Where the Past and Present Collide With Faith by Candice Sue Patterson

When I began seriously pursuing publication seven years ago one of the first things I was told was that every author needed a brand, a punchline that tells readers what to expect about their books. I fretted over this for some time, as I wasn’t really sure what overall theme my books would contain. A few titles later I settled into it: Modern-Vintage Romance—where the past and present collide with faith. Since I write contemporary romance with threads of nostalgia weaved in, it fit. 

 

 

 

Then last year I let one of my critique partners talk me into joining her and five others in a proposal to Barbour Publishers for a collection of historical romances involving Great Lakes Lighthouses. But I write contemporary, I thought. Writing a historical is intimidating, I thought. When will I ever have time for all that research, I thought. But we’ve been critique partners long enough that she knows I love a challenge, so she dangled the idea in front of me like bait. (Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.) 

Was it intimidating? To me, yes. 

Did it require a lot of research? Absolutely. 

And I loved it! 

My first historical, Beneath a Michigan Moon, is part of the Great Lakes Lighthouse Brides Collection that released November 1st. As an author of both contemporary and historical romance, I wanted to share some of the challenges I faced writing in two different time periods. 

First, you need to understand that I was doing extensive edits to my contracted contemporary novel How to Stir a Baker’s Heart (book #2 in my Cadence of Acadia series) while I was writing the first draft of Michigan Moon, while plotting my next contemporary series. 

(Conclusion: I’m crazy.) 

Challenge #1: The Romance Trope 

I’ve always wanted to write a marriage of convenience story. I love the tension it creates between characters and that fact that their relationship blossoms into real love through their daily journey together. This is easy enough to write in a historical because it was common for people to marry for necessity back then. Mail order brides, widows without family and no means of caring for themselves, arranged marriages, etc. Writing this trope in a contemporary, however, isn’t as easy. So when I started writing a new series set in South Dakota using this trope, I had to get creative. Gmail took the place of the postal service for word that the hero was looking for a bride. Both the hero and heroine enter into an agreement needing what the other is offering. And it all plays out on prime time television. While the director continually throws in surprise after grueling surprise. 

Challenge #2: Communication 

Nowadays, we have many ways to communicate. So in my contemporary romance How to Stir a Baker’s Heart, the hero and heroine chat through text, cellphone, email, and face-to-face. At times, the technology doesn’t work the way it should (especially along the coast of Maine where the book is set) and it causes issues. 

In Michigan Moon, it was much harder to get messages back and forth. When the heroine (light keeper at New Presque Isle Lighthouse on Lake Huron) starts to run low on supplies, she receives a telegram that the supply train derailed, and she’ll have to ration what she has until another shipment can be sent out. This accident happened days before, so had there been faster modes of communication on all sides she would’ve been able to ration sooner, keeping her from having to rob old supplies left in a nearby abandoned lighthouse. But it worked to my advantage because this scene turned out to be a pivotal moment for the hero and heroine. 

Challenge #3: Clothing

I’m familiar with today’s styles: midi-dresses, skinny jeans, joggers, flyaway cardigans...you get the idea. I dress my contemporary characters accordingly. However, I was fairly ignorant of the terms for historical items: reticules, chemises, chignons, frock coats. Historical romance is my favorite genre to read, so where I’d heard those terms before I had no idea what era they fell in, or what items were layered over what. This took extensive research both online and books from my public library. I didn’t want to receive any bad reviews simply because my timeline was off. 

Will I continue writing historical romance? I’d like to. I think being hybrid would keep me on my toes, help keep my writing fresh. I enjoy taking modern themes and fitting them into an old-fashioned world. Just like I enjoy taking contemporary settings and lacing history into the plot. 

The Great Lakes Lighthouse Brides Collection featuring Beneath a Michigan Moon is available now in print and eBook at all major online retailers. Amazon Buy Link

Look for How to Stir a Baker’s Heart, releasing April 2019 from Pelican Book Group. 

To keep up to date on my latest news you can find me on Facebook as Candice Sue Patterson-Author or visit my website at www.candicesuepatterson.com 

Using Real History in Your Stories by Pegg Thomas

Writing historical and historical romance means using real history in your stories. Sometimes, that history isn’t pleasant. There are many instances of difficult situations—true history—that need to be told, even though they don’t always show humanity at its best.

Such was the case while I was writing Her Redcoat for the Backcountry Brides Romance Collection. This is a collection of stories set in Colonial America on the frontier—the backcountry as it was called then. I wanted to set my story in what is now Northern Michigan. Most people don’t equate Michigan with Colonial America, but the northern reaches of the state were first visited by the French in 1623. By the 1700s, there were several towns along the waterways between the Great Lakes.

Not too far from where I live is Fort Michilimackinac (mish’-ee-lee-mack’-in-naw). I set my story there because of a well-known uprising of the Ojibwe and Sauk tribes against the British at the fort. The British had recently ousted the French following the French and Indian War. The local tribes had been friendly with the French for over a century. They did not like the British who were stingy with their gifts and arrogant in their demeanor. 

How was I to craft a romance amid so much tension? By playing off the tension, of course! My hero is a British soldier, but one who doesn’t want to be there. My heroine is a local Métis (May-tees’), a woman of mixed French and native cultures. He was prejudiced against the “heathens,” and she was prejudiced against the English. 

So what was going to bring them together? There had to be a connection. He was educated, highly educated for the time, and she owned a book she couldn’t read. Bam! 

Now for the biggest challenge of all … they have to survive an uprising that killed almost every soldier save the officers who were kept alive and traded for ransom. How did I do that? You’ll have to read the book!

To celebrate the release of The Backcountry Brides Collection, including my story, Her Redcoat, I’m giving away one of my signature shawls. Today the area around Fort Michilimackinac is known for its beautiful lilacs. One subscriber to my newsletter will win Northern Lilacs, my handspun, handknit wool shawl on May 31, 2018. Subscribe today to be entered!

Pegg Thomas lives on a hobby farm in Northern Michigan with Michael, her husband of *mumble* years. A life-long history geek, she writes “History with a Touch of Humor.” When not working or writing, Pegg can be found in her barn, her garden, her kitchen, or sitting at her spinning wheel creating yarn to turn into her signature wool shawls.

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A Most Cherished Lesson by Mischelle Creager

I'm pleased to welcome my friend Mischelle Creager back to Seriously Write. When I first asked Mischelle about visiting with us, she sent me two posts to see if either would work. They were both terrific so I scheduled her for two visits! I hope you'll run over to Amazon and download The Rose and The Thorn. It's free and it is the first book in her MacPherson Brides Books.

Like most writers, I can say that I have learned a lot of lessons about life since I started this journey—things like discipline, balancing my writing and the other parts of my life (especially time with my family), rejection, and so many other things. But the lesson that I am most thankful for is one I learned as I finished a certain scene in the first book of my MacPherson Brides series.

To better understand the situation you need to know that for me, many things changed after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. While I don’t need to go into all the details, I will say that before that day, life was bright and exciting. After that day, things turned dark. Things got worse when on Mother’s Day we visited the site as the employees (my husband worked there) and their families were allowed inside the fence to lay wreaths by department at the base of the ruble. As we left, a single bagpiper played “Amazing Grace.”

Sometime later on a Sunday night at church, the song leader led “Amazing Grace. I had a flashback to the time at the site—the sights, the smells, the sounds. When I was leaving the building, the preacher touched my arm, tipped his head toward the auditorium, and asked “What happened in there?” I explained. The next time we started to sing that song, I froze and started counting the bumps on the upholstery on the back of the pew in front of me. I got to where I was afraid to go to church, not knowing when we would sing that song again. This went on for over a year. Thankfully, at a survival workshop, a therapist helped me work through the situation and “Amazing Grace” has become one of my favorite hymns.

Now to the lesson, when I was writing the first book of the series, I had a character who had gone through a very abusive marriage. In church one morning, she connects what is going on there (the words of the song/sermon) with the abuse in her marriage. I wrote what she had gone through—her pain, her flashback, how she had to count the stitches on the shawl the lady in front of her wore to take her mind off the remembered horrors. When I finished the scene, I looked at it and dropped my head. For the first time, I thanked God for what I had gone through after the bombing, for the ability to understand such pain, to know that He allowed me to go through what I had so I’d be able to reach out to others who would need those words of understanding of their pain.

Thank you, God, for knowing what we need and being with us as we go through the growing pains that prepare us for the life You have for us.

Mischelle Creager writes inspirational historical romances set in the mid-1800s. She's not sure which she loves more--researching or writing. When she's not doing one of those two things, she can probably be found reading or baking. She love to share her historical research and has a website Under The Attic Eaves, filled with tidbits she's found in books written in the 19th Century. She also "reprints" a historical magazine, Worbly's Family Monthly Magazine, filled with items from books and magazines published in the middle of the 1800s. You can visit these two sites at http://undertheatticeaves.com/ and http://worblysmagazine.com.

 

If you would like to know more about Mischelle, please visit her author website at http://mischellecreager.com.

Keeping Our Eyes On The Goal by Mischelle Creager

Have you ever set a goal for yourself—maybe loosing ten pounds (or more) by THAT special day so you can wear the dress you’ve been saving, maybe re-designing the back yard in time for an end-of the summer get-together with friends and family, or maybe saving enough for a family trip to Disney World (or whatever place you have as your greatest vacation) next year?

How did you go about accomplishing it? What steps did you take? Or did that goal become a wish and just fly away because there were no steps to support it?

Goals take work and planning. If you notice the items above are all distinct ideas with an ending date.

 

In July, 2013, I set a goal for myself: I would write three novels, start a blog, have a historical website, and publish a historical magazine. AND I would do all of that in two years so I’d be ready to present to agents and editors at the September, 2015 ACFW conference.

 

Now you might think this is impossible, but you need to know that my children are grown, no grandchildren (yet), and my wonderful husband told me years before when he retired that he would do all of the housework (that means cleaning, laundry, cars, and yards). So all I was left with was to write. You also have to understand that I am a total non-geek. I got someone to deal with all the set-ups of my blog, send out my magazine, and design and do the upkeep of my historical website—I just needed to produce the WORDS.

  

I decided I would allow six months to write each book, followed by editing and corrections. Well, eighteen months later, I had the books written, but still needed to finish the editing and corrections. My blog, Families Across the Generations, was up and going, my historical website, Under the Attic Eaves, was being handled, and my historical magazine, Worbly’s Family Monthly Magazine, was right on schedule for publication.  

On Saturday morning in the middle of March, 2015, before I went to my monthly writers group meeting, I signed up and paid for the conference after carefully choosing which editor and agent I wanted to meet with.

At that writers meeting, my goals came crashing down. Well, they didn’t crash down exactly, they made a 180 degree turn. In the matter of two hours, I changed from having everything ready to go to conference to present my series to editors and agents to deciding to self-publish the books. WOW!!!

I now had a new goal—to finish the editing, proofing, covers, formatting, etc. in time to get the books published before the end of the year. Well, to be truthful, my goal was before Thanksgiving.

It’s amazing how having family and friends to guide, mentor, proof-read, etc. and having a definite goal with an ending time can help achieve that (new) goal.

With thanks to all those listed above, I got my books out in early December.

What kind of goals do you set for your writing? Are they general, a big vague ones? Or are they concrete plans with an ending time?

 

Mischelle Creager writes inspirational historical romances set in the mid-1800s. She's not sure which she loves more--researching or writing. When she's not doing one of those two things, she can probably be found reading or baking.

 

She loves to share her historical research and has a website, Under The Attic Eaves, filled with tidbits she's found in books written in the 19th Century. She also "reprints" a historical magazine, Worbly's Family Monthly Magazine, filled with items from books and magazines published in the middle of the 1800s. You can visit these two sites at http://undertheatticeaves.com/ and http://worblysmagazine.com.

 

If you would like to know more about Mischelle, please visit her author website at http://mischellecreager.com.

 

 

 

Avoiding the Pitfalls Historical Fiction – Part Two by Amanda Cabot

Amanda Cabot

Two weeks ago, Amanda Cabot offered pitfalls in writing historical fiction. If you missed it, you can catch it here. This week, she's back with part 2. Enjoy!
~Dora

Welcome back! I’m delighted that you’re here for the second (and last) part of the historical fiction pitfall discussion. There’s no quiz today, because I’m certain that when you read the next selection, you’ll know immediately what’s wrong. This is the more than slightly modified opening scene of Paper Roses, the first of my Texas Dreams books.

March 1856

“It’ll be all right.” Sarah Dobbs wrapped her arms around the child, wishing with all her heart that she could believe the words she’d uttered so often. The truth was, it didn’t matter what she believed. All that mattered was keeping Thea safe. And so Sarah knelt on the hard-packed dirt of San Antonio’s main street to wipe the tears from her sister’s cheeks. The child was hot, tired and excited by the unusual sights, a combination that turned normally sweet-tempered Thea querulous.

Thea was too young to appreciate San Antonio’s rich history. The original Spanish settlement of San Antonio de Valero, named for the Viceroy, was founded in the same year as the French began New Orleans. Located just below the Balcones Escarpment, it had the advantage of a mild, dry, healthful climate; plentiful water and an abundance of limestone for building. In 1721 Valero himself sent a force of 54 soldiers to build a strong fort, what many would call a presidio, nearby. They named the fort San Antonio de Bejar, in memory of Valero’s brother, and by 1726 more than 200 men, women and children inhabited the area. Indians, of course, were not included in that count, although by the middle of the century, each of the five missions in the San Antonio region had more than 200 Indians.

The dominant tribes in Texas were the Apaches and the Comanches. The Spaniards were never able to conquer the first, and the second gave them the greatest defeat they ever suffered at the hands of natives in the New World. But all that had occurred over a hundred years ago. Now the city was part of the great state of Texas, the state that would soon be her home and Thea’s.

Are you yawning? Or did you decide that this was what a friend calls a wallbanger, a book that’s so bad that you hurl it against the wall rather than read it? I’ll admit that I’ve exaggerated the problem, but I’ve judged enough contests to know that including too much history is a common problem.

It’s easy to understand why it happens. We do extensive research and we find so many fascinating details that we want to share them with readers. Unfortunately, heavy-handed infusion of history has the effect of boring readers, including those critical first readers: agents and editors.

So, how do you know what details to include and when? There are undoubtedly other ways to make that decision, but I suggest following three rules.

1. Remember that less is more. When you include historical facts, select the ones that are most critical. In many cases, these will be little-known facts that you’ve chosen to weave into your plot. If one of Sarah’s ancestors was one of the 54 soldiers who’d built the original fort, that would be the fact that I would have included, but rather than simply inserting the fact, I would have followed rule #2.

2. Ensure that each piece of history affects the character in some way. One of the problems with the passage above is that the paragraphs of historical facts have no tie to either Sarah or Thea. Consider the difference if I’d said, “Thea was too young to appreciate San Antonio’s rich history, but Sarah couldn’t dismiss the thrill that ran up her spine at the realization that she was only yards away from the fort her great-grandfather had helped build. Mother had raised her with tales of how Great Grandpa was one of the 54 soldiers the Viceroy had sent to build the presidio.” In this case, there was a reason to have included that particular detail, and so the reader doesn’t feel as if she’s being force-fed history.

3. And, most importantly, remember that you’re writing a novel. Your primary goal is to entertain. Readers do not expect a history lesson. As you edit your manuscript, look at each piece of research you’ve included and ask yourself, “Will the story make sense without this?” If the answer is “yes,” delete it.

There’s no doubt that there are challenges involved in writing historical fiction and pitfalls to be avoided, but from my perspective there’s nothing quite so enjoyable as being transported to a different time and place. If you’ve always dreamt of telling stories about times gone by, I encourage you to make that dream come true. I’m looking forward to seeing your books on the shelves!

With Autumn's Return
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She’s planning on instant success. What she didn’t plan on was love.

When Elizabeth Harding arrives in Cheyenne to open a medical practice, she is confident that the future is as bright as the warm Wyoming sun. Certain she’ll have a line of patients eager for her services, she soon discovers the town may not welcome a new physician—especially a female one. Even Jason Nordling, the handsome young attorney next door, seems to disapprove of her chosen profession.

When a web of deceit among Cheyenne’s wealthiest residents threatens to catch Elizabeth and Jason in its snare, they must risk working together to save one of Elizabeth’s patients, even if it means falling in love.

From the time that she was seven, Amanda Cabot dreamed of becoming a published author, but it was only when she set herself the goal of selling a book by her thirtieth birthday that the dream came true.  A former director of Information Technology, Amanda has written everything from technical books and articles for IT professionals to mysteries for teenagers and romances for all ages.  She’s delighted to now be a fulltime writer of Christian historical romances.  Her Texas Dreams trilogy received critical acclaim; Christmas Roses was a CBA bestseller; and a number of her books have been finalists for national awards, including ACFW’s Carol award. 

www.amandacabot.com

http://amandajoycabot.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Amanda-Cabot/110238182354449?v=wall

Fond Memories by Erica Vetsch

I am of the opinion that fiction writers are born. We just don’t all realize we’re writers at the same age/time. But if you polled writers, I bet you’d find that from an early age, we spun stories in our heads, we lived vividly through the characters in books, and that we spent more time in a fantasy world than in the real world.

Some of my fondest memories as a child revolve around books. When I was young, I lived an intense inner life populated by the characters I had come to love in Marguerite Henry books, L.M. Montgomery books, John Richard Young books, and so many more. I pioneered with Laura Ingalls Wilder, rode race horses with Alec Ramsey, and solved mysteries with Encyclopedia Brown.

I not only lived those stories with the characters, my imagination picked up where the book left off, and I created stories with those characters, taking us all to new adventures. I was always reading a book, whether in school when I should’ve been doing schoolwork or with a flashlight under the covers at night. 

It was that time spent in another world that made me feel happy. I needed that escape, and I still do, though now it isn’t only reading about made up people, it’s making them up myself that is so refreshing and exciting.

When I was explaining this to my teenage son, about how I needed to spend time in my own head to feel like things were going okay, he nodded in complete agreement and said, “Me too, but a book will get me there faster.”

He gets it. He might even turn out to be a writer himself someday.

                                                    

About the Author:

Erica Vetsch is a transplanted Kansan now residing in Minnesota. She loves history and reading, and is blessed to be able to combine the two by writing historical fiction set in the American West. Whenever she’s not following flights of fancy in her fictional world, she’s the company bookkeeper for the family lumber business, mother of two terrific teens, wife to a man who is her total opposite and soul-mate, and avid museum patron.

A Bride Sews With Love in Needles, CA

A Harvey Girl waits on True Love.

With her brother already on the front lines in France, Meghan Thorson becomes a Harvey Girl in Needles, California. Ready and willing to wait on the hundreds of doughboys heading for Europe, Meghan deems this service her way of contributing to the war effort. When a Red Cross  representative breezes through town, Meghan embraces the challenge to do even more, committing to completing a Red Cross signature quilt and canvassing the town for donations to the cause.

Horseman Caleb McBride makes his living by training stock for the US Cavalry and keeps his pride by remaining a loner. When Meghan meets Caleb, she senses something mysterious and wounded about him, piquing her curiosity. But after the townsfolk scorn him as a coward and a profiteer, Caleb feels her pity and becomes even more guarded.

When Needles is hit by an influenza epidemic and the Harvey hotel is made into a temporary hospital, Meghan discovers Caleb’s shameful secret. Will both Caleb and Meghan find a way to kill their pride before their chance of love rips them apart at the seams?