camp follower | Author Suzanne Adair

The British Legion Parties Down for Yule 1780

Posted on December 19, 2014 by suzanneadairDecember 25, 2014

Welcome to the Christmas party blog hop, and thank you for stopping by. Have you ever wondered how people from other times and places celebrated the winter holiday? Each of the authors on the list at the end of this post is sharing an idea about it today. Some authors also have giveaway prizes for you. Visit the blogs, and enjoy this festive season with us.

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It certainly wasn’t “all work and no play” for King George III’s army when it attempted to subdue that pesky insurrection in North America. The Brits did their share of “entertaining” while on American soil. Mischianza, anyone?

Some Brits qualified as true party animals, and one of those party animals, Banastre Tarleton, commanded the British Legion, a provincial unit that wreaked havoc among the patriots living in the southern colonies in 1780 and 1781. A drinker, gambler, and womanizer, Tarleton had goofed off at University College, Oxford and blown through his inheritance before hitting his stride as a light cavalry officer during the American Revolution.

Tarleton is a secondary character in my novel Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution, set in late 1780 and early 1781. (Here’s why I included him.) And because Tarleton was the kind of fellow who’d never have passed up seasonal festivities, there’s a December winter holiday feast and dance in Camp Follower to give readers an idea of how a Crown forces unit might have celebrated in the backcountry of South Carolina. It’s a Yule party, not a Christmas party—and here’s why. Writing that scene gave me the opportunity to show another side to Tarleton and the Legion: soldiers at rest, not fighting their way through the backcountry. A devastating battle would come all too soon for them on 17 January 1781 and is depicted in the book’s climax.

Here’s an excerpt from the Yule party in Camp Follower:

The morning of the twenty-fourth, day of the Yule celebration, [Helen] awoke to the aroma of roasted hog and root vegetables, slow-cooked the night before in pits…A substantial amount of cooked hog and vegetables, baked apples and pears, and cornbread vanished before dark — largesse from Tarleton, distributed among the rank and file.

After nightfall, in a torch-rimmed field north of the manor house, Helen, her garnets at her throat and ears, wandered from a huge bowl of mulled cider to a huge bowl of waes hail to a supply of the best wines from market…During the first course of onion soup, she was seated next to Fairfax, but they ignored each other, and the fellow on her other side stayed sober long enough to hold a lucid conversation about deer hunting…The soup was cleared away, a bell rang, and the men scrambled to switch seats, to the laughter and surprise of the ladies. Broiled bass appeared on the tables, and Helen got to hear about horse racing and advantages of various firearms from a cornet and a captain…

The bass vanished, the bell rang again, and Tarleton, ruddy-cheeked, wine goblet in hand, redirected an officer of the militia so he could plant himself next to Helen and scowl at her. Gold and braid on his uniform winked in the candlelight. “You’ve no idea how I’ve had to fight my way over here…Madam, I need your advice on a delicate matter. With whom should I dance the first tune?”

Giveaway prize: Want a book to read? Use the comment form to tell me something you learned from this blog post and what your 2014 holiday plans are like. I’ll send you an ebook copy of Camp Follower, nominated for two awards. Make sure you provide your name and an accurate email address so I can contact you. Offer expires 31 December 2014.

Happy holidays to all my readers. And don’t forget to check out the authors’ posts on the following list.

Thank you for joining our party

now follow on to the next enjoyable
entertainment…

1. Helen Hollick : “You are Cordially
Invited to a Ball” (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/nsodv78

2. Alison Morton : “Saturnalia surprise – a winter party tale” (plus
a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/op8fz57

3. Andrea Zuvich : No Christmas For You! The Holiday Under Cromwell – http://tinyurl.com/pb9fh3m
4. Ann Swinfen : Christmas 1586 – Burbage’s
Company of Players Celebrates – http://tinyurl.com/mwaukkx

5. Anna Belfrage : All I want for Christmas (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/okycz3o

6. Carol Cooper : How To Be A Party Animal – http://wp.me/p3uiuG-Mn

7. Clare Flynn : A German American Christmas – http://tinyurl.com/mmbxh3r

8. Debbie Young : Good Christmas Housekeeping (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/mbnlmy2

9. Derek Birks : The Lord of Misrule – A Medieval Christmas Recipe for Trouble – http://wp.me/p3hedh-3f

10. Edward James : An Accidental Virgin and An Uninvited Guest – http://tinyurl.com/o3vowum and – http://tinyurl.com/lwvrxnx

11. Fenella J. Miller : Christmas on the Home front (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/leqddlq

12. J. L. Oakley : Christmas Time in the Mountains 1907 (plus a
giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/qf6mlnl

13. Jude Knight : Christmas at Avery Hall in the Year of Our Lord 1804 – http://wp.me/p58yDd-az

14. Julian Stockwin: Join the Party – http://tinyurl.com/n8xk946

15. Juliet Greenwood : Christmas 1914 on the Home Front (plus a giveaway) – http://tinyurl.com/q6e9vnp

16. Lauren Johnson : Farewell Advent, Christmas is come” – Early Tudor Festive Feasts – http://tinyurl.com/mmclaey

17. Lucienne Boyce : A Victory Celebration – http://tinyurl.com/ovl4sus

18. Nancy Bilyeau : Christmas After the Priory (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/p52q7gl

19. Nicola Moxey : The Feast of the Epiphany, 1182 – http://tinyurl.com/qbkj6b9

20. Lindsay Downs: O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree (plus a giveaway prize) – http://lindsaydowns-romanceauthor.weebly.com/

21. Regina Jeffers : Celebrating a Regency Christmas (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/pt2yvzs

22. Richard Abbott : The Hunt – Feasting at Ugarit – http://tinyurl.com/o9vhn8m

23. Saralee Etter : Christmas Pudding — Part of the Christmas Feast – http://tinyurl.com/lyd4d7b

24. Stephen Oram : Living
in your dystopia: you need a festival of enhancement… (plus a giveaway prize) – http://wp.me/p4lRC7-aG

25. Suzanne Adair: The British Legion Parties Down for Yule 1780 (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/oc5496a

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Black Friday 2014 Camp Follower sale

Posted on November 28, 2014 by suzanneadairNovember 28, 2014

“An excellent offering from a skilled novelist” — Armchair Interviews

Looking for a great deal on an award-nominated, historical holiday read? Camp Follower, stand-alone third book of my “Mysteries of the American Revolution” trilogy, is on sale 28 – 30 November. The book was nominated for the Daphne du Maurier award and the Sir Walter Raleigh award, and it shows the Yule and Christmas Day celebrations of 1780 for the British Legion, encamped in the South Carolina backcountry.

Here are the sales and where you’ll find them:

o 99 cents, Kindle U.S. (Regular price $5.99)
o £0.99, Kindle U.K. (Regular price £3.76)

Please spread the word. Many thanks.

A deadly assignment. A land poisoned by treachery and battle. She plunged in headfirst.

Late in 1780, the publisher of a loyalist magazine in Wilmington, North Carolina offers an amazing assignment to Helen Chiswell, his society page writer. Pose as the widowed, gentlewoman sister of a British officer in the Seventeenth Light Dragoons, travel to the encampment of the British Legion in the Carolina backcountry, and write a feature on Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. But Helen’s publisher has secret reasons for sending her into danger. And because Helen, a loyalist, has ties to a family the redcoats suspect as patriot spies, she comes under suspicion of a brutal, brilliant British officer. At the bloody Battle of Cowpens, Helen must confront her past to save her life.

Flogging: A Common Form of Corporal Punishment in the 18th Century

Posted on October 4, 2014 by suzanneadairMay 5, 2015

Have you been watching the excellent adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s historical novel, Outlander, on the Starz channel? I have, and I also belong to an Outlander Facebook discussion group. Since my first book was published, readers have told me that my series appeals to fans of Gabaldon’s books because of certain settings and themes. Redcoats, war, 18th century, amoral characters, civilians in peril—hey, what’s not to like? So many interesting issues and points have emerged from the Outlander episodes that I’ve decided to explore some of them here on my blog.

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Early in season one of Outlander, viewers were shown the scarred back of character Jamie Fraser—the result of his being flogged with a cat-o’-nine-tails by a wacko, sadistic British officer. From all the research I’ve done into the American Revolution, I knew about the cat and the kind of damage it could do. Flogging permanently disfigured a person’s back. The makeup job done to actor Sam Heughan’s back to represent the scarring looked like what I expected, accurately depicting the traumatic damage.

But outrage, disbelief, and horror exploded in comments from members of the discussion group. Most had no idea that flogging with a cat could produce such trauma. Even after a flashback of the gruesome event was shown in episode six, the outrage, disbelief, and horror persisted. I wondered why there was such a disconnect about flogging.

Many people of my generation and earlier were spanked or “switched” if they were naughty children. That level of corporal punishment is mild compared to flogging, but if it’s a viewer’s only point of reference, the flogging in Outlander comes as a huge, horrific surprise. Also, in first-world countries, corporal punishment of children and criminals has been downplayed for several generations in favor of other forms of punishment.

Plus, in the last century, especially the first seven decades of the 20th century, I think that Hollywood’s depiction of “good guys” played a crucial role in the development of these mistaken beliefs about flogging. These Hollywood heroes had stiff upper lips when it came to pain and could unrealistically “take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.” For all their trouble, villains seldom got more than a grunt out of these superhuman hero characters. The following two examples show you what I mean.

Errol Flynn portrayed many swashbuckling heroes on the Silver Screen. Here he is in the movie “Against All Flags.” His character, a Navy officer, is receiving twenty lashes on deck while the crew watches. It’s a ruse that his superiors concocted to convince everyone that he’s in disgrace so his reputation will precede him, and he can credibly infiltrate the villains’ operations. Aside from being a bit sweaty and emitting an occasional grunt of annoyance, Flynn’s character takes those twenty lashes in stride. He then moves on to getting dressed, hunting down the bad guys with sprightly energy, and (because he’s Errol Flynn) seducing a defiant and lovely woman. In reality, twenty lashes was a rather light sentence that might be delivered for minor crimes; often soldiers and sailors received at least fifty lashes. But those twenty would have torn the skin on a man’s back repeatedly. He’d have bled through his shirt, assuming he could have tolerated the pain of fabric rubbing his injured back. For several days afterward, he’d have been far too stiff and sore to gallivant around and seduce women, and he’d have carried scars from the flogging for the rest of his life.

Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are considered icons and hero figures almost five decades after the debut of classic Star Trek on primetime TV. This image, which provides excellent fodder for those who write slash fanfic, shows Kirk and Spock in a jail cell right after futuristic Nazis have flogged them in the episode “Patterns of Force.” To break the lock on their jail cell, Spock stands on Kirk’s freshly-flogged back so he can reach a light bulb and activate a laser-producing gizmo in his wrist. All Kirk does is grunt a little and kvetch about how the Nazis did a thorough job on his back. The two then escape the cell, beat up some Nazis who try to restrain them, and steal their uniforms. In reality, the “thorough job” any Nazi (c’mon, a Nazi, folks) would have done on Kirk and Spock would have resulted in shredded skin on their backs and incapacitation for both men.

Flogging with a cat-o’-nine-tails was a common, flexible punishment for 18th-century soldiers and sailors convicted of a wide range of infractions. The experience that men received from flogging varied, as the whip could also be made of leather, and the knots could contain sharp objects like metal spikes to inflict an additional level of damage.

Trained soldiers and sailors were a valuable military investment in the 18th-century, thus the desired outcome of flogging wasn’t usually the recipient’s death. That meant that often the flogging was delivered by a boy who didn’t have the upper body strength of a man. (Here’s an update/correction on that statement.) Floggings were usually made public. The recipient’s company mates were required to turn out and watch him be flogged. The experience bonded all of them in a grisly way. After a flogging, the man was far less likely to screw up again because his mates were keeping him in line—and keeping themselves in line. I show this briefly in chapter thirty-five of my book Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution.

One more point about flogging. While it was considered punishment, the flogging that Jamie Fraser received in Outlander also demonstrated the psychological effectiveness of torture—and I don’t just mean torture of Jamie. We’re used to thinking of most forms of torture as a way to get someone to divulge information, right? But torture is actually not too effective at that. Studies have shown that when people are tortured, they say anything to make the agony stop. Most of the time, the information they spill is useless.

So if the torture wasn’t just for Jamie (who actually withstood it and didn’t give the loco villain what he wanted), who was it for? It was for the townsfolk who were witnessing the flogging. If you watch the episode, notice their reactions. The villain turned the flogging into a weapon of terror and made it public to keep the civilians in line. And he delivered the flogging himself to give it a personal touch.

Flogging, corporal punishment in the #18thCentury, and #Outlander http://bit.ly/1rV2zSR #history #AmRev

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Understating the Costs of War

Posted on April 5, 2014 by suzanneadairApril 5, 2014

Throughout history, reports about the costs of war in terms of human lives have focused on dead and injured combatants. Commanding officers reported on the numbers of their men killed in battle, those who died afterwards as a result of their injuries, and those who were permanently injured. Pictures like this one depicting a mass grave from World War I show up in high school history books. They reinforce an erroneous assumption that the costs of war have revolved around people enlisted in regular units and militias.

War doesn’t affect only combatants. Casualty reports omit or trivialize the devastation war brings to civilians. Because the physiological and psychological damage to these people hasn’t been reported, it hasn’t been quantified. Thus the cost of human warfare throughout history has been greatly understated.

Examples of military actions with costs that haven’t been quantified
The business of soldiers is combat. Historically, civilian contractors have traveled with military units to provide goods and services not covered by soldiers: goods such as tobacco, and services such as blacksmithing. Because “camp followers” often traveled with the baggage train, which was loaded with supplies, numerous accounts of battles report the accidental involvement of these civilians in actual combat. Although many of them were armed, they often proved to be a trivial challenge to trained combatants. My book Camp Follower fictionalizes this scenario at the Revolutionary War Battle of the Cowpens, 17 January 1781, in South Carolina.

Wives of soldiers have often followed the drum alongside their husbands, bringing their children with them. These civilians have landed in horrific danger. During the American Revolution, the 1 September 1777 issue of The New-York Gazette and the Weekly Mercury reported such an incident. During Sullivan’s attack on Staten Island, 22 August, loyalist commander Lt. Col. Edward Vaughan Dongan was retreating with some of his men, along with his wife and children. Discipline among Sullivan’s Continental soldiers collapsed to plundering. They chased down Dongan’s wife, and her three-year-old son witnessed her rape by Continental soldiers. Meanwhile, Dongan himself was killed. Traumatized by his mother’s rape and father’s death, the young boy died.

As his death shows, a casualty of war doesn’t always have to be a person who is physically injured or killed in a military action. Furthermore, even civilians in their homes or places of business can be traumatized by warfare. Revolutionary Reminiscences from the “Cape Fear Sketches” documents an eyewitness account from the North Carolina backcountry during the first week of April 1781. Here’s what a patriot man saw when he entered Alexander Rouse’s tavern right after the departure of redcoats who’d gunned down several of his comrades within:

Upon entering the house what a scene presented itself! The floor covered with dead bodies & almost swimming in blood, & battered brains smoking on the walls; In the fire place sat shivering over a few coals, an aged woman surrounded by several small children, who were clinging to her body, petrified with terror. We spoke to her, but she knew us not, tho familiar acquaintences; staring wildly around, and uttering a few incoherent sentences, she pointed at the dead bodies; reason had left its throne.

Unlike the Dongans’ story, we don’t know the names of the woman and children who witnessed “the Rouse House Massacre.” Most of the time, civilian casualties of war go unnamed. So when I fictionalized this aggression in my book A Hostage to Heritage, I personalized these people by giving them names.

Civilians who are exposed to combat demonstrate the kinds of immediate psychological traumas detailed in this account. Lasting psychological damage is another cost of war, even more difficult to quantify than the loss of life or visible physiological injury.

In the 18th century, with no psychologists and few sedatives, do you suppose the civilians who survived the attack on the baggage train at Cowpens, or Mrs. Dongan on Staten Island, or the woman and children at Rouse’s Tavern ever ceased having post-traumatic stress disorder? What do you think were the costs to their society? And what are the costs to society today from similar activity in war-torn countries all over the world?

#PTSD in civilians during the #AmRev http://bit.ly/1fVzAoH #history via @Suzanne_Adair

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Revolutionary Yule

Posted on December 19, 2013 by suzanneadairDecember 19, 2013

From the Vault: I’ve participated in a number of December booksignings at historic sites that date from the time of the American Revolution. Site visitors are often surprised at the simplicity with which the grounds and interiors of historic buildings are decorated for the holiday season. The decor reflects the way people in America approached Christmas during the Revolution. I originally wrote about this simpler approach in 2009 in Mystery Readers Journal, vol 25 no 1. (The pictures weren’t in the original.) What I’ve learned about Yule and Christmas has influenced my personal seasonal celebration. This year, Yule and the winter solstice fall on the same day, 21 December. Seasons greetings to all my readers.

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Camp Follower, the third novel in my mystery/suspense series set during the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War, depicts a Yule celebration in the backcountry of South Carolina.

Why Yule and not Christmas?

Contrary to popular opinion, Christmas wasn’t a big holiday for the Colonials or the occupying British. There was no Christmas tree, no roasted goose, no weeks of baking and flurry of gift giving, no packing the church pews for a joyous Christmas Eve/Day service, no bearded plump guy in a red suit whizzing around the world in a sleigh full of goodies. Decades later, Prince Albert would initiate some of those traditions, then they’d gather momentum over subsequent decades into what we have now. But it wasn’t happening yet during the Revolutionary War years.

Christmas was, in fact, in transition. For centuries, the pagan festival of Saturnalia had been on the Church’s calendar as Christmas. The season was a time of widespread “misrule,” when folks indulged in excessive party behavior that resembled a cross between our modern-day Halloween and Mardi Gras. By the winter solstice each year, the harvests were in, the stock was freshly slaughtered, and the first alcoholic beverages of the season were available. People of all classes had idle time on their hands. Many used it to evaluate a year nearly ended and assess ways to approach the new year. But many commoners also chose to let off steam and vent carnal desires at this time. These people turned class stricture on its head by rioting, destroying property, and indulging in licentious sexual behavior. By custom, commoners often invaded upper class homes in mobs and demanded food and drink. The wealthy provided food and drink for them, a form of largesse, a “treat” to divert a “trick.”

So desperate were the Puritans of Colonial America to distinguish themselves from devotees of this seasonal revelry that they outlawed public celebration and acknowledgement of Christmas within their community for many years. However, not everyone who settled in North America was a Puritan. A number of settlers weren’t even Christians. In the years as the colonies and territories took shape, a range of seasonal celebratory behavior manifested itself in homes and in public.

In December 1780, most people associated with King George III‘s empire, regardless of religion, still honored the ancient, annual rhythm of solstices and equinoxes in some form. Makes sense, when you consider how many of them made a living off the land and thus had to stay attuned to the seasons. For the winter solstice, they might have decorated their homes with some greenery, or had a feast and/or dance on Yule. The winter solstice and Christmas Day occur close together, some years almost atop each other, so those people who were Christians might also have attended a service in church on Christmas Day. But this would have been a somber, simple service with no glitz. Conservative Protestants — especially those of the backcountry, folk persuasion — frowned on making a material big deal over the birth of Jesus, just as the Puritans had discouraged it.

Camp Follower renders Yule as it might have been in 1780, celebrated on what is technically Christmas Eve by a British regiment camped in the hinterlands of South Carolina. The regimental commander entertains his officers and their ladies with a feast, and plenty of food is distributed among the rank and file — echoes back to an age when the lord of the manor distributed largesse among the poor in effort to circumvent their Saturnalia carousing. During the Yule festivity in Camp Follower, everyone dances and drinks a lot. And the next morning, the chaplain preaches a brief, quiet Christmas sermon for those few who can make it to the service.

History has recorded enough aggression during the Revolutionary War at the time of the winter solstice, Yule, and Christmas to imply that Colonials didn’t regard those days as a spiritual period. Seems peculiar to those of us in the twenty-first century who are accustomed to a winter holiday that’s sacred (and commercial!). It also threatens those who are only comfortable with a picture of this country’s founding mothers and fathers as the Christians we recognize today, not as an amalgamation of people of different faiths whose spirituality occupied a zone in the evolutionary continuum. Regardless of religious persuasion, however, Yule in Revolutionary America does appear to have been a time of relaxation. Most people still used that period to reflect on a year almost over, as their ancestors had done, but widespread “misrule” was no longer the rule.

The concepts of reflection and relaxation seem so sane to me during this frenetic time of the year that I incorporated a peaceful Yule celebration into my family’s winter holiday schedule several years ago. My sons now enjoy Yule more than Christmas. We haven’t had any whining about material gifts since Mom brought back Yule.

You might say that my rediscovery of Yule has been a revolutionary gift that my historical research imparted upon all our lives.

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Buy the Paperback, Get the Kindle Edition Free in December

Posted on December 2, 2013 by suzanneadairDecember 2, 2013

For the month of December, I’m participating in a special promotion with thirteen other authors of historical fiction. Buy the paperback version of our books on Amazon, and you’ll be offered the opportunity to download the Kindle edition for free. Amazon will also credit your prior purchase of these paperbacks.

What a great opportunity for you if you prefer paperback but also like to have a digital version—or if you’ve been thinking about giving a paperback as a gift and want an ebook for yourself. You’ll find all five of my books in this promotion. Here’s the full list of titles we’re offering.

Remember: this special promotion is only for December.

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Camp Follower for a Weekend

Posted on November 30, 2013 by suzanneadairNovember 29, 2013

From the Vault: I’ve participated in more than a decade of Revolutionary War reenacting with the 33rd Light Company of Foot—as one of their camp followers. Boy, oh boy, those words “camp follower” sure perk the ears of journalists and beg a clarification of what a camp follower does. My explanation often sounds like what’s in the following essay, originally published in 2010 in Mystery Readers Journal, vol 26 no 4, the issue on “Hobbies.” (The pictures weren’t in the original.) In this essay, I discuss giving voice to women of the Revolution so we can learn about “the crushing, undeniable effect of war on humanity.” Note that that voice is loud and clear in my latest release, A Hostage to Heritage.

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I write a mystery/suspense series set during the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War. Several years ago, after I’d described the hobby that best informs my writing, an interviewer said to me, “Honey, you really suffer for your art.” My hobby is Revolutionary War reenacting. During a reenacting weekend, I portray a woman of middle class who is a camp follower.

No, I’m not a military groupie. During the Revolutionary War, any non-combatant civilian who traveled with an army met the definition of what we’d call a “camp follower.” These folks took no commissioning or enlistment vows but were paid in other ways by the army or through interaction with the army. Camp followers in the Revolutionary War included artisans such as blacksmiths and wheelwrights; sutlers like merchants and peddlers; and retainers: family members, servants, slaves, and friends.

Usually when we hear a voice from the Revolutionary War, it’s a man’s voice, a soldier’s tale. Women have a different story to tell about the war. One purpose of my series is to spotlight women in a historically accurate setting and give them their voices.

Why would any woman who wasn’t a prostitute follow an army? In the Revolutionary War, territories changed hands often. The conflict pitted neighbor against neighbor—demonstrated gruesomely in the Southern colonies, where squabbling families used the excuse of war to continue old feuds. Most cities were too small to provide a defense for people. Often an army was the greatest source of protection. When a military force withdrew from an area, civilians who stayed behind became vulnerable and risked torture and death at the hands of enemies. Thus wives left home and marched to the drum with their soldier husbands, bringing with them children and other household members.

A woman who followed an army endured privation. The baggage train where most camp followers traveled was considered worthy of capture. Civilians associated with it often found themselves in the midst of battle. These people also experienced disease, starvation, lack of clothing and shelter, and exposure to the elements. In addition, civilians had to obey military rules. A woman who broke the rules might pay a fine or receive corporal punishment. She could be evicted from camp or executed.

Middle- and lower-class women coped by cobbling together some form of domestic life, normalcy within the military environment and chaos of war. Perhaps they shared a daily meal with their soldiers, or participated in a family activity, such as reading from the Bible. Since women often didn’t receive food rations, they laundered, cooked, mended clothing, and worked in the infirmary for extra pay or food.

These women weren’t early feminists. They did what had to be done, part of the innate ability of women throughout history. Yet the accomplishments of women don’t receive the attention of men’s accomplishments. Stories of war are most often told from the point of view of men, soldiers. Furthermore, we tend to regard women of Revolutionary America through the lens of Victorian society, impose Victorian expectations upon women of Georgian society.

Sometimes in primary research, we must read between the lines to hear the small voice with the true story. When women are allowed to voice their stories, a very different image of war emerges, especially for middle- and lower-class women. We hear the crushing, undeniable effect of war on humanity. I depict these women in my series—especially in my book Camp Follower, where I’ve described the suffering of civilians who traveled with the army that lost the Battle of Cowpens.

If my fiction succeeds in capturing most of what women camp followers endured, then it’s worth sweating beneath my petticoat in the summer, blowing on numb fingers in the winter, and swatting mosquitoes and eating burned food. Who said hobbies must be easy? I look for new experiences and challenges. Maybe for another series, I’ll take up ghost hunting.

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Judging a Book by its Cover

Posted on December 8, 2012 by AdminOctober 21, 2013

Early books
The earliest books with some form of paper for pages most often had no cover images. If you were fortunate enough to own books, the front cover was usually dark leather. In the twentieth century, paper jackets became common over the covers of books. Soon, publishers discovered that they could include an image on the jacket to make it more interesting. These images were printed on the front covers of paperback versions, too. Sometimes the images gave an accurate representation of the book’s content. Often they did not.

Advantages of physical books
In the good old days of publishing, when books were made of paper, authors groused over bad cover images for their books. However, prospective readers might overlook a poor book cover because there was a tactile connection. Consumers could hold a book and thumb through the pages, reading at leisure, perhaps even enjoying that “new book” smell.

Challenges of ebooks
No tactile (or olfactory) connection exists for consumers who purchase electronic books. Thus an ebook’s cover image pulls a great deal more weight in the consumer’s decision-making process. It must capture the attention of the ebook’s target audience; accurately convey the ebook’s concept, tone, and setting; and lure the audience inside. Yet many writers who self-publish, and even a few publishers, either fail to understand these crucial functions of the cover image or ignore them in favor of just getting the ebook out there with some cover image.

Finding cover art that reaches the right readers
For my “Mysteries of the American Revolution” trilogy, my original publisher used artwork from the public domain as the basis for each cover image. When the press ceased operation, and my rights reverted to me, one of my first tasks was to seek out cover artists to create new covers. I’d been listening to what my readers liked about my books, and why. I knew those first covers weren’t appropriate for the books.

Here’s a before-and-after comparison of the cover art for each book in the trilogy.

Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution

The Blacksmith’s Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution

Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution

The Mysteries of the American Revolution Trilogy

Good cover art becomes even more important if an ebook series is involved. When executed correctly for each title of the series, the cover images create a unified appearance that identifies the ebooks and author for the target audience. The images also promise the reading experience that will be found in the series. It’s a covenant of satisfaction and security for readers, the knowledge that if they enjoyed book 1, they can find more of the same in other books of the series. If you love your readers, you’ll give them all that.

How important is a book’s front cover image in influencing your decision to buy the book?

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Reenacting and Gratitude

Posted on November 22, 2012 by AdminOctober 21, 2013

Many years ago, encumbered by the point of view of someone dwelling in the twentieth century, I joined a group that depicted a unit of the Thirty-Third Light Company of Foot during living history events in the American South. My desire was to immerse myself in the activities and sensory impressions an eighteenth-century woman living during the Southern theater of the American Revolution would have experienced, so I could more accurately depict the world of Sophie Barton, protagonist in my first book, Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution.

Reenacting is an enlightening research tool. It helps me create the world of the Southern theater in my fiction. Reenacting is the ultimate hands-on history. By immersing myself in the military world of the late eighteenth century for entire weekends at a time, I cannot escape brushes with some of the hardships that plagued our ancestors. Sudden downpours and windstorms with no shelter. Sudden freezing rain, even with shelter. Heat indices of 120 degrees. Mosquito swarms without screens. No plumbing. No refrigeration. No electricity. No phone service. You get the idea.

My first reenacting event, I didn’t know to expect primitive conditions. After more events, I settled in with the understanding that at the end of the weekend, I’d be reunited with the technological comforts of my time. That’s when I comprehended how tough, persevering, and remarkable my ancestors must have been—and how fortunate I was to live in a country where I had access to wonders such as running water, electricity, refrigeration, and plumbing.

In the United States, we take our twenty-first century standard of living for granted. We forget that comforts such as running water are truly wonders, luxuries to many people in the world, people who start each day by walking several miles, burdened by buckets or jugs, to the nearest source of water (likely not clean). Survival is foremost in the minds of these people when they awaken each day, just as it was for people—patriot, loyalist, and neutral—during the American Revolution.

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers and friends. When you gather with family and friends to celebrate this holiday, consider the hardships endured by courageous people who lived more than two centuries ago during the time of the American Revolution. Today, people throughout the world endure those same hardships. Remember those people in your thoughts and hearts for a moment. And don’t take for granted your luxuries or your liberty.

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Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November

Posted on November 5, 2012 by AdminOctober 21, 2013

Remember, remember, the fifth of November.
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Today is Guy Fawkes Day, a tradition marked with parties, bonfires, and fireworks for hundreds of years in Britain, a celebration to mark King James’s survival of an assassination attempt. Guy Fawkes was a member of a group of revolutionaries who plotted to blow up the House of Lords. The “Gunpowder Conspiracy” was uncovered on 5 November 1605, and many members of the group were captured. A confession was tortured out of Fawkes. After he’d staggered to the top of the tall scaffold where he was to be hanged (step 1 in the “hang, draw, quarter” sequence), he threw himself off it and broke his neck.

Guy Fawkes Day was celebrated in America early during the colonial period. The fête had fallen out of fashion by the time of the American Revolution, another tie to cut while severing bonds with Britain. (In my third book, Camp Follower, the loyalist main character, Helen, laments to her friend, “I’ve noticed they don’t much celebrate the old ways here. It’s even difficult to find a decent bonfire for Guy Fawkes.”) Thus my first exposure to Guy Fawkes Day came in 1982, when I was living in Britain. The enthusiastic responses of Brits to the festival, like their responses to football (soccer) games, made me speculate that in the British Isles, I might not have to look far beneath the stiff, upper lip to find a tribal human from thousands of years ago.

The next time I was exposed to Guy Fawkes Day was a little over a decade ago, when I participated with my school-age sons as British camp followers for the annual reenactment of the Battle of Camden. After dark, the Crown forces reenactors played at mob mentality while parading a
fireworks-filled effigy of Guy Fawkes (“the Guy”) to a bonfire. My sons were both frightened and fascinated by the spectacle. As they grew older, and we attended more Guy Fawkes celebrations at the annual reenactment, they grew to love the festival almost as much as the Fourth of July, which is what it resembles to us Yanks.

Many expatriate Brits in America hold their own Guy Fawkes celebrations. One told me the story of having a celebration about fifteen years ago interrupted by the arrival of the police. A neighbor, witnessing the effigy and bonfire, had called 911 to report human sacrifice in progress.

These days, Guy Fawkes is making a comeback here in America. In Raleigh, North Carolina, “bands and bonfires” mark a fiery, official Guy Fawkes night downtown. I’m glad to see the festival reappear. It provides a good history reminder. And it’s an introduction to a season of lights that hearkens back to the wonder of early humans, who rejoiced at the return of the sun after the winter solstice.

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