Curiosity ‘Pop Ins’ To Earlier Times

By Linda Lovely

In what time and place would I choose to live if I could time travel? That’s the question our blog poses this month.

I can honestly say I wouldn’t want to spend an entire lifetime in any earlier period. For the most part, women in the United States have more freedom now than at any time in history, and I wouldn’t want to give that up. I also can’t imagine being a man. So no permanent time-space relocation for me.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t enjoy “popping in” for a few choice years to experience select eras and cultures. My top pop-in choices are all within the geography of the current United States. 

Here they are:

For an idyllic childhood, I might pick life with the Iroquois in Upstate New York in the 1600s. Based on what I’ve read, the Iroquois let their children play, and women actually owned the family property. Life in Hawaii in the 1700s (before the Europeans brought disease and ideas about children being seen and not heard) also sounds rather idyllic. In both times and cultures, I’d have had great fun playing outdoors, and I wouldn't have been stuck in ridiculous clothes I couldn't get dirty.

For my twenties, I might want to land in San Francisco just prior to the 1849 Gold Rush and get caught up in the optimism and excitement of the era. However, the 1920s in Chicago are equally appealing. Of course, I’d be a flapper in the Jazz Age, and I wouldn't be a stranger to speakeasies.

As an octogenarian (hey, I’m not there yet), I think 1969 Anywhere USA would be appropriate. It would be amazing to see the first landing on the moon given that I’d grown up riding in a buggy before the first automobile.

Of course, there are also time periods I definitely would want to avoid. The Civil War (okay any war) and the Great Depression come to mind. Writers, however, embrace such times of societal trauma to add drama and depth to our stories.

FINALIST-Daphne Published
Historical Romantic Suspense

I set LIES: SECRETS CAN KILL, my recent romantic suspense, in 1938 because my mother had told me so many intriguing stories about the challenges everyone—but especially women—faced during this time. That made my heroine’s triumph over evil and injustice all the sweeter. 

While it might be fun to pop-in for the “good times” in history and then pop out again when things get rough, that’s likely not what would happen even if it were possible. The truth is it’s the people we love that make us happy. And, if I found love, friends and family in any era, I wouldn't willingly abandon them to jump to a more prosperous, exciting or peaceful era.

So, I guess I’ll stay right here and leave my historical forays to my books and imagination. How about you?

HOPE CAN BE A SLIPPERY LITTLE DEVIL

By Linda Lovely

“There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.” 
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

This month’s blog theme is hope—a slippery little devil that seems hardest to grasp when we need its restorative powers most. I must admit I’ve all but abandoned hope of finding an amicable solution to a controversy that has me sleeping too little and worrying too much. In this instance, hope eludes me because so many elements are beyond my control.

So what does that say about hope? Let’s pretend my fondest hope is that a leopard will change its spots. Not going to happen. About the only folks who might realistically expect that hope to come to fruition are brave beauticians armed with stun guns and hair dye or, perhaps, geneticists willing to play with DNA in order to alter spots in future generations of leopards.  

This scenario relates directly to both my personal frustration and the turmoil and troubles my heroine encounters in my newest—soon-to-be-released—romantic suspense novel. I think we all need hope. So once it appears a given situation—or at least one aspect of it—is hopeless, I simply transfer my hope elsewhere. I look for a crack in the gloom, a place where a sliver of light can let a new hope take root, a place where there’s a possibility, however slim, that my actions can influence the outcome.

It’s no surprise my fictional heroines react the same way I do when all hope seems lost. They search for those cracks where even a trickle of light shines through. My new suspense novel is set in 1938 Keokuk, Iowa. While I grew up in Keokuk, I’m happy to say the story unfolds long before I was born. Because the book is set during the Great Depression, a number of editors have told me it runs the risk of getting labeled as “depressing” before anyone read page one. That would be a shame since the exact opposite is true. This romantic suspense is uplifting because the heroine doesn’t lose hope for a better tomorrow. She finds ways to live, laugh, and love despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles and dangers she is powerless to change—economic hardships and a few other tiny problems like a police chief determined to frame her for her estranged husband’s death and a faceless foe who wants to kill her and her two-year-old son. Of course, you’ll have to read the book to find out where she finds cracks in the gloom and how she pins her hopes on things she can influence with her own talents and determination.

  

I think this is my best novel, my favorite so far. Will it become one of your favorites, too? I guess I can say I “hope” so, since I’ve already done all I can to make that outcome a reality. The title is LIES. Release date will be early summer.

Remembering My Mother—Strong, Stubborn, Smart

We had a creepy basement. Our oil furnace alternately growled like a bear and clanked like Scrooge dragging his chains. The coal bin the furnace replaced seemed equally forbidding—ready to swallow you up or hide monsters in its inky recesses. What looked like hair from buried creatures mysteriously poked through nooks and crannies. Shelves lined with old Mason jars hid unidentifiable slime.

Sometimes at night when the basement began to belch a series of terrifying creaks and groans, my sister and I would freeze, certain some boogeyman was about to creep up the stairs. Mom’s reply? “It’s just Casper the Friendly Ghost. Nothing to worry about. I’ll go check.” I don’t recall if Mom grabbed any weapon (her choices would have been a baseball bat, umbrella, or cast-iron frying pan—no guns). But she would descend to the basement, check things out, and return with a smile. “Like I said, just Casper the Friendly Ghost.”

As an adult, I asked Mom about Casper, and she laughed. Mom admitted the noises often seemed as scary to her as they did to us, but she didn’t want her daughters to grow up fearful. Mom was brave.

Funny thing. I don’t ever remember seeing Mom in her bed. I’m certain I did, but it’s not among my memories. I grew up in a single-parent household, and Mom worked fulltime—our all female household’s sole support. When we were little, a great aunt stayed with us during the week. Still Mom did all the laundry, a lot of the cooking, and she cleaned the house on Saturdays (a family affair when my sisters and I were old enough to participate).

For years, if I happened to wake around five a.m., I’d find Mom either ironing clothes or studying. After she graduated high school during the Depression (early since she skipped two grades), Mom immediately went to work to help support her family so her younger brother could stay in school. Later, when we were kids, Mom took accounting correspondence courses so she could get a better job. She did. Of course, it didn’t pay the same as the man she replaced, but that’s another story. Mom was smart, determined, hard-working, and fiercely loyal to her family.

Like any teenager, I had my share of rows with my mother since I inherited her stubborn streak. But I never doubted her love, and I always, always admired her character. Though she’s been gone many years, I still miss her.  Yet I often hear what I like to think is her voice, sharing the mantra she ingrained in me when I was young—“You can do anything you set your mind to.”

I have yet to dedicate one of my books to Mom. I’ve been waiting for the perfect fit, a novel with a heroine who demonstrates all her qualities. That book is my work in progress, a 1938 romantic suspense set in my mother’s era. However, while I’ve yet to make an official dedication, every novel I write is influenced by my mother. Thank you.