Listening to Leah

I'm within about 15,000 words--three or four short chapters--of being finished with the first draft of The Second Cellar, my transitional novel about the adventures of Leah Bright Maxwell (pictured above) in two centuries. Her crises build in intensity. She already stepped squarely in harm's way--and was harmed as a result. I can see the climax in my mind. Hear the frenzied voices, the stomping of heavy boots on the frozen forest floor, the whimpering of a baby and its mama's coos. I smell the woodsmoke hanging like a blanket in the crisp early winter air. It's there.

But for right, I'm waiting. She's recuperating. So I need to talk with her again. We had a long talk before her adventures began. That got us started. But now, before we embark on this last leg, I need to be still and listen to her talk, so I'll know what she's feeling and thinking.

Dear fellow writer, do you do that? Do you carry on periodic dialogues with your characters? Do they influence the direction of your story--their story? To what degree do you allow them to dictate the course?

Please respond by leaving a comment. Thank you.

The Case of the Vanishing Sheriff

Off to the right is old Robert Right Rea (pronounced "ray"), bidding us a faretheewell. His violent demise may never be accounted for, but one small mystery has been solved: that of why his name as sheriff of Jefferson County, Indiana, doesn't appear on the list of elected sheriffs that hangs on the wall of the current office.

According to Ron Grimes, archivist of the Jefferson County Historical Society Research Library:

The dates of his slave-hunting is not definitely known, but there is little record of his activities after Sept. 1854 when he lost in his bid to be elected Jefferson County Sheriff after a well publicized incident involving the arrest of abolitionist Delia Webster.  He owned and operated a hotel in Madison for some time after 1854 and died under suspicious circumstances in 1869.

We don't have the exact dates of his term as sheriff.  He was never elected to the office, but apparently replaced Sheriff William Wharton who resigned while in office in the early 1850's, and served until fall of 1854 when he lost the election.

 Case closed. For now.

Burying a Long-dead Corpse

He's a mystery man, a rogue sheriff who took the law in his hands and twisted it into what he wanted it to be.

"Could he be just a legend?" someone asked.

No. Reliable researchers swear there are newspapers on file that tell of his shenanigans. Another expert on local history told me how to get to his family burial site where his stone stands, proclaiming the reality of his existance. Yet, the large wall poster listing sheriffs of the county all the way back to 1815 makes no mention of the elusive man. But Ancestry.com lists a younger man--perhaps a son or, more likely, a grandson--bearing the same name.

The newspaper journalist in me wants to check further into the story or Robert Right Rae Sr., but since time is short, having promised an agent that I'd complete this manuscript in five months, I've had to find another solution. After all, historians have been on his trail for years and discovered what I've shared here.

Several of you gentle readers shared your wisdom, and this is my solution.

History is a precious thing. It has suffered great harm at the hands of revisionists recently. I do not want to do further damage to the truth. Therefore, I have fictionalized the locations and the characters. In that way, I can base my scoundrel of a slave-hunting sheriff "loosely" on the man himself. I've renamed the towns and counties. To protect the guilty? No. To protect history.

Searching for a Dead Man

I know he lived. His tombstone stands among others of his family near the landfill. The report of his brutal murder appears in old newspapers. His corpse was found naked, with one sock on and one off. He had been bludgeoned on both sides of his head. The man inflicted violence on others all his life and died by violence. And he was supposedly the county sheriff in the mid-1800s.

Though the spelling of his name was a mystery to me for a long time, I finally managed to interview the right person who provided that: Robert Right Rae Sr.--not Wright Ray or Wray. But as for his holding the office of sheriff, I can find no evidence. I called the public library, the historical society, the Sheriff Department where he supposedly served more than a 150 years ago, and a local historical site, but to no avail. The Sheriff's office has on the wall a large poster that lists all sheriffs and their term years, but Rae is not listed, nor are there gaps in that record, according to the office staffer who looked. While he doesn't figure prominently in my work-in-progress, he is mentioned, so of course I want to be accurate.

What does a writer do when your research trail lands you flat up against a stone wall--a jail wall, at that? As I see it, I have two choices. I can keep searching for answers, squeezing in some time to travel to the location and pore over old newspapers for hours, or I can accept what I've gleaned from reliable sources and create a fictional character based on the elusive reality.

Brother and sister scribes, what would you do when faced with such a conundrum? Please leave a "Comment."

Reclaiming All Hallows' Eve

Reclaiming All Hallows'?

[Note: Whenever I refer to the Church, I mean the regenerated followers of Jesus Christ, not some brick-and-mortar structure.]

The Church has allowed Satan, the ancient enemy of Creator God, to steal, or at least taint, many of our celebrations. The man Saint Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, who gave his all to follow the Savior, has morphed into a jolly, rotund, caricature we call Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny continues to try to usurp the position of the resurrected Savior. Children are taught erroneously that Thanksgiving was a time when the Pilgrims thanked the Indians for helping them to survive in the wilderness.

All Hallows' Eve also has suffered at the hands of the enemy, though not as much as the afore-mentioned, since it was never purely Christian and has clearly pagan origins. Most agrarian cultures celebrate significant events in the seasonal growing cycle: harvest time, solstices and equinoxes, and planting time, for example.

The origins of All Hallows' Eve--Hallowe'en (don't forget the apostrophe)--go back 2,000 years to the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The word means "end of summer." Pumpkins, apples, and various gourds were a significant part of that event. The Celtic new year began on November 1.

By 43 A.D., the Romans had conquered the Celts, and within the following 400 years, had integrated their own pagan festivals into Samhain, including Feralia, occurring in late October. Feralia was a day to commemorate the dead.

"Christianity" spread through the Celtic lands by the 800s. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III established that November 1 would be All Hallows' Day. According to Roman Catholic belief, All Hallows' Day was when souls were released from Purgatory and allowed to wander the Earth for 48 hours. Apparently, Pope Gregory was attempting to supplant Samhain with a Christianized version. That was Pope Gregory's M.O. He often claimed pagan celebrations and buildings and imposed a "Christian" significance on them. For example, he claimed the Pantheon (which was dedicated by the Romans to "all gods") for a Christian purpose. His All Saints' Eve was celebrated much as Samhain had been, with bonfires, parades, and people wearing costumes of saints, angels, and devils.

Today, many people claim that Hallowe'en is an innocent harvest festival, but a quick trot through the costume section of the local Wal-Mart tells a different story. With a glance backward to Samhain, Feralia, and, yes, All Hallows' Eve, one can see that the culture of death lives and thrives in today's celebration. It amazes me that many Christian parents continue to celebrate this time of ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and witches, labeling it "innocent fun." What is innocent about rubber masks that portray people who have been maimed, disfigured, frightened out of their minds, or murdered? Parents who encourage such "innocent fun" are opening the creaking door on the occult and nudging their wee ones over the threshold. Hallowe'en always has flirted with the macabre. May our All-wise God grant to those children the wisdom that their parents and grandparents lack.

Jesus says that He Is the Light of the World (John 8:12). As His followers, we are commissioned to reflect that light in today's dark world (Matthew 5:14).

As for Hallowe'en, we need not reclaim it; we never owned it.

Best First Lines Ever?

American Book Review's website lists what the editors consider the "100 Best First Lines from Novels." 

Your assignment, should you agree to accept it, is to peruse the list and then come back here and comment as to whether or not you agree with the list. Why or why not? Which ones would you toss off the list? With what would you replace, so that the list would still contain one-hundred? What great fist lines have you read lately or in contemporary works?

Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader Trailer 2010

"Write to the Power of Three"

Please visit the Hoosier Ink blog to read my article. While you're there, I hope you'll take time to read some of the other entries by Indiana ACFW writers. Thank you.

"Where Clean Teen Fiction Abounds"

I learned about Novel Teen at the American Christian Fiction Writers conference, held this weekend in Indianapolis, and thought it might be helpful for those who want to recommend good reading to the teens in their lives. While I don't necessarily recommend every book featured on the site, it's a good starting place. Don't neglect the classics, though. They're called classics for a reason; they cross over the generational lines to address issues common to mankind through the centuries. They're never dated. Novel Teen is sponsored by Word Press.

What books--classic or contemporary--would you recommend? Why?

Decrescendo

The trees play a symphony of color,
With the maples and the sweetgums
Filling the brass section,
The willows, the graceful, high-pitched strings,
The oaks, leather-headed drums.
It is September, that unsubtle month
That must be heard beating out the summer,
Heralding the fall,
Warning of winter to come.
"These crisp mornings put the sweetness
In the apples," Mama used to say.
And the symphony plays on,
Sometimes in the raucous sunlight that seems
Brighter because it is rarer than in July,
Sometimes under billowing clouds,
Sometimes softly muted in the early morning mists.
The song is as sweet as a golden delicious,
But with overtones of melancholy,
Foreshadowing a key change.

Copyright 1996 by Sharon Kirk Clifton