One of the things I’ve always enjoyed reading in historical novels, and now weaving into my own, is when the author describes a condition that we know the name for, but which hadn’t been a recognized diagnosis at the time.

For example, in the awesomely fantabulous and breathtaking Love’s Reckoning by Laura Franz that I just finished, one of the characters falls and smacks her head and is then plagued by debilitating headaches for months afterward. We know that she had a concussion. They just knew she was pained again and needed headache powders.

Similarly, I have a character in Ring of Secrets who history describes as having “black moods” and “bouts of anxiousness.” He was aware of this within himself and tried to offset it, but he couldn’t control it. Today, we know this would be some form of depression, perhaps even bipolar disease. I obviously took a few liberties with describing these bouts of this historical figure, since he didn’t exactly document his day-by-day life with his condition–and as I read through my galleys of Ring of Secrets for the first time the last two days, I had to smile at this guy. My best friend/critique partner commented when she first read his chapters, “Wow. That kind of nerves seem like a bad idea for a spy…”

So very true. And therefore a trait I wouldn’t have thought to give him, I think. But that one was all truth, and it was just up to me to explore how he may have balanced that with the espionage “business” to which he was called.

And, go figure, I’m doing something similar in Whispers from the Shadows. I’ve talked before, I think, about how my heroine is experiencing extreme sleep deprivation in the first half of the book. Studies have been done on insomnia now, of course, but the extremes are still shrouded in mystery because it’s too dangerous to mess around with. Still, we have words like “panic attack” and “night terror” to describe some of the side effects. Words not around in 1814. So obviously, I get to find other words to expound on her experiences.

But you know, though the vocabulary hadn’t been developed yet, the observations were still there. Plenty of people had talked about “black moods,” though they had no treatment for it. And my hero in book 2, a brig’s captain, thinks how he’s seen plenty of terrible consequences of sleeplessness during his days on the open water, has heard tales of the trauma it can produce.

And always, discovering what they knew at certain points of the past, how they would have treated it, and what they would have called what are everyday conditions now remains a challenge to learn and a lot of fun to include. =)

Now back I go to galleys! I need to try to squeeze two more reads in before I send this baby back. =)

Last week my editor emailed me to say, “Don’t scream, but we need a description for Book 3 of your Culper Ring series. Nothing that will be set in stone, just for planning purposes. I know it’s really early, but can you get that to us in the next month?”

Well, as it happens, I had Book 3 tentatively planned out before I had Book 2. 😉 And now that I’ve nailed it down a little more, I’ve turned to giving some thought to names. As always, I need help! LOL.

So here’s my hero. My original thought was Shade, which is, believe it or not, a perfectly normal name for a guy during the Civil War era (when the book takes place). But I got a lot of comments on Facebook about how people would question that, sooo… I’m considering other possibilities, and I would love more input.

Colin Farrell is pretty close to how I’m envisioning this guy

First, a little about this guy. He’s a tough dude. Where my first hero in the Culper Series is socially awkward and best known for his intelligence, where the second hero is a people person in the extreme with an innate ability to know what people most need, this third hero is going to be my brooder. He’ll be able to put on an affable face–which he’ll have to do a lot–in company, but he’s a man haunted by all that went wrong in life. A twin, he was always the bad brother. The one in trouble, the mean one. The one that superstitious folk would have dubbed “the evil twin” in previous generations. But right around the time the South starts succeeding, he comes to the Lord and turns his life around. Joins the Pinkertons as a tribute to the man who mentored him (yeah, just totally pulled that part out of my hat this very moment), and makes his family proud. His brother, however, infuriates them by claiming the South had every reason to do what they had done. Always at odds, these two are now outright hostile…which eventually, toward the end of the war, culminates in the “good” brother trying to assume our hero’s personality and join a secret Southern society, the Knights of the Golden Circle. (Brother thinks that the bad boy persona of his twin will better suit his purposes…and he hopes that if there’s any fallout, it lands squarely on hero’s shoulder.)

What he’d be wearing

Long story short, the brother ends up dead somehow or another before the book starts, and the hero, as part of a Pinkerton investigation, picks up where bro left off with the KGC. Which means he’s assuming his brother’s assumed identity–his own name. (Confusing enough? LOL. And that’s all the backstory, the stuff we’ll learn in chapter 1!) Now to figure out what that name should be. I want something a little hard, with a bit of a bite to it. Hence why I liked that long “a” and hard “d” in Shade. But other options:

Helmsey
Simeon
Slade
Slader
Matthias
Derius
Solomon
Josiah
Marsellus

(All those are pulled from 1860 Maryland Census records, so no fears of accuracy) From that list, I think my favorite is Slade, which obviously has a similar sound to my original name, but is an old old English surname that could logically be given to a son whose mother had been a Slade.

Preferences? Other suggestions?

I was researching for my Civil War era book when I first read about pilots. I’d heard the term in this context, of course, but I still had to pause. Frown. And think, “They obviously don’t mean airplane pilots, so…”

Okay, it didn’t even require that much of a pause, given that I was reading about boats and ships trying to maneuver through complicated riverways. Pretty obvious that when they say they need to find an able pilot, they’re not looking for someone to wing them through the clouds. 😉

Still, it’s come up again, and I’ve been struck by how important a job these people had. During the War of 1812, for instance, the action in the Chesapeake depended heavily upon how one could navigate the web of estuaries. Those native to the region could find ways around the blockade by following smaller streams and branches around and about until they were past the British ships in the bay. But the British…when they were trying to launch raids with their fleet, they couldn’t do a whole lot on their own.

In both the War of 1812 and the Civil War, the visitors to the territories they were trying to invade relied on a particular group of pilots to aid them–the slaves. Both with the same promise–freedom. Though Maryland was technically a Union state in the Civil War, it was one of the two highest traders of slaves in the early 19th century, sending them south and west. Needless to say, there were plenty kept there too. And much as they had done during the Revolution, the British put out the word that any slave to run away from his master and join the British would be granted their freedom.

This is how they got their pilots. They lured local slaves away and then used their intimate knowledge of the land and rivers to lead the invading force away from the coast.

In Whispers from the Shadows, my hero is a a New Englander who moved to Maryland as a teen. Having been raised with the sensibilities of one from a state that had outlawed slavery before he was even born, he sees this practice and shakes his head–knowing that this same weakness that is bringing the British too close for comfort now will continue to divide his nation. Which, naturally, will lead right into the third book in the trilogy, when his granddaughter finds herself caught in a rather precarious position between the southern sympathizers meeting secretly in Baltimore and her Union-sympathizing family…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. 😉

Oh, and many, many thanks to everyone who took the time to wish me a happy birthday yesterday! I had a lovely day with my family, and it was brightened still more by all the online greetings. =)