Helen Mathey-Horn's Blog, page 44

Three on Thursday – No Wait It’s Wednesday

No, there was no person by this name that I am aware of, but this Pinterest picture could have been him, at least in my mind.

As for the 3 on Thursday a day early…

I’m a day off, but when you’re retired, remembering which day of the week it is, is based on the tv schedule.
Should write and edit more.  Trying to be more serious about the time management of writing.
Had lunch with former colleagues.

The ‘Mind’s Eye’

I think Pinterest is probably a helpful friend for a writer.  I remember ‘back in the days’ before internet at home, I saw a picture in a magazine and thought, ‘Yes, that is exactly what the character would look like.”  I clipped it and over the years it was lost somewhere in a move.

Move forward to 2018 and you can browse through fields and fields (pun intended?) of pictures and refine your ideas.  So I have on Pinterest several boards.  If you go there you will only see one board, ‘Laurel’ as that is the only book currently published.  Mostly I like to keep my ideas to myself until I’m finished thinking them through.

So if you are interested in the way I envision the various people in ‘Laurel’, take a look.   Pinterest Board for Laurel

 

Historical Fiction and Laurel

Writing historical fiction becomes an exercise in learning.  You don’t want to make obvious mistakes, but short of having actually lived through the time, I suspect that errors, perhaps glaring errors, will occur.  On the other hand, you can learn a lot about a time period by researching it.  The cholera epidemic that hit London in 1830 was not something I had specifically known before.  I had knew the various epidemics were the reason London made changes to its water supply and waste disposal systems later in the century.  This was driven by the systematic study of where cholera occurred by John Snow.   His work could be considered the start of epidemiology.  My story takes place during the first outbreak.  I wanted certain things to happen and lucked into some information that suggested it might be possible to help a person survive cholera.  The characters are fictional and as are their actions, but the actions are within the realm of possibility.  So with a few facts and ‘suspending disbelief’ a story idea might be real.

 

Laurel is Published

I had this all thought out last night as I was drifting off to sleep and it sounded fantastic.

Then comes the bright light of morning and I’m trying to remember all the witty things I had

strung together.

I came to this writing gig through a vacation I spent with my parents. I was home for the

summer from teaching overseas and had lots of time for reading. Having finished all the scifi

books I had I started reading the romance novels my mother had laying around. After three

days of three books a day I told my mother that I thought I could write one. She said, “Well, do

it.”

And so that’s what I did for the rest of the summer. Writing was easy in a sense. One thing

led to another book, and another as I’ve always had lots of ideas for stories percolating in my

head. I even put lots of them on paper. But where to go from there was always the next step I

could not quite take. Getting the first book published, thanks to the help of my DIL, was the

hurdle.

Well, now the thing is done. I know Laurel is not the next Great American Novel, but I hope it

entertains. I hope you find yourself turning ‘just one more page.’ If so, I am content.

I am reminded of a comic my mother had beside her computer. “Enough about me, let’s talk

about my book.”

Laurel is a young woman stuck in a world that insists that she must do what her parents

deem right for her. That their choices for her are either limiting or even hostile to her interests

is the problem. So as many heroines in romance novels do, she runs away. Posing as a young

man she starts a career as a painter in London. How would you write what comes next?