Once upon a time when I was a little girl and began to read, I was totally wowed by stories that took me out of my “day life” and into a “book life.” I wanted to read everything, but I learned quickly that everything was not always taking me into a “book life” I craved. When I did find an author that took me away, I would read every book written by that author. Yes, I read dozens of Mickey Spilane books when I was in high school. His fast action moved me through the story, and I was not educated yet to the stereotypes he used as his characters.
Some books I would buy and save to read. These were showcased on a shelf where I could see the cover. The book was a treat for a goal accomplished like the end of a busy semester or a long project that had a deadline. When I got sick at the end of every big project (I would burn the candle at both ends, they say), I would have time to read the book as I recuperated.
Then when I began to write historical fiction, I discovered that there was a “book life” I could create and I could live in this world I created for my characters. The places where they lived became important to me. For “Spancil Hill,” I found a stable house in New York in Murray Hill on Sniffen Court where Cahey and Frederick would live, but I could not go inside, nor did I want to because I needed to see it as it might have been in 1890. I created the space where I could hear the knock on the downstairs door and have the characters live inside.
Mrs. Schultz’s boarding house in “The Darkest Midnight of December” was also a challenge since the hospital and houses around it had been destroyed and an apartment building raised in that space in Savannah. I did have fun decorating the inside of the parlor and laying out the rooms occupied by the women training to be nurses in 1906. The house became so real to me and the routines of the house that when the party is given for Gertrude who was leaving and Sharon created a recipe journal for her departure; I created a cookbook: Mrs. Schultz’s Boarding House Cookbook. The recipes included were mentioned in the book except for the cookie recipes especially a Haitian recipe that Edwidge supposedly prepared, my bow to all the work I did in Haiti for dozens of years after receiving a Fulbright to Haiti.
The staff cottage in “Tybee Rhapsody” was also a challenge because it needed to be a compact place that could also accommodate Gertrude’s sewing of the many children’s uniforms. There also needed to be a place for a piano. Much of the Fresh Air Home had been changed and rebuilt so I had to depend on early photos of houses built on Tybee in 1906.
My living in the books I create also includes storms. On Tybee to do research, I was introduced to a gale the first night. I was staying at a bed and breakfast right on the ocean and was the only person staying there that night with no staff people in residence either. At the peak of the storm, I was sitting in my night gown at the dining room table writing down the sounds and feelings I had during the storm. If I couldn’t sleep, at least I would have a description of what was happening in a gale. I used this in “Tybee Rhapsody” when Gertrude spent her first night in the cottage on Tybee and there is a gale.
The second storm was in Wexford, Ireland while I was researching the next novel, “Meeting of the Waters.” I was not concerned, I had lived through one, surely this one can’t be all that bad. I was up at Red Books in town and one of the men I met came into the bookshop saying, “They have named the gale.” So what? I asked. “That means it will be a really bad storm.” And it was. The gale lasted two days and I was alone in an apartment with no access to others. Not fun. That’s when I decided, I have to put a gale into the book. I found the perfect spot. Look for It when it comes out next year.