A friend once asked if something could be considered art if nobody saw it. It’s an interesting question, one easily transferred to writing. Is writing “legit” only if it transmits an idea to someone else? If so, how many readers are necessary to support that definition? Is there a threshold number of readers needed to validate a work?

The word “validate” brings up another nagging question. For most writers, writing seldom yields financial compensation equal to the time and focus it requires. Sometimes, it’s hard to justify diverting so much attention away from other “useful” endeavors. At what point does taking time to write become self-indulgent?

I want people to read what I write. Writing is meant to communicate. It longs to communicate. Ultimately, though, I believe there’s value in the birth of the idea, that moment where thought is given tangible form through solid word. It’s the creation that counts rather than what happens next.

I need to write for other reasons as well. Writing helps me navigate the world. It’s how I interpret what I experience. NOT writing is like blocking one of my senses. We all have a super-power like this, a filter that helps us process information. It can be music, art, even math. Whatever it is, it’s inherent to who we are and how we deal with our surroundings. That can mean everything from helping us understand to giving us a way to blow off steam or cut through anxiety. (You do not want to meet me in the wild when I’ve truncated my blow-off-steam safety valve by not writing.)

I’ve given myself permission to write again not only because of what it brings to me but because of what it helps me pour back into the world. I learned a long time ago that I’m hardly unusual–if I’m thinking something, there are other people out there who are thinking it, too. If my writing touches even one person at the right time, that can be enough incentive to keep going.

Of course, nothing can happen at all unless a thought is given expression. Fortunately, that’s the one part of writing I can control.

I write journals. Year after year, the stacks of filled notebooks on my closet shelf grow taller, leaning into each other until I’m forced to start another pile. This stash doesn’t even include my high school journals, which I burned before leaving for college. (No regrets. A person can only stand so much embarrassment.)

My journals are a safe place to vent, float ideas, work through issues. They allow me to write honestly about my experiences. But what happens to these volumes when I’m gone? Do I really want anyone reading them when I’m not available to explain myself? At least I’m relatively anonymous; nobody outside my immediate family will care about the words I leave behind, so there’s not much worry about a public airing of my private thoughts.

Other journal writers are not so lucky.

“This book, Momma gave me, that I might write the journal of my journey to Wales in it.” This debut journal entry was penned in 1832 by thirteen-year-old Alexandrina Victoria of Kent. Young Drina found journaling so much to her liking that her last journal entry was written ten days before her death at the age of eighty-one. Drina’s chances of posthumous journal anonymity died the moment she became Queen Victoria of Great Britain.

Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria wrote prodigiously, her gushy, emotional voice changing little throughout the years. She was a fan of underlining and multiple exclamation points, and many of her entries are illustrated with her own (quite good) sketches. Her journals offer first-hand accounts of historical world events and political figures, but equally fascinating is the intimate view of key moments in a woman’s life. In the privacy of her journal, the queen becomes less Victoria Regina and more Drina, imbuing the flat historical data of her life with a strong dose of humanity. Meeting Albert, the first cousin who became the love of her life, inspires a paragraph that might be describing a minor deity. (Poor Prince Alexander of the Netherlands, another suitor, has to settle for “very plain.”) The infatuation with Albert is still going strong in October 1839: “It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert – who is beautiful! my [sic] heart is quite going.” One feels like an intruder reading Victoria’s account of the evening following her wedding: “10 February 1840. I never, never spent such an evening! My dearest, dearest, dear Albert!” The next morning’s entry offers yet another opportunity for a reader to feel like a clumsy interloper: “11 February 1840. When day dawned (for we did not sleep much) and I beheld that beautiful angelic face by my side, it was more than I can express! He does look so beautiful in his shirt, only, with his beautiful throat seen.” Victoria’s journals give us a chance to glimpse the personality behind the icon, which introduces a whole new facet to historical perspective.

Queen Victoria’s children in costume, as sketched by their mother

Victoria’s journals span sixty-nine years. But even more intriguing than what’s contained in the journals is what is not. Victoria, too, questioned the fate of her journals after her death. She appointed her youngest child, Beatrice, as literary executor, instructing her to remove anything from the journals that might offend or embarrass the royal family. Beatrice took the job seriously, copying a verbatim draft of each journal page in longhand, then copying a redacted version of her new draft and finally destroying both the original and the first copied draft as she went along. It took thirty years to whittle Victoria’s original 122 volumes to 111, which really does make one wonder what exactly Beatrice read that made her demolish such large passages of her mother’s writing, especially considering the spicy bits left behind.

Redacted or not, leaving journals behind with no way to discuss them is an act of bravery. And I really do need to figure out what exactly to do with the nearly forty-seven volumes of my own …

There’s a new stack of handwritten notebooks sitting in my home office. My mother passed away at the end of September, and these are her memoirs, waiting to be read. Did she mean for us to read them all? Did she ever worry about what we’d think?

I will read with an open heart.

NOTE: In 2012, in conjunction with Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebration, Queen Victoria’s personal journals were scanned and made available online in a collaborative project between the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford, ProQuest, and the Royal Archives. More information is available here.

Victoria who?

Back in 1872, when Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to run for President of the United States, nobody would have asked that question. Considered a visionary by some, a “she-devil” by others, Victoria had acquired quite a reputation by the time she was nominated by the Equal Rights Party. She’d been born poor in rural Ohio, the daughter of a con artist and a fanatic spiritualist, and she lived exactly the sort of peripatetic life those beginnings imply. Social activist, stockbroker, newspaper editor, suffragette, spiritualist (many would add prostitute, con artist, and fraud), Victoria got around.

Victoria Woodhull

It would take more than one blog post to do justice to Victoria and her vivid existence. Her relevance to me, however, is more easily defined: my novel, Newport, was inspired by an incident in her life that took place during her spiritualist phase.

Victoria and her younger sister Tennessee had spent much of their childhoods traveling in the Claflin family medicine show, promoted by their father as fortune-tellers and psychic healers. Victoria grew into adulthood claiming an ability to communicate with the dead. This communication grew particularly lucrative in 1866 when, at the insistence of her “spirit guide (the Greek statesman Demosthenes),” Victoria relocated to New York City to join her sister, who was already there. It was in New York that Victoria and Tennessee caught the biggest fish of their spiritualist careers: Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of the richest men in the country.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

The sisters met Commodore Vanderbilt at just the right time. Still mourning the loss of his wife, Vanderbilt was between spiritualists. His old one had made so much money getting rid of the two spirits the old man feared were haunting him that she could retire to Vermont, leaving the path free and clear for a new medium. Victoria and Tennie began hosting seances to ease Vanderbilt’s pains, both psychic and physical. Victoria channeled not only messages from Vanderbilt’s other-world mother and children, but stock tips from the great beyond. (Never mind that “the great beyond” was probably her friend Josie Mansfield, who was the mistress of one of Vanderbilt’s business rivals.) The tips worked so well that when Vanderbilt was asked about his stock market success, he replied, “Do as I do, consult the spirits.”

In the long run, the arrangement proved fortuitous for all parties involved. The sisters got the financial backing they needed to open the first female-run brokerage on Wall Street; Cornelius’s broken heart (and many other ailments) were soothed not only by Victoria’s seances, but by Tennie, with whom he had an affair.

Reading about this a few years ago made me think. At what point do people who grieve become so desperate that they’ll believe anything? What besides greed motivates the medium? Or …what if the medium is legit, and the messages delivered from “beyond” are real? Once the questions began flowing, characters, setting, and plot fell into place, and Newport was up and running.

Of course, Newport has many other plot points. But those who have read the book will recognize how this chapter from Victoria’s life impacted the story.

Who’s to say what will trigger inspiration for a book? Almost any tidbit or event will do, and once ignited, the writing process takes on a life of its own. Sometimes, the flow of ideas can feel like a gift from another realm. So, maybe I should add “muse” to Victoria Woodhull’s long list of professions.

Rumor had it that after Cornelius Vanderbilt’s death, his heirs paid Victoria and Tennessee to go away. If so, the money came at a good time. Recently divorced and exhausted, Victoria left for England, where she became a lecturer and magazine publisher. She married again and lived fairly respectably until her death in 1927 at the age of 88.

Victoria Woodhull was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2001. You can read a little more about her here.

Woodhull for President

I longed for the glow of accomplishment. I wanted my mind to run free while I organized my world. So, for my first big project, I decided to clean the basement. I figured I’d give it a good three or four days and then move on. Because after fifteen years of living in the same house, after using the basement as a storage bin for two kids who have grown up and moved away, after years and years of “staging” stuff down there until we could figure out where to put it all, “three or four days” would certainly to do the trick. Doesn’t that sound reasonable?

And I hadn’t even factored in the impact of “real life” on best-laid plans.

Those few weeks away from writing were essentially all spent in my basement. I learned quite a bit down there as I revisited memories, wondered how certain items had ever ended up in our house in the first place, mused over what the heck various objects even were. Primarily I learned that, as with grief, there are five stages to a major basement-overhaul:

1. OPTIMISM: You’ve got this! All it will take is some can-do woman-power and your own superior organizational skills!

2. BEWILDERMENT: How did it get this bad? Where the heck did all this dreck come from?

3. DESPAIR: It’s going to take a backhoe. There’s more stuff in here than archaeologists find when unearthing the remnants of ancient civilizations.

4. ANGER: This isn’t your fault. It’s not even your stuff. Your significant other just tosses crap anywhere he pleases with no thought of who will have to clean it up later. Your kids may have moved on, but their life souvenirs remain for eternity. And where are all these people now? Why, they’re out having lives while you toil over their mess, not seeing sunlight for days on end.

5. ACCEPTANCE: Whatever. Who cares. Just sh9ve that junk into a different corner and move on.

Weeks later, the basement is nearly finished. The trash guys hate me, and Goodwill plans to name a store after us. But I was right about one thing: my manuscript needed this break. I can see what needs to be fixed, and I’m ready to jump back in.

Happy New Year to all. May 2016 bring you health, happiness, and clarity.

I have a manuscript box like that. Stashed in a dark part of the basement, it’s filled with stories that, through no fault of their own, just … well … stink. Yeah, I wrote them. At one time, I even thought they were good.

Thank goodness we all get a chance to evolve.

Looking back, my writing has always been character-driven, especially if you consider a character sufficiently developed when he/she can be summed up in a word or two, as in “the sassy one”; “the troubled one”; “the one who surprises even herself.” (My earlier work is more accessible if you like stereotypes.)

You could always tell exactly how my characters were feeling, because the adverbs attached to the dialogue tags told you so. Readers were subjected to a lot of stuff like “she said questioningly,” and “he said evocatively.” If it still wasn’t obvious enough, there were many different ways to “say” things. Characters purred, chirped, and grunted. It was a regular zoo in each chapter. And, to make sure there was no doubt whatsoever, sometimes the dialogue tags were double-barreled, a fun reading experience for everyone: “she whimpered miserably,” “he snarled angrily,” “she commented pertly.” Dialogue tags, meant to be unobtrusive, were prominent enough to become their very own characters.

Plots were linear. Sure, there were stories to tell, but they lacked depth. Sometimes there was no hook, no compelling reason for anyone to want to turn the page to discover what happened next. Basically, I was writing for myself. Self-indulgent? You bet. Awful? Right again. And, yet, those stories still have a special place in my heart. Those characters and I were friends.

There are some manuscripts a writer puts away knowing that they’ll be back. The plot, although in need of editing, is compelling enough to revisit. The characters have something to say. When the time is right, that manuscript will be revisited and edited into something sharp and readable.

The manuscripts in the box downstairs are not those stories. There’s a reason they live deep in the basement, out of sight.

If I remember my Rudolph correctly, the inhabitants of the Island of Misfit Toys are eventually picked up by Santa and delivered to children who will appreciate them. While nothing quite as heartwarming happens on the Island of Misfit Manuscripts, those early drafts do serve a purpose. Every once in a while, almost by mistake, I wrote a description or phrase back then that was actually good. There was effective use of imagery. There was a character who does not inspire cringing and/or eye-rolls. Like old cars that have outlasted their use, these old manuscripts can be mined for “parts” to use in newer stories.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling frustrated with my current manuscript, I re-read one of my oldies-but-baddies. It never fails to make me feel better.

I don’t hate the internet, but neither do I believe it’s particularly good for me. If I’m on it for too long, I actually feel a little sick. I appreciate that, because it lets me know when enough is enough. It keeps me from getting sucked in.

Everybody has their own tolerance level where the internet is concerned, and I realize that mine is fairly low. Still, my mind is so much clearer when I pay attention to my limitations.

Here are some of the boundaries that seem to apply to me:

• The internet is awesome for research, absolutely amazing. But it doesn’t beat physically wandering through the setting for a book (when possible) or visiting libraries and other relevant sites. Tactile research remains the most satisfying.
• The internet lets you stay in touch and track down people you may never have found otherwise, which is a good thing. But it also makes it easier to blur the lines between acquaintanceship, friendship, and relationship.
• The internet is wonderful for business communications. Quick and to the point, it just makes sense. It’s not as great with social conversations. Without access to facial expressions and vocal inflections to help put words in context, it’s easy to misinterpret.
• The internet can breed a lack of accountability. Because there’s no need to actually face physical reactions, people say things online that they would never say to a real, live person. That’s too bad, because real, live feelings still get hurt.

Sometimes, “faster” isn’t “better.” My weeks away from the computer reminded me how much I love writing my original chapter drafts in longhand. The connection between mind and hand as ink flows onto legal pad feels vital. The slower pace allows me the time I need to record the scene unfolding before me. It makes writing a journey rather than a destination.

It’s loud online. With everybody thronging to social media platforms, how can most of us expect to be heard? Trying to stay relevant in the midst of the noise can be one of the most isolating experiences ever. Still, I know I can’t hide. I have to come back. This time, though, I hope to make use of the ways the internet works for me and jettison the rest.

And I’m stocking up on legal pads.

I’ve been asked one particular question several times now, and it’s one I never anticipated: “Is Liriodendron real?” The answer is a resounding “Sort of.”

For those who haven’t read NEWPORT, Liriodendron is the Chapman family’s “summer cottage,” the mansion where most of the novel takes place. It occupies a prime spot of oceanfront real estate, but you’ll never find it on a map. Its location is deliberately blurry because, no, Liriodendron does not exist in Newport, Rhode Island.

It does, however, exist in Bel Air, Maryland.

Although Bel Air’s Liriodendron has been described as “belonging on the cliffs of Newport…,” the real and fictitious mansions only superficially resemble each other. Both were designed and constructed around the same time (1897-1898), but by different sorts of people for different reasons. Bel Air’s Liriodendron was the summer residence of Dr. Howard A. Kelly, one of the “Big Four” founding physicians of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Born in New Jersey and educated at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Kelly specialized in gynecology and obstetrics. During most of the year he, his wife Laetitia, and their nine children lived at 1406 Eutaw Place in Baltimore City. As the heat of summer descended, however, they decamped for Bel Air, where the temperatures were cooler. Unlike a gilded Newport summer, a grand season of over-indulgence and society did not await. For the Kelly family, Liriodendron was more of a family getaway than a place to “be seen.”

Designed by Baltimore architects Wyatt and Nolting, Liriodendron is a two-and-a-half story, stuccoed brick Palladian mansion currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  I became aware of it during my band days when I played weddings there. I thought it was beautiful with its grand staircase, fireplaces, and graceful terrace. Places like this can’t help but inspire. The house – along with its name – stuck with me.

Let’s talk about that tongue-twisting name for a moment. “Liriodendron” is the botanical term for the tulip poplar tree. With all due respect to Dr. Kelly, who named his summer home, “poplar” would have been much easier to say.  (Apparently, “The Poplars” was in early contention for the name of the estate.) When I needed a name for my fictional Newport cottage, Liriodendron came to mind for several reasons. One of those reasons was that for Bennett Chapman, my new-money magnate, “more” equaled “best,” and I suspected that he’d approve of a five-syllable name for the summer home he intended as his calling card to the upper echelon of Newport society.

Fortunately for the Kelly family, the real Liriodendron was less of a status symbol and more of a home. It stayed in the Kelly family until 1980, when ownership passed through agreement to Harford County, and the estate became part of Heavenly Waters Park. It’s now managed by the Liriodendron Foundation. You can visit if you’d like; there’s a weekly open house on Wednesdays between noon and 7 p.m.

As a postscript, here’s an interesting fact I turned up while researching this post: Howard and Laetitia Kelly, married for fifty-three years, both died on January 12, 1943, he of heart disease and she in a coma six hours later, in the hospital room next to his.

There’s a book in that.

Liriodendron

This was my introduction to the word “anachronism.”

An anachronism is a custom, event, or object stuck in a period in which it does not belong. When readers find anachronisms in their historical fiction, it makes them doubt everything else the author tells them. It’s like being offered a chocolate chip cookie fresh out of the oven and discovering that those “chips” are really raisins. The cookie is suddenly less palatable, and you’re never going to trust the baker again.

Most authors do their very best to research as accurately as possible. Nailing down historical fact is relatively easy. For example, it’s obvious that characters in 1912 can’t hear news of the Titanic sinking via radio; a diabetic character in 1920 can’t reach for insulin; characters in 1957 can’t refer to 50 states in the U.S.A.

Conveying the “feel” of a time period is a little more difficult. Even if a character is meant to be a free-spirited “one-of-a-kind” (which she technically can be only after 1961), there’s only so far an author can go before it challenges the bonds of credibility. Language counts, too. It broke my heart when writing NEWPORT to part with the expletive “horsefeathers.” It was perfect for the character and the scene. Unfortunately, NEWPORT takes place in 1921, and “horsefeathers” did not enter the vernacular until 1928.

I research constantly when writing historical fiction. I try hard to nail the facts and textures of the era. But no matter how many times I check my facts, there is always the chance that something incorrect will slip into the story. I’m already wincing about it.

It is in this spirit that I offer the words of Maud Howe Elliott.

Maud Howe Elliott (Nov. 9, 1854-March 19th, 1948) was the daughter of Julia Ward Howe and Samuel Gridley Howe. She won a Pulitzer for co-authoring The Life of Julia Ward Howe (1916). A prominent resident of Newport, R.I., Elliott was a founder of the Progressive party and a patron of the arts. She wrote many books during the course of her long life, including This Was My Newport, an autobiography published in 1944. This “apology” appeared in the Foreward to the Second Edition of that book, and is dated August 1945:

My attention has been called to certain errors in the first edition of this book. I am sorry to have made any misstatements, but I wish to point out that it is commonly believed that no book has ever printed without some errors.

It is human to err, and I can only say in reply to my critic that I tried to tell the truth, and if I have failed it has been with malice toward none and charity to all.

I do find it amusing that Elliott doesn’t go back to correct anything after this disclaimer, making it clear that she’s convinced her memory and facts are in far better shape than those of her singular “critic.”

Me? I would go back and correct. At once. But in the meantime, I’m thinking I should print Mrs. Elliott’s words up on cards to distribute should the worst occur.

Please know that I have tried my very best to make NEWPORT as accurate as possible, and that I am now fully aware that American prairie kids in the mid-19th century would not be lobbing paper airplanes.

Whew. I feel so much better now.

Maud Howe Elliott c. 1928

I’ve been thinking about my love affair with historical fiction. It goes way back to my childhood, when burying myself in the pages of a book meant a trip to other times and places.

Books were better than movies for me. A book provided the set, characters, and plot but allowed my imagination to fill in some details. My very favorite books inspired me to write my own version of fan fiction before fan fiction was cool. Some authors might have been surprised to learn that a character they’d never created had hijacked their plot and now starred in a whole new version of the storyline.

My preferred historical “vacations” changed as I got older. My favorite era in middle school was colonial America, which made sense since I grew up in 18th century Annapolis. But then I started sliding backward. I slipped through the Jacobite risings in the Scottish Highlands, down past Charles II and the English Restoration, and straight into Tudor England.

By the time I hit college, I was a history major with an emphasis in medieval studies. But after I’d written a few novels, I changed course again and found myself drawn to the late 19th century, an era that had never enticed me before. From there it’s been a continued upward drift. Newport takes place in 1921; the novel I’m currently working on is set in the early 1930s.

It’s even more fun to write historical fiction than it was to read it. Once again, I get to immerse myself in a time period different from the one I inhabit on a daily basis. I get the opportunity to research random events and inconsequential details to my heart’s content. And this time my characters aren’t photo-bombing somebody else’s story. The setting and plot details are my own.

I worry that despite all of my best efforts to accurately re-create the texture of an era, some pesky anachronisms might creep in. But even with that pressure, I believe that authors of contemporary fiction have a much tougher time telling their stories than I do. Why? Because technical advances have made it difficult to build tension in any story set in modern day.

I offer the following examples:

Your protagonist, an amateur sleuth with a nose for solving crime, has a hunch the popular new guy in town isn’t on the up-and-up. But how to prove it? (Well, what do you think Google is for?)

The gorgeous woman who just introduced herself to the protagonist stirs faint memories; he knows he knows her, and he knows she knows he knows her. But, how? (Check Facebook first. If that fails, back to Google.)

The protagonist has information that could change the course of humanity. He must find a way to share this information immediately! (All right, then. Let’s just try a few cell phone numbers, because just about everybody is accessible all of the time these days.)

So, it’s pretty clear I lack the imagination to write a contemporary novel at the moment. We’re all better off if I stick with historical fiction.

And that’s just fine with me.

Aren’t they gorgeous? I’ve been lucky. It doesn’t take a special study to know that book covers matter. A good cover inspires a potential reader to pick up the book to learn more; a bad cover barely registers as the book browser moves on to a different title.

Some people believe that originality and a fresh approach are key to producing good book covers. That’s not entirely true. While we have a tendency to scorn cliches, there’s a reason that certain images, colors, and fonts are used repeatedly. A book’s cover, after all, exists primarily to help market the book. It gets about three seconds of our attention to do that. One quick glance at that cover should not only make a good first impression but should help the reader categorize the story within the pages as well. Using elements familiar to particular genres triggers instant recognition in our brains. That’s one reason you won’t find elegant, flowing font and pastel colors on the cover of a tense thriller, or big, blocky fonts and gun illustrations on a romance. Sticking to general design standards for a particular genre lets a reader instantly know what sort of book to expect; connecting cover imagery to books that have been successful in the past further encourages that reader to take a chance on a new title.

You can tell a lot by looking at my three book covers. With the otherworldly nature of their illustrations, ANGEL CAFE and THE OPEN CHANNEL imply some supernatural chills. ANGEL CAFE in particular has some pretty spooky font going on, and if that didn’t communicate the nature of the book, the tagline would help: “Some spirits are best left alone.” The mood continues for THE OPEN CHANNEL, although the font here has a slightly medieval feel, telegraphing the fact that part of the story takes place in the 14th century.

If you guessed from their covers that my first two books belong to a different genre than NEWPORT does, you were correct. NEWPORT is historical fiction, and its cover evokes its era (the story is set in 1921).

Just as we know what we like when we see it, we also know what we DON’T like. If a great book cover can encourage sales, the unfortunate downside is that a poorly designed cover can become the butt of jokes. It was only a matter of time in our internet-saturated world before a website like this happened.

NEWPORT’s cover was designed by Amanda Kain. ANGEL CAFE’s cover was illustrated by David Stevenson, who also designed the cover of THE OPEN CHANNEL. I am indebted to them for keeping me off of that website.