K.B. Inglee's Blog: The Shepherd's Notes, page 6

Where Were the Men?

Last week’s blog on Swan Upping was really about research, as is this one.

I had a story accepted by the Malice Domestic anthology for next year. I had done a huge amount of research. I wanted to get it right, in part to maintain my reputation as a careful researcher, and in part out of respect for both the subject and the publication.

I was surprised when the comments came back on Saturday. My subject is a fictional murder at the very real Seneca Falls Women’s Convention of 1848.

The issue my able editor, Barb Goffman, brought up was whether men attended the first day of the conference. At the end of my first round of research, I was pretty sure they hadn’t. So, yesterday I settled in for a second bout of research. What I found was really unsettling.

First a bit about my method. I always start with Wikipedia. If I am looking for a date or a name, this is often enough. Wikipedia was great for Swan Upping, since I wasn’t going to write about it. When I wanted to find out more about Mr. Turner before watching the movie of the same name, Wikipedia was just fine.

If I am going to write about something, say, the translation of the New Testament into Algonquin language I will go for the secondary sources. I check whatever might be on my bookshelf, in this case Three Centuries of Harvard by Samuel Eliot Morison, page 39. For fiction writing this is might enough, but research tends to be addictive, so I will often dig deeper. I Google my subject and read through an assortment of secondary sources.

Primary sources are abundant on the internet. Yesterday I printed off a copy of the report from the convention that was published in Fredric Douglas’ North Star Press. Of course this is still a newspaper report, and newspapers were (and still are) notoriously incorrect.

So did men attend the first day of the conference? I still don’t know. The issue hinges on the word “participate”. Men did not participate, but were they in the building? If anyone knows the answer to that, please let me know because I certainly don’t.  I know how I am going to handle this, but you will have to read the anthology to find out. It is due out in May 2016.

Here are a few bits of erroneous information my research turned up:

Sojourner Truth’s famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech was given at this conference. It wasn’t. Her speech was delivered at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio, on May 29, 1851.

When everyone (yes, men too) arrived at the chapel for the first day of the convention it was locked. Someone crawled in thought a window to open the door from the inside. Was it Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s nephew or a Yale professor? Or was her nephew a Yale professor? Both appear to be nameless, at least so far.

I know that the meeting was chaired by Lucretia Mott’s husband on the second day. Yesterday I read one report saying he was too ill to participate. And if he did chair, did he do so on the first day? The North Star says he moderated on the second day but is silent on the first day’s moderator.

For me at least there are two problems here: how to handle this research in a piece of fiction, and when to stop researching and do the writing.

I Discover Swan Upping

I love doing research. I love stuffing my brain with useless information.

An article in the morning paper about Swan Upping caught my eye. Yesterday the swans were upped. There was a photo of two upped swans and their handlers.

First stop is always Wikipedia. It gives me enough information to know where to go next.

Seems the British Monarch owns the mute swans on the Themes. That makes him or her responsible for the health and welfare of the population. It also means you can’t hunt swans on the river. Nor could they become food for the starving population. Remember Robin Hood got in trouble for hunting the king’s deer? The swan situation was formalized in 1482.

Queen Elizabeth II, is "Seigneur of the Swans." She attended her first Swan Upping ceremony on July 20, 2009. Swans are caught by uppers in boats, they are then counted and given health checks. Included in the article is a reference: Norman Frederic Ticehurst, The Mute Swan in England: Its History, and the Ancient Custom. I wonder if I can find a copy anywhere.

Where to go next? Well I am reading a book called Creatures of Empire by Virginia DeJohn Anderson. Maybe there will be something about it. Nope, no swans in the index. But she does have a nice bibliography.

Whenever I can, I ask somebody. So on Monday I will ask the archeologist I work with, Keith Doms, if he knows anything. If he doesn’t he can usually send me somewhere to find out more.

My daughter has a degree in animal science so I asked her what she knew. She said she wouldn’t want to up swans because they are mean. I think she would love to up a swan or two. She will probably check around today and come back with a few tidbits of info.

It seems unlikely that I will ever use this in any of my writing since my work is all set in North America between the early 1600s and the 1890s. Did they ever up swans here? I don’t know, but you can bet I will find out.

The Adventures of Iccarus Norton

My beloved Iccaurs Norton came to life on paper in October 2009. He finally made his way into publication this spring.

Meet him in "The Devil's Quote" and read more fine historical short stories in the anthology And All Our Yesterdays.

Yes, I know it is spelt Icarus, but in the 1700s spelling was less regular, and I like the fact that spell check favors his name with red squiggly underlines.

I'm not entirely sure how or why I came up with the character. I do remember the first glimmer came after I had added a horse called Benjamin and a kitchen cat to another series because I had no animals in any of my work. OK, the murder victim in one short story is a pet bird.

I wanted to start with a horse, so his father gave him a mare called Medusa. I have not described her but I picture her as dark bay with no white makings. The two types of horses in New England at the time were the Narraganset Trotter and the Morgan. Medusa is Morgan type, stocky and general purpose. She is not beautiful, her coat doesn’t shine, but she is an easy keeper, reliable and sound.

While rummaging through an old trunk I came across my father's master's thesis, a history of the town of Norton. From there, he can reach most of eastern Massachusetts by horse in a day or two. While he traveled a lot, but he always came back home, as he does at the beginning of "The Devil's Quote".

He was educated in the apprentice system. His father apprenticed him first to a lawyer and then to a doctor. Being restless, Iccarus didn't complete either apprenticeship, but he did get a fine basic education. At 18 he and Medusa set out on a series of adventures.

So far, he has tutored a boy for the Harvard entrance exams, worked as business manager on a farm, ghost written the autobiography of a gentleman from Boston, fostered the creation of a ladies seminary in his hometown. He has dealt with murder, counterfeiting, identity theft, and fraud.

How much is real and how much have I made up? A lot of this is based on my memories from childhood. Toss in some historical realities and add a lot of made up stuff. The town is real, but since the stores are set in the late 1700 and early 1800 it was a very different place that the one I knew. Iccarus and his family live in the house I lived in, which wasn’t built for century. To the best of my knowledge no one named Norton ever lived in Norton. Many of the names of the residents in my story are names I remember from my childhood. I tried to keep the geography the same, but childhood memory gets in the way here.

Every Iccarus story starts with him in a particular place where something happens to him. The first time he appears he is asleep in the saddle when Medusa stops because there is a body in front of her. My second story starts when he enters his room at the inn, He finds a dead woman in his bed. Private rooms were unusual at the time, so what better place to dump a body?

Once I have a paragraph or two, I close the file and begin thinking. Morning walks with the dog, meditation at Tai Chi, drives to work are all times to work on the next section. I figure out where the story is going, but not how it gets there. More thinking and I come up with an ending. At that point I have about 2000 words. That leaves me roughly 1500 to go. The hardest part is connecting the beginning to the end. Every possible turn in the story seems improbable. People are never where I want them to be. Too much or too little time passes. The process seems impossible until finally fill in the blanks. I spend two or three times as long thinking about the story as I do writing it. Then I go over it to smooth out the rough spots, come up with reasons for everything.

Right now Iccarus is in another inn, again sharing a room, this time with someone who calls himself Icarus Norton. Why? I have no idea yet.

My hopes for the guy is for him to appear in public in a couple more short stories and then have his own collection.

I Want to Learn to Swear in Icelandic

In service of furthering my education, I decided that I should learn to swear in Icelandic. Someone told me that the kids in a friend's family were allowed to swear, but only in their mother tongue. Icelandic is not my mother tongue. I am not great at languages and Icelandic is particularly difficult.

What I actually wanted was my very own personal words that no one would understand. Given the luck we had with being understood in Iceland, even the Icelanders would not know I was really swearing. On the few instances that we managed to get out a few words, the people with us looked at us blankly.

My real triumph in Icelandic is my ability to pronounce the name of the volcano that news readers stumbled over a couple of years ago. Many places in Iceland are named after the physical location. Vic means bay. Fjordur means fjord. Jokull means glacier. I have not trained my computer to use all the proper Icelandic letters.

Icelandic is an inflected language, so like Latin I would have to learn word endings for every case, gender, person and tense.

But if I learned a few good swear words, well, I would have something I could offer in polite society without being looked upon as having a foul mouth.

I was surprised how easy it was to find Icelandic swear words on the internet.

I am particularly fond of the idioms. My current favorite is raggeit which (I hope) means cowardly as a goat.

Why this sudden urge to master even this tiny part of a language I know I can never make my own? My father was part of the American army that took over control of the island when the British left in 1941. The Icelanders have not forgiven us, but they are very friendly and welcoming, none the less. My mother went up in the 1970s with some of his buddies on an anniversary trip. My niece and I went up in the early 90s and we too loved it.

When I came back I started reading Icelandic fiction. First an anthology of grim but often funny short stories. We brought home an English edition of North of the War, a novel about life in Iceland during the occupation. Then I discovered Arnaldur Indridason, who wrote a series of police procedurals. When I had exhausted them, I found Yrsa Sigurdardottir.

This year at Malice, I met her. There are a lot of reasons I attend, but meeting Yrsa was top on this year's list.

Malice Domestic is a conference geared to fans so they can meet their favorite authors. The list of authors I have met there is impressive. Now I go as an author. But no matter how much one has published, we are all still fans. We all have our favorite authors who may now be our friends.

So if you want to be a writer but have a hard time getting started, or if like me, you don't submit often enough: raggeit to you.

An Open Letter to Marguerite Henry

Marguerite Henry (April 13, 1902 – November 26, 1997) was an American writer of children's books . Her fifty-nine books based on true stories of horses and other animals captivated entire generations. She won the annual Newbery Medal for one of her books about horses and she was a runner-up for two others.

When I was in the fourth grade, I wrote to tell her about my story and she wrote back.  

Dear Marguerite Henry,

I am writing to you for a second time to let you know that I have finally done what I promised in my first letter. I stuck to it and I am now a published writer.

I'm sure you have forgotten. You must get hundreds of letters from budding young writers, enclosing their stories.

"A Star For Roseann" is long gone. The plot was a bit on the thin side, but I still remember it.  I never stopped writing. I have dabbled in most genre. I had a weekly newsletter column for years and years. I wrote short stories for my daughter who is now an adult and an author as well.  She no longer needs hand illustrated works on what happens when Mommy goes away. I dabbled in fantasy, tried science fiction, and westerns. I even wrote a bit of liturgy. I was in my 50s when I settled on mystery and wrote my first novel.

I realized something else that you taught me. Historicals can be fun and engaging. I found this out when I read Born to Trot. My father told me the book was about real horses and real people and was set in the recent past. Well, recent back then. I looked it up and sure enough there were photographs of the horses and the people. I have loved research ever since.

Somehow I figured out that short stories were for me, and I have written almost one hundred, and have had a dozen or so in anthologies.

Would I still be writing if it had not been for your kindness in answering my letter? Most likely. Even at the time, I knew it could not have been the quality of my writing the made you urge me to keep it up, but the fact that I had finished a story, no matter how poorly done. I was, after all in the fourth grade at the time, and I was new to writing. I didn't know how hard it really was, or how much time it took. At the time I believed a writer sat down and wrote, and then it was a book.

When I discovered how difficult it was, and how much persistence it took, the memory of you letter kept me at it.

I hope in my turn I have been helpful to new writers, and someone will remember me kindly for the support I have given.

 

Sincerely,

KB Inglee nee Whitney

The Family Business

A couple of years ago my daughter and I were going to set up a website together. We both write, but very different things. I write historical detective stories and she writes supernatural hockey romances. It made sense to share a site. We were going to call it The Distaff and the Damsel.

Not only do we both write, but we both work at the same museum. Newlin Grist Mill is a 1704 water powered grist mill and nature preserve.

A damsel is a young woman, sometimes known to be in distress, but it is also part of the grinding system of a mill. A distaff refers to the female half of a family but it is also a staff that holds flax to be spun for linen cloth. I’m not sure which of us was supposed to be which piece of equipment.

We liked the idea a lot but in the end went our separate ways. She did, or is still doing a fascinating series on the use of horses in fantasy fiction, which turned into a dissertation on which breed to give your protagonist and why.

I have taught beginning riding and run a boarding stable but there are few horses in my work. I finally realized that the only fictional animals I had were a cat I had consciously put in the kitchen of my protagonist’s mother and a carriage horse named Benjamin who appears once to take everyone to the courthouse.

Actually I haven’t seen too many horses in my daughter’s work either, though she does have a "Box of Cows".

I decided I was letting a bit of experience slip though my fingers so several years ago I started a story with a horse. Medusa is an all-purpose sturdy horse who (horses are all “who” and not “what” to me) serves as mount and companion to my character, Iccarus Norton. The horse came first. Medusa stumbles over a body in the snow as Iccarus dozes on her back. She came into my head as her own fully formed character. Dark bay, with no white markings, stocky, steady and kind. Far from beautiful. Not the race horse, but the trustworthy fellows who pony them to the starting gate. She never goes lame, eats whatever is at hand, stands patiently when required to do so. Iccarus takes good care of her, seeing to her needs before his own, because he knows exactly where he would be without her. She doesn’t have a big part in any of the stories, but she is always there waiting.

Perhaps she needs a story of her own. “Medusa Saves the Day.”

 

Notes:

Meet Iccarus and Medusa at: http://darkhousebooks.com/

 

Newlin Grist Mill: www.newlingristmill.org

A Box of Cows can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Box-of-Cows-ebook/dp/B004IK94T6/ref=la_B004KJ04PI_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347465855&sr=1-1

 

Bodge's web site is here: http://elizabethingleerichards.blogsp...

May 12th, 2015

Years ago I realized that some awards are given on the merit of the work, and some on the taste of the reader. Since Malice is a convention primarily to allow fans to meet authors, it is only fair that the fans get to pick the Agatha winners.

Two years ago it occurred to me that anyone who wants to can give an award for something they like, so I instituted the Cadaver.

I am a knitter of doo-dads. I long ago gave up knitting sweaters, or anything useful, in favor of short projects that are cute, animals, flowers, small decorative things. For many years I have knitted a Crimebake lobster called Hardboiled.

The Cadaver is a knitted naked body with a Y incisions stitched up with red and black thread. I was knitting a fairy and had set the naked body on the table waiting for wings. Glancing down at it trying to figure out how to do the wings, I realized it was more dead body than mythical creature.

What does one do with something like that? If I displayed all the silly things I knit I would need dozens more shelves. Better to give them away. To whom? What for? When I finished it I knew the little guy on my table had to go live (or be dead) at the authors house. It would have to be someone who's work I loved, and someone I knew would be honored and not grossed out, or puzzled by my weird sense of humor. Why not turn him into a mini award? I made him a drape so the recipient doesn't have to leave his gruesome self on display at all times.

About that time I read Death in the Time of Ice, by Kaye George, a mystery novel set in a community of Neanderthals, I had read a short story that was the practice piece for the novel, and couldn't wait to get my hands on the book. I knew Kaye had to be the first to be awarded a Cadaver.

The next question was how to deliver it so it was more than just an odd piece of kitting that arrived in the mail.

I wanted to present him in person and in a public setting. I very much didn't want his presentation to take anything away from the Agathas or appear to mock them in any way. So Kaye was awarded her Cadaver over lunch with the Guppies (a Sisters in Crime on line chapter).

This year the now coveted Cadaver went to Edith Maxwell for her as yet unpublished historical about a Quaker midwife in the late 1800s. I was honored to read the manuscript before it went to the editor.

I knew both Kaye and Edith would receive the Cadaver in the spirit in which it was given, from a true appreciation of their work but with a humorous and slightly irreverent twist.

While I bask in the glow of buzz over my knitting skill, the important thing here is that I get to show my appreciation of writers who are important to me.

The little guy is a tangible expression of my joy without costing lots of money and only a bit of time. It is also a way of using up the dreadful pink yarn that should last for another 10 cadavers.

I will cast on next week while I contemplate who gets next years' award.

I hope that you who are reading this find a way to let your favorite authors know how much they are loved.

After Malice

I got home late Sunday afternoon from Malice Domestic. I have had little time to process anything that happened there. Too busy greeting my dog and making sure nothing bad had happened to her while she was under the care of the rest of the family. I spent an hour or so tracing down all the stuff that didn't make it into my suit case, like my black shoes that I found in my suit case (how do things like that happen?) and my daily meds which were on the dining room table.

So here are a few of the things that stand out.

I went with the intentions of meeting Yrsa Sigurdardottir, the Icelandic Mystery writer. I am an Icelandophile if there is such a thing. I am very proud of the fact that I can say the name of that volcano that disrupted air travel a couple of years ago, better than any of the news people on the radio or TV at the time.

I attended the panel she was on, which, as luck would have it, was not at the same time as my own panel, then I went to her signing table to get her John Handcock in the front of two of her books.

As I always do, I signed up to be a time keeper/general helper at one of the session. I didn't pay much attention to what it was. I simply chose a time slot that was convenient for me. The first thing I saw when I entered the room was that the hotel staff had not removed the water glasses from the previous panel. I tore down the hall to get new ones. One of the conference staff was right behind me. Together we set the glasses on the table and as I was pouring water into the first I looked up to see who the author was. Do you ever say things you wish you could call back just after you have dropped them into the air in front of you? I said. "I'm pouring water for Sara Paretsky!!" People who know me know I rarely use exclamation points and I am not usually overwhelmed by meeting greatness.

Three people from my Sisters in Crime local made my stay most pleasant. My roommate, Sandy Cody, made life easy. I am an early riser. She didn't seem to mind at all that I got the bathroom all wet and dropped towels on the floor. She even invited me to a Kentucky Derby party her friends were giving. The operative word is party. The Derby was just an excuse. So I got to be the horse expert in the room. Every Derby party should have one.

Lunch with Jane Kelly at a family pizza place near the hotel was the perfect interlude. She had lived in the neighborhood and knew this place that no one else from the conference could ever find. White pizza wine and good conversation were restful and appreciated.

June Gondi came down for Saturday and I got to introduce her to a few of my non-local friends. I hope she found the trip fun and useful.
 
The people at Wildside Press (they have the best covers, and the contents are wonderful too; you should look them up) referred to me as "one of our authors." They have published three anthologies with my short stories in them.

 

Before Malice Domestic

On Friday I will be leaving for Malice Domestic. Malice is a conference, somewhere in the Washington DC area, where writers and fans get together to discuss books and writing. This year I will be moderating the panel on American historical mysteries.

I went to my first Malice in the mid-1990s. I had just finished my first novel and had no idea what to do next. A friend, who wrote and published a mystery, had discovered the conference through a collogue who lived in the Washington area. I would have someone I knew there, so I wouldn't be all alone. At the last minute he was unable to make it, so I was on my own.

Writers are people who spend long periods alone, setting words on paper (or computer screens) then going back and rewriting everything they did the first time. When the manuscript is finished they have to pull another personality out of their back pockets and enter the market place. They have to sell the work to a publisher then they have to sell it to the public. Very few people are good at both.

I am more the solitary writing type. I made a decision before I stepped on the train to Washington. I would be as outgoing as I could manage. I would go up to strangers and introduce myself. I would be humble and not push my own stellar career as a writer, but find out how they managed theirs.

An added incentive was that Dick Francis was receiving some award that year and I would do anything to meet him. Turns out he was up against a deadline and sent his son in his place. Darn, abandoned twice.

I was pretty proud of how I did. I sat down with several authors I had never heard of, and discussed writing, how they did it, what they got out of conferences like this one, how they chose their topics. The advice I got from every one of them was that I should join Sisters in Crime. I had looked into the two organizations, Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, but hadn't joined either.

I attended a panel at each opportunity but I can't now remember what any of them were except one. I went to the short story panel toward the end of the weekend. One of the panel members was the treasurer (I think) of the Sisters in Crime chapter that was in my area. I talked to her after the panel and as soon as I could I joined the chapter.

The most impressive and inspiring thing I saw that weekend was a newly published writer, her book would be out in a few weeks and she spent the whole conference wheeling her two kids around in a stroller. If she could do it so could I.

After a couple of years I switched to a conference that focused on the craft of writing. It was in my hometown so I could combine education with a family visit.

Last year I went back to Malice, now a published writer myself. My roommate was someone from my Sisters in Crime local. I was given a panel of my own to moderate. I met some of my online friends, shopped my manuscript, and in a strange encounter, met a novelist whose non-fiction I admire.

I am so excited about attending again this year. Come see me at Uncle Sam Wants You, on Saturday afternoon.

I Do Not Have a Muse

I never thought much about having a muse 'til a fellow writer fired her muse (an alligator) for being aggressive. At the same time I had written a guest blog on being a regional writer. Those two ideas, working in my subconscious, melded into this short story.

 

Muse? I don't have a muse.

A soft sound like mice running over newspaper came from the old rocking chair in the corner. I must dust that soon, I thought.

The sound resolved itself into a gentle chuckle. No muse? What do you think we have all been doing all these years?

The chair began rocking slowly, thought the dust was not disturbed. Something inside me said I should be frightened, but all I felt was curiosity.

That's your problem, my girl, you don't give us enough credit.

"Who are you?" I asked.

To be specific, my name is Thomas Tooker.

I knew Captain Tooker had been dead since the early 1800s. Actually I knew quite a bit about him. I had visited his grave and read his journal. He was my mother's mother's distant ancestor.

Captain Tooker continued. Remember that story you wrote about the escaped slave who came to Canada and started a farm down the road from mine? Don't you know I whispered that in your ear?

And I, another voice came from the other corner of the room. Who do you think whispered all those stories about your lady detective?

"And who might you be?" I asked. I was beginning to feel that these…people?…ghosts? were trying to usurp any small success as a writer.

Get off your high horse missy. None of this would have happened without us. Who am I? My name is Abel Whitney. Do you know it?

In my mind I saw a bit of cream colored marble on a church wall. Deacon Abel Whitney. My ancestor, this time on my father's side.

Another rustling drew my attention to the sofa. I do not believe thee knows my name, but I told thee a story of a weaver. Seems to me that was a most impressive work. I came to the New World on the Ann. Thee has perhaps seen me at the recreation of our home.

"And you will take the credit for all my colonial stories?" I asked?

Not a bit of it. You wrote them. We merely told them to you.

Are there many more of you? Do you live in my house?

Yes, there are more of us. We don't live anywhere. We don't exist in your world, said Captain Tooker.

OK, so how can I be writing the Delaware stories if I have no ancestors from the area?