Odds and Sods

by Anna Campbell

As most of you know (because so many of you very generously popped over to support me on my blog tour and various other promo efforts - thank you!), I've recently had a book out. MIDNIGHT'S WILD PASSION hit the stands on 26th April and I've been talking to readers all over via interviews, blogs and in person.

One question that often comes up is where do I get my ideas. And I always answer (because it's true) that I get ideas everywhere.

To give you an example, a couple of days ago I was reading the English National Trust magazine - I have a friend who very kindly sends them to me and they're a goldmine of quirky social history - and I came across the sort of thing that might well spark a story idea.

The National Trust has recently bought a wonderful early 18th century (well, I say wonderful but it sounds a bit creepy, frankly!) house in Northumberland in the north of England called Seaton Delaval Hall. It was designed by Sir John Vanbrugh who designed the cold but very impressive Blenheim Palace which formed the inspiration for much of Cranston Abbey in MY RECKLESS SURRENDER. By the way, Vanbrugh combined successful careers as architect and playwright - not a double that immediately comes to mind! He was also a spy and spent time in the Bastille.

Hmm, I can see a blog coming up on him too! See what I mean about ideas being everywhere? Anyway, back to my piece on Seaton Delaval Hall!

When I read about it, Seaton Delaval Hall struck me as an unlucky house. They had a huge fire in 1822 because jackdaws nested in the chimney shafts (bit more dramatic than "I went to bed with the bar heater on," huh?). The family line died out as a series of heirs fell off the perch (for example, the original builder, Admiral Delaval had no living son and his nephew inherited) much like jackdaws in a lit chimney. After the fire, the house wasn't inhabited until the 1980s. There's even a ghost - a white lady who apparently pines for a Delaval heir who couldn't marry her.

Here's a link to the National Trust site for the house: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-seaton-delaval-hall

When I was reading this NT magazine, I came across a fascinating bit of history that really set my synapses firing. In the grounds there's an impressive mausoleum (pictured below) containing the remains of John Seaton who died at the age of twenty. Here's the quote:

"John, the heir of the Seatons, perished in 1775, having been kicked in a vital organ by a laundry maid to whom he was paying addresses. Thus died the last of the Delavals by the foot of a buxom slut. Over the broken remains of so much hope...his father raised a temple."

Oh, dear! Ouch!

Not the way you want your aristocratic line to come to an end (I'd say 'sticky end' but that might be gilding the lily!).

Now these few lines are interesting for a whole stack of reasons.

Did she kick him where we think she did? I suspect she might have!

What happened to the maid? I haven't been able to find out - I hope she wasn't charged although given the power structure of 18th century England, she probably was.

Then there's the very revealing language. Surely calling a lower-class girl defending herself against a predatory sprig of the aristocracy a 'slut' is a bit of a misnomer! Again, a sad indication of the position of women although I love the descriptive detail of 'buxom' - it gives you a vivid picture of her! More power to her left foot!

Was this action the tragic end of a long and loving relationship? Cue chance to put in a very nice picture of Robin Ellis and Angharad Rees in the POLDARK series.

Or was our heroic laundry maid like Verity/Soraya in CLAIMING THE COURTESAN before the start of her career as a courtesan? Preyed upon rather than preying upon?

More importantly, could our feisty washerwoman be the heroine of a romance novel?

You know, I think she's got potential!

Or could our wincing would-be rake be the hero? He'd need to be a bit more robust but I could definitely imagine a bit of sparky dialogue over the washing line if we wrote him as a sexy beast.

Could our laundry maid be a runaway aristocrat? Charis without having enlisted Gideon's help? Grace trying to make a living after they repossessed the farm? The laundry maid isn't that far away from previous heroines I've written and she shares the strength of character which I like to give my girls.

At this stage, I have no intention of writing MY RECKLESS WASHING MACHINE or CLAIMING THE CLOTHES PEGS but you can see how a quirky incident like this sparks ideas that go on to spark other ideas and so on until you've got the basis for a book.

So while I'm digging around looking for inspiration, I'm turning to you! Do you have any quirky bits of family history - hopefully not a randy great-uncle who was done in by one of his squeezes! - that strike you as funny or strange or romantic or scandalous? Any ghosts in the family? Any skeletons? Any feisty laundry maids? Come clean, as they say in the best laundry romances!Source URL: https://violeta-diario.blogspot.com/search/label/research
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Historical Research and Twelfth Night

posted by Nancy

Today we welcome Lair regular and debut author Barbara Monajem! Barbara's novella, Notorious Eliza, is out from Harlequin Undone, and her single title debut, Sunrise in a Garden of Love and Evil, will be out from Dorchester this spring. Barbara's here to chat about her love of history.

When I was a kid, we stayed up late on New Year’s Eve, and at the stroke of midnight, the whole family went onto the front porch and banged pots and pans. While staying up late was in itself a real treat, getting to make a huge racket in the middle of the night was FABULOUS. I never questioned why. It was fun, and therefore good.

It turns out we were driving away evil spirits. Whoa! How cool is that?

I never would have known if it weren’t for historical research. I love doing research,
because it leads me down so many unexpected paths, most of which have nothing to do with what I’m writing at the time. It’s like being in a maze, but instead of meeting a lot of frustrating dead ends, I meander happily from one path to another, wandering in ever-widening circles, far, far from where I began.

Then reality sets in and I go back to what I was researching, but the trip was fun. And productive! A few weeks ago, I researched wassailing in connection with a recipe blog on the Harlequin community. My goal was to find a few recipes to compare with the one I already had. Instead, I got a great history lesson and pots of fun ideas.

What sprang to my mind (before tripping in research world) was carolers in Victorian garb going door-to-door, rosy-cheeked from the nippy winter air (and perhaps the frequent imbibing of wassail to keep warm). But there’s much, much more. Wassailing has pagan origins (no surprise -- don’t all fun celebrations?) and it’s been going on in one form or another for a long, long time. Door-to-door wassailing was a way of cleansing houses of evil spirits so as to start the year out right. Householders would deck their doorways with greenery. (Hence, here we go a-wassailing, among the leaves so green… Think holly and other evergreens, like we use for Christmas decorations now.) There was an exchange of sung verses at the doorway, and the wassailers would parade through the house, GOING INTO EVERY ROOM (what a cleaning nightmare for the house-proud, before and after) making a huge hullabaloo with pots, pans, musical instruments, and so on, to drive the evil spirits away.

One of my life’s great mysteries solved, all because of historical research.

In return for driving out the poor, beleaguered spirits (I can’t help but see a paranormal in this), you would feed the wassailers snacks and, of course, your home-made wassail. I won’t even start on all the bizarre ingredients your wassail might contain. Regardless, a house-wassailing scene, with all its comic possibilities, definitely belongs in a story. Or a not-so-comic situation involving thieves or smugglers, or a search for missing documents, or secret rooms where the evil spirits – or maybe irritable but well-intentioned ghosts – lurk until the foolishness is over.

Then there was the not-so-nice version, where groups of men would come a-wassailing and wreak vengeance (think curses -- more paranormal stuff! -- or vandalism) on anyone who didn’t give them enough to eat and drink.

Then there’s apple tree wassailing, which took place on Twelfth Night. (And still does in some locations – how fabulous is that? I would be in Somerset or Devon right now, begging to come along, if I had the time and money and guts.) It’s a night known for turning life topsy-turvy, for being the opposite of what you usually are, and for doing what you wouldn’t at any other time (which is of course ideal story fodder). Villagers selected a wassail king and queen, who would lead a procession from one orchard to another. The oldest tree in each orchard was given a taste of the wassail made from its fruit, to encourage it to produce abundantly the next year. A huge racket was made to drive the evil spirits from the trees. People got to kick back and have a grand old time before settling down to the business of the New Year. (And it was nighttime… perfect for illicit romance, as long as you could find someplace warm. :)

I don’t have an apple tree, but this year I’m paying homage to my antiquated pear tree, which deigns to produce now and then, and to the oaks and pecans which provide so well for our squirrels.

As for Notorious Eliza, the idea came partly from research (sort of) and partly from real life. A friend, who does fabulous trompe l’oeil work, painted scenes with a classical feel to them on his dining room walls. The same friend suggested I read William Manchester’s A World Lit Only By Fire, which contains, among other things, much mind-boggling info about the Borgias and their orgies. Put those together, and I had a ballroom with obscene murals on its walls. Add a heroine who paints nudes for a living, and a hero insisting on covering up the murals so he can marry and bring home a respectable wife, and… whee! A story which practically wrote itself.

Happy Twelfth Night and Day to you!

Barbara is giving away a $10 gift certificate at Barnes and Noble to one commenter today, so tell us: What's your favorite obscure fact? Your favorite holiday custom, the one you can't wait to celebrate? Or a bit of historical trivia that you were surprised to learn was true?Source URL: https://violeta-diario.blogspot.com/search/label/research
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Chasing Grandmama....

By Jeanne Adams

I've been chasing my husband's Swedish grandmother. Now doesn't that sound exciting?

Relax, people, she's been dead since the 1960s. I mean that "chase" thing metaphorically. You know. Genealogical chasing. I know, I know, it's one of those crazy things I do when I'm supposed to be doing important things like laundry, or paying bills, or taxes.

Hunting the dead. Pretty serious. The Internet has made this brain-frying pasttime a lot easier, but it's still frequently a puzzle. Take Grandma Adams, for instance. She imigrated from Sweden. Her name was Linda Carlson.

Yeah, you guessed it there were hundreds of Carlsons that came to the USA. Literally, hundreds. They came from all over Sweden. Lots and lots and lots of Carlsons. And Andersons. And Dahlstroms. And Olsons. And they named their children Gustave and Olaf and Linda and Emma.

Guess what? Those names I listed? They're all kin in some way to Gramma Carlson Adams. And did any of them leave any trace of who they were or where they were from? Ohhhhhh, no. They came here and got jobs and got married, but they changed their names to Roy, and John, and Elle.

So, it's kind of a puzzle. Truth be told, I actually like puzzles, which is why I do genealogy research. Of course, it's also why I frequently tear my hair out over the aformentioned research.


Ironically, when you get to the whole Adams side of thing? Pretty easy. Just head north on I-95 to Boston. Hang a left, go to Quincy, Massachusetts and pick a graveyard. Can't swing a dead...ancestor...without hitting an Adams relative. Lots of documentation. We genealogy buffs love that documentaiton stuff.

Of course, we have to give a nod of thanks to the Mormons too. They are wicked crazy about preserving genealogical data. They've almost single handedly worked to save all the Ellis Island records.

Problem is, they just store it. They don't authenticate it or check it. There are no genealogy police, at least I don't THINK there are.... (Of course, there supposedly are no fashion police either, but given my atavistic inability to wear white shoes after Labor Day, I believe they do exist.)

Ahem. But I digress.

Here's the problem. People go to Ancestry DOT com, they find their family tree and voila! they import hundreds of years of data, stuff other people have posted.


Geeee, isn't it great?

Not so much.


You see, they don't check the facts. (Remember Joe Friday? Just the Facts?) Well, there are a ton of entries in one of my family trees where people have added "facts." Problem is, those facts - usually extra children no one had ever found before! Wow! - aren't cross-checked. Like, did that kid's birthday fall before the mother turned sixty? What about the four kids on one family tree I just ran across that were born...(drum roll...wait for it...)after the mother was dead!

Miracle birth indeed.

Fact checking is important. Source documents are important. Really. Really. Important.

So, despite the temptation to accept that Lovisa Carlson who came on the ship Chrisitana out of Stockholm is Gramma, as several people have tried to suggest, I've resisted. I know better. I checked the dates. I checked the parents names (which, miraculously, I know!) So, nope. She's not the one.

Its hard to reisist in writing sometimes too. You know, they show stuff on TV - surely THOSE folks did their research right? They got the science right, surely? - or someone writes something in a book and other writers copy it because, well, surely THAT author did his research, right?

Seriously, now. You don't believe that, do you? When I was researching stuff for Dark and Deadly, I had to call my local arson investigator. After I convinced him I wasn't a psycho - hey, it wasn't easy, I was calling to ask him about bombs! - or a firebug, he gave me some interesting info. You can start a fire with a molotov cocktail, but you can't really blow something up. Not really.

Hmmmmm. Not at ALL what I expected. I mean, I'd seen the shots on the movies where someone throws the lit bottle full of gasoline and BLAMMO! Turns out, you get a big whammo, but its all show. Fire. No blammo.

And that bit where someone shoots at a car and it blows up? It so doesn't work that way. Really. You actually have to hit the battery to get that effect. Guess what? That means you actually have to know where the battery IS. I had to go look under the hood of my car to remember where it is on my car. Got another "guess what" for you. It isn't the same on every car.

So, if you wanna shoot one? You gotta know where the battery is on that make and model. Same thing with the gas tank, which, I've been told is just as hard or harder to hit than the battery.

So no blammo with a bullet unless you're really, really, really good and you have to know your cars.

Who knew?

But like the kids that get added to the Family Tree Maker and AncestryDOTcom lists after the poor woman's dead, if you don't check your sources, you get it wrong.

Of course, there's also the issue of getting it totally right, but no one believes it - ask me sometime about the helicopter in the beginning of Dark and Dangerous sometime! - which is a whole different blog. Snork.

One of these days come soon, I'm going to figure out the whole Gramma Adams riddle. The information, as the X-Files likes to say, is out there. I'm pretty good at research. I'm gonna find her. And her brothers and sisters. Allllll fifteen of them. Yep. And hey, they're dead, it's not like they're going anywhere! Haha! (Sorry, genealogical humor there. Oh, the other one is the bumper sticker: I brake for Graveyards, which I do)

So, what about you? Where do your people hail from?

Are they long time Americans (1600's for my family)?

Are they Swedish? Grins.

Or, are they Irish, Scotch, Indian, Latvian or Persian? Or something entirely different?

And have you ever caught a writer in a research mistake?

Grins....c'mon...spill!
Source URL: https://violeta-diario.blogspot.com/search/label/research
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