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Author, Historian, Storyteller

History, Live and LearnLeave a comment

I think that I have finally figured out why I was never good at improv.  Total non-sequitor I know, but stay with me on this one!  I trained as an actress for four years.  In all of that time, I could never get the hang of improv.  It’s not that I can’t think on my feet.  I’m pretty dang good at thinking on my feet.  It’s that I could never relax and go with the story at hand.  Improvisation made me a nervous wreck and I could never figure out why.  Well, I finally have.  It’s because I knew I wasn’t telling the best story that I could.  I was telling a story, but there was something better, lurking underneath that I hadn’t had time to come up with.  And that is what I am good at.  Pulling out the story that is lurking underneath!

My process is simple.  I observe.  I ask questions.  I discuss.  I research.  Then I let all of it kick around in my head until finally my brain sifts through it all and says, “Aha!  This is what is relevant.  This is what is significant.  This is the story that needs to be told!”  And then I sit down and write.  But I can’t write until my brain is done with the sifting.  Everyone and everything has a story, you just have to dig it out.  Excavate out all of the crap and detritus that have accumulated around what is really important until the crux and the anima of the subject at hand are revealed.

To do that takes time.  In Improv you have no time.  If you take time, your audience gets bored and leaves.  This is why I can’t do improv.  I need time.  I need to reflect and sift through what I know.  Ask questions to expound on what I don’t know and then sift some more.  I am not built for improv.  I marvel at those that are, because that is just not how I function.  But that’s all right.  It takes all kinds, and I have some research on heavy artillery used in the Civil War that is just dying to be read, kicked around and sifted through . . .

Characters, History, Inspiration, WomenView all 2 comments

I’ve been a fan of history for as long as I can remember.  Not in a memorize dates and names of battles and all the generals that ever lived sort of way – don’t give me a quiz, I will fail miserably.  More in a fascinated by the motivations that caused people to act and behave the way that they did, that can only be studied in hind sight sort of way.  I credit this fascination to my father.  He was a history major and then taught history in high school for a spell.  I have a feeling that he was one of those teachers that made the subject interesting and memorable; the way that all history should be taught.  I guess this, because this is how he taught me history, not in the classroom but at home.  Much more emphasis was placed on the whys and wherefores as opposed to the specific dates, times and names.  My childhood was spent watching more WWII movies than I can even recount.  I still have a special place in my heart for “Father Goose” and “Operation Petticoat,” gotta love Cary Grant.  Come to think of it, I still have a special place in my heart for Cary Grant . . .

At any rate, I find history fascinating.  So when I was visiting a friend in Richmond, Virginia and she suggested that we go tour the White House of the Confederacy I said yes.  We wondered through all of the exhibits, read about the little toy cannon that actually fired tiny little cannon balls that Jefferson Davis had made for his son and, like all museums, I wound up in the gift shop.  While perusing the merchandise, I came across this little booklet.  It was less than 70 pages long and it was about female spies in the Civil War.  To say that I was intrigued would be an understatement.  I sat down in the middle of the gift shop and started reading.  It was amazing!  In this time of women in petticoats that were put up on pedestals, here were stories detailing how they would use those very petticoats to hide correspondence.  They would use their perceived “frailty” to continue passing information even after being caught and jailed for being a spy!

These women were brilliant and cunning and brave, and sitting there reveling in their tales a melancholy fell over me.  How had I never heard of these women before?  Why, in an entire museum, was there more about a tiny toy cannon, than an entire group of operatives, which I later learned had major impacts on battles and eventually the course of the war?  I found this sad.  So I bought the booklet.  Then finished my vacation, went home and for the most part forgot about it.  But in the back of my head these women kept kicking around, and the next thing I knew there was a story forming.  It started out as a TV show – a period piece for Showtime or HBO.  It wasn’t until I moved to Los Angeles and a friend out here convinced me that this idea of mine was better suited as a book.  Yes, I essentially moved to Los Angeles to turn my TV show into a novel.  Enjoy the irony, I do.

This is when I finally sat down and started to write the novel In a Time Never Known.  It is the story of Anna and Kady, two southern ladies, a mother, daughter duo, who are spies for the Union.  We get to see the sacrifices that they make, the people they encounter and the lengths that they are willing to go in our country’s darkest hour.  Now my spies are fictional, but I’d like to think that the spirits of the likes of Elizabeth Van Lew, Belle Boyd, Mary Elizabeth Bowser, Rose Greenhow and the Moon sisters to name a few are present throughout the pages.  These are the characters that I have fallen in love with, and these are the characters that I would like to introduce to you . . . in my next post . . . because this one’s really long already . . . and I kinda want to go to bed . . .