Cecilee Linke's Blog
December 7, 2013
Elodie and Heloise Giveaway Done!
Congratulations to the five lucky people who won five free copies of Elodie and Heloise ! :) I sent off the copies earlier this week, so they should be there soon. Four of them are going to various places on the East Coast, while the fifth copy is going to the West Coast. :-)
I'm really really eager to see what everyone thinks of my story. I feel like I have become a better writer since I finished it last year (it's hard to believe that book is already a year old!!), but it was a very good beginning. And everyone has to start somewhere. :-)
Now there is just my giveaway for the Wash Woods book, which ends on Wednesday. If you have not entered it yet, you can click this link here:
http://bit.ly/fcwashwoodsgiveaway
I'm really really eager to see what everyone thinks of my story. I feel like I have become a better writer since I finished it last year (it's hard to believe that book is already a year old!!), but it was a very good beginning. And everyone has to start somewhere. :-)
Now there is just my giveaway for the Wash Woods book, which ends on Wednesday. If you have not entered it yet, you can click this link here:
http://bit.ly/fcwashwoodsgiveaway
Published on December 07, 2013 11:53
•
Tags:
blog, giveaway, young-adult
November 8, 2013
Thoughts on Wash Woods
After laboring over the draft of my first Wash Woods novel, I will now be releasing it into the big wide world beyond my computer hard drive! And it feels a little scary, I will admit! Perhaps because I have grown so attached to this story throughout the writing process that I just hope that people will like it as much as I do.
I still remember when the idea for this book series was planted in my brain. It began with a conversation that I had with my mother-in-law earlier this year. I think it was in January. I was telling her about my interest in ghost towns and strange abandoned places. I told her about a ghost town I had read about in Virginia Beach called Wash Woods that sounded very interesting and that not much was even written about that place. No one I knew had even heard of it before and I was fascinated by what kind of stories and people would have lived there in that little isolated part of Virginia.
“You should write a historical novel set there then,” she suggested and then proceeded to show me several examples of some good historical fiction that she enjoys reading. I was a little wary actually of beginning a story about Wash Woods because so little had been written about it. What I like about reading historical fiction is being absorbed in the customs and life of another time period. How could I do that properly when I would not be able to find a lot of information about it to make it true to life?
Suffice it to say that I found more information about Wash Woods than I thought, enough that it gave me a very good base to start writing my story. Then once I began writing the story, I became immersed in the characters and the setting. I wanted to cry as I wrote the ending (no spoilers! :D ), I felt angry with Mamie’s mother when Mamie was angry with her, and I felt all the teenaged awkwardness of Mamie and her beloved just as I felt it when I was their age. Once I had established the characters and their personalities, the rest came easily.
I did struggle a little with the voice of the characters. These were simple people who lived off the land, so I doubted that they would use long, very formal sentences like I hear and read in most historical fiction. So Mamie and her family speak not informally (there are no lols or anything like that in this book!) but not stiffly formal either (“willst thou be needed a glass of water?”). I think that worked out better in the long run for the characters. Not only does it make the story easier to read, but I feel like it makes it more true to how these simple farmers and fishermen might have spoken.
As a side note, if I had grown up in the area around Wash Woods, I would have certainly included some dialect in the writing. What I mean by that is including speech written out as it might have sounded. Think of the servant Joseph in Wuthering Heights. I could never understand anything he was saying until I read his dialogue aloud. Or even Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion. Their dialogue only makes sense when you read it out loud. But because I did not grow up in the northeastern North Carolina area to know the dialect of how Mamie and her family would have spoken, I did not include that in the novel. There are a few local words such as Christman tree, but no written dialect. :)
The book has been a real labor of love for me. And now that the first one is written and being released in a few days, I am working on the second novel as we speak. In fact, it is my Nanowrimo novel! :)
Speaking of releases, and this will be the last part of this post, I am running a giveaway on this first Wash Woods novel, which I have called False Cape. So if you’d like to try out the book for free (and who doesn’t love free stuff?? :D ), you can enter your name in my Goodreads giveaway. You have until December 11 to put your name in the hat. So who knows, maybe your name will get chosen! :D
(edit: The link for the giveaway is here: http://www.bit.ly/fcwashwoodsgiveaway :D)
I still remember when the idea for this book series was planted in my brain. It began with a conversation that I had with my mother-in-law earlier this year. I think it was in January. I was telling her about my interest in ghost towns and strange abandoned places. I told her about a ghost town I had read about in Virginia Beach called Wash Woods that sounded very interesting and that not much was even written about that place. No one I knew had even heard of it before and I was fascinated by what kind of stories and people would have lived there in that little isolated part of Virginia.
“You should write a historical novel set there then,” she suggested and then proceeded to show me several examples of some good historical fiction that she enjoys reading. I was a little wary actually of beginning a story about Wash Woods because so little had been written about it. What I like about reading historical fiction is being absorbed in the customs and life of another time period. How could I do that properly when I would not be able to find a lot of information about it to make it true to life?
Suffice it to say that I found more information about Wash Woods than I thought, enough that it gave me a very good base to start writing my story. Then once I began writing the story, I became immersed in the characters and the setting. I wanted to cry as I wrote the ending (no spoilers! :D ), I felt angry with Mamie’s mother when Mamie was angry with her, and I felt all the teenaged awkwardness of Mamie and her beloved just as I felt it when I was their age. Once I had established the characters and their personalities, the rest came easily.
I did struggle a little with the voice of the characters. These were simple people who lived off the land, so I doubted that they would use long, very formal sentences like I hear and read in most historical fiction. So Mamie and her family speak not informally (there are no lols or anything like that in this book!) but not stiffly formal either (“willst thou be needed a glass of water?”). I think that worked out better in the long run for the characters. Not only does it make the story easier to read, but I feel like it makes it more true to how these simple farmers and fishermen might have spoken.
As a side note, if I had grown up in the area around Wash Woods, I would have certainly included some dialect in the writing. What I mean by that is including speech written out as it might have sounded. Think of the servant Joseph in Wuthering Heights. I could never understand anything he was saying until I read his dialogue aloud. Or even Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion. Their dialogue only makes sense when you read it out loud. But because I did not grow up in the northeastern North Carolina area to know the dialect of how Mamie and her family would have spoken, I did not include that in the novel. There are a few local words such as Christman tree, but no written dialect. :)
The book has been a real labor of love for me. And now that the first one is written and being released in a few days, I am working on the second novel as we speak. In fact, it is my Nanowrimo novel! :)
Speaking of releases, and this will be the last part of this post, I am running a giveaway on this first Wash Woods novel, which I have called False Cape. So if you’d like to try out the book for free (and who doesn’t love free stuff?? :D ), you can enter your name in my Goodreads giveaway. You have until December 11 to put your name in the hat. So who knows, maybe your name will get chosen! :D
(edit: The link for the giveaway is here: http://www.bit.ly/fcwashwoodsgiveaway :D)
Published on November 08, 2013 07:46
•
Tags:
historical-fiction, indie-writers, new-novel