Historical Fiction Round Table Discussion - January 2017 Edition

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this blog post will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

 —Mark Twain

This is the beginning of what I hope will be an ongoing feature on this blog, a round table discussion by a diverse panel historical fiction authors with the purpose of entertaining and enlightening the audience. For this first discussion I will be a participant, but henceforth will act as host. Readers are encouraged to pour themselves a cup of coffee or, if the hour allows, a glass of red wine. Chocolates are encouraged but not always mandatory. Good humor is mandatory, but not always encouraged.  And so, without further ado, let me to introduce our panel of authors:

Heather Gilbert is the Grace Award-winning author of the bestselling Vikings of the New World  Saga and A Murder in the Mountains mystery series. Her novel Forest Child  received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

Sophie Schiller is the author of Race to Tibet and the forthcoming Island on Fire. Kirkus Reviews has called her “An accomplished thriller and historical adventure writer”.

J.S. Dunn is the author of Bending the Boyne. She has lived in Ireland and traveled to museums and megaliths in Orkney, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, and northern Spain to research the Atlantic Bronze Age.

Annie Whitehead is a history graduate and the award-winning author & writer of Anglo-Saxon fiction & non-fiction, including To Be a Queen and Alvar the Kingmaker.

Wayne Turmel is the author of  Acre's Bastard. His life motto is "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it; the rest of us are doomed too, but get to sit there smugly and say, "Told you so'".

MJ Logue is the author of The Serpent's Root, the fifth installment in the bestselling Uncivil Wars series featuring the adventures of Hollie Babbitt and his rebel rabble of Parliamentarian cavalry. She hails from Lancashire and writes from West Cornwall, Southwest England.

E. Paul (Ed) Bergeron is the Canadian born author of In the Shadow of Vargas, book #1 of the A Land in Turmoil series of historical fiction set in America’s southwest. He lives in Idaho.

MK (Mary) Tod is the author of Time and Regret  and 2 other novels that focus on the Great War. A Canadian citizen, she has lived in Hong Kong, travels extensively, and blogs about historical fiction at A Writer of History.

Catherine Kullmann is the author of The Murmur of Masks. She lives in Dublin and writes ‘historical fiction for the heart and for the head’. Her books are set in England during the extended Regency, the period between hoops and crinolines, and against a background of the Napoleonic wars. 

Panelists, thanks for joining us! (Heart emoji) Please start by telling us where you were born:

Heather:   Southern West Virginia

Sophie:    Paterson, NJ

JS:            Minnesota, USA

Annie:       Sennelager, Germany (I have two birth certificates!)

Wayne:     New Westminster, British Columbia

MJ:            Lancashire, England

Ed:            Montreal, Quebec

Mary:        Toronto, Canada

Catherine:  Dublin, Ireland

What is the first book you read that took you to another time and place?

Heather:  Oh wow! That's a tough one as I try to think back to childhood...I suppose one of the earliest historical series I read was Little House on the Prairie.

Sophie:   The Cay, by Theodore Taylor, because one of the characters was from my home town of Charlotte Amalie and the entire class fought over the book.

JS:        Treasure Island 

Annie:    Ferdinand and Isabella by Jean Plaidy.

Wayne:   Winnie the Pooh, it was a magical place where you had to wear sweaters but not pants. If only….

MJ:      Eagle of The Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff.

Ed:      I don't recall the name, but it was a book about a woman who moved with her husband to Alaska and built a log cabin. [Editor's Note: When you can think of the name, Ed, kindly leave it in the comments ;) ]

Mary:    When I was 12 I read one of my mother’s historical romances – no doubt with three children and a husband who often traveled, she needed an escape. In any event, it involved a Scottish lord who demanded ‘first rights’ from a young woman. Need I say more?

Catherine:   What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge. It is a children’s book set in the US Midwest and was first published in 1872. I read it when I was six or seven.

Rosemary Sutcliff and Jean Plaidy are perennial favorites of historical novelists. Who are your favorites? Tell us in the comments section below.

Who is the first writer that inspired you to become a historical novelist?

Heather:  I would say Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring showed me that one could bring an entire historical period to life through first person point-of-view, although I also love Thomas Hardy's novels which are highly atmospheric and character-rich.

Sophie:   Leon Uris. His historical stories were so powerful and so gripping I was completely mesmerized, and I stuck with the genre all my life.

JS:        James Michener, Rutherfurd, Geraldine Brooks, Susan Vreeland, Mary Renault; all adept at showing the essence of their subject.

Annie:    It must have been Jean Plaidy, I suppose. Actually, no, I think it was the novels I was reading in my late teens and early 20's - a whole variety, from George Eliot to Kathleen Woodiwiss to RA McAvoy.

Wayne:  Alexander Dumas! The 3 Musketeers is still my all-time favorite book, but The Count of Monte Cristo and countless others are amazing… one of my mottos is “swords are WAY cooler than guns.”

MJ:       Rosemary Sutcliff has a way of reducing the reader to tears with small details. (I can't finish Song for a Dark Queen.)  

Ed:       Kenneth Robert, who wrote Northwest Passage and Arundel.

Mary:   I devoured Rosemary Sutcliff. Her stories thrilled my imagination. But my inspiration for writing came from my grandparents’ lives. 

Catherine: Georgette Heyer

Girl with a Pearl Earring was notable for transporting readers to 1660's Holland and for using the word "Girl" in the title, which has been shown to catapult a book to the top of the best-seller charts.

What are you reading right now?

Heather:   Actually, I'm reading through The Message in a Bottle Romance Collection, which includes a Viking/Irish novella I wrote (The Distant Tide). I'm thoroughly enjoying the other stories, set in Scotland, early New York, Georgia, and California. This historical collection releases in March!

Sophie:   Pompeii  by Robert Harris, an astounding work of genius.

JS:       The Blind Astronomer's Daughter  by John Pipkin.

Annie:  Alas, not fiction. English Historical Documents 500-1042. I’m an Anglo-Saxon nerd, yes, but this is for research as well as pleasure. And yes, I really do get pleasure from reading this kind of stuff!

Wayne:  It sounds pretentious, but Malcolm Barber’s The Crusader States.  It’s research for the second installment in the Lucca series.

MJ:    Katherine Pym's Erasmus T. Muddiman (1660’s adventure - a delight) and Better Fighting than Starving about the Royalist Army in exile post-1640’s.

Ed:     Will and Ariel Durant's History of Civilization.

Mary:   The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty. It’s a quiet story that begins in the 1920’s but the main character is fascinating.

Catherine:  I’m re-reading Elizabeth Vaughan’s Dagger Star  trilogy, dipping in and out of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s letters and following Sydney Lady Morgan’s adventures in France in the early nineteenth century.

In your opinion, which characters in history have been written about so much they have become stock characters? 

Heather:   Honestly, I'm not sure, but I would say that "Bloody" Mary has been covered from various angles. I enjoy medieval reads because they don't seem as overdone as the Regency period right now.

Sophie:    Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

JS:            Anything Tudor

Annie:      Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

Wayne:   Oh Lord, if I ever have to read anything else about Henry VIII, or any of the Civil War Generals  (US Civil War 1.0)  it will be too soon.

MJ:   Prince (insert expletive *here*) Rupert, the apocryphal Cavalier Prince. And he's always portrayed as gorgeous and glamorous and intense and romantic. He got more interesting after the Civil Wars, but he'd stopped being dashing by then, and he wasn't half so handsome, so no one's ever interested in that part of his life! (Slightly bashed-about vet who stuffed his house with antique weaponry and random scientific inventions and wasn't really that bothered about women, being long-term shacked up with a succession of actresses.)

Ed:       Hmmm, General Custer maybe. 

Mary:   Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII would be at the top of my list. But I also think Eleanor of Aquitaine and Richard the Lionheart and a few others are in that category. 

Catherine:   Henry VIII and his forty—sorry, six wives.

[Editor's Note: We hear Ken Follett is coming out with his own Tudor mystery in 2017 so it's safe to assume that Tudor fiction is safe at least for the immediate future ;) ]

Has there been too much Anne Boleyn in Historical Fiction or not enough? Tell us in the comments section below:

In your opinion, which characters in history have been not been written about enough?

Heather:   Vikings, although I hope I've done my part to bring them into the reader world. :) Also, I have heard people mention they'd like to read more about Celtic warrior women. I know there are treasure troves of Roman historical stories out there, too. I'd also love to read more about Asian history.

Sophie:   People like you would find in a Graham Greene novel, mostly expats living in a fading colony or in a country undergoing revolution or political turmoil. Their stories are usually hard to put down!

JS:    Figures in lesser known cultures in India, Egypt, Asia; and pre-Roman Europe.

Annie:       Any Anglo-Saxon that isn’t Alfred the Great or Bernard Cornwell’s fictional Uhtred.

Wayne:   Maybe it’s my secret slightly Canadian-Lefty leanings but my concerns aren’t with the “great and powerful.” I’m much more concerned with the people who do the work of history… the second-in-commands, the common people who have to live with the disastrous decisions the powerful make. I’m way more interested in the poor devils stuck on Gallipoli than the agonizing in Whitehall that led to it.

MJ:      John Lambert, one of the regicides - I am obliged to be brief and witty here, so Google him for the full back-story. His eventual fate is an eye-opener to the dark side of Charles II though. Lambert was locked up in exile on Drake Island in Plymouth Sound. Alone. For twenty years. Predictably, he went mad, and he died there. Drake Island is a bleak place....

Ed:     Great explorers like Amundsen and Byrd. 
[Editors note: Ed has read Race to Tibet and he gave it 4 stars! (smile emoji)]

Mary:     Rather than characters, it’s time periods that should be broader, in my opinion. There are far too many stories set in the Tudor period, for example. And I’ve read so many set in WWII that I usually skip over new titles in that period now.

Catherine:   I am more interested in reading about periods than characters. If I want to know about an individual, I prefer a biography to a novel. I find the third to six centuries AD very interesting, as they cover the break-up of the Roman Empire, the end of the western Empire and the rise of Christianity to a state religion. Frequently dismissed as the beginning of the Dark Ages, they were in fact a fascinating time of change.

Roald Amundsen, an explorer whose life story would make a great novel!

If you could go back in history and relive an event, what would it be?

Heather:   I used to think I'd go back and save Julius Caesar. LOL. But I would say I would love to go back and see what really happened to my alleged ancestor, Eirik the Red's son Thorvald, who was shot and died from a native arrow in North America. No one has yet found his grave.

Sophie:   The signing of the Declaration of Independence!

JS:  The building of Maes Howe or Bru na Boinne (megalith, passage mound.)

Annie:   What an interesting question. I don’t think I can answer it, because most of the pivotal moments in history would be horrific to relive, so I’m not sure I would want to witness them.

Wayne:  Who wouldn’t want to be a fly on the tavern wall when the US Constitution was being hashed out? The level of intelligent discourse mixed with deep personal animosity and bitchiness was unprecedented. And they used big words!

MJ:  Relive, or intercede? The murder of Thomas Rainsborough, the Leveller leader, by persons unknown in 1648. Did the King order it? Did Oliver Cromwell authorize it because Rainsborough was a threat to his authority? Was it a robbery that went wrong, or a couple of likely lads showing off to either the King, or Cromwell, or both?

Derailed the burgeoning democracy that was the Leveller movement altogether, which split the Army of Parliament down the middle, which meant that Cromwell became the power in the land when maybe if Rainsborough had lived he would never have been.

Which is a very interesting alternative history plot line indeed....

Mary:   Since I’ve read and written so much on WWI, I think that would be the event I would relive, despite the horror and destruction.

Catherine:   Major Percy arriving in London with the captured French eagles from Waterloo. We are so used to following everything live on television and in social media that it is hard to imagine the explosion of feeling when word finally reached England that Napoleon had been finally defeated.

Two writers on this panel opted to witness the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

What is your writing goal for 2017?

Heather:  Working on my contemporary mystery/suspense novels.

Sophie:    To finish my current novel, Island of Eternal Fire.

JS:            To finish and launch 2 titles.

Annie:      To meet my publisher’s deadline with more than an hour to spare!

Wayne:    To finish part 2 of my series and make enough money off of Acre’s Bastard to continue financing my writing addiction.

MJ:     Finish the Marston Moor book - Babylon's Downfall - which is possibly the grimmest, hardest thing I've ever had to write, knowing that from that point on it's downhill all the way for the Army of Parliament and my lads.

Ed:       To publish 2 books already written. 

Mary: To finish my current WIP and have it accepted by Lake Union Publishing. Plus, to begin the next story – a sequel to it. Both are set in 19^th century Paris. Beyond writing, I’ve set goals for my blog and for participation in the historical fiction community.

Catherine:  I plan to publish two new novels: Perception & Illusion in March and A Whisper of Scandal in November. I hope to start a completely new work as well, but as yet do not know what that will be.

What is the hardest thing about starting a new writing project?

Heather:  Plotting. I plot really loosely, but I often have to get into the flow of the story (getting to know the characters) before I know where the twists are coming.

Sophie:  I agree with Heather, and I would add the research takes up an enormous amount of time, but it's fascinating!

JS:     To not research it to death!

Annie:   Convincing myself that I have done enough research and it’s time to start writing my own words.

Wayne:   Knowing when it’s time to quit Googling and start writing. It’s way too easy to go down the research rabbit hole, never to be heard from again.  

MJ:    Stopping!

Ed:    The outline.

Mary:  The research? No, I love that. The writing? No, I love that too. The hardest part is creating the story outline – figuring out all the pieces that need to come together to entertain readers.

Catherine:  Working out a plot. I don’t over-plot in advance, partly because I think you lose some of the freshness when you finally start on Chapter One and partly because my characters have a habit of taking control. I love it when that happens. For example, when Napoleon escaped from Elba, Luke Fitzmaurice insisted on heading off to Brussels to join Wellington.

How has writing about history changed your perspective about history?

Heather: I realize that everyone comes at the facts with their own worldviews, whether they're writing textbooks or novels. It's inevitable, and I think we need to teach our kids to read with discernment.

Sophie:  There are many stories that went “under the radar” and were forgotten by the public. Some of these stories are worthy of being told again and again. The job of the historical novelist is to find these hidden gems and dramatize them in an entertaining manner. An excellent example of this is Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.

JS:   It shifted the timeline and location for processes in science, astronomy, and genetics.

Annie:  It has made me think more about the emotions and personal dramas of those involved.

Wayne:   Everyone talks about the grand plans and schemes, but so much of how history turns out is pure luck or hinged on crazy things happening. If you understand people (that they will always do what you least want or expect) and geography (they fought there because the land was flat, not because it was the most strategically important and nobody can control the weather) history becomes a lot more interesting.

MJ:  Almost unbearably. Not so much "what if?" as "what about?"-the people who fade out of the picture after their moment in the spotlight, the ordinary people, the little people.The me and you of history who made it possible, but whose names have been forgotten. Who tells their story?

Ed:  That it's true that history repeats itself again and again. And we don't learn the lessons from the past.

Mary:  I now see the humanity that lies behind history – the good, the bad and the ugly parts of those who make history or participate in historical events. And like Ed said, I also see the repetitive tragedies of history – the elements referred to in the saying: those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Catherine:  I look at it more in close-up, I suppose. I want to see the nuts and bolts not just the big picture.

What is your favorite “writing drink”?

Heather:   Coffee!

Sophie:    Canada Dry lemon lime sparkling seltzer 

JS:    Coffee, OK! Just gimme coffee…

Annie:   100% cocoa made into hot chocolate with unsweetened almond or soya milk. Afternoons - tea, very strong.

Wayne:  I’m usually a tequila guy, but I always celebrate writing milestones (like finishing a draft or the arrival of the first paperbacks) with a Templeton Rye on the rocks. It’s a tribute to the main character in my first novel, The Count of the Sahara.  I like to think Byron de Prorok would approve.

MJ:        Pepsi Max, out of the bottle, because I am wholly without class. (*wink* emoticon)

Ed:       Coffee of course, but not instant; I could never be like Hemingway and say whiskey, but no! 

Mary:    Coffee! A decaf latte to be exact, which my husband often makes for me. He’s the best.

Catherine:  While I am writing, tea or coffee, afterwards gin or wine.

Coffee: The drink of choice for historical novelists.

 What is your favorite “writing snack”?

Heather:   I don't really snack a lot while writing, but if I did, it would be chocolate.

Sophie:    Dark Chocolate!

JS:        Frozen yogurt, pref. chocolate, of course.

Annie:     Will you hate me forever if I say that I never snack?

Wayne:   Gummy bears or Swedish fish. I am secretly a 12-year old boy.

MJ:       Cheese, sour cream, and hot sauce sandwiches. True fact.

Mary:  Ah, the challenges of being at my desk for hours on end. Often hunger strikes, and occasionally I use it as an excuse to break away from writing. I love things like apples with peanut butter or a small bowl filled with nuts, dried cranberries and granola.

Catherine:  I try not to snack but find it hard to resist a dark chocolate Goldgrain biscuit.

American authors may have a hard time finding Goldgrain biscuits on their supermarket shelves.

Which authors have influenced you the most and why?

Heather:   Thomas Hardy because of the way he gets into the characters' heads. Agatha Christie because she was a genius who wrote so many outstanding, unpredictable mysteries it makes my head spin.

Sophie:  Jules Verne, for his style of putting ordinary characters in the middle of fascinating adventures, Ken Follett, for his suspenseful writing style, and Lionel Davidson, for his mastery of thriller writing.

JS:    James Michener, Rutherfurd, Geraldine Brooks, Susan Vreeland, Mary Renault; all adept at showing the essence of their subject.

Annie:    On an aspirational level - Jane Austen, Sharon Penman, Elizabeth Chadwick. On a personal level, Helen Hollick. Her support when I was just starting out was the difference between giving up and not.

Wayne:     I am the literary love child of Alexandre Dumas and Hunter S Thompson. I aspire to write grand romantic adventures—imagining people are capable of amazing things—but have a cynical attitude towards human beings that tells me they’ll probably disappoint me in the end, but what the hell give it a shot.

MJ:    Rosemary Sutcliffe for heartbreaking understatement - the Song of Solomon for its sensuous romance. That you can make a reader think, or feel, without ever directly referring to the thing you want them to think or feel...

Ed:   Recently I have found Patrick O'Brien's work inspirational. His characterizations especially.

MK:   I have read so many authors that I can’t settle on any one in particular! Rather, I learn from them all both in terms of what to do and what not to do.

Catherine:  Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, who introduced me to the period. Heyer also set such a high standard of research. I have enjoyed following in her footsteps and love when I discover the original of, say, one of her cant phrases. I enjoy reading other 19th century novels, including those of Maria Edgeworth, Anthony Trollope, and Mrs. Gaskell and this has helped me find the right voice for my own work.

James Michener (1907-1997) One of the most prolific and popular historical fiction authors of all time.

What is your favorite historical movie?

Heather:  I love A Room with a View and I also just watched The Last Kingdom and enjoyed it for the most part.

Sophie:   Emma’s Shadow, a Danish film about a Depression-era girl who fakes her own kidnapping, and Dark Eyes, a Russian-Italian film about a Victorian-era man who has to choose between a life of ease and a life of integrity.

JS:   Quest for Fire  for its credibility and Garden of the Finzi-Continis for its utter pathos.

Annie:   Well if you don’t already hate me for not snacking, let me put that right by saying Braveheart. Yes, I know it’s a heap of tosh, but it’s fun, it gives a good period ‘feel’ and I challenge anyone to tell me an historical film that is completely accurate...

Wayne:   When I was a kid, I loved anything set in a time when swashes got buckled: pirate movies and Robin Hood. But for real history it’s hard to go wrong with David Lean. Lawrence of Arabia  rocks. There’s also a wonderful movie called The Mountains of the Moon which introduced me to the person I’d most like to have dinner with, Richard Francis Burton.

MJ:   The Horseman on the Roof  or Ladyhawke! [Editors note: You seem like a Ladyhawke kind of a person!]

Ed:     Can't say, so many stray from the actual in order to create conflict.

Mary:   The first one that comes to mind is The English Patient – a sweeping story with lush settings, conflict, mystery and romance. But I could also choose Sophie’s Choice with Meryl Streep, or Elizabeth I with Cate Blanchett, or 12 Years a Slave or … you see the problem with choosing a favorite?

Catherine:  I watch very few movies, but enjoyed Love and Friendship, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Lady Susan. And, although not strictly historical, I loved all the Lord of the Rings films.

If you could have dinner with any historical personage, who would it be and why?

Heather:   Jesus would be choice number one, but outside that, probably the Vikings I've written about or Agatha Christie for the reasons I've mentioned above.

Sophie:    Raoul Wallenberg or Karen Blixen

JS:       Otzi the Ice Man (das Man im Eis)

Annie:   Charles II. We’d have drinks, we’d feast, we’d have a party and then we’d dance the night away.

Wayne:  Without a doubt, Richard Francis Burton (google him, people, it’s worth the trip.) Explorer, Speaker of 13 languages, Fencing master, World Traveler [Editor’s note: He went to Mecca]….He’d be insufferable over the long haul (he wore out most of his friends) but that would be one amazing night. I’d bring the brandy.

MJ: Thomas Fairfax, Commander in Chief of the Army of Parliament. Because he had remarkably fine eyes, wrote appallingly clunky poetry, and was one of those decent, honorable, earnest, ardent gentlemen that popular history has exclusively on the Cavalier side. I would be sad when he went home, though.

Ed:     Helen of Troy or Moshe Dayan, but leaning toward Helen. 

Mary: Winston Churchill comes to mind for his keen intellect and the courage and leadership he gave to Britain and the world. 

Catherine:  Jane Austen and her family. I would love to observe the social dynamics of the family and, if I could get over my initial awe, talk to her about writing. 

Sir Richard Burton in Mecca.

Where do you go for inspiration?

Heather:   Often inspiration strikes when I'm driving in my van, without any kids! LOL. But I love the woods and the beach.

Sophie:    The Caribbean, the islands are steeped in history.

JS:     Very strange, remote places. Pyrenees mountaintops to Welsh islets.

Annie:   Into the history books. I was doing some research the other day and kept coming across a name and realized that was my next novel!          

Wayne:  On a regular basis, I get my lazy crack to meetings of The Naperville Writers Group (NWG Represent!). I work out of my house, so I don’t get out enough, and to talk writing with people who are passionate about all kinds of genres is inspiring. My new book arose from an argument with some members about how YA is killing the book business. There may have been alcohol involved.

MJ:      Reenactments J

Ed:    The trails, the mountains. It used to be the seashore. If I have time we’ll drive to the Washington or Oregon coast for sea food and stark, rugged  beauty of the untamed ocean.

Mary:  Books, the Internet, personal travel, old letters and diaries, obituaries, art, photos, poems. The list is long but in many cases, serendipity strikes based on whatever is at hand.

Catherine:  First there is a spark—a ‘what if?’ or ‘what then?’—something I have read, or a sentence I have just written. The Murmur of Masks came from a throwaway phrase in Perception & Illusion. I thought ‘What happened then?’ Or I see a picture or a photograph. Ideas occur to me all the time and I jot them down in my notebook of Possible Plots.

What is the je ne sais quoi that makes a novel unforgettable?

Heather: For me, it's memorable characters, setting, and/or events, although bonus points if the plot line seriously surprises me. I was addicted to psychological thrillers for a while for this reason—I wanted something I couldn't predict. But they are so dark I went back to reading regular mysteries.

Sophie:  Feeling you are a part of history, or that you can relive history through the pages of a novel. When the character’s dilemma completely draws you in, you have an investment in the outcome. Whether good or not so good, the ending has to be satisfying.

JS:     When the author captures the era and immerses the reader.

Annie:    Hmm, well, the correct answer is that it can’t be defined otherwise it wouldn’t be the je ne sais quoi (pedant? Me?) But actually, a good book has to start well, make me not notice the writing because it seems so effortless, leave me bereft at the end, and hold me in its atmosphere for at least two days after I’ve finished reading it.

Wayne:  By definition, if I knew that it would be a je sais quoi…. but that’s beside the point. To me it’s that scene that creates a cinematic moment in the reader’s brain: Jim Hawkins hiding in the barrel overhearing the plot to kill the captain… that sense you get when the descriptions of a battle give you those freeze-frame images that transport you elsewhere... and great dialogue that sounds like real people having real conversations even if the stakes are unimaginably high.

MJ:  That the characters have a plausible life outside the book.  Diana Gabaldon’s Jamie and Clasire Fraser have it: the reader can imagine them talking, laughing, worrying about the bills - having an existence that we only step into when they're having an adventure,  but that carries on even when we're not watching.

Ed:   The characters, conflict if it is true. I don’t like super heroes. Although Ian Fleming’s James Bond was fun to read at the time.

Mary:  Well-drawn characters facing high-stakes dilemmas in tumultuous times.

Catherine: Speaking as a reader, first you have to care about the characters and their stories, and then the ending must ring true and feel right, even if it is not the simple happy end you had hoped for. And you must gain something from reading it, something that stays with you.

When you pick up a novel you enter a whole new world.

Readers: thanks for joining us on this first installment of historical fiction round table. If you have a specific question for any of our panelists, please enter them in the comments section below and we will get you an answer (and not just on Wikipedia). To learn more about the authors, please click on their names above and you will be directed to their Amazon author page where all their books are listed. Check back in February for the next installment! 👯😂😄😎

What I learned from taking in IQ test

While I was growing up I didn’t see myself as being different from other children. I loved to play outdoors riding bikes or skateboards, I loved to swim and snorkel in the ocean, and I loved playing in the Emancipation Garden in downtown Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas with my classmates. I loved exploring Fort Christian, the Grand Hotel, and all the side streets and alleyways of Charlotte Amalie with all their interesting shops that sold beautiful and unique items. Once I found a cache of old coins in the park with the faces of long dead Danish kings. I loved to dream about the old days of Charlotte Amalie while it was still a Danish colony, when 3 masted schooners would drop anchor in the harbor and privateers roamed her alleyways. I longed to live in history and that fueled a lot of my childhood fantasies. I was sociable yet studious. I was an ‘A’ student in school yet I loved to dance at parties and have fun. I had two sides to my personality. Actually, I had more sides, but there were some sides that I didn’t share with others. 

Fort Christian, the fort that fueled a lot of my childhood fantasies. Photo by Jogi Wolf.

An Interesting Discovery

When my family moved to St. Thomas in 1973 I was 8 years old. My father became a partner in a business with two other men, both of whom I believe were severe alcoholics. One in particular was so diseased both in his mind and spirit (he was like an evil genius) that he ended up killing himself shortly after our arrival. One day, several months after his death, I discovered a box in my parents’ closet that held the most wonderful stamp collection I had ever seen. I later learned it was HIS stamp collection. Somehow, my father had inherited a box of his personal effects and because I discovered it, I became the owner of this magnificent stamp collection. Immediately, I dove into the hobby of stamp collecting, learning everything I could about the various countries of the world, their cultures, their history, their languages, their major cities, their statesmen, their major battles, their great men of science, technology, and art. I spent years adding to this wonderful stamp collection and my curiosity grew as a result. Another side of my personality was music. I loved classical music, opera, and popular music. I knew all the major composers and all their preeminent works. I taught myself to sing in various languages and octaves, including the soprano range. I learned to sing entire operas by heart, something I wouldn't have dreamed of telling anyone. Another side of my personality was collecting beautiful things, such as glass animals, and post cards of anthropomorphized animals. I also became an aficionado of foreign movies and books in all subjects; I read widely and collected a variety of books. All of these hobbies and interests became aspects of my personality that made me into a well-rounded, intelligent, and curious child. But I never told anyone about this side of my personality, my parents never spoke about it, they never encouraged it, and I was pretty much ignored.

 Trying to be Normal Is a Big Mistake

I never considered myself “gifted” or special. I knew I had some pretty amazing hidden talents, such as the ability to pick up foreign languages with almost an indistinguishable accent, and to sing in multiple languages, and to read books in foreign languages. I considered this a normal part of myself and no one ever pointed out that this might qualify me as “gifted” or “special” or highly intelligent. In fact, my intelligence became almost a taboo subject in my home. It was never spoken about, acknowledged, or even recognized. It was like an unspoken pact that I was to be treated as inferior and my specialness was to be downplayed at all costs. School was no different. I was never treated any differently than other children; I was never picked out for special classes, never pushed into any particular field of study. In fact, from the age of 14 I was pretty much left to my own devices to figure out the mysteries of life on my own by my parents, my teachers, my professors, bosses, relatives, by pretty much everyone. It was as if I was put in a little boat, thrown into the ocean, and told to chart my own course through life without being told that I possessed any wonderful gifts. Or worse, that I was thrown into the ocean in the middle of a raging storm and never told I held the keys to my own survival. Other times, I felt as if I’d been marooned on an inhospitable island. That is pretty much the story of my life. I was an extremely gifted person who was trying to FIT IN with ordinary people and FAILING MISERABLY. I was not selected for scholarships, special courses, special attention, or special promotions or jobs. And so, for the first 51 years of my life I thought of myself as “average” and “normal” and sometimes even “unexceptional.” Except, of course, that I knew I wasn’t. I knew I was extremely intelligent, gifted, analytical, and able to solve complex problems and strategize but I still tried desperately to fit in. I could pick up almost any book and master the material and then compare that material to other material and formulate opinions based on my findings. I possessed, what psychologists call “inductive capacity”, the capacity to formulate new concepts when faced with new information, to extract meaning from confusion or ambiguity, and to think through complex situations and events in a clear manner. I also knew that when I tried to be “average” I failed miserably, and in the end I felt miserable.

 How did I know I wasn’t normal?

Because whenever I tried to conform to society’s definition of “average” or “normal”, whether in business or social settings, I always ended up feeling awkward, stupid, uncomfortable, and miserable. In other words, when I tried to conform to society's definition of normal I was a complete failure. I could not conform to anyone’s vision of normal. My friends tended to think I was a goofy or odd, that I was weirdly intellectual, or that I remembered names, dates, facts, places, events, and that I could talk about virtually any subject. At times this made me look weird. These were not qualities that women typically aspired to. If these qualities define one as goofy or odd, then yes, I was goofy and odd. The only problem was, I didn’t realize that I was “extremely gifted.” I was like a Maserati trying to fit into a world of VW Beetles and FAILING. It never occurred to my parents that I was “extremely gifted”. It never occurred to my teachers or professors that I was “extremely gifted.” It never occurred to my bosses that I was “extremely gifted”, or if they did recognize it, they certainly did not want to promote it. The fact is, no one really cared, and I was trying desperately to fit in with the “normal” children when I was not really normal. So for the first 51 years of my life I was not living up to my full potential because I was trying to dumb myself down. The result of this was that I was feeling boxed in, limited, and stifled in my life. I was trying desperately to fit into a mold in society for “acceptance” yet I was constantly being rejected and I DIDN’T KNOW WHY.

 I Chance Upon an IQ Test

One Friday in September of 2016 I decided to take an IQ test. Since I had never had my intelligence measured before, I decided it was time. On an impulse, I dug in my heels, and sloughed my way through 40 grueling questions of increasing difficulty on the Wechsler Test, or the Culture Fair IQ test (based on the work of Dr. John C. Raven) that is considered the gold standard of intelligence tests. It was not easy, and by the time I was finished I was sweating, hyperventilating, and felt like I had run a marathon. I was certain I had “failed” the test. I didn’t harbor any illusions that I was extremely gifted, that I possessed some extraordinary intelligence, or that I possessed innate qualities that put me in an elite group of humans. When I saw my score I almost fell off my chair.

After paying for the test, I discovered my IQ was 141, a score that placed me in the extremely gifted range shared by less than 2% of the global population, or the 99.69 percentile according to the Wechsler scale. To say I was shocked is an understatement. Even days later I am still digesting the results. It’s nothing like I expected. I was completely blown away by the results and it certainly validated a lifetime of feeling weirdly intelligent and being made to feel like an oddball as a result.

 

What I learned from all this

I learned that it's never too late to discover oneself. I learned that we should love ourselves for our strengths, for our differences, and for the qualities that make us unique. We should not allow others to make us feel inferior or strange or odd or goofy because we love opera or classical music, or great literature, architecture, foreign languages, or art. We should pursue our interests with passion and belief in our innate abilities regardless of an IQ score and regardless of what society thinks of us. Because even in a world where there are no IQ scores and schools of higher education, we can still have great music, art, literature, and technological and scientific discoveries. We can achieve these things simply by believing in ourselves and pursuing our vision with a passion. We don't need the validation of an "IQ Certificate" to break new ground in any field of study or to push the boundaries of art, music, or literature. What we truly need is belief in ourselves. But if you feel you need to take an IQ test to "validate" your right to pursue a certain field of study or career, by all means, do so, but what's more important is one's innate ability, talent, desire and drive. Years before I took this IQ I began to pursue a lifelong dream of writing. I worked extremely hard and made great strides. Now that I know I have an IQ that puts me in an elite category of humans, I believe I will have to work THAT MUCH HARDER in order to create something worthwhile for humanity, because now the bar has been pushed so much higher. I know I will have to crank my Maserati engine up to its highest performance level because I am no longer driving a VW Beetle, but a sleek Italian sports car that is expected to perform like a cheetah.

My discovery has made me aware that being normal and average is not necessarily a bad thing, but neither is it a great thing. But I’m okay with that. It makes sense now why for so many years my friends would look at me with crossed eyes wondering why I was so weird, so intellectual, so knowledgeable, and so "different." While I was desperately trying to fit in and be normal I was failing at being MYSELF. I was failing at fulfilling my true potential. I was failing at making use of my God-given talents. If anything, I am more committed now to being as different and unique as possible. I no longer fear being labeled “odd” or “quirky”; in fact, I find it amusing! In a way, I know that the more I pursue my artistic visions, the more I will be honoring and honing my innate talents, abilities, and intelligence. This was the unexpected gift I received when I took the IQ test. It was like a heavenly pat on the back after a lifetime of feeling like I never belonged. 

Incorporating Voodoo in Historical Fiction

   Growing up in the '70's, Geoffrey Holder was a fixture on the TV set as the pitch man for 7-Up, the uncola. What most people don't realize is he was recreating a character he had brought to life in the James Bond thriller, Live and Let Die. Geoffrey Holder didn't have to do much to thrill me. All he had to do was smile his engaging, Cheshire cat smile, speak in his Trinidadian calypso accent, and doff his panama hat while sipping a 7 Up as if it was the elixir of the gods. I was even more mesmerized by his no-holds-barred performance as the villainous Voodoo witch doctor Baron Samedi in Live and Let Die. The way he danced across the screen with his writhing, twisting movements so typical of West Indian performers I had grown up with in the Virgin Islands ignited in me a life-long fascination with the history and culture of the West Indies.

Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi in Live and Let Die (1973).

Geoffrey Holder was the perfect foil for James Bond. While Bond reflected the posh, orderly world of Great Britain, Holder typified the exotic, mystical world of the Caribbean. His performance as Baron Samedi made such an impression on me that it continued to haunt me decades later. When I decided to write "Island on Fire", a novel about the eruption of Mount Pelée in Martinique, I knew I had to include voodoo in the story. Even in the 21st century, voodoo is an inescapable part of life in the Caribbean. From Cuba to Haiti and down to Trinidad, black magic and superstition still affect day-to-day life. In Martinique, the discovery of ritualistic voodoo objects in the public square still makes headlines in local newspapers and is the source of much fear and anxiety among the population.

Even today, voodoo ritualistic objects can still be seen in Martinique.

I felt that any novel set in Martinique had to contain a voodoo theme. Quimbois, as voodoo is called in the French West Indies, has existed for centuries. I based my character, Gaston Faustin Jacquet, aka the Grand Zamy, on an actual voodoo sorcerer called the Gran-Zongle who terrorized the island in the 50's and '60's with his lethal brand of voodoo that allegedly killed up to 402 people. His killing rampage was finally put to an end when he committed suicide in 1965 due to remorse. The voodoo scenes in my novel are based on the work of two French investigative journalists who documented the practice of voodoo in the French West Indies in a shocking exposé. While my novel is fictional and the characters are products of my imagination, I based the techniques on eye-witness testimony. Please read a sample from "Island on Fire", where natural disaster, black magic, and political intrigue collide in a brand new work of historical fiction.

The Gran Zongle was a real voodoo quimboiseur in the 1960's who may have killed up to 402 people with his particularly lethal brand of black magic according to his suicide note.

Emilie found the shop easily. The sign read, “GASTON FAUTON JACQUET, HERBALIST AND HEALER.” After leaving the carriage, she collected her nerve, but all she could see was Sister Marie’s stern but loving face flashing before her eyes. She felt a pang of guilt in her stomach but pushed it away and continued with her plan.

Pushing open the door, she entered the shop. Almost immediately she spotted a handsome, well-dressed older gentleman with stern eyes, tufts of white hair, and an imposing presence sitting behind an imposing mahogany desk. He was writing in a ledger with neat, elegant script, but as soon as she entered, he fixed his eyes on her, as if sizing her up. She felt slightly uneasy, but browsed around the shop for a few minutes, pretending to peruse various objects. Bu when the pounding of her heart became too great, she turned and was halfway to the door when a deep voice called behind her: “Bonjour mam’selle, may I help you?”

Emilie stopped short, her heart pounding. Slowly, she turned and said, “Thank you, monsieur; I was just…ah…just looking.”

The gentleman invited her to continue browsing with a gracious smile that disarmed her. He was smooth in his manner and handsome enough to beguile her. She walked around the store with as much casualness as she could muster, as if browsing through the shop of a notorious voodoo witch doctor was the most natural thing in the world to do. From time to time she would catch him studying her while he pretended to be perusing his ledger books. He had an almost paternalistic quality about him, but he was suave and elegant to a fault. Although she couldn’t say for certain, she was sure the man behind the desk with the penetrating eyes and wizened face was the Grand Zamy. She had a strong intuition about it. Was this handsome, kindly gentleman the infamous quimboiseur who held the people of Martinique in his grip?

Emilie turned to meet his gaze. He smiled, showing a row of gleaming white teeth, yet there was nothing particularly friendly about his smile. As she continued browsing through the store, Monsieur Jacquet’s eyes followed her every move. But Emilie sensed another quality lurking beneath the surface. Whether it was cunning or deviousness she couldn’t say for sure. There was something haughty and domineering about him, as if he could see right through a person to his core and then use his cunning to control him.

The store was unlike any other Emilie had ever seen. There were rows of bottles filled with various contents such as scented oils, herbs, powders, bone fragments, dried insects, flowers, holy water, eau de cologne, roots, snakeskins, berries, nuts, and desiccated chicken feet. Each bottle was labeled with a yellowed parchment on which mysterious symbols were written that could have been Latin, Greek, Arabic, or Kabbalistic. There was also a large assortment of candles in various colors and sizes, talismans, crucifixes, charms, rosaries, statues of saints and African deities. On one wall there were pictures of saints with eyes that looked curiously alive. It was enough to make her skin crawl, but she had come too far to back down.

The Grand Zamy laid down his fountain pen. “Is there something I can do for you, mam’selle?”

“I uh—” Emilie froze.

He leaned forward and urged her to continue with a kindly, paternalistic voice.

“I…uh…need some help,” she said, feeling strangely awkward.

The Grand Zamy motioned toward a chair. “Please sit down, mam’selle. What is your name? Don’t be afraid. I’m here to help you.”

Emilie slithered into the chair and met his gaze. His face looked so normal, so paternalistic, almost like a kindly grandfather. She could hardly believe this well-mannered gentleman was responsible for so much death and turmoil, most of which was only spoken about in hushed tones. She had heard a rumor from Victorine that his first wife went insane and was shut up in the lunatic asylum on the Rue Levassor, although no one knew for certain. She simply disappeared one day, and the sisters of Saint-Paul de Chartres who cared for the patients were notoriously tight-lipped about the patients. But Victorine’s face went grim when she told Emilie that no one had ever seen or heard from his wife again. But that was many years ago.  Most people had forgotten about her. No one knew precisely what went on inside the stone walls of the asylum, although some people claimed they heard screams in the night. Others told stories about restraining chairs and other forms of torture. Victorine said she had heard of people who were poisoned by him. And some who were turned into zombies. It was all terrifying to Emilie. Adding to the mystery, everywhere he went he was trailed by an alluring servant girl, even when he went to mass each morning. The exact nature of their relationship was always the subject of gossip and innuendo. Still, Emilie reasoned that this sinister character was her best chance for breaking free of Lucien.

“Bonjour, my name is Emilie Dujon and I have a problem.” As she spoke the Grand Zamy fixed his eyes on her, as if he was hypnotizing her. She shifted in her seat and continued, “You see, I’m engaged to a man who is unfaithful…” She paused for a moment to let that sink in. The Grand Zamy nodded, sphinxlike, and urged her to continue. “Since I no longer love him or wish to marry him, I must find a way to end our engagement without causing a scandal.”

The Grand Zamy leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. “So, if I understand you correctly. You’re engaged to a man you do not wish to marry.”

“That is correct.”

The Grand Zamy regarded her through narrow slits. “Does this man love you?”

“Yes, I believe he does, in his own way.”

“But you don’t love him.”

Emilie shook her head. “No.”

“Then, mam’selle, you have a serious problem indeed.” The Grand Zamy closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, as if deep in concentration. “Let me think for a moment. Love, you see, is a powerful emotion. Once it takes hold it is very hard to uproot. But there are certain herbs that can help mitigate the situation, provided of course you use the correct mixture and in the correct dosage. Luckily for you I have great experience in these matters. As you can see I have a well-stocked laboratory.” He motioned toward the shelves with the assortment of bottles. “In addition, there are powerful incantations that can increase the effectiveness of the potion. I recently assisted a young man from the village of Pointe-Noir who fell in love with a young lady whose family objected to their engagement. They whisked her away to the other side of the island, which enraged him. He came to me in a state of great agitation, vowing revenge against anyone who would take away the love of his life.”

“What happened?” said Emilie.

The Grand Zamy gave a mysterious smile, like the Mona Lisa. “I don’t think you want to know the exact details of that case. Thankfully I solved the young man’s problem to his satisfaction, and in the end that’s all that counts, correct?” Emilie nodded. “The medicine I prescribe is tailor-made to suit each patient’s needs. It takes years of experience to know the correct formula and spells. That is the art of the herbalist. But it’s a mistake to think I alone hold full control over the outcome. At most I am only an intermediary. I ask the spirits to intervene on behalf of my clients. Some herbalists—my competitors, some of whom are quite unscrupulous—think the best approach is to simply eliminate the obstacle. But that is an extreme measure I rarely employ. First, let us consult the cards and see what they have to say.”

Standing up to his full height, the Grand Zamy lit the black candles on the chandelier and said, “Spirits, I invoke you, tell me how to solve this young woman’s problem.”

The black candles flickered for a moment and then mysteriously snuffed out. Taking out a deck of tarot cards, he shuffled them and asked her to cut them. He spread the cards out on his desk in the shape of a cross, then he turned them over one by one, studying them with great concentration. Finally he looked up and said, “You have recently discovered a painful truth, or perhaps you have been betrayed. You feel lost, isolated and alone. Perhaps you have seen your man in the arms of another woman. That is the Three of Swords. I see much anguish and despair. You feel as though you have been pushed to your limits and you’re going through a dark night of the soul. You are filled with worry and sadness. You lie awake all night worrying and fretting. That is the Nine of Swords.” He pointed to a card and gazed at her through narrowed eyes. “I sense you are experiencing an upheaval, a sudden change, or perhaps you have realized the truth about something. Something which was once hidden but has now been exposed. You are in a crisis. This is evidenced by the Tower card over here.” He pointed to a card that showed a tower that was struck by lightning and was in flames. Emilie shuddered at the sight of it. “And look here,” he pointed to another card. “This is the Nine of Pentacles. It represents a lady of refinement and grace. She does not seek the easy way out but learns to take matters into her own hands. She relies on herself to solve her own problems. This, mam’selle is you. You must learn to trust your own abilities. And do you see the Ace of Cups over here? This represents a new love or a fork in the road, a new path or a struggle between two choices. Beware of overconfidence and the danger of rushing in too soon. I see difficult times ahead of you. Great strife. I see a maiden, bound and blindfolded, surrounded by danger and unable to see her way out. She is overwhelmed. She feels trapped by her circumstances, lost and confused. This is the Eight of Swords. Don't look worried, Mam’selle, I am sure you will find your way out. Look here, there is a powerful, broad-shouldered man carrying a great burden. That is the Knight of Wands. He is confident and courageous. He carries the duty of responsibility on his shoulders. He will risk anything without fear. That card is a good sign. Finally, I see an awakening to a new and even greater challenge. I see a large goal ahead of you.” The Grand Zamy looked up from the cards. “Unfortunately, that is all I see. I believe your problem is not too severe and can be solved by a simple ritual and potion.”

“Are you sure?” said Emilie.

“I’ve dealt with much worse cases.”

“Are these potions dangerous? I mean, can they cause great harm?”

“My dear, anything can be harmful if applied in the incorrect dosage. That is why you must always consult with an expert. For ten francs I will prepare a powder that will calm your fiancé’s ardor cause him to break off your engagement. Perhaps it will set your destiny in motion. Have no fear that harm will come to him. I assure you the effects are not permanent.” He erupted in house-shaking laughter that sent a shiver up her spine.

With quivering hands, Emilie extracted ten francs from her purse and handed it over to the Grand Zamy. He placed the money in a strong box and locked it. He explained to her that she must take three strands of her hair and three strands of Lucien’s hair and wrap them up in a sheet of silk paper. Then she must go to the cemetery and stand at the edge of an open grave and recite the following incantation, Sator arepo, tenet opera, Rohas, Enam, Binah Jhedulah, Teburah, Jiphereth, Netzah, Hod, Jesode, Malrouth, Meschache, Obdenego! Come all to help me destroy the love that oppresses my heart! Emilie wrote down all the instructions, including the spell. The Grand Zamy continued, “Then, while still standing at the edge of the grave, you must light a candle and say, Good souls of purgatory, I entrust my love to you in order to let it fall asleep in the same way that you were plunged into your eternal sleep. So be it. As you recite the words, throw the silk paper with the hair into the grave.”

The Grand Zamy stood up and strode over to the wall. He selected an assortment of bottles containing various powders and herbs. After mixing them in a wooden bowl, he added some crushed beetles, a drop of lavender oil, and a bit of tafia. He poured the mixture into a vial which he sealed with a cork and handed to Emilie.

“Here you are, mam’selle,” he said. “This is the potion that will change your life. Now give me the young man’s name and date of birth.” She gave him the information. “Now listen very carefully. When he comes to visit, light a white candle in front of a mirror. Place the powder into a glass of punch and serve it to him. In a short while his behavior will start to change. He may seem a little intoxicated at first, perhaps even a little erratic, but he will soon ask for his ring back and your problem will be solved.”

“Is it that simple?” she asked.

Eyeing her, the Grand Zamy said, “For you, my dear, it is simple. For me it is a bit more complicated. I will recite the appropriate spells, perform sacrifices, and petition the spirits—that is the special task of the herbalist. I do not expect a fine lady to sacrifice a chicken.”

The Grand Zamy roared with laughter, causing Emilie to almost jump out of her seat. Clutching the vial, she raced out of the store.

Publishers Weekly Review of Transfer Day

I have chills. Back in 2008 when I set out to fulfill a childhood dream to write a book that would recreate the Danish colonial era of St. Thomas, the island of my youth, I was perhaps a little naive. After all, I had no idea the enormity and complexity of the task I was to undertake. But I persevered, I stuck to my guns, and along the way I had some major breakthroughs. I combed through records in the National Archives, I contacted people all over the world, some of whom have become lifelong friends. I made discoveries that shocked me; I learned so much about WWI history and how it affected even tiny, insignificant corners of the globe. In the end, I believe Transfer Day is a beautiful story that brings to life the Danish Colonial period, a part of history that both the Danes, the Americans, and the people of the Virgin Islands are in danger of losing. My rationale for doing this was: "since no one else had done it, I'll do it." I believed deeply that it had to be done. And so, I am truly grateful for this beautiful review from Publishers Weekly. I hope that with the weight of the most respected literary publication in the United States behind this project, more people will be able to discover this story and fall in love with the characters as I have. I dedicated Transfer Day to Mrs. Louise Brady, a beloved and revered St. Thomas educator who I count as a great influence in my life. I hope she would be proud of this book. Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed the book. Thank you to everyone who encouraged me. I love the history of these beautiful islands, and I hope more people will discover it in the pages of this book!

The 1917 transfer of the Danish West Indies to the United States, which forestalled imperial Germany’s hopes to control strategically valuable ports during WWI, provides the background for Schiller’s engaging historical thriller. In 2001, journalist Søren Jensen, still grieving over the loss of his wife, travels from Copenhagen to the Virgin Islands to investigate a report that documents exist supporting the claim of Abigail Maduro to have “personally thwarted a German invasion” of the islands. Abigail recently died at the age of 101, and Søren meets her granddaughter, Claire Lehman, a possible new love interest (Claire’s eyes have “an inner fire, a boldness that resonated deep within him”). Claire gives Søren access to her ancestor’s diary, which details the teenage Abigail’s growth into self-sufficiency and her role in countering German espionage before the sale of the islands. Schiller deftly blends fact and fiction in a page-turner with emotional resonance. 

A Historical Novelist Goes Digging in Martinique

Heatstroke, motion sickness, exhaustion, bloodthirsty insects, and having to be escorted off a mountain by gendarmes were just a few of the privations I suffered while researching my latest novel ISLAND ON FIRE on the island of Martinique. To be blunt, conditions were bad—constant 100° temperatures and 99% humidity—but the results more than made up for the hardships. What I discovered while exploring the city of St. Pierre were pieces of the past, evidence of lives suddenly cut short by the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Pelée on May 8, 1902: a button, shards of pottery, broken porcelain, pieces of exploded bottles, the remnants of a flower pot, a destroyed tea set. The past comes back to life in a terrifying fashion in St. Pierre, Martinique.

St. Pierre, Martinique, once called the Paris of the West Indies was totally destroyed on May 8, 1902.

Pottery shards are all that remain from someone's ruined tea set. 

An old button dug up near the Rue Levassor made of natural material, either horn, ivory, bone, or possibly even wood, carved from the tagua nut which was used extensively until WWI.

Saint Pierre was once the most important cultural, financial, and administrative city in the French West Indies. But on the morning of May 8, 1902, it was completely destroyed when Mount Pelée erupted at approximately 8 am, sending out a pyroclastic flow that killed more than 30,000 people in five minutes and reduced the city to rubble. Today, the city has been largely reclaimed, but it will never recover the same vibrancy and prominence it had at the turn of the last century.

The Rue Victor Hugo after the erupton.

As I unearthed each item I was well aware the object had once belonged to an individual, and that it played some part in that person’s life. That's the poignancy of discovering the past: you have the chance to connect to someone who lived centuries ago, and who died by a catastrophic act of nature. When I discovered a button or various shards of pottery, I was perhaps the first person in over 100 years to touch these items. That's sad given the fate of the people of St. Pierre. When they died they had no way of telling future generations their story. I considered that my mission: I went to St. Pierre in order to tell their story.

A selfie taken in the ruins of "America's Pompeii".
Note the modern-day graffiti on the Roman-style columns are still doing the job they were designed to do, which is to provide a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below.
The graffiti says: "Madinina: Death" (Madinina is the old Carib name for Martinique.)

     

In many ways, St. Pierre is "the Pompeii of the Americas" because it resembles Pompeii by the cataclysmic manner in which the city was wiped off the face of the earth. Almost like an atomic bomb. The city and all its inhabitants were decimated by the release of the volcano's pyroclastic flows, those supercharged gases from deep inside the earth. Among the rubble was a once-vibrant theater, a hotel, fashionable stores, a Chamber of Commerce, the barracks, the jail, a psychiatric hospital, one of the first of its kind, the lighthouse, the fort, all the beautiful homes, all of it was reduced to rubble in the span of five minutes.

It wasn't even a question of outrunning the lava, with the pyroclastic flows traveling at a rate of 500 mph (700 km/hr) at temperatures of 1,830 degrees F (1000 degrees C) the people were asphyxiated almost instantaneously and incinerated within seconds. There was no chance of escape. Also called a nuée ardente, a pyroclastic flow is comprised of hot ash, lava fragments, and fiery gases ejected by explosion from a volcano, flowing downslope at tremendous speeds. It all happened so fast, the residents of St. Pierre had no idea their end would be so violent, yet so brief.

St. Pierre, Martinique before it was destroyed in a volcanic eruption.

As you meander through the ruins, only a few elements of the city’s former life are still visible: a few retaining walls, spigots, iron gates, the remains of fountains and staircases.

The remains of a public fountain located on the Rue Levassor built in 1850.

An old spigot is all that remain of a fresh water fountain in the mental asylum.

     

The damage was extraordinary, and what is even more surprising is that the ruins have been left largely untouched since 1902. The entire town is a vast archaeological dig. While there, I visited all the major sites where the action of my novel takes place. I would pick a location and dig down only several inches to see what the earth would reveal. In every single case I unearthed something from the past. I will take you on a virtual tour of this extraordinary town that was obliterated by a volcanic explosion, yet has managed to come back from the dead.

Shards of tiles that have been buried for more than 100 years.

The remains of the city engineer's building, on the Rue Levassor

Ruins of the fort cathedral on the north side of town.

The isolation chamber in the mental asylum

The ruins of the theater, probably what would have been the orchestra pit.

Remains of the mental asylum.

Inside a destroyed warehouse in the Figuier Quarter

On the Pont Roche, the oldest bridge in St. Pierre that is still being used for cars!

An inside look inside one of the isolation rooms in the mental asylum. This is a restraining chair. Built in 1839 as a public and private institute for the mentally insane, the asylum was one of the first in the world to offer hydrotherapy to its patients using water from the nearby Riviere Roxelane, and they even record some successful cases.

Standing in the ruins of the fort cathedral. People live in close proximity to the crumbling remains of old St. Pierre, as if having volcanic ruins in one's backyard is the most natural thing in the world.

Rue Mont au Ciel, in the fashionable mulatto quarter of St. Pierre. Until the 1990's this passageway was still covered with rubble from the eruption of 1902.

The fountain at the entrance of the St. Pierre theater, where the opening scene of my novel takes place.

The original cobblestoned Rue Levassor that runs parallel to the Riviere Roxelane, where I found so many artifacts. At the end of this street is where the mental asylum and the Engineering building are located.

The ruins of St. Pierre from 1902.

The ruins today. The biggest difference between today and then is the growth of new vegetation.

     

My adventure in St. Pierre left me exhilarated and humbled at the same time. It is breathtaking to stumble upon buried objects, yet so humbling to know these people died by an act of God so powerful, so terrifying, that only one person was left to tell the tale. If I learned anything from my experience, it is to never take anything for granted. Especially the gift of life. If a once-beautiful, thriving French town can be reduced to rubble in five minutes, it shows how fragile, precious, and fleeting life is. Perhaps that is the takeaway from St. Pierre: to live each day as if it is your last. 

What are the qualities that make a love story unforgettable?

     When it comes to love stories, "The English Patient" is usually held up as a classic romance like “Gone with the Wind” or “Sleepless in Seattle.” But in truth, I found it to be tired, cliché and boring. This may be due to the fact that I didn’t connect on an emotional level with any of the characters. I found the Hungarian Count László de Almásy and the Englishwoman Katharine Clifton to be vain, selfish, and unredeemable characters, not noble or admirable in any way. And while some people would counter that by saying that Scarlett O’Hara was similarly vain and selfish, Scarlett also had other redeeming qualities, such as her Southern pride, her intense love of Tara, her plantation, and her refusal to give in to the Yankee invaders. The tired plot of “The English Patient”, which depicts an adulterous affair between a self-serving Hungarian Count and a married Englishwoman, lacks the requisite virtuousness to make me care about the characters and root for them. Much of this, in my opinion, has to do with their lack of redeeming qualities.

     So, if quality of character is paramount in making your audience care about your characters and love your story, does that mean you can extend this quality to stories don’t fall under the typical romance label? The answer is yes. Over the years I have found that the characters I admire most are honest, refreshing, natural, honorable, and in a word, HUMAN. The beauty of a love story is the way it depicts admirable characters that are admirable DESPITE their foibles and imperfections and maybe even BECAUSE of their foibles and imperfections. Love is such an intrinsically human emotion that the more imperfect a character is, the more we can root for him in his pursuit of a noble and virtuous cause. Think: Don Quixote de la Mancha.

In my opinion, Don Quijote has more redeeming qualities than Hungarian Count Laszlo de Almasy.

   While there are many different genres of love stories, from Western to Victorian to Regency to Contemporary to Swashbuckling, they don’t necessarily have to be the old-fashioned "boy meets girl" formula. A truly fabulous unorthodox love story can stand out by breaking down this powerful human emotion called love in an entirely new and refreshing way.

   Here are some classic examples of timeless love stories told in a unique fashion:

FINDING NEMO —a full-length cartoon that is a kind of "love story" between a father and a son (anthropomorphized as tropical fish).  When the son is captured by fishermen, the father embarks on an Odyssey to find him. An amazing story beautifully told with a sub-plot involving a romance of sorts between the Daddy Fish and a Lady Fish who he meets and befriends along the way. She is a quirky character with only short-term memory, but they cling to each other despite their imperfections.

LIFE AND NOTHING BUT (La vie et rien d'autre) —a French movie which explores an unacknowledged love between two people brought together by the misery of war. A wealthy French widow of the Great War is searching for her husband's body, dead or alive.  The major in charge of identifying the bodies is gruff and dispassionate, but in spite of the tragedy and hopelessness surrounding them, feelings between them emerge.  Amidst the ruin and shambles that is the aftermath of WWI these two disparate souls connect in a breathtakingly fresh and honest way.

EMMA’S SHADOW (Skyggen af Emma) —a kind of an offbeat "love story" between a 10-year old Danish girl and a sewer worker. When a young Danish girl is constantly ignored by her self-absorbed parents, she cooks up a plot to concoct her own kidnapping and runs away. After stumbling into a naïve sewer worker, she enlists his help by telling him a phony story about her noble Russian origins, and the sewer worker comes to care about her so much (and she for him when she sees how mistreated he is by everyone around him) that he risks his freedom to help her escape the “Bolsheviks” that are chasing her. In the end, she finds the love and caring that was so lacking in her previous life.

CINEMA PARADISO —a love story of sorts between an elderly projectionist and a fatherless young orphan.  When an Italian boy’s father fails to return from WWII, his mother is fraught with anxiety about how to pay the bills. Seeing her anguish, the old theater projectionist takes him on as an apprentice and a beautiful friendship ensues. Years later, after the boy grows up and leaves his small village, he learns how much the older man cared about him and wanted to see him happy.

DARK EYES —a love story between a married Italian man and a married Russian woman who meet in a spa. The Italian man has married above his station, rendering him useless and purposeless in life. But when he meets a beautiful and almost helpless Russian woman, he discovers his own latent courage that has been dormant inside of him to win her love and give his life new meaning and purpose. The story ends with a surprise twist that shows how important it is to seize chances when they are presented.

BRAVE —a love story of sorts between a young girl and her mother. Set in the Scottish Highlands, Brave depicts a princess named Merida from the clan of Dunbroch who rebels against her mother and her clan’s custom by refusing to marry any of the suitors selected for her.  After consulting a witch for help, Merida accidentally transforms her mother into a bear and Merida is distraught when she realizes how much she loves her mother and how close she is to losing her if the spell becomes permanent. 

Each of these movies depicts characters that are offbeat and quirky, and display abundant humanity in their respective quests. To me, that is the essence of a love story. The characters do not have to be perfect, they don’t have to be sanitized Hollywood stereotypes, they have to be real people who care deeply about one another, so much so that it shakes their world—and ours.