Guest Blog on My Devotional Thoughts - Blog Tour

Here is my "Writing Processs" guest blog as posted on My Devotional Thoughts.

J.A. Beard's Unnecessary Musings - Author Interview

My interview on J.A. Beard's Unnecessary Musings 

No Wasted Ink Interview

My interview on No Wasted Ink.

Books and Needlepoint: My Favourite Place to Research by Gabriele Wills - & Book Giveaway

Books and Needlepoint: My Favourite Place to Research by Gabriele Wills - Enter to win a copy of The Summer Before the Storm

The Challenges of Writing Sequels

I’m working on Book 3 of my Muskoka Novels series, and am once again struggling with a few issues. With the Dickensian cast of characters having over 1100 pages of experiences behind them, how much do I reiterate so that those who have not read the first two books will know what’s going on, while those who have just finished them won’t be bored? It’s a fine line to tread.

Continuity also has its challenges. Each character is for me a real person, so no problem recalling how they look or “who” they are. I do have profiles for them, which include their favourite expressions, what other characters think or say about them, whether someone gave them a gold locket or a silver cigarette case, and other minutiae, which may become relevant at some time.

I’ve spent weeks combing through the first two books to compile a list of continuity facts, which also include descriptions of places and events. For instance, Grandmother Wyndham had her portrait painted by John Singer Sargent, so of course it has to hang somewhere. Hothouse flowers were shipped regularly from the Wyndhams’ city estate to their summer cottage on the lake. A lucent necklace of gas lamps encircled the entire point of their island. I have over 40 pages of these types of notes.

So now it’s time to immerse myself in another world again!

Historical weather and other tidbits

Trying to recreate an era as accurately as possible, I’m continually amazed and delighted that so many historical tidbits can be found instantly on the Internet. I know that in 1914 the July full moon fell on Tuesday the 7th, which is when my characters have a moonlight cruise on the lake. I’ve seen photos of the first class dining lounge on the Lusitania, and know what was served to my characters for dinner as they departed for England. I know what a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost ambulance looks like, as driven by one of my young women. I’ve watched funerals for those killed in air raids, and followed Edward, the Prince of Wales, on his tour through Canada in 1919.

I need a good understanding of the time to be able to realistically place my characters in it. So even trivial things like the weather are taken into account. Looking at the climate data for 1919, I see that June was incredibly hot, with half the days registering over 30°C, while July was almost as hot, and had only four rainy days. How unlike our summer last year, which was lamentably cool and wet. The weather certainly has an impact on how you spend time at your lakeside cottage, as my characters do.

After two cool summers here, I know I’m not the only one looking forward to a blistering 1919-type one. In the meantime, I’m spending the winter there!

Soundtracks of our lives

Even more than language (see previous post), music evokes an era - ragtime pre-WW1, jazz in the ‘20s, the Beatles in the ‘60s.

We all have soundtracks for our lives - music that transports us in a heartbeat to a particular time and place whenever we hear it. That applies equally to fictional characters. Throughout my “Muskoka Novels”, appropriate lyrics of popular songs are used for dramatic or ironic effect, and in character and relationship development.

During my research, I came across ragtime historian and award-winning performer Bill Edwards’ website, and became enchanted by his masterful renditions of the hit tunes of the pre- and WW1 eras. It helped me to immerse myself in the mindset for writing about that time. 

I thought it would enhance the reading experience to have a companion CD of that music to accompany each novel. Bill readily agreed to produce them. So readers can enjoy the music to which characters dance and flirt - songs that evoke romance as well as themes in the storyline.

When I mentioned that one of my characters wrote a hit Broadway musical in Elusive Dawn, Bill asked me if I had any lyrics for the signature tune, so I sent a few lines that had been playing around in my head. He expanded those into a song in the style of the era, and has recorded it for the Elusive Dawn CD. It's entitled "I'm Over the Moon For You". I just love how fact and fiction intertwine! And I’m eagerly awaiting the release of this latest CD.

Visit NovelTunes for more info about the “Music for Muskoka” CD that accompanies The Summer Before The Storm.

 

Obsessiveness pays off!

The coordinator of the “Lest We Forget” project at Library and Archives Canada was so impressed with my WW1 website that she will be using it for her workshops with students, and recommending my war-related novels, The Summer Before the Storm and Elusive Dawn. History teachers have also said that they would use the site in their classrooms. So all that research I did is useful for more than the framework for my books, which is thrilling!

I’m moving in a couple of days, and there’s still too much to do. I’ll be back next week.

The perks of research

A year ago I was in France, driving along the dramatic coastline between Boulogne and Calais, wishing the rain would stop. The colourful fields and yellow gorse were a delight after the drab April browns of Ontario, but the weather wasn’t a lot warmer. Yet I hadn’t come for sunshine. This was a research trip.

On an endlessly snowy day in February, I had been struggling with descriptions of the Calais area where some of my characters work during the First World War. I scoured the Internet for photos, spent plenty of time on Google Earth trying to get a feeling for the landscape, read descriptions by people who had been there at the time, but wasn’t satisfied I really knew what it looked like. So I told my family we had to go to France. Springtime in Paris! No persuasion required and the VISA card had lots of room.

When the rain finally stopped and we were able to walk the beaches at Caps Blanc-Nez and Gris-Nez, and the dunes at Sangatte, I realized how right I had been that I needed to be on location to get a true feeling of the countryside and the sea. And I experienced first-hand the gale-force winds that sandpaper your skin and which people kept mentioning in memoirs. The imposing cliff at Cap Blanc-Nez can’t be fully appreciated from photos, like the one above, and the hilliness of that stretch of coastline was a surprise. Since my characters drive ambulances along here, that was important to know.

Wimereux was a delight, with plenty of Victorian buildings still in existence. I have characters staying in the same small hotel that we enjoyed, since I found a postcard of it from that era, and realize that, except for its name, it has hardly changed. Seeing one of the villas that had been used as an officers’ hospital during the war was also an exciting connection to the past.

I could have spent more than five days exploring this area - we only went as far south as Le Touquet, and hope some time to go to Normandy (for WW2) - but our next stop was the Riviera, where it was warm and sunny. My excuse for this part of the trip was that I have a character who owns a villa in Cap d’Antibes, so we explored that and found the perfect location.

I know that my characters will visit here - often! - and have to admit that I would be thrilled to join them. The exotic vegetation and masses of flowers blooming in the generous sunshine, the rich blues and turquoises of the sea set against the snow-capped Mediterranean Alps were food for a hungry soul. Imagine people actually living here!

 

Connecting with the past on a visceral level

This photo of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemetery at Etaples on the north coast of France can’t even begin to convey the enormity of the site or the profound sadness that you feel when walking among the nearly11,000 graves. The middle and right grave at the front are those of a Canadian doctor and nurse killed in the air raid on the 1^st Canadian General Hospital on May 19, 1918.

There are endless pockets of smaller cemeteries, especially near the battlefields. Neatly walled, lovingly maintained, they appear like a bizarre crop amid farmers’ fields. When you stroll through them, one thing strikes you immediately - most of the dead had barely had a chance at life, many still in their teens.

The CWGC website allows you to do a search on fallen Commonwealth soldiers, and pinpoint the exact location of a grave. Armed with that info, we visited my husband’s great-uncle’s grave at Dud Corner cemetery last year. He died at the age of 21 in the Battle of Loos in 1915. In the photo we have of him in his officer’s uniform, he looks heartbreakingly young.

These former battlefields lie poignantly silent, yet bid you to take a moment to reflect. They brought to mind the last verse in John McCrae’s poem, “The Anxious Dead”:

Bid them be patient, and some day, anon,

They shall feel earth enwrapt in silence deep;

Shall greet, in wonderment, the quiet dawn,

And in content may turn them to their sleep.

The Role of Fiction

I was involved in a discussion on one of the First World War forums about the viability of war fiction. Some of the purists thought that fiction has no place in the literature of war. I pointed out that fiction can bring enlightenment to those who would normally not pick up an historical tome, having heard that sentiment from some of my readers. I myself would not have read the hundred books I did had I not being doing research for my novels. A pity, since so many are riveting accounts that now number among my favourite books.

But I’m delighted that I’ve interested people in the Great War, and imparted some understanding of it. Here are a few relevant comments from readers:           

"Please accept my congratulations on an engrossing novel. Once begun, it was impossible to put down. Because of last year's anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, I have read much of the recent writing about that cataclysmic First World War battle. But that writing did not capture the terror, the mud or the wastage of human life in the detail or degree that you managed to capture in Elusive Dawn."

"I am very appreciative for your depiction of the first world war. My grand-mother lost two brothers in that war and I've always felt that I had no real understanding of it. Today with the war in the Middle East, I still feel as though I have no understanding again. The Summer Before The Storm gave me a glimpse of the horror of war, it felt like a first hand account."

"I love history but tend to find the war stuff quite boring - however you made it all interesting by connecting it to great characters!"

More comments can be seen on my website at  theMuskokaNovels.com

Getting the facts right

So here’s one of the things that qualifies me for the moniker of “obsessed writer”. I’m a stickler about getting the facts right. For my first two “Muskoka Novels”, The Summer Before The Storm and Elusive Dawn, I read over 170 books, consulted hundreds of websites, visited museums, WW1 battlefields and cemeteries, and joined three war forums, where I asked experts about obscure facts I couldn’t find anywhere else. Those forums became an obsession in themselves. The Great War Forum has over 23,000 members worldwide, so you can imagine how many discussions were posted daily. I finally had to stop actively participating or Elusive Dawn would never have been completed. I have to admit that I still haven’t left them behind completely, although my research on the war is done.

During my final editing of Elusive Dawn I wanted to write a good description of the Bronte moors, but have never been there in winter, only in summer. Doing a search on the Internet, I came across a report from a British ecologist about the moors. So I sent an email requesting more info. Imagine how surprised I was to have a response from BBC Radio Sheffield asking it I would be on the Rony Robinson show? Host Rony would call in the experts and supply me with the desired details. So there I was at 7:00 AM on a transcontinental chat with Rony, the ecologist professor, a renowned artist, and the curator of the Bronte museum. Unfortunately a bad connection kept me from speaking much with them, but I heard it all and came away with an embarrassment of riches from the 20 minute discussion. All I had really needed were a few lines to describe colours, textures, and vegetation in November. I then felt compelled to beef up the description to do some justice to the time invested by these generous people.

Research is such fun!

Surprising facts make good stories

Who would have thought that civilian women could travel across war-torn France in 1916 to meet their husbands in Marseille before the men went off to Salonika? That's exactly what my British grandmother-in-law and her friend did! In my grandfather-in-law's memoir, he talks about staying in a hotel with his wife for a week, during which he only had to go to his military camp a couple of hours a day to work. (He was a Captain then.) Not the sort of scenario most people would associate with the First World War, especially as the bloody Battle of the Somme was raging up in the north of France at that time. 

Also surprising is that wives of officers were allowed to travel to Paris to meet them for short leaves. And how about the wives of officer Prisoners of War being allowed to live with them in Switzerland or Holland while they were interned there? Germany sent men who were ill or suffering psychologically from imprisonment to these neutral countries. Although not allowed to return to England, those who could afford to, lived in hotels and had their families join them for the duration of the war. 

Aviator Cecil Lewis in his fascinating autobiography, Sagittarius Rising, mentions flying secretly from France to England for a weekend rendezvous in London.

 It's odd and intriguing facts like these that I like to incorporate into my historical novels. I'll be posting more of them later.