The heroes of the Old West always intrigued me, probably because I'd grown up with TV shows like Bonanza, The Rifleman, The Virginian and The Lone Ranger, all rugged men who survived hardships with stoic grace, but who never hesitated to help others whenever needed.
While I never base characters on anyone I know, I do sometimes borrow names for some of my heroes and heroines. My sister Annette's a genealogist, and traced our family history back to a French Canadian fur trapper named Peter LeVert. The Anglicized version of LeVert is Green, and my paternal grandmother's name was Nettie Green. So my hero became Jebediah Greene.
The imprints of the Native Americans who lived on the Eastern coast also influenced me while growing up. Their names were everywhere. The road I grew up on was an Indian name, I believe from the Lenne Lenape tribe though I'm not certain. This story begins in Tipton, Missouri, a major stop for stage coaches.
Several Native American tribes made their homes in Missouri, but for this story, I chose the Osage. The women of the tribe took care of the farming, the men hunted and sometimes fought to protect their people. Men and women alike were storytellers, artists, musicians and healers. Osage artists were famous for their wood carving and beadwork. They seemed like the type of tribe I would fall in love with, so I let my heroine, Winona, fall in love with their ways too. She'd never been particularly fond of domestic chores in Philadelphia, but the camaraderie of the Osage changed all that.
Shakespeare's provided inspiration to countless writers, too. One of my favorite movie versions of Shakespeare (besides the Franco Zefferelli production of Romeo and Juliet) is A Midsummer Night's Dream with Kevin Kline, Rupert Everett, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christian Bale, and others.
While my story's not a fantasy, both the hero and heroine love this Shakespeare play and make reference to it.
On a side note, I found this Beatles rarity while looking for the movie above. Enjoy!
I love sharing the background of my stories. It usually takes me anywhere from many months to several years to finish a story. I always have about a dozen in the WIP queue, and work on them as time permits. Research is sometimes a holdup. I love it a little too much.
For my dark paranormals, research involves everything from The Underworld to Greek mythology to goddesses to angels.
Dancing with the Devil was no different. The myth of Persephone and Hades has always intrigued me. The gods and goddesses were a strange and incestuous bunch (Persephone was Hades' niece, in fact). I wasn't about to touch that aspect of it.
But that aside, Hades is, after all, the devil. The ultimate bad guy. The guy you can never trust, never be friends with, never turn your back on. Yet somehow, he managed to make Persephone fall in love with him. After their marriage, her mother Demeter protested and basically earned Persephone a Get Out of Hell card for at least part of the year. Persephone ultimately chose to return to Hades.
Why? Did Hades have some redeeming qualities? He wasn't a faithful husband. He spent a little too much time with the nymph Minthe. Persephone took notice, and violently murdered Minthe. Maybe a little of her husband rubbed off on the goddess, eh?
Much of the story is set in The Underworld. Not many have visited and returned to describe the setting, but there are plenty of resources to make up for that.
Hades refers to both the ruler of The Underworld and Hell itself. For the most part, it refers to the ruler in Dancing With the Devil. Tartarus is the least desirable of the realms, where the damned souls reside, and where Hades keeps his main castle in my story.
As far as the realm being broken into sections, well, that was something I imagined. Each section has its own archduke, chosen by Hades. For Section Six, Zeveriah is archduke, and has fallen into Hades' favor with his financial expertise. Hades is about to appoint Zeveriah as CFO. As an extra perk, he's throwing in his granddaughter Lily.
Carrying on in the tradition of Hades and Persephone, the two arrange the marriages of their offspring with prominent figures in The Underworld. Persephone's daughter Illiana, however, chose to buck that tradition and instead married an angel, Zacharel. Their daughter Lily was kidnapped as an infant and placed into the care of a woman who turned out to be a double agent - friendly to the angels, she secretly worked for The Underworld, and helped set up Lily on her 21st birthday.
When she steps into the waiting limousine, Lily has no clue she's taken the first step toward fulfilling her role as The Destined One.
It's funny how elements come together in a story. When I first began Dancing With the Devil, Lily's a pole dancer. Not your stereotypical exotic dancer, she just loves to dance. So it seemed natural to include a scene in which Persephone and Hades arrange a performance during Lily's visit. As a starting point, I researched belly dancing and stumbled across information on slave dances, which I'd never heard of, but which fit the story perfectly.
Slaves dance performances tell a story in and of themselves. They might be a woman's personal story, or it might be a traditional dance which relays a part of the culture.
In Dancing With the Devil, the performance depicts the origin of The Destined One, and shows how the woman will fulfill her role. Lily's enamored of the dancing itself, and asks to learn the method. I'd never understood much about it, but apparently using the finger cymbals, or zills, is extremely difficult to master.
Not for Lily, of course. :)
Angels provided another reason for research. I dusted off my copy of A Dictionary of Angels and searched through it for what might be an appropriate angel. The one who caught my eye was Bodiel.
As The Ruling Angel of the Sixth Heaven, Bodiel would seem to be in a position of direct opposition to the archduke of Hades Section Six, Zeveriah. A good excuse to make them foes since the beginning of existence.
Bodiel's also part of the Sixth Order of Angel, known as Thrones. The array of angels is astounding, in fact - one for every month, every day, and every hour of the day. And more beyond that. But that's all for another story. :)
Literally, Bodiel means "The Enlightenment of the Source of the Whole of Existence." For my story, he focuses on enlightening Lily. He understands the risk in becoming personally involved, yet it doesn't stop him. Besides being a warrior angel, he also rides a motorcycle. True hero material.
My research files for this story go on for many, many more pages. I'll wrap it up with Lilith, who's somewhat of a mystery. Apparently much of what was formerly recorded about Lilith was stricken from history. Some referred to her as the first goddess, and the first wife of Adam - in fact, created alongside Adam rather than Eve, who came later to replace Lilith. It seems Lilith was somewhat of a party girl, and liked to keep her options open rather than commit to one guy. She "mated" with the archangel Samael (who became the original fallen angel, or Satan). So some referred to her as a demoness, and she may or may not have been the serpent who tempted Eve with the apple in the Garden of Eden.
It seems to be the general concensus that Lilith was banished. So she became the go-to goddess for desperate Veronica, who's in love with Zeveriah, who's determined to make Lily fall in love with him. But he also is addicted to relieving the pain of waiting for Lily by, ahem, spending time with Veronica.
As I've mentioned before, Dancing with the Devil is a much higher heat level than I normally write. I think I mentioned I stopped writing it a few times because of it. But then I realized the sex was not gratuitous. In Dancing With the Devil, it's more of a power struggle than anything. It made perfect sense, so I stopped trying to limit my characters and let them tell their story.
I can't remember what first caught my attention about the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. Once I began researching it, I couldn't stop. So many elements resonate today - natural disasters are a too-frequent occurrence of our lives.
Before April 18, 1906, San Francisco was a wild city of 400,000 people, making it the ninth largest American city of that time. Nearly every vice imaginable could be found there, particularly in the Barbary District. It was the Victorian Age, but peep shows, nickelodeons showing scandalous videos, dance halls and whore houses enjoyed great success because the Mayor was easily bribed, like his Vice Squad.
The Barbary District was also where the term "shanghai'd" came into play. Men who wandered alone into alleys or near the bay sometimes found themselves kidnapped, headed on ships to Shanghai.
San Francisco captivated my imagination, as I'm sure it did for many people who visited in its heyday. The earthquake changed a way of life for many residents.
The disaster was immense in magnitude. Though the Richter Scale hadn't yet been invented, geologists estimated it at about 7.8.
More than 3,000 died. Many perished in the earthquake itself, but the resulting fires killed many more. Lasting for days because of broken water mains, these fires were so intense, they sometimes erupted into fireballs and engulfed anyone in their path. Smoke blackened the skies.
Crumbling structures buried or trapped other people, oftentimes too quickly to react. More than once, police took pity on men either caught on fiery rooftops or pinned by debris too heavy to move - and shot them before they could burn alive.
Men were deputized as special police whose actions later came into question. At the Mayor's direction, they shot looters on sight. More than 1700 soldiers arrived to help, but some of the soldiers themselves were seen looting. The military's attempt to halt the fires by dynamiting entire city blocks was a miserable failure.
On the afternoon of the quake, a telegraph operator tapped out this final message: city destroyed by fire, Examiner building just fell in a heap. Fire all around us in every direction. Destruction by earthquake something frightful. They are blowing up standing buildings in the path of flames. No water. It’s awful. I want to get out of here. Or be blown up.
People wandered the streets in a daze. Amazingly, once food rations and supplies arrived by train, people rolled up their sleeves and got to work. Everyone was determined to rebuild the city. They cleared debris, saving whatever materials they might reuse. So much debris, in fact, that 15,000 horses died in hauling it away - and contractors figured into estimates the value of the animals they knew they'd have to replace.
Work on the street car system began almost immediately, and ten days later, Mayor Schmidts inaugurated service on a new line. Concerned about a possible epidemic, the city offered a bounty for dead rats.
I hope you found this as fascinating as I did. I loved writing this story, and throwing Norah and Mac into these dramatic times. I hope you'll check out their story too. :)
It's difficult to explain where the ideas for One Soul for Sale originated. As I mentioned yesterday, it was one of those rare stories that tumbled from my head almost fully formed. It made the critique rounds, of course, but I wrote it very quickly to keep up with the narrative gushing forth.
It meshed a few key elements, but the catalyst came from online bidding sites where people sometimes post outrageous items, including a soul once, I believe. Other items so odd, the news featured them included someone's wife, and a house. I'm sure there've been many more, but you get the idea. Further proof that truth is stranger than fiction.
One of the main elements concerns an artist's conundrum in balancing life with art, something with which any writer can identify. How to know when you're too focused on your goal? When to pull back? Or give up? How much of ourselves are we willing to sacrifice for our art? Artists working in all mediums all confront these struggles at some point or another.
I set this story during Halloween, otherwise known as All Hallow's Eve, for a few reasons. One, it's second only to Christmas for me. I love Halloween decorations equally, and my house reflects it. The legends surrounding this holiday have always intrigued me. Halloween is when the barrier disappears between this world and the next, allowing souls to freely roam between. A time for mischief and mayhem. How to know whether a force is good or evil? Sometimes it's difficult to tell - so that element is part of this story.
I also pay small tribute to my mom in One Soul for Sale. She's been gone for years, but her spirit's still strong. I know she's still watching over, along with my dad. The quote attributed to Madelyn's mom actually came from my dad, who always warned me about not wishing my life away. Excellent advice. The present is all we have, and I make the most of it.
I've been lucky to garner some wonderful reviews for One Soul for Sale. Reviewers described it as “outstanding,” a “riveting read… I couldn’t stop until I hit the last page.”
As I mentioned, you have two opportunities to win copies of One Soul for Sale this fall: during Ramsey's Reviews' Halloween Bash, and Night Owl Reviews Halloween Web Hunt. Links to each are on the logos at the top right of this page.
Here's an excerpt: Madelyn gazes out the window, adrift as a leaf. “Everything’s on a downhill slide – work, dating, all of it. Sometimes I think I have to sell my soul to get what I really want in life.” “Well, that’s easy – put it on uBuy.” Gwen shakes her cup to stir up sugar from the bottom. “You’re such a comedian.” Madelyn reinforces Gwen’s dream at every opportunity. Her friend reciprocates by being Madelyn’s best cheerleader for her art, though lately, her sketches are as uninspired as the rest of her life. “I try my best.” Gwen’s been revising her standup act for months, perfecting it so she can one day actually perform before a crowd at a comedy club rather than open mike night. Or in front of her bedroom mirror. Their meager salaries don’t allow for luxury, so neither is a stranger to the allure of uBuy, and both feed their addiction to the site daily. Madelyn finds designer clothing bargains while Gwen goes for vintage. Besides supplementing their wardrobes, Madelyn and Gwen love uBuy for its oddities. The odder an item is, the more appeal it has. Madelyn’s desktop swaying, ukele-strumming hula-skirted Gumby is testament to this. Gwen collects memorabilia of famous comedians; Groucho Marx is a favorite. On that level, Gwen’s offhand suggestion appeals to Madelyn. “I should list my soul, just for kicks. To see what response I’d get.” People have sold stranger things. Maybe some cute guy would buy it, and who knows where that might lead. She’s already tried online dating, though. Cyberspace, she found, is not a good place to meet strangers. The notion is erased from Madelyn’s mind by the sight of a stunning man on the sidewalk. Standing by the newspaper vending box, he checks his watch. His dark features are set off by his black shirt, black sport coat and black slacks. He’s so perfect, he looks out of context with his surroundings. When he looks at her, shock waves rumble through her nervous system like an oncoming storm. A rush of heat engulfs her. “Madelyn? Hey, what’s wrong with you.” Gwen’s voice is distant, as if it comes through a tunnel. She snaps her attention back to her friend. “Nothing.” In truth, Madelyn knew her universe had just shifted.
Wilderness Girl began with a line I distinctly heard spoken in my head. No, I don't normally hear voices; it's never happened before, and hasn't since. But it was enough to launch this story.
First, a little backstory on the voice. I love to garden (though this year my gardens are a miserable failure, but that's another story altogether). Unfortunately, we live in an area where snakes are prevalent. Not just one type of snake, but several, including poisonous copperheads. When I was little, I loved to collect all sorts of slimy reptiles and bring them home, including snakes. Now, of course, I prefer to avoid snakes altogether. One of the perks of age is reason, I suppose. :) But one rather long black snake would regularly slither through our yard on his way to doing snake business wherever.
I actually didn't mind this snake, and it apparently didn't mind us either. It even let my kids and dog check it out. I checked it out from a distance. :) But other snakes weren't so easy to identify, and while working in the garden, I'd often see them up close more often than I cared to. (Yes, there's a point to this story.)
Weeding one day, I had a close encounter, and (here it is...) heard the voice. What did it say? Very clearly, I heard: **ck me till I'm blind.
It seemed a reasonable exclamation from a girl out in the wild when confronted with such a snake. Someone whose wilderness skills ranked somewhere between zero and point five on a scale of 20. So Dana was born: web developer, she's artistic in a virtual way, and practically lives online. She even met her boyfriend online. So when she meets Hank, he's more than a breath of fresh air. He opens her eyes to the joys of manual labor. :)
As I mentioned yesterday, guys on motorcycles really intrigue me. Not necessarily bad boys, they usually think a little more independently than guys, say, who drive compact cars. Whenever I see a couple on a bike, they always look so in synch with one another, physically as well as emotionally. They look happy.
Camping's one of those activities where couples need to be in synch with one another, and depend on one another. Not only to look after their partner's welfare, but their emotional well being too. I'm sure it's a great test of relationship strength as well.
Like most of the characters in my stories, Hank and Dana emerged from the deep shadowy recesses of my brain fully formed. I had to get to know them a little, but as usual, too, it was like getting reacquainted with old friends.
I hope you'll come to know and love Hank and Dana as much as I did.
One final note, about the trailer. The incredible music was composed by Michael Eli, who generously allowed me to use it. I erroneously attributed it to the band Soul Custody in the credits. but it's Michael's sole composition. It's so beautiful, I let it run a little longer than the video.
You can view the entire Story Elements series (so far) by entering the key words Story Elements in the search box to the right.
Here's another Wilderness Girl excerpt different than the usual: The guy at Wilderness Outfitters had been right. This seemed an excellent spot. The slope offered a perfect view of the stream at the bottom of the hill. But where was he now that she needed him? Probably having a good laugh, imagining her here by herself. The only other vehicle in the parking lot was a motorcycle–obviously not another camper. Perhaps he’d never intended to show up at all. Maybe he’d gone back to the coffee shop that night and made plans with the Frappacino Girl. Should she head back to the car? She’d have to gather everything up again, trek back through the woods…. No. Going back meant giving in to failure. Next, she’d be sitting home on weekends, feeling like a complete loser. She’d never been that girl, and she wasn’t about to start now. The instructions. Though they read like something translated from Japanese to Greek to English, maybe the illustrations would be of some use. She bent to retrieve them. When she reached for the pole, it moved. Oh good God. A snake. Four feet long, maybe five–hard to tell, after panic set in. Looking at her with its beady black eyes, flicking its awful tongue. Why, of all things, did it have to be a snake? She’d rather have wrestled a grizzly. Happy to leave the city-dwelling man-snakes like Sean behind, she hadn’t thought about the possibility of facing the real thing. She should have known better than to take off into the mountains alone. Her cell phone had zero reception on this hill. If the thing bit her, she’d die out in the wilderness. “Oh, **ck me till I’m blind.” Behind her, a twig snapped and leaves rustled. She didn’t dare look. With her luck, the bear had arrived to take on her challenge. A husky voice asked, “If I get rid of that snake, will you ask me again?” She turned her head ever so slowly. It was him! Wilderness Guy. He looked even better than the night they’d met. His sparkling gaze danced across her in appreciation. The way he looked at her made her want to peel off her clothes layer by layer, to see the pleasure in his face grow. She struggled to regain her composure. “You’re here! Can you please help me before I’m eaten alive?” He rested his hands on his hips. “I told you I would be.” Relief gushed over her, her earlier disappointment forgotten. He shifted his feet. “But you didn’t answer my question.” Disappointment returned. He’d seemed so nice at Wilderness Outfitters, but here he was, acting like they were at a singles bar or something. When he arched a brow, his teasing flared her temper. She’d had enough of self-absorbed guys who thought they could get whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. He obviously knew he registered a twenty on a scale of one to ten. After putting up with Sean’s games, she wasn’t about to let this guy call the plays. “You….” His hand shot out. “Don’t move.” Oh damn. The snake–she’d forgotten for a blessed second. It coiled upon itself and raised its head. Its tongue darted out. “Oh no….” She fought her buckling knees. “Stay calm.” His low voice fanned embers of the fire she’d felt that night in the store. He slunk toward her like a warrior stalking an enemy. Graceful as tai chi, his serpentine movements mesmerized her. No wonder the reptile watched him as though he were a snake charmer. He moved nearer and her muscles tightened, imagining him melding into her embrace. When his arm grazed hers, she gasped. His touch felt electric, magnetic, just as it had the night they’d met. He winked. Already in a slow boil, heat bubbled from within her to her surface. She seethed, “Are you going to get rid of it, or play with it?” He arched a brow. “I love to play. Don’t you?” She opened her mouth to argue. Before she could form the words, he lunged downward. One hand below the serpent’s head, the other in the middle, he lifted it into the air. Man and reptile twisted in a tangled dance down the hill. Her heart raced. The scene played like a primal ritual. He proved such a hot and skilled warrior. She followed, unsure what to do. What if it bit him? Old movies came to mind of cowboys cutting the skin of a snake bit partner, sucking the venom out. Ugh! Never again would she go camping. Her gear would be on eBay as soon as she made it home. With halting steps, he made it to the creek, wrestling the snake at arm’s length. In one final twist, he bent at the water’s edge. It shot from his hands and disappeared into the stream. She tried to steady her breathing, to fathom what she’d seen. “Are you all right?” “Yeah.” Wiping a forearm across his brow, his dark eyes searched hers. “I’m shaking all over.” The snake aside, his six-pack abs and leg muscles resembling a personal trainer’s could account for the bulk of her trembling. He watched her. Studied her. Her jaw hung open like a gaping moron; she realized too late, and snapped it closed. He bit his lip and burst out laughing. “What?” Why was he laughing? Maybe he’d realized what he’d done, and hysteria had set in. She wanted to wrap her arms around him, to comfort him, to bring him back to the moment, but he convulsed with giggles and chortles. He slowed down several times before exploding all over again. Holding his stomach, he wiped at his eyes, but when his gaze met hers again, he chuckled. “I’m sorry.” He held his hand to his stomach, watching her concern turn to confusion. He dipped his hands in the crystal water and splashed his face. “Oh man, I needed a good laugh.” Tendrils of damp sandy brown hair curled around his neck. “I don’t follow. Was that supposed to be funny?” The scent of a setup began to fill the air. He bit back a smile. “Garter snakes are harmless.” Her cheeks burned. “Garter snakes. Like that one.” So he wasn’t being careless by teasing her while the snake cozied closer. One last chuckle bubbled to the surface. “Yup.”
Once upon a time, I was sifting through emails on an author loop when lo and behold! another author said, "I haven't seen a mermaid story in a long while." Which made me think, "Hmm. I haven't either."
So I began researching mermaids. I'd always loved Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid (even the Disneyized version). As I expected, mermaid lore and legends abound. I was surprised to learn how far-flung the legends are, from Japan to Ireland to Israel and Greece, and just about everywhere in between.
In Ireland, for example, mermaids are called The Fairy Mistress or Fairy Sweetheart, Leanan Sidhe, which translates to My Inspiration Faery. A dark, unearthly beauty, she's a Celtic muse who lives off the eastern coast of Ireland, sometimes coming to shore to find a new lover. Usually an artist of some type, whom she inspires to genius.
As early as 5000 BC, the Babylonians worshipped the god Oannes, who was half-man, half fish. Oannes was a force for good, light and life, representing the positive values connected with the sea.
In 1493, Columbus claimed to discover mermaids who "rose high out of the sea, but were not as beautiful as they are represented." Some argue they were simply dolphins, but who knows?
Pliny the Elder, in the first century A.D., believed in "Nereides." In the fifth century, descriptions of mermaids appeared in Physiologus: "a beast of the sea wonderfully shapen as a maid from the navel upward and a fish from the navel downward."
Bartholomew Angelicus wrote that mermaids charmed seamen with music. "But the truth is that they are strong whores," who lead men "to poverty and to mischief." She lulled a crew to sleep, kidnapped a sailor, and took him to "a dry place" for sex. If he refused, "she slayeth him and eateth his flesh."
Definitely not the Disney version.
Religious leaders condemned mermaids as "whores" and in Elizabethan times, the mermaid was used as a symbol of prostitution.
A surprisingly detailed account from 1900 describes a mermaid found dead in a stream: the upper part of the creature was "about the size of a well-fed child of three or four years of age, with an abnormally developed breast. The hair was long, dark and glossy, while the skin was white, soft and tender. The lower part of the body was like a salmon, but without the scales."
Much magic is associated with mermaids around the world. Able to grant wishes or heal, they're also generally vain - but mostly because they're gorgeous. According to Japanese legend, eating the flesh of a mermaid will bestow immortality.
A few things were clear: these "women of the deep" live a long long time (no one's sure exactly how long, of course), are beautiful enough to lure any man to a watery grave, and can sometimes be lured themselves by a handsome guy with a great singing voice.
To place the story in a contemporary setting, the handsome guy would be the lead singer/guitarist in an indie rock band.
So the mermaid, of course, would love rock music.
I also came across the Weeki Wachee Springs amusement park, where women perform as mermaids. What better place for a modern mermaid to surface without too much notice?
Surfacing was also an opportunity to showcase some of the music that I love. Inadvertently, of course, with no copyright violations. :)
And because Elvis has ties to Weeki Wachee Springs - he once visited there, and this photo supposedly hangs on the wall there - he also has a small part to play in Surfacing. His charisma, stunning looks and amazing singing voice would of course make any mermaid fall in love.
I'm very excited for tomorrow's release of Follow the Stars Home, my Native American romance and my second historical novel.
Like Angels Sinners and Madmen, Follow the Stars Home came together after meticulous research. Based on the 1879 founding of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Follow the Stars Home weaves true accounts with fictional characters.
I first learned about the Carlisle Indian Industrial School from a PBS special shortly after moving to Carlisle, Pa. I found the episode so compelling, I would purposely drive by the students' graveyard on what is now the Army War College.
Descendants visit the graveyard and leave offerings on this tree, or place them on the headstones.
The Cumberland County Historical Society has a wonderful exhibit of photographs and artifacts at its Carlisle museum.
When I came upon this near-life-sized exhibit, I felt as if the schoolchildren stood in the same room looking back at me. A chilling experience.
Later, Dickinson College's Trout Gallery had an exhibit on the school called Visualizing a Mission. Displays included photographs of the students, some of their personal effects such as drums, clothing and moccasins. The most striking was the pictograph created by Etahdleuh Doanmoe called A Kiowa’s Odyssey, which documents the experiences of this student.
Captain Pratt's motto was: Kill the Indian, Save the Man. In some cases, it just killed the Indian. Students died of exposure to foreign diseases, or sheer homesickness, or sometimes suicide. Many ran away. In fact, many ran away to join the spectacular traveling show Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
Pratt despised the show, not surprisingly. He wanted to obliterate the culture, and hated that the show glorified it instead. When circumstances turn against Black Bear, now called Samuel, he runs away to find the show. He's been beaten, locked in the guard house, forced to change his name and cut his hair, and is no longer sure of who he is. He feels undeserving of Rose Quiet Thunder, who seems to have adapted well to the school's rigid structure.
Rose Quiet Thunder may have learned everything the teachers hoped, but sees through the propaganda of their school newspaper when she joins the staff. Devastated when Samuel Black Bear runs away, she stays at the school several more years. Once she realizes it would take another several years for her to graduate, she opts to go home instead. She intends to do what she can to preserve the Lakota culture Pratt's trying to destroy.
The characters in my novel are fictional. No disrespect is intended in writing from a Lakota perspective, and I hope to honor those first students with this story. Imagining their journey from a human perspective, I wove in Lakota mythology and legend, using books such as Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz' American Indian Myths and Legends, and James Mooney's The Ghost-Dance Religion. Linda Witmer's "The Indian Industrial School" provided a great deal of information about the student's daily lives, along with fascinating photos. Pratt was careful to document students' progress through photographs, showing them as sad savages upon their arrival, and happy, neatly dressed civilians after attending his school.
Surprisingly, I also found a news account from the local newspaper, then called the Valley Sentinel. Dated Friday, October 10, 1879, it began:
"About twelve o'clock on Sunday night Captain Pratt arrived at the Junction with eighty-six Sioux Indian children, whom he had just selected from the Rosebud and Pine Sage agency, varying in age from ten to seventeen. Their dress was curious, made of different cheap material, and representing all the shades and colors. Cheap jewelry was worn by the girls. Their moccasins are covered with fancy bead work. They carry heavy blankets or shawls with them, and their appearance would not suggest that their toilet was a matter of care. Some of them were very pretty, while others are extremely homely. All possessed the large black eye, beautiful pearl-white teeth, the high cheek-bone, straight-cut mouth and peculiar nose."
Imagine those poor kids arriving at midnight in a town full of white strangers, so far from their loved ones. I hope I did them justice.
If you're like me, this summer's vacation will be a staycation. But you can always escape with to an exotic locale with a fun read.
Going with Gravity is just what you need. Travel with my heroine, Allison Morris, to lush Hawai‘i, and be swept away by sexy surfer Wes Hamilton.
This is the first of a new series of posts called Story Elements. These will examine the different aspects of each story, and how I pulled the different elements together to form each story. Stay tuned for another cool new series called Casting Call, which will debut on Wednesday July 28.
A news story spurred the initial idea for Going with Gravity. A jet lost its fuselage in midair and managed to land with no injuries to any of its 350 passengers, despite a gaping hole in the plane. An amazing story in itself. But in reading it, I wondered about the people on that plane. More importantly, who could I put on such a plane?
To ratchet up the tension, the characters on that fateful flight had to be under personal pressure. So I created Allison Morris. A harried public relations expert, Allison stayed at her job out of dedicated professionalism. Her boss, Michelle McCarter, took her divorce from a famous rock star badly, and often left a PR mess for Allison to clean up. Others might kill to have an in with the rock star royalty she rubbed elbows with, but Allison would kill for a day off, and Michelle was becoming too much to handle. Allison had always dreamed of going to Hawai‘i, but when Michelle needs her there, she doesn't look forward to it. She's barely had time for her own life.
Poor Allison was so uptight, I needed to balance her out with someone laid back. Someone who didn't let anything rile him. Someone who believed in the path he was on. Wes Hamilton is just such a guy. Up for any challenge, he seems Allison's polar opposite, except that he holds the same basic values - he cares for people, for the environment. Despite his anything-goes appearance, he works hard, and not just at maintaining his status as a world-class surfer. He's also an entrepreneur.
So when that fuselage blew in mid-air, while Allison's in the rest room, she freaks. Wes rushes to her to make sure she's ok. His embrace turns into a kiss. For all Allison knows, this could be her last few minutes alive. She wants more. So she earns her entry into the Mile High Club.
Because so many of my summers consist of staycations, I love researching settings. Going with Gravity's main setting is Oahu, but the flight's emergency landing is in San Diego. I found a very cool hotel there called Hotel del Coronado. Not only is the hotel itself very unusual, its rooms - especially the bathrooms - are amazing. And they overlook the Pacific Ocean.
From there, Allison goes to the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani (she's on a budget, and can't afford to stay where Michelle stays). Down after a misunderstanding with Wes, she learns about Princess Kaiulani, the crown princess of Hawaii in the 1800s. The princess's tragic story is one I'd like to write about sometime.
Hawai‘i has so many unique elements. As soon as you hear the sweet and soulful strains of a slack key guitar, it conjures images of the island beaches and sunsets, girls in grass skirts dancing with their hands and hips and feet. A slack key guitar is basically a six-string acoustic with the strings loosened to achieve that unique sound. Various theories exist about its origins, but the general consensus is that European sailors introduced the six-string guitar to Hawai‘i at the start of the nineteenth century. Around 1832, guitars were also brought to Hawai‘i by vaqueros (cowboys) from Mexico and Spain hired by King Kamehameha III to instruct the Hawaiians in managing an overpopulation of cattle. Many of the vaqueros worked on the Big Island of Hawai‘i around Waimea. According to my research, "When the hired vaqueros returned to their lands, they often left behind their guitars. Hawaiians began to tune the guitars in their own way by loosening, or slackening the keys until the six strings formed a single chord. In addition to the signature tuning, slack key guitar is distinguished by the playing technique. The bass sound is played on the lower register while the melody is played on the higher register at the same time. This unique blending of sounds results in an intricate, rich, and soulful harmony."
The ukelele is also strongly associated with Hawai‘i, but doesn't transport me instantly to the islands quite like the slack key guitar.
The Hawai‘ian language really amazed me. With only eight consonant phonemes, and either 5 or 25 vowel phonemes, depending on how the long vowels and diphthongs are treated. Its simplicity equals its complexity.
To get an idea, here are a few words and phrases relating to the sea: Kai; moana (open); malo, pāʻū (poetic). See sayings, pūnoni, forecast. Calm, quiet sea, kai mālie, kai malino, kai malolo, kai hoʻolulu, kai pū, kai wahine, kai kalamania, kaiolohia. Strong sea, kai koʻo, kai kāne, kai nui, kai nuʻu, ʻōkaikai. Rough or raging sea, kai pupule, kai puʻeone, kai akua, ʻōkaikai. Deep sea, kai hohonu, kai ʻau, kai hoʻēʻe, kai lū heʻe (fig.). Restless sea with undercurrent, kai kuolo, kai holo, kai lewa, lapa kai, kai kō, kai au. Dark blue sea, moana uli, moauli. Streaked sea, associated with Kona, kai māʻokiʻoki. Whispering sea, associated with Kawaihae, kai hāwanawana. Salt sea, kai paʻakai. Shallow or reef sea, kai kohola, kai koʻele. Rippled sea, kai hoʻolili. Receding or ebbing sea, kai heʻe, kai emi, kai mimiki, kai hoʻi, kai nuʻu aku. Western sea, kai lalo. High sea, kai piha, kai nuʻu. Of the sea, o kai. Towards the sea, i kai, makai. Place where sea and land meet, ʻae kai. By the sea, a kai. Sea almost surrounded by land, kai hāloko. The eight seas, nā kai ʻewalu (seas about the Hawaiian Islands, poetic). Puna with its sea rustling over pebbles, Puna i ke kai nehe i ka ʻiliʻili. My sea, concealing sarong (UL 124), kuʻu kai, pāʻū halakā. Black sea, yellow sea, Kāne's purplish-blue red-brown sea … silent sea, swinging sea (PH 237), kai ʻeleʻele, kai melemele, kai pōpolohua mea a Kāne … kai mū, kai lewa.
Of course, I had to incorporate a few of the more romantic and descriptive phrases into Going with Gravity. Wes couldn't resist the sea because of its kayani, which means “to call” or beacon. Wes taught Allison the meaning of ho`onipo: to make love, court, woo, yearn for. He also gives her a new name, Alana, which means Awakening. Unfortunately, the Hawai‘ian language is nearly extinct. As of 2000, less than 0.1 percent of the population spoke it.
I hope you've enjoyed learning a little more about how Going with Gravity came together. Here's the trailer, and an excerpt. The story's available from The Wild Rose Press.
Allison pulled her portfolio from her laptop case and set it on her lap, afraid to open it. As soon as the articles had arrived on her fax machine, she’d shoved them into her bag, then hopped in the shower. Delay tactics only worked for so long. The moment of truth had arrived. She opened it and thumbed through. Eleven pages. Eleven. And these were only the newspaper articles from the past two days. TV and online news sites surely covered more. And then there’d be the inevitable blogger. Uncontrollable, overly opinionated and accountable to no one, they were the worst. Michelle had arrived on Oahu with a bang, and then had the audacity to blame Allison for not doing her job to quell the media. She held up one photo of a topless Michelle prancing in the surf, laughing. Rumors and innuendo could be stopped with logic and tact, but to downplay this photo, she’d need a good explanation. When Michelle’s logic and tact failed her so obviously, Allison had to wonder about her mental state. A hulking figure filled the aisle, stowing his bag in the overhead compartment. Those shorts. That shirt. It was him. He checked his ticket, looked at her and smiled. His blond hair fell across his forehead as he sat next to her, his shoulder bumping hers. “Hello again.” For two years, she’d rubbed elbows with stars of all magnitudes without so much as a blink, and fended off paparazzi following the wife of megastar James McCarter. With two words, she’d been reduced to the rank of dreamy-eyed teeny bopper. He smiled, raised an eyebrow. She realized, then, she hadn’t responded. And her mouth hung open. Make that drooling dreamy-eyed teeny bopper. She flashed a smile. Think. Damage control is your business. Put it to good use for once. “Hi.” Oh, yes. Very witty. What a deft deflection of his charm. She turned back to her articles, but sensed the weight of his stare. He frowned at her reading material. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to read over your shoulder. I take it you’re a closet fan of the poor little rich girl?” “In the same way I’m a closet fan of train wrecks, I suppose. I guess you’re not a fan.” “Of hers?” He chuckled. “God, no. She’s awful. Her publicist should be shot.” Shot. Of course. Working fifty-five to sixty-five hours a week wasn’t enough to keep the spin spinning fast enough for the rest of the world. The one guy who’d interested her in the past two and a half years thought she made a good candidate for execution. Her life was in such a rut, she’d need mountain climbing gear to get out. “If you’re a fan, I didn’t mean to offend.” Sincerity had wiped the smile from his face. “Actually, I’m..” She turned and smiled, “…her publicist.”
The heroes of the Old West always intrigued me, probably because I'd grown up with TV shows like Bonanza, The Rifleman, The Virginian and The Lone Ranger, all rugged men who survived hardships with stoic grace, but who never hesitated to help others whenever needed.
