The Writing Life

On multiple occasions my oldest daughter has declared that she will one day be an author! She always adds a…”just like Daddy.” to the end, though that may just be my creative license/memory kicking in here. In any event, I don’t doubt her. She’s been a storyteller for a long time, especially when she’s blaming her siblings for something broken in the house! But more importantly, she’s been writing some of those stories down. That’s how it starts, and for some of us once that writing bug takes hold, it doesn’t let go. I’m fairly certain that’s the case with her.

As much as I love to hear her say that she wants to follow this writing around like I do, a part of me is reluctant to fully embrace it for her. There are so many things she doesn’t know: the hours spent behind the keyboard wondering if it’s all worth it, the pain of seeing a story fall apart as you try to put it together, the late nights and the early mornings when the story won’t let go and starts driving you crazy, or even just that nagging uncertainty that even if it all comes together will it be worthwhile or will you be the only person ever reads your masterpiece?

Even with the lows, there are awesome highs. They seem to come less often, but they must be the reason those of us who venture those long hours behind the keyboard keep at it. There is the first time you see something you wrote in print (The Power of Teddy Bears), or even scarier…the first time you get to read your writing out loud—mine was on NPR’s This I Believe essay series! (At least it was pre-recorded). Those are the hooks that keep us going, fueling the hope.

This year has brought a bunch of high points for me. I landed in the hands of a great literary agent, Liz Kracht, and she helped me craft my latest novel well beyond my abilities. And just this week Liz sold the book to Oceanview Publishing. Crazy! I’ll finally see my story in print, where I can go into Barnes and Nobles and find it on the rack! That’s the kind of hook that will keep me at this for a long time!

So when Cheyan tells me that she wants to be a writer, part of me wants to tell her about all the little things along the way. But that would be cheating her. She’ll figure it all out when she needs to, and all those trials will make the call from her literary agent that much sweeter…the call where she learns she landed her first book deal! Thanks Liz!

If Lincoln Had Lived?

It's a curious question, isn't it? Exactly the kind of thing I love to explore, a tipping point in history! Next April we'll come across the 150^th anniversary of President Lincoln's assassination, and this same question is sure to be asked and evaluated by anyone who ever cracked open an American history book. All too often we hear the easy answer. If Lincoln had lived then the period after the Civil War would have been easier, more peaceful. Lincoln would have handled Reconstruction better, so the argument goes. The South would have emerged from the devastation of war earlier with Lincoln at the helm. But the truth, I believe, is far more nuanced—everything with history is.

The first known photograph of Lincoln after clinching the Presidency

Too many of us look back on Lincoln's presidency and the time period leading up to and after the Civil War with distortion of our modern time. How many times have you heard that hindsight is 20/20? The trouble is, hindsight also gets more entrenched the further away you get from the actual events, the more time and memory fade all the little details. It's easy to forget just how unpopular old Abe Lincoln was in the last year of his presidency. He was re-elected in 1864, after putting Senator Andrew Johnson on the ticket to build a larger coalition in countering the Radical Republicans—the elements of his own political party who actively sought retribution from the South for their secession. Lincoln even had to fight for the nomination of his party that year, by stacking the party convention with delegates who owed him their jobs!  It wasn't until just before the general election in Sept 1864 that several Union victories pushed Abe ahead in the polls and secured his second term. How soon we forget...the man we all know as the greatest American President was universally reviled by his party, by the South, even by abolitionists who saw the Emancipation Proclamation as a hollow document. (An excellent review of this is given by Larry Tag at the Civil War Trust.)

And so in 1865 we had an ominous backdrop to our nation, one where the course of history could have flown in almost any direction. The nation was torn apart, reconstruction had barely started, draft riots took place up north, factory workers threatened action if a flood of newly freed slaves made their way north to compete for their jobs, and the War still simmered. Even when General Lee handed his sword to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, uncertainty lingered over the country. A large number of Confederate soldiers in the Army of General Joe Johnston were still at the fight, and Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, was on the loose and encouraging Johnston to disband his men and fight on in guerilla warfare.

           General Joe Johnston

That was exactly what Lincoln had long worried over, that the War would linger, drag for years as a burning brush fire marring the country from progress. If General Johnston wanted, he could easily have formed an insurgency the likes of which our nation fought in Iraq, or Afghanistan—small groups of men harassing the countryside and the occupying Northern Armies for years to come. Johnston had nearly 90,000 men at his command, more than enough to extend the fight indefinitely. What Lincoln needed was a clear defeat of the Confederacy, an end to the War that everyone could point to and agree upon. But before he could see that day he took a night out with his wife to catch a play. He never saw the country fully reunited.

Two days later, on April 17^th 1865, Johnston met with Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, the man who had cut a path of destruction across the South. At that first meeting Sherman handed Johnston a telegraph that told of Lincoln's death. The southern general knew what it meant. He had a decision to make and little time to barter. Lincoln had instructed his generals to go easy on the surrendering armies, to help them back into the fold of the nation. And Johnston argued for this kind of treatment, for a surrender that went beyond pure military terms. In an effort to ease the reconciliation, Sherman relented and agreed to political concessions, such as reinstating state governments and releasing arms to state militias. But officials in Washington rejected the terms of the deal. They found the details too lenient, especially after the death of the President. Revenge was setting in and Lincoln was becoming the Northern martyr. On April 26^th 1865, Johnston accepted surrender on purely military terms. By doing so he directly disobeyed orders from Jefferson Davis, who wished the struggle to continue. Johnston knew revenge would come swift from the North—revenge for a fallen President no matter how unpopular he had been.

So we’re left pondering. What would have happened is Lincoln lived? Would Johnston have surrendered? Maybe not. Maybe his men would have blended back into the fabric of the South, dropping their uniforms but taking their rifles and their powder. An insurgency would have erupted, plaguing the nation for years if not decades. Booth never knew the blow he dealt for the Southern cause. Lincoln’s death was a short-term symbolic victory for the dying Confederacy, but ultimately it’s final undoing. And Lincoln may have known, even predicted his own death as the last impediment for the nation to heal. He had dreams and premonitions of his own death, dreams he documented. His friend and confidant, Ward Hill Lamon, claimed that Lincoln dreamt of "the subdued sobs of mourners". During the dream Lincoln asked a soldier who had died. The soldier said, “The President. He was killed by an assassin." That dream was on April 4^th 1865. Just 10 days later he paid the ultimate price.

We’ll never know exactly what might have happened if Lincoln had a real bodyguard. But my bet is that the simple answer, the ideal image we have of Old Abe guiding the nation through its time of healing, is just too easy to accept. History is too nuanced, too complex to let us off the hook so easily.

What would America have looked like if Lincoln lived? No one knows…

Capris Pants and Stockings

I have always loved writing, and very slowly I think I’ve become moderately tolerable at the whole business of storytelling! Whenever I describe my writing to anyone, most notably when talking about LINCOLN’S BODYGUARD, I get questions about writing historical fiction.

Did you always want to write historicals? What about other genres? Science Fiction?

The truth is, I have no idea! I love reading everything—especially anything really well written. But when I first sat down to write, I somehow landed on historical fiction. I’ve thought quite a bit about this, and at first I came to the conclusion that I was lazy, or scared. Historical fiction gives me a backdrop that my story has to fit into…like finding how the jigsaw puzzle fits back together when you only have the edges built. There are rules with a world already pre-built that your characters and their struggles might somehow mesh with. But with that comes great responsibility—research!

When I’m wading through my fourth or fifth book trying to dig up enough background to fully understand the time period, I’m really envious of those writing science fiction. They can just put a warp drive wherever they need, bend the rules of physics around their story, and otherwise form a world they need to make the story perfect. Us poor saps writing historical fiction don’t have it so lucky.

Don’t get me wrong—while I love not having to invent my own world I also love the research end of things, even taking field trips to museums and other grand historical locales to get the setting right. You might be able to do some of that in Science Fiction, but you quickly have to start using your imagination. And since I only have so much of that fairy dust in my back pocket (that’s where I keep it), I like saving it for my characters and their main conflicts.

But there’s a unique element in writing Historical Fiction, and that’s the way the present world, the modern world, views the past. If I truly wrote a story exactly like it would have occurred in the past, chances are no one would like it. Pick up Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage. The writing is so very different. Even though I think it’s an amazing piece of literature, my bet is that it would not have enjoyed the same success if it were published today…if it could even get published (that’s a whole other conversation). So there’s a trick to writing historical fiction. You don’t necessarily want to write in the style of days long ago. You want to write it to convince all of us readers that we’re in that time period, while still relating to the world of today. It’s bad enough that I can’t stick a random warp drive into my next thriller set in the Revolutionary War, but now I’ve got to figure out how to make Paul Revere not seem like a ninny in stockings. Even with all the research I still haven’t figured out why the capris pants, powdered wigs and the stockings were all the rage back in the day…I think I’d even take bell bottoms over those things!

I should have written vampire love stories. 

So you want to be a writer?

“Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?

It took me years to write, will you take a look?

It's based on a novel by a man named Lear

And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer, Paperback writer.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the question…so you want to be a writer? Sometimes it’s followed by an expression of support, sometimes by a kindred soul who knows the same tortured feeling of trying to squeeze a story onto paper such that it sounds as good on the written page as it does in our heads, but more often than not it’s followed by someone who wants to tell me exactly how tough that dream will be!

“Everyone wants to be a writer,” they’ll say… “It’s not easy to get published,” they’ll tell you. “Why don’t you try something easier,” mom chimes in.

“Well then, my backup plan is to be an astronaut.”

That usually shuts them up. (Editorial note: I actually tried to become an astronaut, but getting sick on a roller coaster doesn’t bode well for a career of intergalactic exploration).

What’s fascinating is that so many of the naysayers, the folks who like to point out how high the hurdles will be to see your book land on the shelves of Barnes and Nobles, or on the front page of Amazon…those people, they’ll turn right around and pitch you their book idea! They either tried but couldn’t figure out how to put it together, or they were scared to start.

It’s a page at a time, that’s all it is. It’s about finding interesting things to do in life and having plenty to write about. It’s about long hours in front of a screen pecking away (I only use three fingers!) to make a story come alive not knowing if anyone else will ever read it. It’s about making it to conferences to learn to write better. It’s about knocking down the doors of agents until you find a good one (or if you’re lucky enough, a GREAT one—Liz Kracht!). It’s about reading, so that you’re a consumer of the written word while you learn how other authors put it all together. It’s about all those things. But more than anything, it’s all about starting. It’s also about knowing when to let go, and when to start again.

I’ve written three novels. The first will stay in my desk drawer, or in that encrypted file that I will never give up! I’d be embarrassed to read it again (it did have an astronaut as a character, though). The second might get dusted off soon, edited and revised to incorporate all that I’ve learned and experienced along the way. The third…well, you can read a bit more about it here.

Though I had been writing my entire life, I decided I wanted to be a writer while lying in a mud puddle in the bottom of a concrete bunker in Afghanistan. And six short years, two more deployments in between, an additional pair of kids, and a crazy collie later, that third novel has landed in front of interested editors. I should have been a damn astronaut!

“If you really like it you can have the rights,

It could make a million for you overnight.

If you must return it, you can send it here

But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer, Paperback writer.”

- Lyrics by Paul McCartney…the music in my head while typing this…the Beatles.

John Frederick Parker who?

Do you know the name? Does anyone remember him? I certainly didn’t, even as I set out to research Lincoln’s Bodyguard. I had heard rumors of him before, but I never knew the name. It was a small historical fact, something dwarfed by the events surrounding it. But John Frederick Parker was Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguard. President Lincoln had a bodyguard, even at Ford’s Theater on April 14^th 1865! Incredible!

In our world it seems crazy that we wouldn’t have bodyguards surrounding the President. We’ve grown used to the machinery that is the Secret Service. The limo nicknamed “Beast”, the well fortified helicopter “Marine-1”, and even the ubiquitous “Air Force-1” that only Harrison Ford has managed to destroy (obscure movie reference: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/air_force_one/). But back in the land of Lincoln, even as the nation’s one and only Civil War was wrapping up, we had no organization like the Secret Service. The White House lawn was open, individuals (not just the wealthy political donators), walked right into the President’s office to petition the man himself. It’s amazing Lincoln made it to a second term.

Late in 1864, the Metropolitan Police Force of Washington DC created a special unit of four officers to guard the president. John Frederick Parker was among them. He was well distinguished for the blemishes on his record, for sleeping on duty, for visiting brothels, and for conduct unbecoming an officer. But he remained not only on the police force, but even on Lincoln’s detail! He must have been related to someone important.

On that fateful night in Ford’s theater, he was there, stationed right outside the door to the Presidential box. During the first act he left his post in order to take a seat in the gallery where he could see the play. And then at intermission he joined Lincoln’s footman in the Star Saloon for drinks! No one knows for sure where Parker was when Booth crept into the Presidential box that night. We only know where he wasn’t! To be fair though, we don’t even know if he would have stopped Booth. In those days actors like Booth, the Hamlet of his day, were like our A-list movie stars. Parker may just have let Brad Pitt in to see the President. But we all remember John Wilkes Booth’s name. Can you imagine if Parker had been where he was supposed to be sitting, and if he had been good at his job? You and I and everyone else would know the name John Frederick Parker.

In a fitting bit of historical irony, there isn’t even a single photograph of the man. He’s even buried in an unmarked grave. He’s lost to history, as if history herself wants to forget him. The only thing he’ll ever be remembered for is his greatest failing, leaving us to always wonder…what would have happened if President Lincoln had a real bodyguard?