Cynthia Hamilton's Blog: Reading and Writing - Posts Tagged "cynthia-a-graham"
The Story Behind the Story: Cynthia A. Graham: Beneath Still Waters
As I’ve said before, Twitter has been a wonderful source for discovering authors I would’ve never found otherwise. Cynthia A. Graham is one of the exceptional writers I've connected with there. I downloaded a free sample of her first book in the award-winning Hick Blackburn series, “Beneath Still Waters” and was instantly caught up in her writing style. She lured me in, pulling me into that murky water along with her protagonist. I remained mesmerized throughout Hick’s quest to find answers to a baffling, heart-wrenching crime, while fighting his own personal demons.
Today marks the release of the third book in the series, “Between the Lies," which promises to be another hard-hitting mystery, full of hard choices and tense drama.
But first, here is Cynthia’s story behind “Beneath Still Waters” and the series it spawned:
Hick Blackburn pulled his hat over his eyes and squinted against the silver sun flickering and blinking on the surface of the slough’s dark water. The sentence came to me as I stared at a large lake one summer morning. I remembered watching the sunlight dance upon the water and thinking, that’s the way I want to begin my book.
For me, writing has always been the way I make sense of the world. Those things hard to verbalize find shape and meaning in the written word. Beneath Still Waters had been in the “percolating” stage for some time. I had read a newspaper article from the 1920s in which authorities were trying to identify the remains of a baby found in a slough. The story was horrific and stayed with me and, as I stared at the lake, the story of Hick Blackburn began to emerge.
I began writing Beneath Still Waters when we were, once again, at war. There were questions I wanted to explore—questions about life and death, how we determine who is worthy to live, and how soldiers cope with the long-lasting effects of decisions made in the heat of battle.
Though I had never before written one, mystery emerged as the best genre for this exploration. The great P. D. James once said, that the attraction of mystery “isn’t the horror, it’s the puzzle, the bringing order out of disorder.” There can be no more disordered place on earth than a battlefield and I knew I wanted to discuss the real cost of war on those soldiers who came home. I wondered how it would feel to return to a small town that hadn’t changed, knowing full well that you would never be the same. And I wanted to give a voice to my own family members—my uncles who came home from the war bringing ghosts and demons that haunted them for the rest of their lives. I was tired of all the hero stories, not because these boys weren’t heroes, but because those kinds of stories somehow seemed to minimize and invalidate the true pain and anguish brought about by their experiences.
Once I had created this character who had experienced real pain and anguish from the mistakes he’d made and the things he’d done, I knew this man, Hick Blackburn, would help me to understand and question the world around me—and he has. Beneath Still Waters was so well received and so many asked what happens next, I decided to write a sequel, Behind Every Door. I am currently writing my fourth Hick Blackburn mystery and the third, Between The Lies, comes out March 27. Because chaos was my initial inspiration, current headlines have insured that I am never lacking in story ideas.
The real challenge for me has been making sure my character grows. He is no longer a twenty-two-year-old man, he is now a twenty-seven-year-old father and the worst thing an author can do is create a static character. The challenge has been to understand that the hurt and pain will never leave Hick Blackburn, they have become a part of him and they have made him who he is. But he must learn to move forward and try and make sense of the past while becoming the best man and father he can be.
“Beneath Still Waters” on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2FMyBLz
Goodreads book page: http://bit.ly/2FH3FR1
Cynthia A. Graham’s website: https://www.cynthiaagraham.com
Today marks the release of the third book in the series, “Between the Lies," which promises to be another hard-hitting mystery, full of hard choices and tense drama.
But first, here is Cynthia’s story behind “Beneath Still Waters” and the series it spawned:
Hick Blackburn pulled his hat over his eyes and squinted against the silver sun flickering and blinking on the surface of the slough’s dark water. The sentence came to me as I stared at a large lake one summer morning. I remembered watching the sunlight dance upon the water and thinking, that’s the way I want to begin my book.
For me, writing has always been the way I make sense of the world. Those things hard to verbalize find shape and meaning in the written word. Beneath Still Waters had been in the “percolating” stage for some time. I had read a newspaper article from the 1920s in which authorities were trying to identify the remains of a baby found in a slough. The story was horrific and stayed with me and, as I stared at the lake, the story of Hick Blackburn began to emerge.
I began writing Beneath Still Waters when we were, once again, at war. There were questions I wanted to explore—questions about life and death, how we determine who is worthy to live, and how soldiers cope with the long-lasting effects of decisions made in the heat of battle.
Though I had never before written one, mystery emerged as the best genre for this exploration. The great P. D. James once said, that the attraction of mystery “isn’t the horror, it’s the puzzle, the bringing order out of disorder.” There can be no more disordered place on earth than a battlefield and I knew I wanted to discuss the real cost of war on those soldiers who came home. I wondered how it would feel to return to a small town that hadn’t changed, knowing full well that you would never be the same. And I wanted to give a voice to my own family members—my uncles who came home from the war bringing ghosts and demons that haunted them for the rest of their lives. I was tired of all the hero stories, not because these boys weren’t heroes, but because those kinds of stories somehow seemed to minimize and invalidate the true pain and anguish brought about by their experiences.
Once I had created this character who had experienced real pain and anguish from the mistakes he’d made and the things he’d done, I knew this man, Hick Blackburn, would help me to understand and question the world around me—and he has. Beneath Still Waters was so well received and so many asked what happens next, I decided to write a sequel, Behind Every Door. I am currently writing my fourth Hick Blackburn mystery and the third, Between The Lies, comes out March 27. Because chaos was my initial inspiration, current headlines have insured that I am never lacking in story ideas.
The real challenge for me has been making sure my character grows. He is no longer a twenty-two-year-old man, he is now a twenty-seven-year-old father and the worst thing an author can do is create a static character. The challenge has been to understand that the hurt and pain will never leave Hick Blackburn, they have become a part of him and they have made him who he is. But he must learn to move forward and try and make sense of the past while becoming the best man and father he can be.
“Beneath Still Waters” on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2FMyBLz
Goodreads book page: http://bit.ly/2FH3FR1
Cynthia A. Graham’s website: https://www.cynthiaagraham.com
The Story Behind the Story: Cynthia A. Graham Beulah's House of Prayer
A setting can play a dramatic role in story writing, as if it is a character unto itself. Shaking its fist in the background of “Beulah’s House of Prayer” like malevolent spirit is a bleak spot of history that resulted from a financial collapse and the destruction of the land. But the story Cynthia A. Graham tells is not bleak, despite the combined circumstances of The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
Set in the Oklahoma panhandle in the 1930s, in a town that is as emaciated as its inhabitants, the story begins with the arrival of Sugar Watson, a young, orphaned trapeze performer taxed with the somber and dubious mission of burying her father in his hometown. The inhabitants of Barmy are as dreary as their surroundings, many of whom are just hanging by a dust-covered thread. The train—which doesn’t even stop in Barmy anymore—made an exception in Sugar’s case, depositing her in the closest place to hell that she’s ever seen.
But it’s the quirkiness of the individuals and their plights that make the story so fascinating and compelling. Layers are pulled back, exposing the small kernels of humanity that dire times have not completely snuffed out. With gentleness and humor, the author gives us an indelible look inside times that seem unsurmountable, yet are a glory to behold in the mind’s eye, and she uses history to show us the amazing resilience of the human spirit.
It’s my pleasure to welcome back the very talented Cynthia A. Graham:
Like many, I enjoy reading history. As I read The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, I was surprised to learn that, unlike what I’d been led to believe after reading Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, fully two-thirds of those living in the Dust Bowl stayed in place. As I continued to read, I became more and more astonished by the things I learned. So much of the Dust Bowl mystique is shaped by Steinbeck, so I decided to tell the story of those who stayed behind and endured. I wanted to give a voice to the vast majority of farmers who stayed on the family farm throughout the Depression.
But as Egan points out, most of the people who lived through these hard times never spoke of them. Like World War II veterans, they reasoned that after living through hell there was no need to conjure it up again, and therefore, much of what they experienced remained locked away. But Egan sought these people out and finally, after all these years, they began to discuss what they’d seen and endured. And as I learned what these survivors of the worst man-made environmental catastrophe in history went through, I knew I wanted to write about them. It was their stories I wanted to tell in Beulah’s House of Prayer.
Usually writing does not come easy for me, but in this instance I heard a voice, a voice that begged to have its story told. I was born in 1936 on a ragged, wasted little strip of land known as the Oklahoma panhandle. This voice stayed with me throughout the story, narrating from afar.
As I wrote Beulah, I began to enjoy the vivid characters that seemed to come into being of their own free will. The main protagonists are Sugar Watson and Homer Guppy, two lonely, young people who go in search of treasure and find more than they bargained for. And I began enjoying the minor characters as well, characters like Marigold Lawford, the young widow of the richest man in town whose parents traded her to him for a truck. And, of course, the book’s namesake, Beulah Clinton, a Holy Ghost preacher whose husband was carried away by a tornado. Her arrival in Barmy, Oklahoma coincides with that of Sugar Watson’s and becomes the catalyst for the story.
I tried to walk a fine line writing Beulah. I wanted to be realistic about the harshness of the Dust Bowl. I didn’t want to candy-coat facts such as over 7,000 people dying of dust pneumonia, or, to put a fine point to it, they died from simply breathing. I didn’t want to ignore the fact that suicide and alcoholism were ways that many coped. And I didn’t want to gloss over the mental toll of facing day after day of dry dust so thick even wet towels couldn’t keep it out.
But I knew when I began I didn’t want to write a story of sadness and defeat, but a story of grace and endurance. I sought to honor and acknowledge those who walked through these events -- through the heat and the bugs and the hunger, and came out stronger on the other side. I didn’t want the story to be bleak. And, in the end, though it is difficult, it is not depressing or sad. Instead, it is a testimony to love and hope, those things that undoubtedly kept people going throughout days and days of dust that fell like snow.
https://www.cynthiaagraham.com
Twitter: @cynthiaa_graham
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/cynthiaagrah...
https://amzn.to/2LXPDxw
Set in the Oklahoma panhandle in the 1930s, in a town that is as emaciated as its inhabitants, the story begins with the arrival of Sugar Watson, a young, orphaned trapeze performer taxed with the somber and dubious mission of burying her father in his hometown. The inhabitants of Barmy are as dreary as their surroundings, many of whom are just hanging by a dust-covered thread. The train—which doesn’t even stop in Barmy anymore—made an exception in Sugar’s case, depositing her in the closest place to hell that she’s ever seen.
But it’s the quirkiness of the individuals and their plights that make the story so fascinating and compelling. Layers are pulled back, exposing the small kernels of humanity that dire times have not completely snuffed out. With gentleness and humor, the author gives us an indelible look inside times that seem unsurmountable, yet are a glory to behold in the mind’s eye, and she uses history to show us the amazing resilience of the human spirit.
It’s my pleasure to welcome back the very talented Cynthia A. Graham:
Like many, I enjoy reading history. As I read The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, I was surprised to learn that, unlike what I’d been led to believe after reading Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, fully two-thirds of those living in the Dust Bowl stayed in place. As I continued to read, I became more and more astonished by the things I learned. So much of the Dust Bowl mystique is shaped by Steinbeck, so I decided to tell the story of those who stayed behind and endured. I wanted to give a voice to the vast majority of farmers who stayed on the family farm throughout the Depression.
But as Egan points out, most of the people who lived through these hard times never spoke of them. Like World War II veterans, they reasoned that after living through hell there was no need to conjure it up again, and therefore, much of what they experienced remained locked away. But Egan sought these people out and finally, after all these years, they began to discuss what they’d seen and endured. And as I learned what these survivors of the worst man-made environmental catastrophe in history went through, I knew I wanted to write about them. It was their stories I wanted to tell in Beulah’s House of Prayer.
Usually writing does not come easy for me, but in this instance I heard a voice, a voice that begged to have its story told. I was born in 1936 on a ragged, wasted little strip of land known as the Oklahoma panhandle. This voice stayed with me throughout the story, narrating from afar.
As I wrote Beulah, I began to enjoy the vivid characters that seemed to come into being of their own free will. The main protagonists are Sugar Watson and Homer Guppy, two lonely, young people who go in search of treasure and find more than they bargained for. And I began enjoying the minor characters as well, characters like Marigold Lawford, the young widow of the richest man in town whose parents traded her to him for a truck. And, of course, the book’s namesake, Beulah Clinton, a Holy Ghost preacher whose husband was carried away by a tornado. Her arrival in Barmy, Oklahoma coincides with that of Sugar Watson’s and becomes the catalyst for the story.
I tried to walk a fine line writing Beulah. I wanted to be realistic about the harshness of the Dust Bowl. I didn’t want to candy-coat facts such as over 7,000 people dying of dust pneumonia, or, to put a fine point to it, they died from simply breathing. I didn’t want to ignore the fact that suicide and alcoholism were ways that many coped. And I didn’t want to gloss over the mental toll of facing day after day of dry dust so thick even wet towels couldn’t keep it out.
But I knew when I began I didn’t want to write a story of sadness and defeat, but a story of grace and endurance. I sought to honor and acknowledge those who walked through these events -- through the heat and the bugs and the hunger, and came out stronger on the other side. I didn’t want the story to be bleak. And, in the end, though it is difficult, it is not depressing or sad. Instead, it is a testimony to love and hope, those things that undoubtedly kept people going throughout days and days of dust that fell like snow.
https://www.cynthiaagraham.com
Twitter: @cynthiaa_graham
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/cynthiaagrah...
https://amzn.to/2LXPDxw
