Why I love Writing Historical Fiction

I spoke to my sister-in-law the other day and she couldn't understand how I could write novels that required so much research. I said "I love the research." Digging out those little gems of history and daily life, how people dressed, what they ate. Did women really not wear underpants in the eighteenth century (my preferred time period)? They didn't! Apparently this made it easier for the women to use the necessary (toilet) with all those stiff layers of clothing.
A fact that shocked me: the English washed their clothing in urine. They used urine for its acidic properties. I learned that on a visit to Shakespeare's parents' farm in Stratford-upon-Avon.

When I wrote my first novel, now titled Escape the Revolution, I wrote the story before my research and had to change so much, but found I enjoyed ferreting out the details. In my tavern I had a bar. I discovered there weren't yet drinking bars in 1790, so I had to change it. Pot-boys scooped out ale or beer from barrels in the kitchen and poured the drink into tankards to be served directly to the table. I triple checked these facts.
I still find many famous authors who put bars in their stories long before they appeared in history (the Victorian age).
I love the challenge of getting my details right. Of putting my heroines in a situation where they can't whip out a Smartphone to call for help. They must use their wits. Nothing is simple without modern conveniences.

In the days before the Internet (Yes, young people, there were those days) I utilized the library system for my research. I lived near Washington DC and traveled there to the Library of Congress Reading Room, an excellent resource. I was fortunate to be able to use their comprehensive library.

How fast does a horse travel in one day? (about fifty miles). Marriage rules and restrictions, the calling of the banns. All these things you must take into consideration when writing historical fiction. There were odd customs/fashions for women, such as mouse-fur eyebrows, and when they lost their teeth, a cork ball was stuffed in the cheek to fill out the face. Early in the 18th c. men wore rouge on their lips and cheeks, huge wigs--as did women--and high heeled shoes.

In one novel, Rose's Precarious Quest, I had a character who was a doctor in 1796. I had to request rare books by a Dr. Hunter to gain knowledge from that era. I also came across a fantastic website put out by Colonial Williamsburg on eighteenth century medicine. Domestic Medicine. I learned about the humors of the body (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood) and how they must be regulated to keep one well. The strange, often deadly remedies (as in mercury and white lead) used to heal the sick. However, the poisonous Foxglove plant was turned into Digitalis to successfully treat heart disease.

For my Canadian Historical Brides story, On a Stormy Primeval Shore, I had to research the province of New Brunswick. I must applaud my wonderful research assistant, Nancy Bell, who found me reproductions of historical documents on the internet.
 I learned so much about who settled this territory, who the native tribes were, the Acadians, Germans, Scots, English and the Loyalist Americans who fled the American Revolution. The struggles these people went through in a harsh climate.

It's a good thing I love all these details, the thrill of research. However, it makes me a picky reader when I catch the historical mistakes made by other authors.

To purchase this book and my previous novels  Amazon and All Markets

For more information on me and my books, please visit my website: www.dianescottlewis.org

 

Diane Scott Lewis grew up in California, traveled the world with the navy, edited for magazines and an on-line publisher. She lives with her husband in Pennsylvania.

I Remember When....... by Victoria Chatham

For the month of June, we are repeating a topic that proved very popular this time last year. We all have our memories, but which ones stand out the most for you? Mine revolves around my first formal riding lesson on a pretty, dapple-grey pony called Greybird.  

My parents could never understand where my passion for horses came from. Neither of them was interested in the creatures that decorated the edges of my school notebooks and galloped through my dreams at night. I sat on my first pony when I was about five-years-old. We used to go to Cornwall to spend summers with my aunt and uncle and I was on the beach with the ponies every day. I walked behind the rides with a basket picking up after them, I fed them handfuls of hay and at the end of the day got to ride one back to the stables. There was never any question about where I was or what I was doing, and I loved those summers.  

Moving around as we did meant that we often were living nowhere near any riding stables but when I was eight-years-old we moved to Pembroke Dock, in South Wales. Here, as luck had it, I found a riding stable but, I think in an effort to discourage me, my parents insisted I earned my riding money by doing chores. I cleaned my dad’s army boots and the brass buttons on his uniform. I dusted and swept and dried dishes for my mum. I became an early recycler by collecting empty beer bottles but don’t recall now how much I got paid for the empties, probably one penny per bottle, but it all added up to the five shillings required for an actual riding lesson.

So, on a brilliant Saturday afternoon with the sun shining out of a clear blue sky, the grass in
the paddock beside a Norman church long and very green, and with Pembroke Castle across the river in the background, I was taught how to properly mount a saddled pony (very different to the handfuls of mane required to assist in hoisting myself onto a pony’s bare back) and everything that came after.

That day is as clear now as it ever was and, yes, I am still as passionate about horses as I was then. These days though, my riding is restricted to a gentle trail ride or two every summer. The days of dressage and what show jumping (never my favourite riding activity) I did are in the past but I still think and dream about horses and, because I write historical fiction, include them in every story I write.

http://books2read.com/Brides-of-Banff-Springs

www.victoriachatham.com

Did Someone Say Spring?

I love spring. 

photo © Janice Lang 

I hate spring. 

My feelings are about as ambivalent as the weather here in Central Connecticut. Winter is my least favorite season, so it goes without saying that come the Vernal Equinox, I should be jumping for joy. The days are longer (Daylight Savings Time notwithstanding). There’s even a change in the quality of the light, warmer, brighter. Snow drops and crocuses, which often make their first anxious appearance in late February (only to disappear again and again under mountains of wet, heavy snow) are now blooming. Finally. Daffodils and irises are forming buds. Peonies are pushing up through the soil. At this time of year, the snow doesn’t linger very long. Still nights can get pretty cold, making for treacherous walkies when the doggie needs to go out for her “last whizz” before bedtime.

As T.S. Eliot said in The Waste Land, “April is the cruelest month.” Being a Taurus and April-born, I used to take exception to that bit. But, no longer. In recent years, it’s as if Mother Nature can’t make up her mind. I remember Aprils with summer-like heat—90+ degrees—and Aprils when it seemed as if Old Man Winter was having too much fun to step aside. This year is the latter.

Of Mark Twain’s famous adage, “If you don’t like the weather in New England, wait five minutes” he knew what he was talking about. He lived for a time in Hartford, not far from our home. Speaking of Twain, he also said the following:

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours. It was I that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that marvelous collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all the climes. I said, “Don’t you do it; you come to New England on a favorable spring day.” I told him what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he came and he made his collection in four days. As to variety, why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to quantity—well, after he had picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor.

Come May, the weather should begin to settle down. We are gardeners here, grow veggies and herbs, some of the tender variety. So we wait until the last threat of frost is gone, usually by Memorial Day, at which time my husband optimistically opens the pool for the season. Some years we take a chance, if the temps are what we used to refer to as “seasonable” to plant our zucs and cukes, peas, tomatoes, and peppers a bit earlier. Alas, these early plantings are becoming a thing of the past.

Frankly, there is no such thing as spring in Connecticut of the kind I remember from childhood. We go from winter straight to summer. This always catches us off guard. One day we’re bundled in thermals and thick socks, boots and parkas, the next day we’re scrambling to find shorts, t-shirts and sandals.

My memories of spring from an earlier era are fond ones. My mother loved lilacs and planted them in a row along a rail fence in our yard. When ours bloom around Mother’s Day, the heavenly scent speaks to me in my mother’s voice. The colors of spring, that new green and the red and yellow casts around the maples and willows against an otherwise stark landscape make me nostalgic for my younger days when the seasons knew their place.

~*~

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire, Lord Esterleigh's Daughter, Courting the Devil, The Partisan's Wife, and The Return of Tachlanad, her latest release, an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her The Books We Love Authorpage or visit her website. All of Kathy’s books are available in e-book and in paperback from Amazon. Look for Where the River Narrows(Quebec), book 12 of the Canadian Historical Brides collection, with Ron Crouch, coming in July.

 

Would I Change Anything?

In thinking about this month’s topic, I find myself in a quandary about what to write. After a chaotic and frightening few weeks following Thanksgiving here in the U.S., I’m just thankful to be alive…at least for the immediate future. But nothing is ever guaranteed, and nothing in life really unfolds as we’d like it to. We can plan all we want, but can never count on the stars aligning in the right pattern, or that cosmic monkey wrench out of the blue dashing our dreams. Or those moments of real joy when the impossible is achieved and knowing that nothing will ever take them away.

Like everyone, I’ve made my share of mistakes, and rash choices. I’ve learned to live with them and find my footing on the new trajectory that unfolds, occasionally pausing to look back and ponder how different life would have been…if only. But what purpose does that serve?  I can’t change any of it and dwelling on it is not only stupid, it’s self-defeating.

I am who I am based on all I’ve done…mistakes and all. I do what I do—now, this moment—based on the choices I’ve made and road blocks I’ve faced, the battles I’ve fought, lost and won. I’ve arrived at this point in life because of the whole mishmash that has been the cumulative effect of every day, every moment I’ve lived.

I can’t say I would change a thing. To do so would make me someone else. I’m not sure I’d respect that person or be able to call her “me.”

Coming July 2018