by Roseanna White | Apr 3, 2013 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
I am by no means an expert of historical fashion–I leave that to wonderful folks like Rachel Wilder, who my family fondly refers to as “Louisiana Rachel,” and who I have recruited to read my manuscripts and find any errors in how I refer to cravats vs. ties, waistcoats and vests and chemises and panniers and hoops and crinolines and…and..and…
I can’t tell you where the seams were in sleeves in a random year in the 19th century. I can’t tell you exactly when hoops turned to bell-shapes and what fabrics were most common when, and what colors were popular–not without looking it up, anyway. But at this point I’ve researched the fashion of enough eras, from 1770s through the 1920s, that I’m beginning to recognize things before I see a year attached to them. And that’s pretty cool. =)
One of my recent realizations of this was with a book I was reading for WhiteFire. There was no date at the beginning of the book to tell us when it was taking place, and our other editor asked. I said something like, “Based on the fashion described, it has to be 1890s.” I went and checked in the proposal she’d sent earlier, and voila! 1890! I felt so proud, LOL.
This is a pretty handy (and necessary) skill for a historical writer to have attained, and it’s a fun one to learn! It’s also the point where I can recognize a few designers, believe it or not. Every time I see a late 19th-century gown that I just adore, I know it’s from the House of Worth. Haven’t been wrong yet, LOL.
So while we’ve looked at a lot of fashion here as I’m in one era or another, today we’re going to just take a quick tour through the ages that I’ve studied. =)
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| 1770s |
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| 1780s |
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| 1790s |
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| 1810s |
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| 1830s |
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| Early 1860s |
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| Late 1860s (House of Worth!!) |
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| 1890s (also Worth – drool) |
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| 1905 |
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| 1911 |
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| 1920s |
And you know what all these beautiful dresses make me wish? That we still wore such lovely creations on a day-to-day basis! I daresay Charles Frederick Worth would be none too impressed with the trend of yoga pants, LOL. 😉
by Roseanna White | Mar 27, 2013 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
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I have no clue what color-scheme will used on the cover,
but for purely inspirational purposes, I made a blue title banner 😉 |
I’m on the downward slide (okay, so there’s nothing slide-like about this mounting battle, LOL) of Circle of Spies, and having SO MUCH FUN with these characters! But wow, is there a cast of them necessary! I’m still at that point where I doubt my own ability to draw all my character threads together in a nice little bow by the end of the book–which is also the end of the series, remember–so I’m spending some time gnawing at fingernails over here (metaphorically, anyway). And making copious notes about “Don’t forget to include Elsie at the end! Don’t forget that Barbara needs to be involved in this! Don’t forget to give Granddad Thad a role in this part!”
But one thing I’m having especial fun with in this one is using names of real people for my characters. I don’t usually do this, but as my awesome editor found a few redundant names in
Whispers from the Shadows (three Henrys?
Really, Roseanna??) and we started plugging in names of folks at Harvest House for these mentions, it turned into a pretty fun game. She gave me the challenge of including “Barbara” in a book sometime, and I took her up on it…which got me thinking.
Marietta, my heroine, had no real female friends. Which can work…but I already did that in
Ring of Secrets. I really shouldn’t have
another loner female character in the same series. So yes, she needed a friend, who could be named Barbara. But who was this woman? How does she enter the story? I decided somehow or another that she would be tied to the brother Marietta lost at Gettysburg, the one she loved above all. And then at our fabulous writing retreat, my critique partner gave me the idea of using a photograph to alert Mari to her presence in her life–a perfect solution, though that likely makes little sense to you right now, LOL. Resulting in,
voila, exactly the friend I needed Marietta to have! And a lack I hadn’t realized was there until someone issued me that challenge of including a name.
So then I had the brilliance (inspired by the aforementioned critter
Stephanie Morrill and her next book, The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet) of including YOUR names in this thing! Well…
your spy names. =) Not that I’m going to have that many spies, but every time I need to name a minor character, I’m pulling from that list. (So if you haven’t left me a comment on my
Spy Name Game with yours yet, you’d better!!) I’d already assigned one of the names to a role I needed, an innkeeper in Western Maryland. I had a decent idea of her personality and grinned when I realized she’d be saving my hero’s life at the climax.
Then yesterday I had this realization. Namely, that all my bad guys are Confederates. Yet I don’t want to paint all Confederates as bad guys! And while I know that I also have another Civil War-set manuscript here that is entirely Southern, where “Yankee” is the equivalent of a curse and the highest insult my characters can use, um…readers of the Culper series don’t know that, LOL. And I don’t want to come off as hating the South, which I most assuredly do not. So what I need is a wonderful, amazing, God-fearing, heroic Confederate character in this thing…and my inn keeper is just the one to play the part!
So when some of you ask me how I come up with my ideas…this is a new one for the list, LOL. Quite a few twists and quirks of
Circle of Spies have come about solely as I contemplate NAMES, of all things! Who knew? So seriously, if you haven’t already,
create your spy name!! Never know how it might inspire me. 😉
by Roseanna White | Mar 20, 2013 | 17th-19th Centuries, Remember When Wednesdays
Between Ring of Secrets and Whispers from the Shadows there’s a gap of 34 years or so. Substantial when you consider how characters age, but in terms of changes in the world itself between 1780 and 1814, it’s fairly simple. Fashions changed quite a bit (bye-bye powdered wigs! LOL), language became slightly more modern. But technology underwent no huge changes. They still traveled by ship or horse, and that was pretty much it.
But between
Whispers from the Shadows and
Circle of Spies, I have a gap of 51 years. And it was a
busy half-century! I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the differences of
this world, the world of 1865. The world where we now have telegrams to communicate so very quickly. Still not as fast as cell phones, granted, but a message got to someone within a day rather than weeks or months. For that matter, people got
themselves moved in a day instead of a week or month!
As I was reading a diary of someone involved in intrigue during the Civil War, that hit me over and over. That this guy just hopped a train to New York from Washington at the drop of a hat. That a trip to Canada was no big thing. That it wasn’t any more difficult to go from Baltimore to D.C. then than it is now. (Maybe easier, given the traffic these days, LOL.)
In terms of my story, this means I have the ability to make it cover more distance more easily. That I can send my villain out and about for a week and then back when I need him. That messages can come on the day of an event without it being coincidence. Though not quite instantaneous like our world so often is today, the pace of 1865 was so much faster than in previous generations–and that’s both overt and subtle. I’m have a lot of fun trying to integrate the mindset that came along with it, too.
The realization hit me pretty solidly at the tail end of my writing retreat, when I paused to think, “Hey, my family in this thing owns a railroad–I should probably incorporate trains!” And when I sat back to think How?, oh the images that came! So we’re looking at a showdown on the rails. Not Western-style, with gun-slingers jumping all over the cars and dodging tunnels, but the climax is going to be on a train. And someone’s going to get tossed out of it.
And he-or-she is only going to survive it because of a friendly local who helps out. Which brings us to a fun bit. 😉 Have you
generated your spy name yet? YOU SHOULD!! I’m going to be pulling from this list of names to name some of the minor characters in
Circle of Spies, and you might just see yourself in there! Not necessarily as spies…but you never know. =)
by Roseanna White | Feb 27, 2013 | 17th-19th Centuries, Remember When Wednesdays
My totally awesome fashion book sadly doesn’t have much on men for the 1860s, so I’ve been trolling the internet while writing Circle of Spies. And you know what I’ve found? That the variety of fashions for men in 1865 gives me some awesome freedom. =)
My first choice was in figuring out what kind of hat my hero wears. I know this seems small, but his opening scene is him getting off the train and waiting for the villain to arrive, and he’s all brooding and silent and stuff, and I didn’t to visualize him just so. So what hat did he wear? Top hat? Bowler? Straw boater thingy? Just look at these choices!
I decided that Slade Osborne wears a bowler. I at first had him in a top hat, but…nope. Just can’t do it. He’s a bowler man, for sure and certain.
Men’s coats came in a variety of lengths and styles too, with differing collar widths. Sometimes gents would only button the top button of their coat, so as to show off their waistcoat (vest). Cravats had some variation too. Notice in the picture below the man is wearing trousers, shirt, vest, frock coat, and over coat. The outermost coat would come off inside, leaving frock coat on.
Slade wears a knee-length frock coat, quite fashionable, but only because someone else commissioned his clothes for him. I kind of wonder what he would have chosen for himself… 😉
Then, goodness, I had to decide on facial hair! I’ve never really had many heroines with facial hair at all (except for Xerxes, who had a full beard because, well, he did, LOL. Historically, that is. But for Slade, the image of Collin Ferrell I’d based him on featured a goatee. So in my mind, that’s what he had. In trying to ascertain if this was time-accurate, I looked up the word–check. Fine for the time. But did that mean it was popular? Well, what I love about 1865 is that there are pictures everywhere! I just opened one of my books on Baltimore during the Civil War, found a photo of a huge group of men, and studied their moustaches and beards, LOL. And, yep, I found several goatees!
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| Not that this is precisely a goatee, but I’m looking online now instead of in my book, LOL |
So there we have it. Slade Osborne wears a bowler, a knee-length frock coat, carries a pocket watch, has a goatee. But my favorite part about him is his demeanor. Where Bennet in
Ring of Secrets is a social bumbler who far prefers his chemistry laboratory…where Thad in
Whispers from the Shadows is amiable, personable, and adventurous, with a keen intuition about what people most need…well, Slade is brooding, silent, and has learned firsthand the price of betrayal. But oh, the things he can say with his mouth firmly shut! Yep, he’s a fun one. =)
by Roseanna White | Feb 20, 2013 | 17th-19th Centuries, Remember When Wednesdays
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| Camden Station in 1865 |
One of the interesting tidbits I’ve learned as I’m researching Circle of Spies (the official name of Culper Ring Series, Book 3!!!!) has to do with Baltimore and the trains.
Now, Baltimore was a fairly important railroading town, as one might be able to guess from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad’s name, LOL. There were several major lines running through the city. And yet, you wouldn’t hear those locomotives if you were in the city during the Civil War era–oh no. They were considered noise pollution (not that that was the name for that at the time), and running a train through the city proper was against the law.
Kinda interesting, then, since the lines had to go straight through Baltimore to get to, say, Washington D.C.
So there were two major stations. There was the President Street Station that came into Baltimore on one side of town, and the
Camden Station on the opposite side, heading to D.C. In order to get to one from another, passengers either had to debark, take a coach through the city, and catch a different train, or else the cars had to be decoupled from the locomotive, hitched to horses one by one, and pulled through the town to the other station, where a new engine would be coupled up.
Inconvenient for travelers, to be sure, though I suppose the residents appreciated it, LOL. But what I find interesting is how many times this was used for nefarious purposes! This process was around what the first attempt to kidnap or kill Abraham Lincoln was based, when he was on his way to Washington for his Inauguration. And when the war was just heating up and Union soldiers were en route to D.C., Confederate sympathizers dumped sane, bricks, and other debris on the tracks between the two stations to prevent the cars from being pulled along by the horses.
The fun little tidbits I just love learning. =)
by Roseanna White | Feb 6, 2013 | 17th-19th Centuries, Remember When Wednesdays
You know what I love most about the Culper Ring? That I set about to learn about them a year and a half ago expecting high adventure, cloak and dagger, James Bond meets Jason Bourne kind of action. But what I found weren’t specially trained super-spies. They were people. Shopkeepers and farmers, fishermen and soldiers.
They were you. They were me.
They didn’t have special training. Heck, the code they developed was amateur at best and could have been cracked in about an hour had it ever been intercepted. But they had the safety of invisible ink…which one of the brothers Jay developed solely for fun before the Revolution began. While in England, no less. He wasn’t some chemist working at a top-secret facility, he was a basement scientist.
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| Haymaking by Winslow Homer, 1864 |
That’s what I love. That these were just people who didn’t believe in embracing limits. Who lived in a time when discovery meant going out and doing instead of sitting and typing in a command in Google. (Not to knock Google–I love me my search engines! LOL). That these folks got up each day, not with a mission from headquarters, but with a down-to-their-bones need to help their country. To serve their brothers. To obey their God.
Sometimes, I look around this world with its this-crisis and that-crisis…with its millions of people who say, “I deserve this”…with its millions more who shrug and say, “Nothing I can do.” I see the dangers, the crime, the hatred, the total lack of understanding between opposing views. And I think, We need the Culpers. We need someone willing to take a few risks to do what needs done.
And then I realize…they’re out there. The people who don’t just go out of their way to do the right thing, but who make it their way. Maybe they don’t know they’re a Culper. Maybe they don’t encode their work and send it to anyone in charge. But they’re there. People who get up every day and say, “Show me what to do today, God. Show me how to help.”
And to whom He replies, “Keep your eyes open. Someone’s going to cross your path soon…”
These are the people–like you, like me–who change lives. And who can, I truly believe, change the world.
Let’s change it with them. Let’s honor them for their quiet labor and start something together. Let’s form a not-so-secret society of do-gooders. Let’s make it our way.
Do you know someone worthy of being a Culper? Tell me their story, and I’ll send them one of these custom-made challenge coins. No, actually, I’ll send them two. One to keep as a token and reminder, and one to pass along to someone they know who fits the bill.
The story of the coin: The path is straight, and it’s narrow. But sometimes, looking at it as it leads toward the city on the hill, we see the undulation of the landscape and think it’s pretty twisty. Pretty difficult. But oh, how beautiful shines that place of rest! There’s only one way to get there, though.
“Nostra via est facere bona” … “Our Way is To Do Good.”
How? Well, that’s where the reverse of the coin comes in. Let’s embrace the spirit of the ash tree–a symbol of sacrifice, sensitivity, and higher awareness.
Let’s be Culpers.
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.