A Collection of Sparks by Rose Anderson

I have a new book out just in time for the holidays! It's an exciting collaborative born from my international Exquisite Quills reader/writer group. Buy here and elsewhere. I have two short stories in this anthology/cookbook: The Gift of Time and Star of Wonder. For my post today, I'd like to share the spark behind the latter.

I’m often asked how I come to write the stories I do. That answer is hard to pin down because I write all sorts of things from children's early readers to historical non-fiction. All I can say is  each writing had a spark that ignited it. For me, writing is the natural progression of a lifelong story collector.

I’ve been collecting stories ever since I was a child. Like so many of my generation, I grew up listening to my elders at the kitchen table. Important conversation could only occur there amid ritual items of adult conversation. In my house these were Melmac coffee cups and a chromed percolator. They sat beside large ashtrays of Pall Malls whose tendrils of eye-stinging smoke swirled to the ceiling like genies. The habit of conversation in the kitchen was long rooted in the past.  Even human language is thought to have come about when firelight extended the day. The hearth has always been the center of all activity. No matter the hearth is now a kitchen stove.

When my parents, aunts and uncles, and friends got together, they discussed everything from politics to the day to day business of their lives. They also played pinochle and laughed and told stories. I’d be there on the smoke-free floor drawing pictures amid the jungle of legs, all the while listening quietly and soaking up stories like a little sponge. I still remember bits and pieces of those stories. I’ve collected stories ever since.

When hubby and I moved our little family to this farm house 30 years ago, we immersed ourselves in the land and surrounding history. Everyday details of all the adjacent farmsteads were stories waiting to be discovered. To that end, we asked questions of elder residents whenever we could. I love when older folks share their memories. I could listen to seniors reminisce for hours. My active imagination and background in history hung on every word. My mind filled in the blanks and I could see their life and times unfolding right before my eyes.  Through their reminiscing, I learned about the man who went to California as a miner ‘49’er and came back after striking it rich. I discovered there are three children buried along the back road under pink peonies because the farm was quarantined when they lost their lives during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. I learned about the pioneer cemetery where five children are buried and how the morbid sore throat (diphtheria) ravaged the family in the 1850’s. I know about the grisly murder of a farm hand. I also know where the lime pit is on the hill (that dissolved the body!). Through restoration work, I learned about the hidy-hole—a secret cellar in the house next door. Hidy-hole suggests Underground Railroad activity. I still wonder about the human molar and chauffeur’s license pin we found in that house’s cistern.

With such a head full of details, how could I not write books?

One of my favorite stories comes from older neighbors who remembered when the 1930’s brought rural electrification to my area. They told of how the Christmas tree was lit for the first time when electricity finally came down the line on Christmas eve. This truth is the basis for my story Star of Wonder. The rest is a tribute to love. As with all of my stories, Star of Wonder has its share of metaphor. 

Many of our oldest neighbors have passed on since we came here 30 years ago, but I still have their stories. I cherish the details of their lives and share them wherever I can. Like now. Through the retelling, those lives and times are remembered. I encourage everyone to ask questions of their elders. The details of their lives are as precious as the time left to tell them. As you gather with family and friends this holiday season, ask them to share those memories. Make their stories yours and share them. And then share your own. Stories live forever.

From my family to yours, I wish you the happiest of holidays.

Do you have a precious little story that you've collected?
Please share in comments!

>>۞<<

Rose Anderson is a multi-published award-winning author and dilettante who loves great conversation and delights in interesting things to weave into stories. Rose also writes across genres under the pen name Madeline Archer. She lives with her family and small menagerie amid oak groves and prairie in the rolling glacial hills of the upper Midwest.Stop by my blog for interesting topics all month long

http://calliopeswritingtablet.com/

Find Rose Anderson's scorching novels wherever love stories are sold.
Sample Rose Anderson's Scorching First Chapters 

A Little Gossip by Rose Anderson

Authors will tell you that some books write themselves while other stories take every last brain cell to finish. In my writing process there have been times where I've determined a story will turn out one way then it goes careening off in another direction. Where does this big shift come from? Mostly from sidebar conversations with my characters.

Every so often a secondary character will just pop into my head-- like that neighbor who wants to talk over the backyard fence when all you want to do is rake your leaves. Conversations like this take place at the craziest times too, like when I'm in a theater watching a movie or when I have a house full of guests. Fictional characters can be very rude that way. Ill-timed though they may be, I'll occasionally discover my bit characters know far more about the story than I do and bring an insider's perspective that I hadn't even considered.

I had a drop-in encounter like that when I was working on The Changeling (the story that launched a new pen name for sweeter stories). I stood washing dishes at the kitchen sink but my imagination stood in the Scottish Lowlands. I found myself at the doorstep of a centuries-old mansion just outside the town of Selkirk. When I write historical stories, each has its own distinct architecture and landscape so I recognized the mansion as Carterhaugh. The year was 1891. 

Because I love escapism as only good imagery provides, I write the sounds, smells, textures, and sights into my stories. I raised the heavy bronze door knocker in anticipation and made my presence known. Of course it sounded exactly how you'd imagine it would sound on a heavy oak door.

This door was opened by a slight woman of no more than five feet tall. By her crisp black dress and the hefty chatelaine of keys, I knew at once this was Mrs. Frew the housekeeper. She's worked here since she was twelve years old and was well into her 70's now. Her eyes sparkled with her smile when she said, “Ah Mistress Madeline! We’ve been expectin’ ye. Come in. Come in.”

My pen name was spoken with the polite and practiced tone of a woman long-employed at the top of the household hierarchy. I followed her down a hallway to an older portion of the manor where she led me into her private rooms. The charming sitting room had a cheery fire and was decorated with late-Victorian flounces and small China figurines. This space of her own was a perk for the housekeeper who oversaw the service staff, a duty she shared with the head butler Monroe.

“Please, sit doon,” she told me gesturing to the small floral-patterned settee with its finely embroidered pillows. The small basket of embroidery sitting beside her chair suggested she’d done them herself. A young woman lightly rapped at the opened door. I recognized her as chatty Winnet. The maid smiled at me and gave a slight dip of a courtesy. I could tell she’d like nothing better than to sit with us and share the household news for I’d written her exactly so.

“Ah there ye are, girl. Set it there.” Her last words came with a nod toward the small table before me. Winnet set her full tray down then curtseyed once more and was gone. Mrs. Frew saw to my tea and then her own before saying, “It’s so guid of ye t’ come, dear. I’d imagine ye have many questions and t’ tell ye the truth so do I. Perhaps we each can offer answers. ”

I said, “Perhaps we can, but first I’d like to say how well you’re looking today, Mrs. Frew. I know you’ve been feeling under the weather.”

“Och, never mind me. Mistress Madeline. Our healer Janet Roxburgh takes guid care of me. The lass has a talent for mixing healing herbs, ye know. She sees to me several times each week and all is well So what is it ye want to know?"

Her Scottish accent was exactly as I imagined while writing her--softer, more refined. I told her how happy I was she was feeling better. Then I asked how young laird Lenox was fairing at Carterhaugh.

“Oh, the young laird is a guid man, as guid as his uncle Laird Charles was, god rest his dear soul.”

Lenox was a good man. All my heroes were. At this point in the story, he had no idea he was a half-fae changeling. Being privy to the inside details as I was, I also knew Mrs. Frew had an inkling of Lenox’ true nature. Testing how willing she was to speak of it, I went straight to the point.

“Mrs. Frew, may I ask, do you notice anything unusual about Lenox?”

“Unusual?”

I nodded.

“Ye mean beyond that he’s an outsider to these parts?”

Not wanting to lead the conversation beyond my question, I nodded again.

She gave me an appraising look as if testing how trustworthy I was with sensitive information. That was a solid trait in many large households like this. The servant staff may very well talk among themselves, but they seldom shared such opinions on their lairds and ladies with outsiders. I saw when her decision lit her eyes. She said simply, “He reminds me of my cousin.”

“Oh?”

She told how her auntie had born a son much too soon and far too sickly to survive. She was only a girl at the time but explained how she had gone with her uncle when he placed the wee laddie upon a faery hill in the hopes the fae would take him away and make him well with their magic, adding, “My uncle Robbie explained that once taken, the poor sickly babe would never return. Leaving him was the only hope, ye see. An’ sure enough, come mornin’ the sickly babe was gone and a hale and hearty changeling was in his place. A changeling is a mixed-raced babe, dear, in case ye don’t know. The laddie had slightly pointed ears, but not so pointed as to be taken as a full-blooded fae.”

I asked if this was a common thing, leaving babies like that.

“Oh aye, it was common in the Highlands when I was a girl. It’s the only chance the sickly babes have, ye see. My auntie happily raised her changeling as her own, for it meant the fae had her son and were doing the same. Owen, she’d named them both.” Glynnis smiled remembering.

I hadn't set out for any of the other characters to have actual experience with a changeling. This was a very curious addition to the story and I liked it. I urged her to share more, “And you say Lenox reminds you of baby Owen?”

“Aye, his lairdship has a similar presence.”

"Please explain."

“Weel, manys the time I’d hold wee Owen and he’d set me to tingling from head to toe. It’s a sensation one never forgets, dear. That very same tingle comes from the touch of headmaster Eppa and from his daughter Janet every time she comes to treat me with her herbs. The tingling sensation also came from the hand of the new Laird of Carterhaugh.”

I’d written Mrs. Frew to be quite an astute woman. She certainly was.

“Mistress Madeline, if I may, do keep this opinion of mine to yerself, hmm? I don’t think our young laird knows what he is just yet. It would be a jarring revelation, no?”

No he didn’t know just yet, but he’d have to know eventually. His life was in danger. I reached over and gave her slight knobby fingers a squeeze of assurance. “His secret is safe with me, Mrs. Frew. Thank you for sharing your insights.”

She smiled and reaching for the plate of scones, said, “Mrs. Nevin, our cook, makes delicious scones. Do have one, dear. Now if ye don’t mind, I have a few questions myself...”

>>۞<<

The Changeling is a spin on the Scottish ballad of Tam Lin.
Listen to the ballad here.

Read all the Tam Lin versions through time

Blurb ~
Half-fae Lenox Pendry is surrounded by secrets and none are his to keep. Torn from his mother’s arms as a newborn and raised a changeling, Lenox grows to adulthood unaware of what and who he is and oblivious to the danger unfolding as his birthday draws near. Unwittingly sent to the Scottish Lowlands out of harm’s way, he meets a beautiful healer named Janet Roxburgh. The townspeople believe her to be a witch. It would appear Janet has a few secrets of her own.

BUY on AMAZON
"Madeline delivers a well thought out beautiful story with a plot that unfolds before your eye, it's very cleverly written. The characters you meet along the way are believable and the reader can relate to them."
~A Reader

>>۞<<

Stop by my blog for interesting topics all month long

http://calliopeswritingtablet.com/

Rose Anderson is a multi-published award-winning author and dilettante who loves great conversation and delights in interesting things to weave into stories. Rose also writes across genres under the pen name Madeline Archer. She lives with her family and small menagerie amid oak groves and prairie in the rolling glacial hills of the upper Midwest.

The Changeling by Madeline Archer comes from the sweeter side of Rose’s imagination and is rated PG. Find Rose Anderson's scorching novels wherever love stories are sold

Sample Rose Anderson's Scorching First Chapters 

Tea with Finola & Martin by Rose Anderson

Experience tells me the literary characters created in my imagination evolve into people of substance. I walk into their world and they share with me all the details of their lives, details I never realized while writing them. I’m always surprised to discover these insights for they too have life’s baggage and skeletons in their closets. That makes sense. Things like this make us the people we are. Funny thing, I feel these emotions when they reveal them, as if those insights are actually a view inside my own soul. Hmm… I suppose they are. I wrote them!

I had such an encounter recently when I found myself 111 years in the past …

Tea with Finola and Martin

I was standing beside an ancient tree on the Harvard campus, absorbed in the magic of being transported 111 years back in time, when a lovely old woman came up to me. She had snow-white hair and expressive green eyes, her appearance indefinably reminiscent of an Irish actor I’d seen once. I recognized her instantly as Finola Maguire and said hello.

She was all smiles and spoke with a faint Irish lilt when she said, “Ah, Rose, I’ve been waitin’ for ye to come to call. Come inside an’ I’ll put the kettle on for tea.”

She placed her hands on the ancient tree and I heard her indistinct whisper. Suddenly, a small glittering cottage appeared right before my eyes. I followed her inside and she asked me to sit. The house was cozy, no more than two or three rooms, as far as I could tell. She took off her coat and hung it on a hook by the door, then went to tend her teakettle. To my surprise, a brass button shot out of an old boot near the hearth to clatter across the floor.

Seeing it, Mrs. Maguire peered into the boot, and said, “Martin, stop sortin’ yer treasures. Look who’s come for a visit. It’s Rose herself!”

A second later, a packrat emerged. I greeted him and he chittered happily. I caught Mrs. Maguire’s eye hoping she’d translate. After all, she was a witch and he was her familiar spirit.

She said, “Martin says he’s so glad you’ve come and wonders if ye’d care to look at his collection. He’s very proud of it, ye know. Go on an’ take a look, dear. it’s sure to make ye smile. I’ll only be a minute with our tea.”

Delighted, I turned my attention to the packrat. The little sprite dipped in and out of his boot with a great many buttons, keys, and other things that he’d found lost on the ground. I told him how impressed I was and could tell it pleased him by the happy ridges that appeared just above his eyes. He was about to show me the collection in the other full boot in the corner across the room, when we were called to take our tea.

Mrs. Maguire filled my cup first and then saw to her own. For Martin, she poured a splash of milk in a saucer, then buttered a corner of a biscuit for him. His tail pointed to the jam jar and she spread blackberry jam over his butter then handed it over. He took the piece in his deft little paws and launched right into it.

Apparently his not waiting for us was a lapse in manners, in her opinion, for she tsked. Motioning to the plate of scrumptious-looking biscuits, she told me, “Oh do help yerself, dear. We don’t stand on ceremony, do we Martin?”

He looked at me and shook his head. His whiskers were purple with jam and crumbs stuck to his nose. I found him adorable.

I helped myself to the biscuits. They were delicious and tasted exactly like biscuits my grandmother used to make. But of course they would. We writers often use what we know when we write our scenes. I judiciously asked about her grandson. I pretty much knew the outcome of this story, but they didn’t just yet.

“Oh Rose,” she said, “for more than two hundred years I’ve searched high an’ low for others to help me with me daughter Abigayle’s charm. There are no other witch folk.”

She went on to say she recently spent two weeks traveling to Salem for the rents, then on to Boston for the banking, and then back home again. While she was in Boston, she placed inscrutable ads in the local newspapers, things only other witch folk would understand. Not a soul had yet replied. She dabbed her glistening eyes with her napkin, and said, “I’ve come to suspect the others of my kind were either all murdered during the witch hunts, or they abandoned the Auld ways to save themselves.”

Martin chittered and I suspected he wanted her to explain the Auld ways to me. This proved to be the case when she asked him the best way to distill this vast concept to a non-witch like myself. Whiskers dripping with milk, he chittered on and on. She listened and occasionally nodded. Finally, to me she said, “Ye know Martin is an ancient creature, Rose, far older than we. What he knows comes from long ago when people lived closer to nature. Back then, there were some with an affinity for the energies of all life. These were my people, Rose. The energies are auld, as old as time itself—a life force if ye will, an’ it exists in every livin’ thing. Folks with this affinity understand that life comes in two halves of the whole.”

Martin, now grooming himself after his meal, stopped and chittered once more.

“Oh that’s a good explanation, Martin.” To me, she said, “Ye don’t see a stag without seein’ a doe, nor a hen without a rooster. An’ ye don’t see a woman without seein’ a man. It’s the same for everythin’, Rose. Even the flowers an’ trees have both sides within them. My kind understands the glorious Mind who made it all, an’ we know the Mind walks among creation as both the god an’ goddess. An’ because we understand this, we are allowed to call upon the energies of nature for magic.”

I couldn’t help but ask why the witches of Salem couldn’t call upon these energies to help put an end to the persecutions.

“Oh bless ye, dear. If only we could have done so. There were so few of us to stand against the fear and intolerance, ye see. Long ago, when everyone followed the Auld ways, it would have been a small matter to turn an ill wish into good. It takes the belief of many to turn dark thoughts to light ones. But somethin’ happened when a few people learned they could wield power by incitin’ fear in others. The fearful ones turned away from the Auld ways, an’ in time they simply forgot.”

I couldn’t help but compare the intolerance of the past to current events in my own time. Intolerance was an ugly thing no matter when. I told them as much.

Martin chimed in. She nodded and relayed his words, “He says ye always must believe the world can be better, for that’s exactly how it becomes so. Ye must believe, dear. Believe and hope.”

I understood what they meant. Positive thinking often made the seemingly impossible possible. My thoughts turning to the nearly impossible situation her grandson was in, I asked about Neila.

“Oh, she’s a dear, sweet-natured lass. An’ so terribly shy. The poor dear gets all tongue-tied when it comes to talkin’ with people so she keeps to herself. I have her makin’ her sketches across the way in that empty building. She’s practicin’ her conversation while she works.”

How sly of her. I told her so.

Her cheeks pinkened. She smiled back at me and said, “Hope is a good thing, dear.”

Martin chittered. There was no need to translate. I understood.

One new pen name, two new love stories.
Both available for pre-order this week!

 
http://www.amazon.com/Entice-Me-Luscious-Love-Stories-ebook/dp/B015YEHP9U/ 

The Changeling
A spin on the Scottish ballad of Tam Lin

Blurb ~
Half-fae Lenox Pendry is surrounded by secrets and none are his to keep. Torn from his mother’s arms as a newborn and raised a changeling, Lenox grows to adulthood unaware of what and who he is and oblivious to the danger unfolding as his birthday draws near. Unsuspectingly sent to the Scottish Lowlands out of harm’s way, he meets a beautiful healer named Janet Roxburgh. The townspeople believe her to be a witch. It would appear Janet has a few secrets of her own.

http://www.amazon.com/Paranormal-Romance-Changeling-Sweet-Novel-ebook/dp/B015QBO3VO/

>>۞<<

Stop by my blog for interesting topics all month longhttp://calliopeswritingtablet.com/

http://madelinearcher.blogspot.com/

Rose Anderson is a multi-published award-winning author and dilettante who loves great conversation and delights in interesting things to weave into stories. Rose also writes across genres under the pen name Madeline Archer. She lives with her family and small menagerie amid oak groves and prairie in the rolling glacial hills of the upper Midwest.

Find Rose's scorching novels wherever love stories are sold
Sample the First Chapters

An exciting New Venture & a New Nom de Plume for Rose Anderson

I'm happy to share some exciting news. This October will see two new works published under my brand new pen name-- Madeline Archer. Madeline will go to literary places Rose has only dreamed of. More on that in a moment.

When I became a novelist, I jumped right in. It's a weird story really. I had been working on a wordy 5-book masterpiece for years (I call it my magnum opus or MO for short). When the end of the tale drew near, I began to fret. What if no one wanted to read it? What if I couldn't get a publisher to even take it on? I had experienced sad rejections back in the early 1990s when trying to get my children's books published. I mean, if publishers didn't want my adorable children's books, would they even want my adult fiction? Did I really want to go through all that self-esteem bruising again?

I determined what I really needed to do was to get inside the process so when the time came to pitch and publish my MO, I'd know what the heck I was doing. But how?  

Well, something happened in the span of a week that set my feet on a different path. Several things came out of the blue to tell me just go for it, but not in any way I expected. First, my daughter asked me what I knew about ebooks. I knew nothing. Then later that same day I heard an interview on public radio that said ebook publishing was the next big thing. Two days later, I saw a TV interview with the guy who owns Amazon.com and he was talking about epublishing. The day after that I opened a writer's newsletter and the topic was epublishing. That same email listed opportunities for writers, one of which was an epublisher looking for unsolicited manuscripts from unagented authors. Unsolicited and unagented? That's me! The synchronistic bell rang in my head so loud I'm surprised my dogs didn't start barking.

There was a problem though--that publisher was looking for erotic romance and I didn't write romance, let alone erotic romance. (My magnum opus is rather heavy fiction). Still, when the universe raps you on the forehead and says EPUBLISH in all caps, you just have to. It took exactly seven days to write an erotic romance about an online affair and I submitted it with fingers crossed. The story was accepted and I've been writing romance ever since.

Yes, Rose Anderson writes award-winning erotic romance and will continue to do so. But I also write children's and youth books, murder mysteries and high-concept fiction, as well as historical non-fiction. You just can't mix those genres. And that's where Madeline Archer steps in. She'll write the other flavors of adult fiction.  As for my kids' literature and non-fiction... Rose and Madeline and I will keep you posted. One day I may even finish my magnum opus!
;)

I'm happy to announce Madeline Archer's October 2015 debut with two fun projects: 

Entice Me ~ In this anthology of ten amazing authors from Romance Books '4' Us, my  sweeter novelette is Heart of Stone.


Heart of Stone

Blurb ~

A story that begins with the witch hunts of Salem.

As formal education for women lacks substance in 1904, Neila Flannigan leaves Ireland to attend Radcliffe women’s college in America. Shy and solitary, Neila passes her lonesome hours drawing interesting features of the Harvard grounds to send home to her father. A chance encounter with a kindly old Irish woman inspires her to sketch a statue in an old unused building. Desperate for companionship, lonely Neila shares her thoughts and feelings with a man carved in stone. Some days it feels like he listens. 

 

The Changeling
A spin on the Scottish ballad of Tam Lin

Blurb ~
Half-fae Lenox Pendry is surrounded by secrets and none are his to keep. Torn from his mother’s arms as a newborn and raised a changeling, Lenox grows to adulthood unaware of what and who he is and oblivious to the danger unfolding as his birthday draws near. Unsuspectingly sent to the Scottish Lowlands out of harm’s way, he meets a beautiful healer named Janet Roxburgh. The townspeople believe her to be a witch. It would appear Janet has a few secrets of her own.

>>۞<<
Stop by my blog for interesting topics all month long
http://calliopeswritingtablet.com/

Rose Anderson is a multi-published award-winning author and dilettante who loves great conversation and delights in interesting things to weave into stories. Rose also writes across genres under the pen name Madeline Archer. She lives with her family and small menagerie amid oak groves and prairie in the rolling glacial hills of the upper Midwest.

Find my scorching novels
wherever love stories are sold
Sample the First Chapters

Dear Diary by Rose Anderson

The RB4U theme for August includes diaries, so that's my topic this month. I hope you enjoy. 

When we're teens, it typically goes like this: We know who we are and it isn't about to change. I recall my 8th grade year when I knew everything I could possibly know. I was on top of the heap. The cream of the grade school. Then high school happened. Then college happened. Then marriage, then motherhood, then an empty nest happened. And in between I worked and played and had my fair share of highs and lows. While I was living each stage of my life, I never figured my attitudes, opinions or dreams, for that matter, would change much. I never gave much thought to stages back then. 

Many of my friends kept diaries when we were kids. I had one too. It was white fake-leather vinyl with hippie-type flowers and had a small lock fitted with a generic flat brass key. I was never one to journal (as wordy as I am as an adult, that might be hard to imagine.  *smile* ), so the diary had two entries, and two torn out pages, and then promptly fell to disuse and disinterest. But if I had kept a diary at each stage when I was busy being this or that, I would have seen a profound change in me over time.  

Some say journaling acts as a cathartic release. I have a friend who swears by it for just that reason.  Diary/journals are that gauge--a reminder of mistakes made you'd rather not make again and a way to asses to be sure you never do. You can talk out issues troubling you and doing so might just reveal answers to problems. The subconscious mind often intuits solutions long before the conscious mind does, even if the words describing how are a long way off. It's a way to hold on to high points-- those memorable moments and accomplishments you're proud of. Others say keeping a diary/journal acts as a way to harness one's creativity. As a writer I say, just write a novel! 

Many diarists write things down for posterity's sake. Others, by no design of their own, end up having their words define a time in a zeitgeist view of their world. I would imagine they never dreamt their diary would be read by others. Anne Frank's tragic diary comes to mind, as does the diary of Samuel Pepys. Of the former, without her secret diary we wouldn't be aware of the strength in this young girl's dreams as she hoped for a better future, despite the terrible fanaticism that would brutally take those dreams away. (A lesson to the world if ever there was). Of the latter we wouldn't have the clear picture of the scope and breadth of the Great Fire of London in 1666. His words leave a candid description as clear as that from any intentional chronicler.

As a person who does historical research for kicks, I can tell you there's nothing so satisfying as first-hand accounts and citeable references.  If you're like me, then I have something for you!

11 Historical Diaries & Journals Found Online  

1.  500 historical diaries online
2.  Wisconsin Historical Society - Historic Diaries 
   (type in Diary in the search bar) 
3. 19th Century Travel Diaries 
4. Diary of Alice Cunningham Fletcher & More
   An Edwardian England diary
5.  Diary from Dixie 
6. Diary of 18th century midwife Martha Ballard
7.  50 digitized Iowa Civil War diaries & more 
8. Nebraska State Historical Society
   3000 homestead letters 
9. The American Memory Project of the Library of Congress
   African American Odyssey 
10. 100 links to diaries, journals & recollections from the Overland Trail
11.  The diaries from two communities during the Reconstruction
    The period after the Civil War
    

♥♥♥ Authors and readers, do you enjoy original sources such as diaries and journals? Feel free to share in comments those portions that captured your fancy. Have you any diary/journal links to share? Please do! ♥♥♥

>>۞<<
Stop by my blog for interesting topics all month long
http://calliopeswritingtablet.com/

About Rose
Rose is a multi-published, award-winning author and dilettante who loves great conversation and discovering interesting things to weave into stories. She lives with her family and small menagerie amid oak groves and prairie in the rolling glacial hills of the upper Midwest.

۞>>>>NEW & COMING SOON<<<<۞

Find my scorching novels
wherever love stories are sold
Sample the First Chapters

Message in a Bottle By Rose Anderson

Happy 4th of July! Independence Day is a marker for me. To me it means summer is officially on. Where I live, the corn is supposed to be knee-high by the 4th of July. We're right on schedule. In keeping with RB4U's summery theme for July, I'm talking about beaches and the things people find on them.

Don't you just love beaches? I do. I love the solitude, the sandy, wet, somewhat fishy scent on the air, and especially the sound of moving water. Visually, you can't beat an overcast day. That's when you realize the tan sand beneath your feet is actually a rainbow of colored micro stone. That's also when the silvery-gray driftwood comes alive, sort of like Tolkien's Ents. Void of shadow, they become living beings who stand perfectly still whenever an eye is cast in their direction. 

One of my favorite things to do on the beach is look for treasure. I've never found a gold doubloon, but I have found other treasures such as shells of all sorts, bleached sand dollars, dried starfish, and those otherworldly mermaid purses (empty shark/ray egg cases). Of all, my favorite beach treasure is polished beach glass. A metaphor if ever there was. If conditions are right, the glass trash we throw in the water surrenders to the waves and the water reclaims the sand that made the glass. If the conditions are right. We humans are sloppy creatures. I won't linger long on our plastic trash that's choking the world's oceans other than to leave you a bit of good news here.

Long ago, on some sunny Pacific beach in California, the child I was found a glass Coke bottle with a note inside. Unfortunately, the bottle wasn't sealed well. Water had made the note illegible. I've often wondered what the had said before the salty sea washed the ink away. 

I've since learned people have cast bottles of messages upon the waves for a very long time. In 310 B.C., the Greek philosopher Theophrastus tossed sealed bottles in the sea to prove the Mediterranean was formed by the inflowing Atlantic ocean. Fearing bottles might contain secret messages sent home by her numerous British spies or her naval fleet, Queen Elizabeth I of England appointed an Uncorker of Ocean Bottles to her royal cabinet. Under his watchful eye unauthorized opening of bottled messages became a capital offense. Then there's this famous message in a bottle from a passenger on the torpedoed Lusitania in 1915. The poignant note reads:

Still on deck with a few people. The last boats have left. We are sinking fast. Some men near me are praying with a priest. The end is near. Maybe this note will...  (That's where the sentence ended.)
 
There are many interesting stories of messages in bottles. I'll share a few in order by how long they were at sea:

1.) Time spent floating at sea~ Just a few months.
When crossing the English Channel on a ferry in 2002, a mother from France tossed a message in a bottle overboard. The message was a note to her child who had passed away at age 13: It said:

"Forgive me for being so angry at your disappearance. I still think there's been some mistake, and I keep waiting for God to fix it … Forgive me for not having known how to protect you from death. Forgive me for not having been able to find the words at that terrible moment when you slipped through my fingers".

The bottle washed up on a beach in Kent to be found by a woman walking her dogs. Along with the note, the woman found a lock of hair. Her friend, Author Karen Liebreich, translated the message and was inspired by it enough to write The Letter In The Bottle. Several years later, the mother who penned that heart-breaking note contacted the author and they eventually met.

2.) Time spent floating at sea~ 76 years
One November in 2012, a bottle with a note was found floating in the surf in Australia. The handwritten note was dated March 17, 1936. It said:

At sea. Would the finder of this bottle kindly forward this note, where found, date, to undermentioned address.

The note was written on special stationery marked with a picture of a ship, and was signed: H E Hillbrick, 72, Richmond Street, Leederville, Western Australia. It's believed the ship was the SS Strathnaver, a British Royal Mail Ship bringing mail and passengers to and from England and Australia. The finder tracked down Mr. H. E. Hillbrick, but the man had died sometime in the early 1940s. The address lead to Hillbrick's grandson, who was alive and well and living in Perth. The grandson told local media about his grandfather's message, saying it was his only connection to the man.

3.) Time spent floating at sea~ 85 years
In 1999, a fisherman found a green ginger beer bottle with a note from Private Thomas Hughes, a 26-year-old World War I soldier, to his wife. Along with it, a note for the finder of the bottle which read:

Sir or madam, youth or maid, Would you kindly forward the enclosed letter and earn the blessing of a poor British soldier on his way to the front this ninth day of September, 1914. Signed Private T. Hughes, Second Durham Light Infantry. Third Army Corp Expeditionary Force.
 
The bottle had been tossed into the English Channel when Private Hughes was en route to fight the war in France. The note to his wife read:

Dear Wife, I am writing this note on this boat and dropping it into the sea just to see if it will reach you. If it does, sign this envelope on the right hand bottom corner where it says receipt. Put the date and hour of receipt and your name where it says signature and look after it well. Ta ta sweet, for the present. Your Hubby.

Two days later Hughes was killed. The fisherman delivered the letter to Hughes' daughter 85 years later.

3.) Time spent floating at sea~ 98 years
A few years ago, a Scottish fisherman trolling the waters off the Shetland Islands hauled up a bottle in his nets. The note inside said simply:

Please state where and when this card was found, and then put it in the nearest Post Office. You will be informed in reply where and when it was set adrift. Our object is to find out the direction of the deep currents of the North Sea.

This wasn't a love note or an S.O.S., but rather a century-old science experiment meant to study local ocean currents. In June of 1914, one Capt. C. Hunter Brown of the Glasgow School of Navigation set this bottle to sea, along with 1,889 others.  At the beginning of the last century, these drift bottles gave oceanographers valuable information regarding the patterns of water in circulation in the seas around Scotland. The Guinness Book of World Records considers this one to be the oldest message in a bottle found. But who knows what else is floating out there.

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From bottles to beach glass to gold doubloons, have you ever found some sort of treasure on a beach? Have you ever launched your own message in a bottle? It just may be found one day!

 

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About Rose
Rose is a multi-published, award-winning author and dilettante who loves great conversation and discovering interesting things to weave into stories. She lives with her family and small menagerie amid oak groves and prairie in the rolling glacial hills of the upper Midwest.

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