Online Dating in the 19th Century???

with guest Karen Witemeyer.

One of the hazards of being an historical writer is getting sidetracked with fascinating research rabbit trails. You open Google looking for specific information on how to harvest sorghum and an hour (or two) later, you've not only learned how to harvest sorghum but how to make sorghum syrup (basically molasses), discovered which living history farms in Pennsylvania can demonstrate this process to you (not very helpful when you live in Texas), found a recipe for beef ribs with a sorghum glaze, and uncovered a whole slew of arguments on why one should never eat refined sugar but use natural sweeteners like sorghum when cooking.

Not that this example actually happened to me recently or anything . . . OK, it did.

Yet, every once in a while one of those crazy rabbit trails leads to a valuable tidbit. Like in 2011 when I started researching telegraph communication for an older book. I stumbled upon a novel written in 1879 by female telegraph operator Ella Cheever called Wired Love.

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Apparently many operators were women in the late 19th century, and they were often identified as such by the delicacy of their “sounding” on the wires. The hero in Miss Thayer’s novel, Clem Stanwood, knows right away that the operator at the “B m” station is female.

Nattie Rogers is intrigued by the mysterious “C” at the “X n” station and seeks out conversations that soon turn flirtatious. These two telegraph operators fall in love over the wire without ever laying eyes on one another.

There is one scene about halfway through the book that served as my inspiration for my latest book, Heart on the Line. A case of mistaken identity had scared Nattie away from “C,” but Mr. Stanwood arranges a visit to her boarding house, and while sitting amongst others in the parlor, he begins tapping out code with his pencil against a marble table top. Nattie recognizes her call name and, taking up a pair of scissors, drums out a reply. They carry on an entire conversation this way with no one in the parlor suspecting their actions were anything more than idle tapping. Until, that is, Mr. Stanwood reveals himself to be the real “C”.

Nattie jumps to her feet and exclaims aloud, “What do you mean? It cannot be possible!”

Hysterical!

Of course everyone else in the room thinks she’s lost her mind except the hero who crosses the room to take her hand.  Awww…

So, online dating in the 19th Century? You bet. On the telegraph line!

In Heart on the Line, I had a great deal of fun creating situations where my two telegraph operators communicated through coded tapping without anyone else being able to understand the significance of their private conversations.

Here's an excerpt from my book where Grace and Amos meet in person for the first time. Grace has been hiding out in a women's colony to escape the man who killed her father and recently learned that her location had been discovered. Amos overheard the information on the telegraph line and immediately hopped on a train to lend his aid. Only Grace doesn't know if the stranger who just arrived in town is friend or foe. The town marshal has locked Amos up in the jail as a precaution.

Grace willed her hand not to tremble as she fit the hairpin over her finger. A difficult task when her insides were jumping about as if she'd swallowed a family of crickets. Straightening her shoulders, she took a step forward, intent on tapping out a message on the cell's crossbar. But a hand grabbed her arm and tugged her backward. 

"Don't get too close, Miss Grace," the marshal instructed as he gently steered her away. "You can do your talkin' from back here." 

Actually, she couldn't, but Malachi obviously didn't know that. And why would he? He wasn't an operator. She glanced around the office, her gaze zeroing on the desk. And the tin cup resting on its surface. Yes. That would work nicely.Smiling at the marshal, she stepped away from his hold and moved toward the desk. "May I?" she asked, indicating the chair. 

Malachi looked at her oddly but nodded. "Be my guest." 

"Thank you." Grace swept her skirt aside and settled herself on the seat before reaching for the coffee cup. She peered inside and frowned. Still half full. She glanced around for a place to dispose of the unwanted beverage, but there were no potted plants or conveniently located knotholes in any of the nearby floorboards.

Without giving herself time to think better of it, she lifted the cup to her lips and chugged down the cold, bitter brew in one long gulp. She grimaced and nearly choked on the awful stuff, but she got it down.

"You . . . ah . . . want a fresh cup?" Malachi asked, the shock on his face rather comical. "I got a pot on the stove in the corner."

"No, thank you." Her reply emerged more as a rasp than actual words, as if the horrid concoction had paralyzed her tongue and throat. How did the man drink that swill? It tasted like boiled shoe leather. "I just need the cup."

She promptly turned the tin cup on its side and hovered her hairpin-covered finger above it. Grace glanced past the befuddled marshal to the man waiting expectantly in the jail cell. He was gripping the edge of the right side of his jacket and holding it away from his body. He'd fitted the bottom button between the first two fingers of his right hand, and held it an inch above the iron crossbar.

Grace turned away and bit the inside of her cheek to contain the smile that was trying to edge its way onto her face.

He knew exactly what she was about and was ready to respond.

Focusing on the silver cup in front of her, Grace began the test. 

Call me like you would on the wire. 

A series of dull raps came from across the room, the cloth-covered button muffling the sharpness of the reply. Dn calling Hs. The sound might be off, but the rhythm wasn't. It only took the first few clicks for Grace to recognize the sender's unique style. To an untrained ear, one tapping pattern might sound like any other, but to an operator, the rhythm, tempo, and phrasing combined to create an outcome as distinctive as a signature.

 Mr. A's signature.

The two continue their coded conversation as Grace digs for more of the truth, but it is here that the fantasy of a mysterious admirer first begins to turn into the reality of true love.

So you see, not all rabbit trails are bad. Following one could lead you to the perfect plot for a new book. At least that's my current justification. Ha!

•  If you are a writer, what do you like least/most about researching?

•  If you are a reader, what is the most interesting tidbit you've learned from reading a novel?

I'll be giving away an autographed copy of my telegraph love story, Heart on the Line, to one lucky commenter. (US addresses only, please.) Winner announced in the next Seekerville Weekend Edition.

P.S. As a fun trivia note – Look carefully at the decorative swirl on my cover. See the pattern of dots and dashes? My very clever designer used Morse code to spell out "love" over and over again in that flourish. Cool, huh?

Heart on the Line

Grace Mallory is tired of running, of hiding. But when an old friend sends an after-hours telegraph transmission warning Grace that the man who has hunted her for nearly a year has discovered her location, she fears she has no choice. She can't let the villain she believes responsible for her father's death release his wrath in Harper's Station, the town that has sheltered her and blessed her with the dearest friends she's ever known.

Amos Bledsoe prefers bicycles to horses and private conversations over the telegraph wire to social gatherings with young ladies who see him as nothing more than an oddity. His telegraph companion, the mysterious Miss G, listens eagerly to his ramblings every night and delights him with tales all her own. For months, their friendship--dare he believe, courtship?--has fed his hope that he has finally found the woman God intended for him. Yet when he takes the next step to meet her in person, he discovers her life is in peril, and Amos must decide if he can shed the cocoon of his quiet nature to become the hero Grace requires.

Christy Award finalist and winner of the ACFW Carol Award, National Reader's Choice Award, HOLT Medallion, and Inspirational Reader's Choice Award, CBA bestselling author Karen Witemeyer writes Christian historical romance for Bethany House, believing the world needs more happily-ever-afters. She is an avid cross-stitcher and makes her home in Abilene, TX with her husband and three children.

Can a man get so hopelessly lost...

I’ve been researching what I call Pathfinders for a while.

I am trying to get a real overview of what it was really like to try and get through the Rocky Mountains the first time.

Finding a route was a big part of the Louis and Clark Expedition. And they barely survived it and then only with the help of native people who were miraculously Sacagawea’s family.

John C Fremont was tasked with finding a winter passage through a farther south region of the Rockies, with Kit Carson. Okay, these guys were GOOD. But even good as they were, it took him three tries--three winters. 
On his first try he got eveyone out alive. 
His second, he lost ten men to cold and hunger and other dangers.
Third try...he made it through.

James Beckworth (or Beckwourth) was the guy who opened the California Trail. He found a way from Reno Nevada to San Francisco. This is just exactly where my story is set.

Jim Coulter and Sacagawea were with Louis and Clark. Coulter turned around at the end of the expedition and went back. He's believed to be the first man to see Yellowstone. But he was such a known story spinner no one believed him. FOR YEARS. When I research, all the maps you see are either too close or two far. All of them have major four lane highways. All of them have ME and my CELL PHONE.

Bridger walked the Rocky Mountains north from Southern Colorado to Canada. His story about leaving a man behind believed dead, is part of the movie (or a fictionalized version of the movie) The Revenant. 

Of course we don't have pictures and online bios of all the guys who did this and DIED.

My premise is, can a really trail savvy guy, in about 1850, get so lost he just plain can’t get out of the mountains? He ends up just living there. By the time he finds his way out he’s settled and doesn’t leave.

I’ve been reading about the Donner Party.

I’ve got a picture, taken at the museum beneath the St. Louis Arch that says something like, “Many pioneers headed west with directions that covered one side of a sheet of paper. That is IT!

Now most wagon trains had a guide, a trail boss, or scouts, men who knew where they were going. But what if somehow you ended up on your own? What if your wagon train was set upon by thieves and everyone died and you alone survived?

Mary Connealy would've fallen off the covered wagon and DIED.

What if the guide died or ran off?

The trail itself would probably be visible, wouldn’t it? Or are some of them less traveled? The Donner Party was trying a new and little known trail so we know it happened.

A man who knew the woods would find trails, but out there? With millions of acres uninhabited, those trails would be game trails. You could walk on them and they’d probably lead around cliffs and lead to water, but could you get anywhere? It’s a good bet a deer will never ever make a trail that leads to town.

Today, I'm talking research

Today I thought I’d talk about research, how I try and track these things down.

I always start with Wikipedia for research. I’ve heard not to trust Wiki as the final answer, but I’ve also found really invaluable sources through there. A lot of times they’ll mention where they get info.

One example: http://a.co/9xlgV3p The Reckless Breed of Men a twenty year old book about fur trappers, only available used now. I got my copy for about $7.

Another one I particularly loved, Jim White's Own Story: The Discovery and History of Carlsbad Caverns. Jim White is the man who discovered Carlsbad Cavern and it took him TWENTY YEARS to convince people there was really a huge cavern down this hole in the ground. It was so far from any road, this was in about 1920, so there were roads and cars around, but still no one would believe him.

Anyway, when I bought this book, old, used, it was

SIGNED by Jim White. I just loved that.

So Wikipedia leads me to other sources, and that includes books and also other websites.

I also use Google Maps and transform it to Google Earth so I can get a look at the terrain.

I find old maps online—I use maps of old trails a lot. You can find them with Oregon Trail, California Trail, Santa Fe Trail and all sorts of off shoots of each. I open them and modern maps and try to compare roads now to trails then. Did you know that I-80 that cuts all the way across the country, follows the Oregon Trail? The Oregon Trail followed the Platte River, then the Transcontinental Railway followed the Oregon Trail until it curved off and followed the Mormon Trail. And now Interstate 80 follows the Oregon Trail.

People went that way not because someone had broken a trail, but because it WAS a trail. Does that make sense? They went the way that worked. They used the same passes because there were passes.

I will go to Amazon and search up say…Jim White’s book, after finding there is a book through Wikipedia, then I buy that book and good old Amazon wants to help me spend my money so they’ll toss other books at me and I can hunt around.

I’m working in the Sierra Nevada Mountains right now near Lake Tahoe and I found out Mark Twain lived and worked near Tahoe for quite a while. Reading his writing about it has really helped me get the big picture.

I also like to find novels. Yes, fiction, that is set in the place I want my books. The Louis L’Amour books in our local library all have maps in the front.

When I’m buying these books I remind myself that it’s a lot less expensive than a research trip…which I never EVER get to take!!!

What I’m really having trouble with though is the VASTNESS. It’s so hard to quite imagine the brutally hard work of riding a horse or a wagon over a mountain.

The original Oregon Trail had no passage wide enough for a wagon, a horse could get through, but not a wagon, so they’d have to lower the wagons over cliffs on ropes. 

It would be days of hard labor to get wagon after wagon lowered. And maybe the whole train would make progress of about 100 feet in three days.

I don’t mind doing this. I have always loved research but in some ways I hate it too, because it’s such a time sink. I can get lost for hours tracking down details and not get a word written in my book. But I justify the time now because I realize I’ve gotten a lot of ideas for the NEXT series while researching the current one.
In fact I think I've gone on too long in this post and I apologize for that, but it's hard to imagine that ANYONE isn't fascinated by this. And yes, it's possible, I live in my own little dream world. 

What do you do for research? Where do you look? Is it on line? Or do you set your books right near you so you know what things are like? Does ANYONE ever get to go on a research trip?

Let’s talk about all the tricks of the trade in researching a book.

Leave a comment to get your name in a drawing for a signed copy of my latest release.

LONG TIME GONE

Click to Buy

Connealy Combines Western Action and Charming Historical Romance
The Boden clan thought their problems had ended with the death of a dangerous enemy, but have they truly uncovered the real plot to take their New Mexico ranch? Rancher Justin Boden is now in charge. He is normally an unshakable and rugged man, but with his brother, Cole, shot and in mortal danger, even a tough man faces doubts. And it doesn't help that Angie DuPree, the assistant to the doctor trying to save Cole, is as distracting a woman as Justin ever laid eyes on.

Writing Out of an Era

with guest Eva Marie Everson.

Even though I am a child of the 1950s, it was my mother who introduced me to the magic of the decade. When I was a child, we snuggled together, watching Debbie Reynolds movies. Or Gene Kelly movies. Or Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly movies. As I grew older, we sat near each other, our eyes straight ahead to the black and white films showing on the color television/stereo combo. Sometimes, though, those flicks were colorized--the blues and yellows popping in surreal ways. Even up to the day of her death, Mother and I shared the love of classic films and, while neither of us liked watching war movies, we appreciated those set during WWII and immediately after. One evening, as a movie's credits rolled, Mother shared her own memories of those days. "I stood on the sidewalk in front of our house," she told me, referring to an early-childhood memory. "I was about eight or nine and I stood there waving to the soldiers as they made their way in their caravan, heading toward Fort Stewart." Then she smiled. "They'd call out, 'Hey, Little Sister,' and I'd wave and wave." After a pause she said, "And that was my contribution to WWII."

I've always enjoyed the era, but in all honesty I knew little about it. So, when I heard the true story of Joan Hunt Zimmerman, how she came to this country from England after WWII with only $30 in her pocket, and how she ended up buying a wedding dress with four other women before accepting a job in Nuremberg, Germany in the Palace of Justice working under General Robert Partridge, only to return to the States and then marry a soldier she met halfway around the world (and in the dress), I knew I had my homework cut out for me.

Watching movies is one thing. Immersing oneself in an entire era is another. Where to begin?

I contacted my good friend (and fellow author) Dan Walsh. Dan had several era-laden books that had done well and I hoped he'd be a fount of information. Ironically, his answer was the same as my mother's might have been were she still "with us."

"I watched a lot of movies set in that time period or filmed in that era," Dan told me.

Well, all right then ... I began by watching episodes of Bomb Girls (because of the fierce independence of the female characters, even though the era is about ten years ahead of Five Brides) and Call the Midwife (because the era was right and Joan is British). I listened for words and phrases not common to me, but that would have been common to the time and place. As for movies, I watched Monkey Business (which gave me the reference to Marilyn Monroe's walk you'll have to read the book to understand), How to Marry a Millionaire (single women living independently in the 1050s while looking for/not looking for love), and To Catch a Thief (because, well ... let's face it ... Cary Grant is Cary Grant ...no matter the era!).

Because most folks--and certainly not the young women who lived on Greenleaf in Chicago in the early 1950s--had a television, radio met many of the entertainment needs. I went online and found uploads of classic shows (Our Miss Brooks, Father Knows Best, and The Big Show. I used part of the script of the latter in one of the book's scenes.

Of course fashion was a big issue. I typed "Women's Fashions of the 1950s" into a Google search and had a field day, especially with some of the old McCall's and Simplicity dress patterns for both men and women. I had already noted from the movies that women wore gloves and both men and women wore hats. I also noticed that the way a woman moved in her clothes was different from today. There was a femininity I found myself missing ... mostly that which had could recall from my own mother.

I studied every detail of life. Shoes. Hair. Dining experiences. Cars (oh, boy, did I look at cars!). As I wrote, I listened only to the tunes of the 50s. Everything and anything I thought would draw readers into the 1950s.

Then, it was time to get specific. Chicago, 1952 ... Nuremberg, Germany, 1954 ... Charlotte, North Carolina, 1956 ... and most importantly the iconic Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company. I studied photos I found online, including those of downtown Chicago during a Christmas season and videos taken by young servicemen while stationed in Germany. I read accounts of what life was like during the era, especially when it came to being raised by certain religious standards. I studied Joan's photos, looking deep into the background for any hint of the way things had been.

I'll be honest ... some days I found myself wishing I'd been born 25 years earlier than what I had been and some days I found myself so enraptured by the era, I allowed myself to simply stay there, even after my writing workday had come to a close.

At the end of the near-year it took me to write the book, I felt I knew and understood the world of the real Joan Hunt and her four roommates better than I could have ever done, even if all five of them were alive to tell me every little detail. I also found myself a little bit madly, crazy-in-love with an entire decade.

Joan Hunt Zimmerman and her husband Robert on their wedding day.

I'd love to hear about your favorite decade ... a favorite movie or song from within that era ... or the fashion ... or, share with us a particular experience you had that could have only happened when it did.

Five Brides by Eva Marie Everson

One dress, five women, a lifetime of memories.


Five single, fiercely independent women live together in a Chicago apartment in the early 1950s but rarely see one another. One Saturday afternoon, as they are serendipitously together downtown, they spy a wedding dress in a storefront window at the famous Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co. After trying it on―much to the dismay of the salesclerk and without a single boyfriend or date between the five of them―they decide to pool their money to purchase it. Can one dress forever connect five women who live together only a short time before taking their own journeys to love and whatever comes happily ever after?


Leave a comment today for a chance to win a copy of Five Brides. Winner announced in the Weekend Edition.

Eva Marie Everson is a multiple-award winning author and speaker. She is president of Word Weavers International, director of Florida Christian Writers Conference, and enjoys coaching new authors through her company, Pen in Hand. Eva Marie and her husband are the parents of three fabulous children who have blessed them with the world's greatest grandchildren.Visit her at evamarieeversonauthor.com.

A Step Back in Time

Janet here. I love a road trip, especially when celebrating our June anniversary with my DH. Back in March, he suggested we travel to Columbus, IN, the town where I was born and lived for only five weeks. I've always been curious about the house and the town so I jumped at the chance. He reserved two nights at the Inn of Irwin Gardens and I found the address of my house in my baby book.

The day before our anniversary, we drove to Columbus. After lunch, we headed to Ruddick Avenue and had no difficulty finding the house. It looked old enough to have existed back then, yet I was pleasantly surprised by its condition. The owners appear to be painting the scalloped peak. I would've loved to see the interior. But no one was outside and I didn't have the courage to knock on the door. Maybe next time.    

Entrance of the Inn of Irwin Gardens

We stopped at the Visitors Center with its displays of Chihuly glass and booked two tours for the next day, then took a leisurely stroll through a few downtown shops before heading to the tree-lined street of the bed and breakfast. The impressive exterior of the Inn and the walled gardens didn't overshadow the interior. 

The tea room and fountains as viewed from the veranda
photo taken from the website 

The Innkeeper took us on a tour of the public rooms. After we settled into our room, we viewed all the sleeping rooms, open until the other guests arrived. Built in 1864 by Joseph I. Irwin, then remodeled twice, the last time in 1910, the mansion embodies early 20th century luxury. Our room named for J.Irwin Miller, who was born and raised here, was huge with an adjoining bath. Some of the fixtures looked like they could have been there in 1910 but I'd need to do some research to know.  

Living room 

staircase

Our room

Our room's sitting area

Besides five bedrooms/suites, the Inn has a tearoom, library, small room built for the telephone and electric elevator and a huge terrace with two sections under roof overlooking sunken gardens and fountains, and even a bronze elephant, replica of the one at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

Not surprisingly for an historical author, the four generations of the Irwin/Miller family that once lived in this mansion triggered my curiosity. Who were these people and where did all their wealth come from? 

I discovered that Joseph Oliver Irwin immigrated to America from Ireland and fought in the Indian War under General Anthony Wayne, then later settled in Bartholomew County, IN, in 1828. This man was the great-grandfather of Joseph Ireland Irwin, who came to Columbus at the age of 22. 

Joseph I.Irwin's mother had given him 30 cents to ride the train but he decided to save the money for a start in life and walked to Columbus. Not sure of the distance, but I am sure this man was frugal and industrious. Irwin found work in a dry good's store. Four years later he started a dry good's store of his own. He built this house in 1864 at the age of 40. Seven years later, he started Irwin Bank. 

Joseph's son bachelor William G. Irwin, a businessman and banker, hired a chauffeur and mechanic Clessie Cummins. I was fascinated to learn that in the 1920s, Clessie, a man with no formal education beyond eighth grade, tinkered in the Irwin garage, inventing a way to increase the speed and endurance of the diesel engine for use in trucks, buses and race cars. With Irwin’s financial backing, Clessie Cummins founded Cummins Diesel. Though the company struggled at first, sales to the military during World War II and the post-war expansion of trucking, along with the savvy leadership of William's great nephew, J. Irwin Miller, led the company to prominence. 

J.Irwin Miller ran the company for four decades.Today the company has about 40,000 employees worldwide. All this is to say that Columbus, IN, was blessed by one man with an idea, another with the wherewithal to make it happen. I find that inspiring.

Dining room

Columbus benefited from more than just having Cummins, Inc. in town J.Irwin Miller was not only an excellent businessman, he was a philanthropist, who eschewed entitlement and helped establish the National Council of Churches. He was also a patron of modern architecture, the reason Columbus ranks sixth in the United States for buildings designed by famous architects. Pretty impressive when the other cities are Chicago, NYC, Boston, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and the population of Columbus is about 45,000.   

Zaharakos ice cream parlor

We had a lovely dinner and a restful night. The next morning after a delicious breakfast in the dining room of scrambled eggs, salmon, fruit and chocolate muffins, juice and coffee, we took the architectural bus tour, stopping to visit two churches. We had lunch at Zaharako's, a spectacular ice cream parlor, then walked back to the Visitor's Center and our next tour of the J.Irwin Miller house.

The Miller house, mid-century modern

J.Irwin Miller built this house for his wife Xenia and their five children. We were not allowed to take photos inside the Miller House, now owned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, but we could snap pictures from outside looking in. The reason for reflections in the glass in the photo of the conversation pit and piano and bookcases beyond. The Swedish architect designed small, even tiny bedrooms for the children. Even the parents' bedroom was not large by today's standards. The children's bedrooms might have been small, yet they lived and played among expensive furnishings, artwork by Monet and Picasso and a Stradivari violin their father played. J.Irwin and Xenia lived in this house into their nineties. Though the conversation pit was not the only living space in the house, a brass handrail was installed to help them safely enter it. Of their five children, only Will still returns to Columbus for board meetings and has a residence there. 

I find the contrasts between these two Irwin family homes fascinating. I loved our stay in Columbus. I not only found my roots, I also found story ideas taking root in my head. Think of the historical possibilities with the Irish immigrant, the industrial revolution, the automobile and all the changes they spawned. What caused Clessie Cummins to leave Cummins Diesel, taking some patents with him, and start a company of his own? Think of the contemporaries that could be spun from a family with this back story. Perhaps a romance between an architect and a woman in town. 

I also visited the library designed by another famous architect, but better yet found many Seeker books, including three of mine. It was fun to think that my books were being read in the town of my birth.   

I brought bananas foster French toast, fruit, juice and sausage, the same breakfast we had the second morning of our stay at the Inn of Irwin Gardens. 

Grab a plate and let's chat. Share trips you've taken that have broadened your perspective and enriched your lives and perhaps even brought stories to life in your mind. Leave a comment for a chance to win a $15 Amazon gift card.

Janet 
  

THE FINE ART OF MAKING STUFF UP

Julie, here, and I gotta tell you that this post today by guest blogger Siri Mitchell not only made me laugh out loud, but it set me free!

As an author who's terribly allergic to research, I marvel at these detailed author types who scour mountains of books, interview tons of people, and strike out on multiple research trips to their chosen destination. Because, you see, my chosen destination is, uh ... Google, and I was ashamed to admit that before reading Siri's post today. So without further ado, please welcome our delightful guest, award-winning author Siri Mitchell, and be thoroughly liberated and entertained ... not to mention eligible for one of two exciting Siri book giveaways if you leave a comment!

The Fine Art of Making Stuff Up

by Siri Mitchell

On the road to publication, the hope is that if you can just figure out how to write a better book you’ll be able to vault yourself into publication. Common wisdom holds that one of the ways to do this is to make sure you do enough research to get your story details exactly right. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Because as a Christian novelist, you certainly don’t want to lie to anyone about anything! If there’s truth to be found, then we want to do it! And we want our stories to include it.

There’s only one problem with that: we write novels. Novels that are fictional by definition. They’re mostly, in large part, made up. Which means they’re not true. Which might, kind of, sort of, mean that we have to lie. On a regular basis. As part of the profession.

Probably that won’t take anyone by surprise. At least not consciously. But really, you have to kind of admit that sometimes, as novelists, we get carried away with our research. The problem occurs when we let that research carry away our stories.

Let me give you some examples. With all of my novels, I’m reading between 20 and 30 printed books and accessing well over 200 websites or internet pages as I research. In fact, I’m known for my heavily-researched novels. So I’m not advocating that you make everything up. But with my Elizabethan, A Constant Heart, I became so obsessed with ‘getting it right’ that I was determined to track down where Queen Elizabeth and her court had been, on any given day, during the years my story took place. (There were at least five or six of them and she traveled about her kingdom quite a bit.) With my Revolutionary War-spy novel, The Messenger, I was determined to figure out exactly how an escape from a Philadelphia prison was planned and executed even though the only detail I could find was the date on which it happened. For my pen name (Iris Anthony) book, The Miracle Thief, I decided I needed to know when – exactly – a treaty was agreed to and when it was enacted…even though there were no chroniclers of that era during the Dark Ages and the best clue I could find was that the treaty was agreed to in ‘autumn’ of the year 911.

All of those details, I can now say without an inkling of doubt, were impossible to discover. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t spend weeks trying to find them. I wanted the story to be right. And how could I get it right if I didn’t know the facts?

Well…I could do what I ended up doing. I could decide that, my goodness, if I couldn’t find the information after a several-week search, it certainly wasn’t general knowledge. But…what if it was specialized knowledge? What if the half-dozen of my readers who were experts in the Elizabethan era/Revolutionary War period/Dark Ages knew all of those things by heart? What if they learned it in Queen Elizabeth 101? Maybe they give you tables of all 44 years of her Outlook or Google schedules on the first day of class. Or maybe the top-secret spy mission that was carried out during the Revolutionary War by less than a dozen patriots was published as a popular tell-all in some book that everybody but me has access to.

What if they do? What if it was?

What if some people do know all those things? How many of them are likely to read my books? One or two? And is my not-knowing-for-positively-sure going to ruin the reading experience for all the rest of my readers?

On one of my visits to the Louvre Museum in Paris (one of the largest and oldest museums in the world), I was wandering through the Near Eastern Antiquities section, browsing the ancient artifacts on display. One of them was a small wooden box with a hole in the top. I wondered what it was, so I stepped forward to read the label. It said, “Box made of wood, with a hole in the top.” Sometimes, even those you’d think ought to know these kinds of details, don’t. So let that be a lesson to us!

The point of fiction writing is to create a story that feels plausible according to its setting and era without violating the known facts (unless, of course, you’re writing an alternative history). That means you have to do enough research to know what makes sense. I’m not letting you off the hook for that! Efficiency is not often a word applied to writing, but it still absolutely applies to research. If you’re like me, you have better things to do with your writing time than chase a rabbit trail through time and space. Sometimes – and you’re going to have to learn to be okay with this – you’re just going to have to make stuff up. So with that dark day in mind, here are some tips to help you do it:

           

1.     Recognize that trying to completely, authentically replicate a setting or person isn’t just impossible, it would probably also be really boring. Authentic reproduction isn’t what you’re after. Creating a convincing illusion is.

2.     Give yourself permission to say enough is enough. Those books of mine I mentioned might have been marginally better if I had been able to find the facts I was looking for. In some cases those facts might have even altered the plot, but really, it wouldn’t have affected the quality of the actual story. Those details really weren’t necessary to my stories and the time I put into finding them, had a diminishing return for a novelist. Maybe not for a historian, but you’re not one of those, are you? Giving up on finding a detail doesn’t make you a failure, it makes you a competent manager of your precious resource of time.

3.    If it really gives you hives to even dream that you’ve overlooked some important detail that everyone might know, then place your story in an unusual setting or era. (see Puritan Massachusetts colony in Love’s Pursuit; the Boston of Italian immigrants in A Constant Heart; a St. Louis candy-making family in Unrivaled; Louis XIII’s court in The Ruins of Lace; or the Dark Ages of France in The Miracle Thief). 

4.     Be confident. It’s not necessary to feel apologetic for not tumbling down every mole hole in your research. There’s nothing easier to detect than insecurity in writing. You’re the master of your story and the more you write around that one elusive detail, the more you try to explain away its absence, the more you point out that it’s just not there. So make it up and move on.

5.     If you’re going to make up a detail, you don’t have to go into great detail about it. The trick to making stuff up is to not overdo it. Oftentimes people who lie reveal their subterfuge by talking too much. A sleight of hand is usually just a slight movement. Same with making stuff up. 

6.     If it’s not important, it’s not important. I’ve spent too much time trying to find era-specific names for things like colors. Pea-colored green works just as well as azoff green, doesn’t? And it’s more descriptive too. If it doesn’t affect a plot point, make it up. (On the other hand, do use the ‘telling detail’ that fixes your story in time and place. Who but the Victorians would have used a celery server? Where but in the South can you buy boiled peanuts?)

7.     If exact location isn’t critical to your story, set it in a fictional place. I do this for my French historicals, gleaning the popular suffixes or prefixes of the region’s towns and re-combining them for an authentic-sounding name. A fictional place gives you all sorts of leeway. Then you can locate it on the most convenient train-line or stagecoach route or river. (Or near none of them at all!) And you can also say terrible things about its inhabitants and without living in fear that someone’s going to accuse you of slander.

8.     I do the same thing with titled nobles. 

  9.     Travel is overrated. I used to be a terrible snob about this, declaring that no one could write convincingly about a place they’d never visited. I’ve changed my mind. Mostly because I can’t afford to do all that traveling. So how can you fake it?

  a.     By looking at photos on Snapfish or Shutterfly or personal blogs from other people’s vacations. They’ve given me some great scene ideas and descriptive details. Just do an image search on the internet.

   b.     Tell yourself it doesn’t matter. Sometimes even visiting places like London won’t do much for you if your novel is set in the distant past (Middle Ages, Tudor, Restoration). I keep telling myself over and over again that even if I were able to go visit my setting, I wouldn’t be able to see it as it was back then.

c.     Use your personal sensory experiences to give life to your novel. Have you ever scuffed your way across a stone floor or stood in the middle of a building with a soaring ceiling? Then you can place a character quite convincing in a medieval cathedral. Have you ever been so cold you didn’t even have the energy to move? Then you can write convincingly about how most characters from pre-history – 1920 felt in the winter inside their own homes.

10.  Use a calendar. Some writers like to track down the lunar calendar for their stories so that they’ll portray the phases of the moon correctly, but as long as you plug your scenes into a calendar at some point, you’re probably not going to err by having a full moon two weeks in a row. Or by having six months of a blazing hot summer. Besides, is anyone going to read your 1843 historical with a lunar calendar in hand? (If they do, then they don’t deserve happiness.)

11.  Pay attention to your adjectives. I had a terrific editor once who pointed out that when I was referencing age or minutes or distance in one of my novels, everything was ‘about seventy’. A character was about seventy years old. The wait was about seventy minutes. The distance to where they were driving was about seventy miles. I’ve also had the phrase ‘the smallest of’ appear in a novel, multiple times. So even when you’re making stuff up, you still need to exercise your creativity.

12.  Do some triage. In both my Iris Anthony books (The Ruins of Lace and The Miracle Thief), terrain figured very heavily into a couple of my pivotal scenes. In the former, I needed a really rocky mountain/hill because I had to have a coffin slide off a wagon and crack open as it dashed against the rocks. In the latter, I needed an avalanche a bit earlier in the season then would normally be the case. Neither scene necessarily made a lot of sense in the settings so I had to make a choice: head way south where there was rocky terrain and there were higher, rougher mountains or give up a bit of accuracy to work within my story’s time-line constraints. I decided the time constraints were more important, so I made up the rocky hill and imagined an early and brutal winter. 

13.  Use common sense. I once heard a writer castigate a novel because ‘no one did that sort of thing back then’ when the novel took place. I happened to know, because I knew the era, that sort of thing did happen once or twice. It wasn’t a common occurrence, but then novelists don’t generally write about the normal choices or things people do every day as a matter of course. We write about the uncommon. It’s probably not a good idea to write a 1976 Chevy into a Tudor setting, but putting one of only 9,000 DeLorean cars that were ever made into the movie Back to the Future worked really well. Sure, it might not be probable, but the better question to ask yourself is, ‘Is it possible?’

14.  Stop trying to collect points. There are none in writing anyway. The sad truth is that no one knows what kind of stories are going to sell. There are no magic formulas. There is no sure-fire, guaranteed method to ensure that what you write is going to gain you representation or place you on the bestseller list. So the idea that doing extra-hard, super obscure research earns you extra points isn’t just a fantasy, it’s wasting your time. The thing is to finish the book you started and then launch it out into the world. And even then, you still won’t get any points. Sorry!

15.  Understand that you are going to get it wrong sometimes. And I’m talking about those things you’ve already researched. That puts making stuff up in a whole new light, doesn’t it? I don’t know how many websites I visited to figure out what kind of instruments might have been played (and by which gender) during the Elizabethan period. Let’s just say lots. And I still managed to work an instrument into my mix that wouldn’t have existed back then. Which leads to…

16.  Practice saying, ‘Oh, well.’ You can even practice saying it with an exclamation point: ‘Oh, well!’ I tried my best when I wrote that Elizabethan novel. I know you do too. We all make mistakes in our writing. Thankfully, the world doesn’t end and no actual people die. It’s never fatal. Oh, well!

17.  Understand that details serve your story. It’s not the other way around. People are going to be amazed at your book, not because you finally figured out what the French call that weird wavy latch on their window sills or because you finally got to the root of that mysterious throwaway comment you read in an interview somewhere about the real purpose of lap dogs in the Middle Ages, but because you told a compelling story.

So I am passing my Pinocchio nose on to you. Go forth. Do your job as a novelist. Start making stuff up! And feel free to share with the rest of us: do you tend to be a nitty-gritty researcher or a carefree maker-upper? Or maybe you’ve hit a wall in your story research. Is there something we can help you make up?

GIVEAWAY:

Leave a comment or question, and you'll be entered to win one of two giveaways from Siri -- a signed copy of her latest release, Love Comes Calling or her latest indie book written under the pseudonym Iris Anthony, The Miracle Thief. 

ABOUT SIRI:

Siri Mitchell is the author of over a dozen novels, among them the INSPY Award-winning She Walks in Beauty and the critically acclaimed Christy Award finalists Chateau of Echoes and The Cubicle Next Door. She also writes under the pseudonym Iris Anthony. A graduate of the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, she has worked in many different levels of government. As a military spouse, she lived in places as varied as Tokyo and Paris.

Connect with Siri/Iris at:

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