Travel Schedule Woes

Monday, March 18, 2024

 

Roland and I are planners. We plan our travels years in advance, so when something falls through, it leaves us scrambling for alternatives. This was a particular problem during COVID, when we had to reschedule trips to South Africa and to Australia/New Zealand, but we got through the travel withdrawal somehow without losing the addiction. Then in 2022 we had to postpone the Ireland half of a trip to Iceland and Ireland after Roland tested positive for COVID. We made that up with a trip to Ireland last year.

Now we have to change our plans again. Roland put a lot of time and effort into arranging a trip to Eastern Europe this summer. He found two tours from our preferred providers that we could take back-to-back, with a seven-hour train ride between the end of the first to the beginning of the second. One was a land tour of Croatia and Slovenia with EF Go Ahead Tours, and the other is a river cruise from Bucharest to Budapest on Viking, which is is the other leg of the first trip we took with Viking in 2015..

Then EF emailed to say that their tour was cancelled because not enough people had signed up. They offered some alternatives, but none of them worked with the Viking cruise, which we will take as scheduled. The three trips we have done with EF Go Ahead have all been good experiences, so although it didn’t work for this summer, we had no hesitation about booking with them again. Since we had already been talking about doing a land tour of Portugal, Spain, and Morocco, we used the credits from the cancelled tour to book that one for the end of next year.

When we find a provider we like, we stick with them. This summer will be our fifth cruise with Viking, and we are going to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand with them next year.

Now the question is: Where do we go after Spain?

__________

The photo at the head of this post shows the boat we were on during our first cruise with Viking in 2015. It was docked in Budapest at the time.

Wedding Feast or Famine

Monday, March 11, 2024

 

In Roland and my families, weddings seem to be feast or famine. Our daughter, Caroline, got married on July 1, 2006. One of Roland’s sisters was married the year before, but it had been over a decade since any other weddings.

After Caroline and Pete’s wedding, we had another long dry spell until one of Roland’s nephews got married in 2022. Last year was quiet, but it looks like there will be two weddings in 2024.

We had a strong hint at Christmas, when John brought a girl home for the first time, bringing her all the way from North Carolina. Although it is hard to get to know anyone in just a couple of days, we loved Christina at once. She is a strong Christian and a lovely person inside and out. John chose well.

My niece Rachel also brought her boyfriend over for a gathering of extended family just after Christmas, and we liked him, too.

On February 25 (a Sunday), we received a call from Rachel telling us she had gotten engaged the day before and was getting married at the end of August. Then, two hours later, John called to say that he had gotten engaged the day before, as well. That’s his and Christina’s engagement picture at the head of this post. No date yet because they’re still working on their plans, but I expect it to happen sometime this year.

John is 37, and some mothers might have tried to push their children into marriage by that age, but that was never my goal. Marriage is sacred, and without the right partner people are better off single.

I’m glad John waited for Christina.


Learning to Surrender

Monday, March 4, 2024

 

When the Union armies surround Vicksburg, 12-year-old Charlotte and her family find themselves living in a cave. As she discovers what it is like to lose control of her life, will her attitude toward slavery change?

Learning to Surrender is finally here. The following link takes you to the amazon.com page for the paperback, but the Kindle version can also be reached there. The book should be available online from Barnes and Noble in the near future.

LEARNING TO SURRENDER at Amazon

The title comes from a real event. When the Yankees ordered Vicksburg to surrender in May 1862, this was Colonel Autry’s reply:

Mississippians don’t know, and refuse to learn, how to surrender to an enemy. If Commodore Farragut or Brigadier General Butler can teach them then let them come and try.

It took a year, and it was General Grant who taught them, but the residents of Vicksburg did learn to surrender.

Learning to Surrender is not about battles or the fighting itself. There are plenty of other stories told from a soldier’s point of view.

Buy and read my book to discover what it was like for the residents of Vicksburg, Mississippi as they learned to surrender.


Diaries, Diaries Everywhere, and Not a Drop of Ink

Monday, February 26, 2024

 

With the release date for Learning to Surrender just around the corner, I am reprinting a March 5, 2018 post that explains why I chose not to use the popular diary format for this novel.

Diaries, Diaries Everywhere, and Not a Drop of Ink

I apologize for the cutesy title, which isn’t even quite true. But it almost is.

Many Southern women kept diaries during the Civil War, and they ran into shortages of paper and ink. They improvised by writing on scrap paper and filling their quill pens with berry juice.

So when I decided to write a story about the Siege of Vicksburg, I considered using the diary format that has been successful for many middle-grade historical novels. Scholastic’s Dear America series, with books written by various authors, is the best-known. Then there is the American Diaries series written by Kathleen Duey, who is one of my favorite writers of middle-grade historical fiction. The first books in both series were published in 1996, so it is unlikely that one copied the other. (The time between conception and publication can take several years.) The two series ran in tandem until the early 2000s and faded almost in tandem, as well. Scholastic also issued a series for boys (My Name is America) and another for younger children (My America) published around the same time. The Dear America series later saw a resurgence with both new offerings and re-releases of some of the original books.

But that’s part of the problem. Fashions come and go, and that is as true for writing styles and formats as it is for clothing. Not that all trends are fads, and a well-written diary story will never go out of style. But I prefer to write what works for me rather than chasing a trend.

The main reason I rejected the idea of writing my book in a diary format is simple: it limits my options for dramatizing the story. First, although some real-life diaries contain vivid descriptions, the writers rarely describe those places and events that are part of their everyday lives. Even the backstory is simply assumed. Second, real-life diaries rarely set up a scene or contain dialogue. To put it in literary terms, diaries tell rather than show.

Obviously, that isn’t always the case, and some authors have found ways around the limitations. Of the many Dear America books that I have read, a couple have made significant use of dialogue, but it only works with the right protagonist—one with a good memory or a strong dramatic sense. Or there is the way Kathleen Duey does it, where diary entries are fleshed out and accompanied by much longer sections written in a more traditional third-person style.

Still, not every Southern woman or girl wrote a diary, and I would rather have my protagonist spend her time reading. That gives me more freedom to write the story I want.

And I don’t have to worry that she’ll run out of ink.

__________

The photo at the head of this post shows three of the Civil War diaries in my collection. From left to right, they are My Cave Life in Vicksburg (Mary Ann Webster Loughborough), The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman (Sarah Morgan), and Vicksburg, A City Under Siege (Emma Balfour). Emma Balfour’s entries end on June 2, 1863, a month before the siege ended. Her subsequent entries are probably just lost. But who knows—maybe she ran out of ink.


Creating Sympathy for Characters with Unsympathetic Beliefs

Monday, February 19, 2024

 

My fourth middle-grade historical novel, Learning to Surrender, will be released at the beginning of March, and my next blog posts till the soil for its publication or, to be more direct, they market it. Even so, the rest of my February posts are not pure promotion but are designed to provide insight into the writing process.

During a trip down the Mississippi River to research a different book, I came across information on the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg, where the residents dug and lived in caves that served as bomb shelters. The idea intrigued me, but it had one big negative.

There were few, if any, abolitionists in Vicksburg at the time. Early in the writing process, I came up with several ideas of how I might make my character and her family secret opponents to slavery, but Roland wasn’t sure that even closet abolitionists existed in the deep South then. Besides, that choice didn’t feel right. Historical realism dictates that my main character believe in slavery, so how could I make her sympathetic in spite of her unsympathetic beliefs?

This isn’t an unusual situation for a writer to be in. Many stories begin with an unsympathetic protagonist whose change in character or beliefs is at the crux of the story. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge, who starts out as a people-hating miser and ends up as an open-hearted and generous person. Or Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden, who is one of the most spoiled, selfish heroines in children’s literature until she starts having compassion for someone else.

Readers don’t usually identify with unsympathetic characters, and they don’t like to read about people they don’t identify with. Unless we catch their interest at the beginning of the book, they won’t read on. That means that one of our tasks as writers is to generate sympathy for unsympathetic characters or for otherwise likeable characters with unsympathetic beliefs. Charles Dickens did it with humor. Frances Hodgson Burnett did it by showing the circumstances that formed Mary’s obnoxious character.

Generating sympathy for a main character with unsympathetic beliefs is just part of the job.

But you’ll have to read Learning to Surrender to find out how I did it.

__________

The drawing at the head of this post comes from Harper’s Encyclopedia of United States History (vol. 10), John Lossing Benson, ed. (New York, NY, Harper and Brothers, 1912). It is in the public domain because of its age.


Preaching to the Choir

Monday, February 12, 2024

 

It’s been unseasonably warm here lately, which makes it all the more poignant to remember the very cold days we had in January. On Sunday, January 14, it was seven degrees below zero, and the choir was scheduled to sing at the 8:00 a.m. service. Some churches cancelled services, but ours didn’t. That was consistent with my father’s philosophy, who never cancelled church because of the weather. He always said that if there was even one person in the congregation, he would hold the service. (I’m not sure he ever had that few people, though.)

Back to the present. When the choir members arrived for our pre-service warm-up on January 14, we were all there except for three members who had other commitments and would have missed anyway. Our director, Karen Foote, has often complimented the choir on its dedication, so when her mother said we wouldn’t show up with those temperatures, Karen said she was wrong. To prove it, Karen took the above photo and texted it to her mother.1

It wasn’t just a matter of preaching to the choir, however. The 8:00 a.m. service is typically the one with the lowest attendance, but even in the cold temperatures of January 14 the congregation outnumbered us. And that’s with the option of attending the 9:30 service online.

Daddy believed that the weather shouldn’t make any difference in how we worship.

I’m glad my church agrees with him.

__________

1Karen is not in the photo. The person who isn’t wearing a robe is our accompanist.


The Source of Peace

Monday, February 5, 2024

 

I won’t go into the details, but I had a tough several days with eyesight issues that could have affected my lifestyle. I’ve since learned that there is no permanent damage, but even before I knew that, God had given me peace.

Thursday’s devotion was especially helpful because one of the readings was Psalm 31. These selected verses from the ESV speak to my eyesight issues but also to other hardships in life.

3For you are my rock and my fortress;

     and for your name’s sake you lead me and guide me;

4you take me out of of the net they have hidden for me,

     for you are my refuge.

5Into your hands I commit my spirit;

     you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.

6I hate those who pay regard to worthless idols,

     but I trust in the Lord.

7I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love,

     because you have seen my affliction;

     you have known the distress of my soul,

8and you have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy;

     you have set my feet in a broad place.

 

14But I trust in you, O Lord;

     I say, “You are my God.”

15My times are in your hand;

     rescue me from the hand of enemies and from my persecutors!

16Make your face shine on your servant;

     save me in your steadfast love!

 

24Be strong, and let your heart take courage,

all you who wait for the Lord!

 Whatever your situation may be, I pray these verses give you peace, too.