Thank you for making time to check out this blog entry. We're all busy. I'll try to make it worth your while.
I am still taken aback when people tell me they enjoy reading my musings about writing and about the 18th and early 19th century in general. Why should what I have to say be so interesting? Still, I'm honored by your allegiance.
Having said that, I'll tell you here, in case you don't already know, that the next book in The Oldest House series, the third one, called A CHRISTMAS IN TIME, should be out...soon. I hope to have copies available at the Fancy Fair in mid October at the House. Also, by then, it should be available online at Amazon in paperback and Kindle.
The Fancy Fair is on October 16 and 17.
On October 3, I'm doing an all day book signing in Tunkhannock, PA, at Monzie's in conjunction with the Airing of the Quilts. If all goes well, I should/might have preview copies of the new book available that day as well! Although my emphasis that day will be on my murder mystery series which I write as Eugenie D. West.
So...what's this latest Oldest House book about, you ask? Well, the title give a clue: it takes place at Christmas time. The subtitle is 'Christmas, 1799' so there's the year. Those of you who have read Izzy's story from the beginning will realize that in 1799 she and Josh would have been married for three years. And this book opens as they are on their way back to The Oldest House to celebrate Christmas with their family. They haven't seen them for three years because they now live in Charlottesville, VA, and both Josh and Izzy have been very busy settling into their new home in Charlottesville. Josh is a practicing attorney and works very closely with Thomas Jefferson, who is the country's Vice President, having lost to John Adams in the 1796 election.
Izzy has been busy on the home front and also with becoming established in Charlottesville society, and among the wives of government leaders.
They are very excited to be back in Braintrim: a lot of changes have come to the area they are anxious to see, and more are coming!
This book differs somewhat from the previous two in that it refers more to the goings on of the wider world and the ways in which the people who lived at The Oldest House in 1799 might have felt about them. Local, national and international events are introduced and explored through the eyes of the men and women of Braintrim. This was quite a challenge, as I had to imagine myself a post-Revolutionary entrepreneur in rural Pennsylvania, or an aging matron brought up in the strict Georgian world who finds herself faced with frightening changes brought on by the Revolution and its after effects. Some of the topics discussed and debated in the book include the XYZ Affair between the U.S. and France, the slave revolt in the Caribbean and the ethics of slavery in general, regional newspapers being shut down by the Alien and Sedition Acts, Federalist values vs. Democratic-Republican tenets, and a local church schism. While I tried to be expository so that my readers might understand each issue and thus better comprehend my characters' reactions, I hope I dipped only delicately into didacticism.
The book also introduces more of the Sturdevant family and their acquaintances--actual, real people who existed. Alas, virtually nothing is known of these people's personalities so I had to invent them! This was one of the most fun aspects of writing the book: finding new people who really lived in 1799 in this area, and turning them from names in a dry primary source like a census record into living breathing people.
I hope their descendants will be forgiving if I portrayed an ancestor or two in a different way from that which has been imagined by others.
A CHRISTMAS IN TIME is, after all, a work of fiction.
There are even more details in this book about the finer points of home life, food, fashion and manners in general. The more I research the more I learn and I hope I've got it (mostly) right although I know there is always more to learn! Luckily, primary sources exist for most of these topics, so the way things might have been done with regard to Christmas dinner and traditions may be extrapolated from the general and applied to the specifics of The Oldest House and Braintrim, PA.
In general, A CHRISTMAS IN TIME will give readers a sense of the way in which Braintrim was growing and maturing along with its residents during this interesting period: it's not a settlement of a couple of isolated homes any more but a bustling, thriving village, with a burgeoning population. And as we all know, more people means more interest but can also mean more disagreement and strife.
To whet your appetites (and remember, the royalties from sales of all my Oldest House books go to the House!) here is an excerpt from A CHRISTMAS IN TIME.
Elizabeth fixed her husband with a pointed look. “Don’t you think there was something, well, something else Josh was doing over in France?” she asked in a whisper. The very man they spoke of, and his wife, were just in the next bedchamber, themselves readying for dinner. Elizabeth did not wish to be overheard speculating on things she had not been made privy to.
“Something else?” Sam parroted, frowning. “Like what?” But his voice was a whisper, too.
Elizabeth shrugged. “I know he was Mr. Marshall’s aide,” she began slowly. “And he told us about how handy it was that he speaks French. But I wonder why Josh would have wanted to go? I mean, he was just a secretary, really, and on a trip that was unsuccessful in many respects. Why would he go? And why would Mr. Jefferson let him go? I thought Josh worked very closely with Mr. Jefferson, so I cannot understand why he would want one of his key people gone for weeks and months?” She tipped her head to one side and looked at her husband.
Sam nodded. “’Tis true, since Mr. Marshall is one of Mr. Jefferson’s chief opponents, it could not have been easy to get Josh included in the delegation.” His twin had not confided any more specifics to him than what Elizabeth had just spoken of. But he, too, had wondered, because he knew his twin, and the gambit just hadn’t seemed like something he would want to do. Plus, whenever he spoke of the Marshall delegation to France, Josh’s tone and manner became strained: Sam thought there was something more, something his twin wasn’t revealing. “Perhaps Mr. Jefferson wanted Josh to go with Marshall,” Sam suggested now.
Elizabeth thought for a moment. “Izzy says that Mr. Jefferson trusts Joshua completely. And he is very close to her, as well,” she added with a confirming nod. “Apparently, Mr. Jefferson thinks of Izzy like a niece and of Josh rather like a son.”
“Mmmmm…” Sam thought for a moment as he changed his neck cloth and ran a cool piece of toweling over his face. Then he took his hair out of its tie lacing, combed it, and re-tied it. Here in Braintrim Village, few people wore wigs, except the Judge when he was on his bench. But they still followed the older Colonial fashion of small pony tails for men although cropped hair such as Josh sported was beginning to catch on as a fashion.
“It was, as I said, not a very successful mission,” Elizabeth repeated. “And the way President Adams dealt with making the dispatches public, after first trying to keep them a secret…I wonder who gave him that idea? Or the idea to redact the French envoys’ names?” she mused, shaking her head.
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