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’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

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.

The Cliff Walk begins benignly enough at Memorial Boulevard and Easton’s Beach, where it looks like this:

But while much of Cliff Walk is paved, there are many portions of it that are not as easy to navigate, and walkers are advised to take caution should they choose to follow the Walk to its end. There are spots along the way where the cliffs have drops of over 70 feet. In case you don’t believe the written warnings, this picture helps drive the point home:

The dangers were even more apparent after Superstorm Sandy, which slammed into Newport on October 29, 2012. Sandy devastated Cliff Walk. Parts of the walkway washed away. Retaining walls caved in. Tangled fencing littered the paths. Cliff Walk did not completely reopen until June 24, 2014.

…which didn’t mean that SOME people (*ahem*) didn’t slip past the warning gates and chains to see the damage for themselves. As always, the views were wild and wonderful, this time edged with the reminder that no matter how developed, the coast is always vulnerable to the whims and ravages of nature.

I last walked the Cliff Walk at the end of April 2015. Because I didn’t have to worry as much about falling off as I did in October 2013, I was able to observe a little more.  There are new trail markers along the Walk now, sixteen of them placed at various points of interest along the way, each including a QR code that visitors can scan with their smart phones to learn more about what they are seeing.

The views, as always, were spectacular in every direction. But I also noticed this:

That’s right: random padlocks on any length of chain link fence along the way. These are love locks, which started popping up throughout Europe in the early 2000s and spread globally. According to legend, couples write their names or initials on the padlock, lock it, and then throw away the key, symbolically locking their love for eternity. It’s said that if both of the lovers are not present as the lock locks, their love is forever jinxed. It might be a better idea for these couples to figure out what it means if the locks get cut off, as is now happening at various bridges across the globe when the weight of these padlocks begins to cause structural damage to the bridges themselves. Will true love be any safer along the Cliff Walk?

There’s so much to experience along the Cliff Walk, and I plan to write more about it at a later date. For today, though, I’ll leave you with a few images to enjoy. If you try really hard, maybe you’ll feel the sea breeze on your face. Better still, plan a trip. You won’t be disappointed!

When I began thinking about the novel that would become NEWPORT, location images floated across my mind. They looked like Annapolis. There was a picturesque historic district dotted with homes and buildings that traced their foundations through four centuries. There was a beautiful waterfront. There was also a naval presence, even though that would not play a big part in my story. (Annapolis is the home of the U.S. Naval Academy, so the city streets are filled with midshipmen dressed in white uniforms during the warmer months, blue in the colder.)

Anyone who grew up in Annapolis can tell you that it’s the atmosphere of the place that gets under your skin: the beauty of the water views, the realization that you are walking streets once walked by generations and generations before you, the timeless feel in which anything could happen. It’s the perfect setting for a story…

…except that my characters had other ideas.

I had just begun to write my new manuscript (set in 1910) when the dreamy protagonist(female) bowed out, introducing another character in her stead. And what a character! Adrian de la Noye came with very definite ideas about what he wanted to say, and most of them bore very little resemblance to what I’d already started to write. I figured out quickly that 1910 was out: the book would take place in 1921. It was also clear that Adrian’s story was far more tangled than the placid one I’d originally had in mind. I was a little slower to catch on that Annapolis would not be the stage. Apparently I was frustratingly slow, because after a week or so of trying to squeeze Adrian’s story into my chosen setting, I woke up one morning with the word “Newport” etched on my mind.

I had never been to Newport, but I’ll grab any excuse to travel somewhere. And so, one rainy week in March, my daughters and I took off on an adventure to Newport, Rhode Island. And here’s what I found:  a picturesque historic district dotted with colonial-era buildings, a beautiful waterfront, and the home of the U.S. Naval War College. In addition I got glittering gilded-age mansions, an oceanfront view. and a city with a long history of being a playground for the wealthy. It turned out my initial imagery for my new story had been correct. I just didn’t have enough information in my personal databank to know that my subconscious was showing me Newport, not Annapolis.

Adrian was satisfied. Set loose in the location of his choice, his story began to unreel.

My own Newport adventure continues to be a wonderful, surprising trip. With Annapolis in my blood, Newport has always felt familiar, and it’s a joy learning more about this fascinating place that has lent its  texture to my novel.

I  am not a travel writer, nor do I plan to discuss Newport’s history at length. (For those aspects you’ll need to go here or here.) I like the quirky undercurrents of places, the people and stories that might  not make every guide or history book. Those are the Newport stories I hope to share here on occasion.

I still hope there’s an Annapolis story in my future. But for now, I’m happy to spend time with my hometown’s kissing cousin, Newport, Rhode Island.

I’m not talking about the classical Greek muses. There were nine of them, plenty to go around. Daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, they were raised by the god Apollo and the nymph Eufime. They grew up to become the sources of inspiration for literature, science, and the arts. Over time, each muse was assigned her very own sphere of influence: Calliope inspired epic poetry; Clio, history; Euterpe, song and lyric poetry; Melpomene, tragedy; Polyhymnia, hymns and sacred poetry; Terpsichore, dance; Thalia, comedy and pastoral poetry; and Urania, astronomy.

These lovely ladies were considered more than mere inspiration. They were the personification of knowledge and the arts, invoked by authors as renowned as Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, and Shakespeare for help with the creative process.

The fact that I don’t believe in this personification of inspiration stems largely from self-interest. These nine young things who longed to dedicate their lives to the arts are not the muses I would get. I would get Diversus, the muse who jumps up in the middle of a particularly thorny section of a manuscript in order to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Or maybe I’d get Prolato who, bored by the dialogue she herself just handed her characters, suddenly notices that there is a basket of laundry that must be folded right this very minute. My personified muses would be into distraction and procrastination. And, why not? They’re goddesses. They have eternity to figure out how to foreshadow the brand new plot point that just occurred to me on page 200.

I, however, do not have that luxury of time. I need to step it up a little.

The muse I believe in is not personified at all. It’s a state of being, a point where the Greek chorus that lives in my head finally shuts up and lets me simply record the scene I see unfolding in my mind. Shielded from fear of failure, I can sense that what I’m writing is right–in need of editing, to be sure, but fundamentally laying the bones for a story that only I can tell. This muse supplies the light and space to create without self-imposed boundaries, and that’s exhilarating.

I’m hoping the muse will help with this blog. I have stories to share, including some fun Newport-related posts a little closer to NEWPORT’s July 7th publication date. I could really use a muse … but I need the heart-based one who piques my interest and opens me to possibilities, not the one who just whispered in my ear that there is chocolate in the freezer.