by Molly Owen | Nov 13, 2012 | Blog, Terry Blain
While you’re writing one book, ideas for other stories pop into your mind. So you make notes. 
The idea for Colorado Silver, Colorado Gold came from the location of Durango, so looking into Durango history, I chose the 1880s. To the location and time I added some general plotting. But a story is told through the character, so they must have names.
I already had the name of my heroine, Julie (a cute blonde girl that I used to work with). But Julie is not really historical for that time, so making the backstory (all that happens to you character before the book starts that make them who and what they are) that her father was a fan of Shakespeare, so named his daughters Cordelia (King Lear) and Juliette (with Romeo). I don’t actually say this in the story, so if you caught the Julie and Cory connection – good for you.
Once I had the heroine’s name, I needed a hero for her. One that would contrast and eventually connect with her character. My hero’s name is Wes, to underline ‘the west’ where the story takes place (and short and easy to type – always a consideration). I didn’t want Wes to be short for Wesley (too Princess Bride), so made it a contraction of his last name, Westmoreland. Again the sub text of connection with the wide open spaces of the west.
Julie’s Uncle Frank is named after a nice guy I used to work with. Other character names seem to just pop up full blown. Landham Kennedy, the villain’s name came just that way. There were a lot of Irish immigrants in the United States which accounts for the Kennedy. But I don’t think Landham is his real first name, but one he took when he came west. I see Kennedy and his friend/hanger-on Rickman as hiding their southern roots of being poor white trash. Both Clare and her brother, Lieutenant Sullivan also had ties to the wave of Irish immigrants in the 1840s.
Wes’ friend Kate Valdez is obviously part Mexican, which would be realistic for a woman in either California or Colorado. Kate just sounded like a good, solid name for an old friend.
In case you’re interested, the title comes from the silver and gold mined in Colorado, but also my heroine (with the silver blonde hair) and my hero (with the golden blond hair).
Do you have any unusual stories about how your characters get their names?
by Molly Owen | Oct 12, 2012 | Blog, Terry Blain
When I was starting to write Kentucky Green, I made a collage. This idea was suggested at one of our chapter workshop. I found it to be a good exercise as I’m a very visual person. Once I decided on Kentucky, and who my hero and heroine were and what they looked like, that’s when I started looking for photos for my collage.
I used a 2’ x 3’ bulletin board, so I just stapled or pinned the things I found to the board. As I wrote or found more items, I just kept adding things (when I finished the story, I decoupaged all the items to a poster board so it’s permanent).
The best place for photos of scenery is in National Geographic. When our Friends of the Library have their annual sale, I look through boxes of old National Geographic magazines. For ten cents I buy all the ones with articles on a place I might want to set a novel.
You can see how important setting is to me by all the scenery on the collage. Several of the photos sparked scenes in my novel. Dan and April stand together looking out over the land, the line of ridges that march over the land. The photo of the ferns (from a story about Kentucky in National Geographic) also plays into the story.
As you can see, I used a lot of images from the film The Last of the Mohicans. Although the film is set a generation earlier than Kentucky Green, the images work. My hero, Dan, is often dressed just like Hawkeye (Daniel Day Lewis). The center image is actually the cover for the audio tape of the motion picture sound track (the sound track now upgraded to a CD in my collection) which I used a back ground music while I wrote.
I have the major photo of the hero and heroine on opposite sides of the collage, to represent how they are in opposition at the beginning. One of the problems I had in the first draft of the opening, was that the heroine kept apologizing. Too wimpy. So I found the picture on the upper right hand side. This woman is not one to go around apologizing, and her hair do is pretty close to how April wears her hair (a double good photo!).
If you’ve read the book, you might be able to pick out other items that appear in the story. And I had some visual images to send in for the cover. If you’re a write and having trouble with your story, you might try making a collage.
by Molly Owen | Sep 2, 2012 | Blog, Merry Farmer
Something really interesting happened to me when I set out to research what Medieval Peasants ate. I found a lot of contradictory information. On the one hand, there are websites and books out there that suggest that the peasant diet was mean, people didn’t get enough nutritional value from their food, and food itself wasn’t readily available. On the other hand, there are just as many resources that state that, in fact, the diet of medieval peasants was far superior to that of the modern man. There are a bunch of things out there about how we should be attempting to eat more like our medieval ancestors. So of course I just couldn’t resist the delicious historiographical dilemma brought up by all this food talk.
Let’s look at the facts, shall we? (more…)
by Molly Owen | Aug 13, 2012 | Blog, Terry Blain
The first book I wrote was actually Kentucky Green. I know a lot of writers tell about the story they wrote in the first or second grade and how they always wanted to be a writer. But that’s not me. I always wanted to be a history teacher and ended up with a couple of history degrees and taught US History and Western Civilization at the community college.
For me, teaching history was really story telling. All about people and places and events. How people lived, what was important to them. Everyone said ‘you know all these stories, you should write a book’. Since I’m a rotten typist (and only an average speller) writing didn’t sound like too much fun. The thing that finally drove me to write was when my husband bought a computer/word processor (remember when they called it word processing?) which took away my excuse.
So being an academic, I took a writing class and learned about genres, and how popular the romance genre was. The instructor said to write what you like to read (well, duh!). I’d always read historical novel, and looking back I can see that they contained a strong romance even if they weren’t ‘romantic’.
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by Molly Owen | Apr 7, 2012 | Anne Carrole, Blog
I enjoy reading firsthand accounts of the Wild West to get the “feel” of the time period. One of my favorite authors in this regard is H.H. Halsell.
Texas born Harry H.Halsell was five years old when the Civil War ended. As a boy of six he and his brother O.D. Halsell were chased by Comanches, and survived but his uncle, George Halsell, a line rider for relative Dan Waggoner’s 10,000 acre ranch was killed and scalped. Harry’s lifetime spanned from the Civil War to president Dwight D. Eisenhower for a total of 96 years.
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