enough to remember you
And your ways and your lessons that weren’t meant as lessons
It was just you going about your life
You walk with me still

This is taken on the Sprucedale farm, my grandfather Herb Pritchard, my grandmother Lois holding my mother on her hip, Aggie St. George (my great grandmother) Lottie Hines (great aunt) and Capel St George (great grandfather)

Seeing their faces and reading my great grandfather's journals brings these people back to life. Research gives an opportunity to reach into the past and touch our roots. Both personal and humanity as a whole. I recently did a course on Hadrian's Wall and seeing the barracks of the Roman army and the aged solidity of items centuries old was profoundly spiritual for me. We are just a link in the chain that stretches behind us and ahead of us, like the stripes on a chipmunk's back that go from the head of his knowing to the tail of his remembering.

I do hope you enjoy my contribution to the Books We Love Canadian Historical Brides series. His Brother's Bride releases today! March 1, 2017. Please stay tuned to this blog for more enticing details about upcoming books in the series.

Now, for your reading enjoyment...A teaser from His Brother's Bride.

July 1st 1916 Dominion Day celebrations were a bit more subdued than previous years. The war to end all wars as H.G. Wells declared on August 14, 1914 was well into its second year of conflict. Luxury items were starting to become scarce. But in the small town of Eganville, Ontario on the Bonnechere River things weren’t as impacted as they were in larger centres.
The harvest promised to be a bumper crop this year, so optimism was high. Annie shoved her hat pin deeper into the nest of her hair, hoping to keep the new straw hat from coming adrift. She was crammed in the bed of the buckboard with her brothers and sisters. Except for Hetty, of course. Riding with a gaggle of siblings was beneath Hetty Baldwin newly betrothed to Clarence Hiram. Dust rose from the well-travelled road, everyone from the surrounding countryside seemed to be headed into town. She leaned over the side of the wagon and peered ahead. Thank goodness, they were almost there. Once Father found a strategic place to park the buckboard, Annie planned to slip away into the crowd and avoid being saddled with her younger sibling. Rotha was two years older than her and could take her turn looking after the little heathen.
On another note, Annie wanted to be out of earshot when Father clambered up onto the back of the wagon and began his hell fire and brimstone preaching. While she admired his convictions and his passion, it was more than a little embarrassing when he got so enraptured that spittle flew from his mouth. The wagon jolted to a halt and she hurried to disembark, being careful not to snag her full skirts on the heel of her new boots. She admired them for a moment before shaking her skirts down to cover all but the toe. It wouldn’t do for Mother to seize the opportunity to lecture her about vanity or showing her ankles.
Giving her skirts one last shake to remove the dust, Annie twisted the strings of the small crocheted purse securely around her wrist. Hetty’s high clear voice preceded her appearance prompting Annie to slip between two groups of gossiping older women and make good her escape from family responsibility. She grinned while putting more space between herself and the wagon. Surely Hetty’s voice could cut glass, given the chance. Stifling a giggle she wriggled past the crowded doorway into Arlo’s General Store. With her small hoard of pennies she purchased some licorice whips and peppermint sticks. Not wishing to linger and be discovered by her siblings who were sure to be headed in this direction, Annie left the establishment as unobtrusively as possible.

Till next time- stay well, be happy and keep reading!

Pioneer Women in Science

History is full of stories of men.  Powerful men; warriors, kings, champions, knights, explorers, and emperors.  The stories of women are so few - Catherine the Great, Hatshepsut, Elizabeth I, Cleopatra.

Male Scientists, leaders in their fields, and discoverers are plentiful as well.  In the man's world of science, for centuries women were either shut out, if they were allowed in it was hidden, or they masked their identities behind their husband.

Even in the 1950's, when the race was on to discover the very essence of what made life possible, the secret of DNA, women were looked down up; Watson and Crick were given all the credit for discovering the structure of DNA while many have never heard the name Rosalind Franklin.  Sure we know some names - Marie Curie being one of the most well-known, followed by Jane Goodall, but so many are relegated to the background, to obscurity.

Here are a few of Canada's Pioneers in the field of science.

Dr. Ernest Rutherford is a staple of chemistry textbooks, from high school through college level.  His gold foil experiments led to our understanding of the behavior of atoms.  Yet it wasn't until I was researching for this post that I came across Harriet Brooks, who was Canada’s first female nuclear physicist.  She worked alongside Rutherford as well as with Marie Curie.

Everyone knows that we have a polio vaccine.  Many know that Jonas Salk's work on the polio virus led to the vaccine.  But even in a microbiology class, I was never taught about Leone Norwood Farrell, whose work made it possible to mass produce Salk's vaccine.  Without her, the vaccine wouldn't have saved near as many lives.

In the field of paleontology, of the study of long dead (but once living things - like dinosaurs) there are tons of notable men, but few women.  I learned about Mary Leakey and Mary Anning in my Dinosaurs of the Mesozoic class because they were the exceptions to the male rule.  Canada boasts a woman who pioneered a new field in paleontology - the use of microscopes to examine tiny, microscopic fossils, the kind that can be used to tell an enormous amount about the changes of a landscape over millions of years.  That scientists is Frances Wagner.

Those are just a few of the big names ... 

There are also pioneers that didn't discover big things, that didn't start a totally new field of study - but instead pushed against the "no women allowed" belief and became the first in medicine - like Maude Abbott, who was among the first group of female medical students and who later went on to do pivotal work on congenital heart disease, or Carrie M. Derick, the first woman to be appointed a full professorship at a Canadian University and who works on our understanding of heredity.

If you, or a young female you know, is interested in learning about a career in the science field check out the Society of Canadian in Science and Technology.

If you are interested in learning more about the Pioneer Women in Science in Canada, check out these following articles.  There are so many more ... this is just a sampling.

Female Canadian Scientists

Five Canadian Trailblazers in Science

And Canada doesn't stand alone with women pioneers in science ... 

If you are interested in learning more about the Pioneer Women in Science (globally), check out these following articles.  There are so many more ... this is just a sampling.

Women Scientists Who Changed the World

Extraordinary Women in Science and Medicine (a former exhibit at the Glorier Club)

Female Science Pioneers

Celebrating Women in Science and Engineering

Celebrating the Work of Women Paleontologists

A little bit about Sprucedale, Ontario by Nancy M Bell

I thought some of you might like to learn a bit about the location where most of my story is set. Sprucedale, Ontario is a village in the Almaguin Highlands. It is located on Highway 518 12 kilometres from the Highway 11 corridor. The village is situated on the Park to Park Trail which connects Highway 11 to Highway 69 and follows the rail bed of the abandoned Parry Sound Exploratory Railway for 61 kilometers. The village was named for the formerly abundant stands of spruce and other conifers. Sprucedale is in the Municipality of McMurrich/Montieth in the Almaguin Highlands district of Parry Sound. My grandmother lived outside of the village on a farm. My mother was born on a part of the original St. George farm in a log cabin. The country is heavily treed with hard and soft wood bush, a mix of conifer and deciduous trees. Maple, oak, elm, spruce, pine and cedar.

This is the log cabin my mother was born in, still on the same farm but moved from its original location. It now serves as a sauna spa.

My grandparents, my uncle and my mother having supper on the front porch of the cabin in its original location.

The old school house my mother would have attended

The Sprucedale Train station. My great grandfather used to take cream cans into the station to be shipped to T Eaton Company in Toronto.

Fall colours. In late September and early October the Ontario bush is afire with the orange-red and gold of the maples flaming on the hills punctuated by the deep green of the conifers.

Winter snows come often and deep. In the early days it wasn't unusual to be snowbound for months at a time.

In summer the land is much kinder. Deep clear rivers and lakes invite the hot toiler in the fields to cool off. Long summer evenings where pioneers worked until the light faded completely. Although it is beautiful, it is also always testing. In late April and May the black flies swarm making life miserable for anyone who has to work outside. My grandfather used to smear oil or bear grease on the plow horses' faces and in their ears to keep them from being eaten alive. Once the weather heats up enough to kill off the black flies the mosquitoes emerge, followed by the huge deer flies and horse flies. Sand flies also come up out of the earth as the plow turns things over.

Typical bush scene.

One last photo to share with you. In front is my younger sister and myself. In the back is my grandmother Lois St George Pritchard, her sister Rotha St George Dennison, and her other sister Charlotte (Lottie) St George Hines. This was taken in Sprucedale on Aunt Lottie's front lawn around 1962. If you ever have the chance to visit Sprucedale and the surrounding area be sure to stop and enjoy the wonderful scenery. In winter snowmobilers flock to the area, as well as ice fishers. In summer, hikers and cottage goers come to enjoy the lakes and villages. Til next month, Stay well, stay happy, stay safe.