Please join me in welcoming AshleyRose Sullivan to the blog today. Her new YA novel, Silver Tongue, features historical figures set in an alternate world, showcasing just how fragile history can be. I find the plot to be fascinating and asked her to write a bit about her writing and research.
On Writing and Researching (Alternate) History
by AshleyRose Sullivan
Mark Twain said something like, “Get your facts first, then
you can distort them as much as you please.” Granted, I’m getting this quote
from the notoriously unreliable internet and I doubt that when he (maybe) said
these words he was envisioning a woman in the 2010s writing a book about
monsters and murder on an alternate version of the Mississippi River but, I
mean, I think it still applies.
My second novel, Silver
Tongue, began as an idea about history itself–about how fragile it seems. I
think we all ask ourselves, when learning about some big event long ago, how it
might have been different but for one small thing. In my case, I thought about
what might’ve happened if George Washington had drowned in the Delaware River.
What would America have looked like twenty or thirty years after the
Revolutionary War had been lost? Would America even exist?
This is where research comes in. I had decided George
Washington never made it to the other side but I needed to know what actually happened before I went around
making a fruit salad of history. I created a long list of questions and set
about answering them. I got the bare facts pretty easily. Wikipedia is
endlessly useful for things like the dates of famous water crossings. I made a
timeline. Silver Tongue takes place
in 1839–sixty-three years after The (Failed) Crossing of the Delaware. So, what
really happened in those sixty-three
years? How about the years that followed? What was just around the bend and
might’ve changed if only a little thing here or there had been shifted around?
I made a list of interesting events from all those years and let that feed into
the atmosphere of the novel. The daguerreotype was introduced in 1839, for
instance, but not until after the novel takes place–I bumped it up a little and
the ability to see a photograph became part of the story.
The little things, though, that’s where the fun is. What
kind of food does Claire eat? What might her best friend, a fashion-forward and
wealthy Nouvelle French guy choose to wear to a big outdoor festival? What kind
of games might these friends have played together? In other words, what does a
regular day look like? For this, there are TONS of history books and blogs out
there. There are lengthy posts about smocking fabric in the Regency Era and
riding habits throughout history. And books like What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, by Daniel Pool and
Georgette Heyer’s Regency World are
phenomenal resources when it comes to the mundane details of life in fancy
pants olden days. Of course, when you’re writing an alternate history (with
obvious and very dramatic emphasis on the alternate)
you take liberties.
Claire exists in a culture that never was–a French/Indian
mixed society that only might’ve been. The food she ate would be a blend of
both culinary traditions–using ingredients that would’ve been available in the
Americas. Substitutions occur. The writer takes over. New recipes are formed
along with new history. At this point, you’re molding the world around the
story but everything is always informed by the facts. In the end, you simply
take charge. Decide what never was, what might’ve been, and let the ghost of
our real history haunt the narrative.
One last thing: Read yourself some real, actual books from
whatever time/place you’re writing about. People were writing the heck out of
some books in old timey days! Netflix was not a thing yet! So get those books.
Most of them are free or very cheap what with their authors being super dead. Silver Tongue is heavily informed by
Gothic Fiction. I wanted to write a classic, gothic monster story so, in many
ways, the best research I did was to just read a lot of classic, gothic monster
stories: Frankenstein, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But it isn’t just a monster story,
it’s also an American story. So I
read stuff by some big deal Americans: PT Barnum, Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe.
Unsurprisingly, the works of the time are like treasure chests full of little
details. We tend to not think of these books as research because they were written as entertainment but, when you
let the fiction of the times sink into your brain, you gain a deeper
understanding of the life lived by the characters, the authors, and the regular
people of that time.
Silver Tongue
AshleyRose Sullivan
YA Alternate History
April 2015
Seventh Star Press
The
Colonies lost the Revolutionary War. Now it's 1839 and the North American
continent is divided into three territories: New Britannia, Nueva Espana, and
Nouvelle France where seventeen-year-old Claire Poissant lives.
Claire has a magical way with words—literally. But a mystical power of
persuasion isn't the only thing that makes her different. Half-French and
half-Indian, Claire doesn't feel at home in either world. Maybe that's why
she's bonded so tightly with her fellow outcasts and best friends: Phileas, a
young man whose towering intellect and sexuality have always made him the
target of bullies, and Sam, a descendant of George Washington who shares the
disgraced general's terrible, secret curse.
But when Sam's family is murdered, these bonds are tested and Claire's special
ability is strained to its limits as the three hunt the men responsible into
dangerous lands. Along the way they cross paths with P.T. Barnum, William
Frankenstein and other characters from both history and fantasy as they learn
the hard way that man is often the most horrific monster and that growing up
sometimes means learning to let go of the things you hold most dear.
About the Author
AshleyRose Sullivan: Born and raised in
Appalachia, AshleyRose Sullivan now lives, writes, and paints in Los Angeles.
She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University and her first
novel, Awesome Jones: A Superhero Fairy Tale is available from Seventh Star
Press. She can be found at her website or her blog, My Year Of Star Trek.