Inspiration Plus Investigation Leads to Publication

Thought for the day:  A smart person isn't someone who knows all the answers; it's someone who knows where to look for them.

And Dianne Salerni definitely qualifies as one of those smart people. She's the kind of person who, when faced with something that piques her curiosity, loves to crawl down the research rabbit hole to explore every little nook and cranny to see where the information leads her. And then, lucky for us, she utilizes that information to write wonderful books.

In January, 2012, I featured a post about Dianne's first book, We Hear the Dead, a really cool historical novel about the Fox sisters, seances, and the birth of spiritualism. During the Q & A session on that post, she stimulated our appetites by telling us a little something about the plans for her next book.  Guess what? (ta-DA!) That next book is being served TODAY! Yep. It's finally time for lunch  launch.

As much as I enjoyed Dianne's first book, I enjoyed this one even more. A quickie review:

Verity leaves the safety and comfort of life in a modern (by mid-1800 standards, anyway) city to move to a podunk town to live with a father she barely knows and marry a man she's never met. There, she discovers the graves of her mother and aunt, inexplicably covered by metal cages, and placed beyond the boundaries of the church's consecrated burial grounds. She wants answers. 

In a skillfully woven tale, Salerni delivers those answers. Verity encounters ugly rumors, malice, and danger, but she also finds her mother's stash of diaries, unexpected romance, and eventually, the truth. 

 ***

Reeeeeally good. Lots of intrigue, and a VERY good read.


Psssst! Wanta see pictures of the actual Pennsylvania gravesites that inspired Dianne to write this book? 

     Cool, huh? Gives a whole new meaning to don't fence me in. (The book is even cooler!)

No Q & A this time around. This time, the lovely Dianne has written a guest post for us, and her topic?

                                                         Writing Historical. 

Writing a novel is hard, really hard, no matter the genre. But people often ask me about the research involved in writing a historical novel. Where do I get the information?

I have no idea how writers did it before the Internet. Books? How did they find books that contained the exact details they needed? Historical societies? I imagine authors spent a lot of time poring through aged letters and journals, searching for the everyday aspects of life that are essential for bringing a historical novel to life.

For me – Google is my friend. And so, of course, are the historical societies that post documents and photographs online so I can view them without visiting the archives in person. In writing THE CAGED GRAVES, I read accounts of the Wyoming Massacre (1778) that were written less than a hundred years after the event, nineteenth century descriptions of the history and settlement of Catawissa, Pennsylvania, lists of businesses and a census, diary entries written in the early 1800’s, and photographs of the region taken shortly after the Civil War. All without leaving my home.

Some things were still hard to pin down. How long would it take to travel by train from Worcester, Massachusetts to Catawissa? Which neighboring towns were less than a day’s travel away – and in existence at the right time? I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how someone would acquire ornamental plants in a time when florists and nurseries were non-existent. Eventually common sense prevailed. My main character would acquire clippings from a neighbor who already had those plants. (How the neighbor got them – not my problem!)

One of the most interesting internet hunts I’ve ever done was for a different historical fiction manuscript, (not THE CAGED GRAVES – so no spoilers here). I needed to know how someone would handle an accidental poisoning by arsenic in 1885. Try googling that!  I did turn up a newspaper article describing an accidental poisoning of an entire family in the mid-1800’s. From that article I was able to identify symptoms and recovery rates, but not how they were treated.

Eventually, through Google Books, I stumbled across a 1903 cookbook. (I figured 20 years off was close enough.) In the back of the cookbook, there was a section titled: What to do Before the Doctor Arrives. It listed various types of household poisons and recommended treatment for each. In the case of arsenic, in case you’re wondering, the recommendation was to induce vomiting with salt water, have the victim swallow raw egg whites to coat the stomach, and if the doctor didn’t arrive quickly, make the victim eat rust.

Yes, rust. Iron binds with arsenic. The doctor, when he arrived, would be administering a suspension of ferric hydroxide and magnesium oxide, which is basically … um, also rust. Who knew?

*****

Thanks, Dianne. Guess what, y'all? Dianne is offering a FREE copy of The Caged Graves... yes, that's right, I said absolutely FREE---FREE---FREE Kindle version of her book to one of you fine folks who comments here. With the help of our cats, (They insist on helping with EVERYTHING.) I'll be drawing one of your names out of a hat at 11 PM EST this coming Thursday. (If you'd like to opt out of the drawing, please let me know in your comment, okay?) GOOD LUCK!

                                                                    Thanks, Dianne!

                                        Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

Pssst! Every comment left here this month will also earn you a chance to win a free copy of my book. Mention it on your blog, and earn another two chances. (What's a little blatant bribery between friends?)