Or Why Historical Fiction?
Does a genre find you, or do you find the genre. A little of both, I think. All of us have reasons to write with either
imagined or a “real” audience. Initially
my audience was very small, very real, and very personal.
It was me.
I won’t bore you with examples of high school drivel, meant
to sooth wounds, or reach out to someone who wouldn't see the words in the
first place. There are plenty of those
samples still around, tucked in a ragged file folder or hidden between the
pages of an old journal. And there are
samples of greeting cards made for family members, and short articles written
for a neighborhood newspaper, named the Saturday Blah. I’m not sure if at that stage, I had any
audience in mind, but the carbon-copied newspaper was the “Social Media” of the
neighborhood, and I very much wanted to be a part of that lively
enterprise.
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In college, besides a
myriad of papers written for a specific audience, the professor, I created a
few things for personal friends, but without the intention of them going much
farther than that. A short book about
finding the importance of life became what I called my first “cardboard cover
books”. These books had very narrow intended
audiences: my boyfriend, my stepson, and the children of our neighbors. They used stick figure illustrations, and
were housed between—you guessed it—two pieces of cardboard hooked together with
snap-together binder rings.
The feedback for these books was very unambiguous and
endearing. And the joy and fulfillment
of writing un-edited and un-censored projects (that I had full control over)
was pretty much unrivaled by anything I've created since. But having a bigger audience niggled at me, and
the last of these cardboard books, which was written one chapter at a time and
mailed out one section per month throughout the school year from birthday to
birthday to my stepson in Billings, Montana became a springboard towards
publication.
Not exactly a springboard.
This particular book was rewritten after every few rejections, and it
was turned down thirty-five times before it was picked up by Scholastic Tab in
Canada. It stayed in print for five
years, was reprinted under a new title and stayed in print another five
years. To date, it sold more copies than
any of my other titles put together.
Praise be to Scholastic Book Clubs. Praise be to tenacity. Every draft improved the book. (It had a long
way to go.)
So, why historical fiction? Did the genre choose me, or did I choose the genre?
Two things: (And one
of them isn't that I’m now old enough for my birthday to be in an era of its
own.)
First, during my adult life I have had the good fortune to
live in rural areas both in Colorado and British Columbia that are rich in
history and lived-wired to the past. By
this, I mean the path is still traceable and easy to follow via a relatively
stable community of people who remember the stories of parents and grandparents
who have lived in the area and remember the stories told to them by their
families about floods, droughts, tragedies, disasters, births, deaths, celebrations,
and other stories of the past, rooted in the land and the people that lived
there.
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| Dad on his horse on his grandparents about 1936 |
Family stories exist in urban areas, but the trail to
discovery is less overgrown by the thick underbrush of packed calendars or social
engagements focused on sports and media entertainment. It’s more likely in rural settings for
conversations to drift from the details of the day’s horseback ride or cattle
check to the history of the people that traversed the same trails at an earlier
time. The geography and topography of our
everyday living seems to link more directly to the past. Or at least the past 150 years, which is where
my focus lies. And although perspectives on history change, the facts and lifestyle information remain relatively constant.
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| Great grandparents family in front of stone house they built. |
The second reason for “choosing” the genre of historical
fiction is rooted in practicality. Until
recently I have worked full time, and the day to day demands of teaching,
decreased the time available to research, write and publish a book. This
pretty much eliminated any possibility of keeping up on contemporary stories,
or something more timely like vampires, paranormal, or an interesting
combination therefore. I long ago
figured out that I am not a “trendy" kind of person. I never seem to be able to keep up.
Now is a different time in my life and the world at large,
with blogging, social media, marketing, and a myriad of other things around our
family ranch to sidetrack me from writing goals. Many days it seems like I still can't keep up which still makes Historical Fiction a perfect fit. And I’ll never have to worry about being passe.
