Upmarket. Historical fiction. Family Saga. Mainstream fiction with a central romance. All these terms describe my work, which doesn’t fit neatly into a single category. I see this as a strength. Love beautiful writing tackling profound subjects? You’ll find it in my novels. Love history? I’ll wow you with my research. Love epics about multiple generations set in multiple locales? I’ll sweep you away. Love love stories? I’ve got you covered. My first two blurbers (published novelists who’ve read and endorsed my work) called it a drama, which is equally spot-on.
What my novels aren’t: Christian/inspirational fiction. Many of my characters are Catholics, and one is a Catholic priest. I explore theological questions because they impact my characters’ lives. But I am very critical of traditional Catholicism, and I try to show the harm fundamentalism can do. At the same time, my work is not a polemic against organized religion. I find the “bells and smells” of Catholicism fascinating and often beautiful. I try to be respectful of the Church’s good points.
Neither are my novels romances in the modern genre sense. While finding and accepting love is central to my work, while my couples experience intense joy together, not all of these couples get happy endings. I prefer love stories that are suspenseful and realistic, and I find tragedy cathartic. I think the heartbreak makes the happiness more satisfying.
My original inspirations for the Lazare Family Saga were doorstopper epics later made into television miniseries: Alex Haley’s Roots (1976), Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds (1977), and John Jakes’s North and South trilogy (1982-1987). Also influential were Anne Rice’s The Feast of All Saints (1979), Lucia St. Clair Robson’s Ride the Wind (1982), Janice Woods Windle’s True Women (1994), and Clancy Carlile’s Children of the Dust (1995).
More recent historical epics with romantic elements include Sara Donati’s Wilderness series (1998-2009) and her follow-ups The Gilded Hour (2015) and Where the Light Enters (2019); Paullina Simons’s Bronze Horseman trilogy (2000-2005); and Jennifer Donnelly’s Tea Rose trilogy (2002-2008).
I love the scale of a classic multigenerational family saga, and I am awed by novels that tackle centuries instead of decades, like the work of James Michener and Edward Rutherfurd. These epics are a fantastic way to learn history and travel vicariously. However, because these authors have so much ground to cover, their characters are usually static. These characters witness dramatic events, but they rarely grow as individuals. Their internal conflict only skims the surface.
Much as I adore the sweep of history and external conflict, I also find internal conflict delicious. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. I wanted to dig deep and really unpack the psychology and sociology of racism and Catholicism. I didn’t simply want to show Racists Being Racist and Zealots Being Zealots. I wanted to explore the implications of growing up in a racist society and a fundamentalist home on a person’s decisions and sense of self-worth. I wanted to write about flawed, struggling people like me. But I didn’t want to sacrifice the satisfying way one generation impacts and recalls another in a family saga. I also wanted to write about the American South and the American West.
I wanted to choose “all of the above” and find the surprising connections between them. How is being a priest like being a slave? How is being deaf like being a person of color? How is the spirituality of a Cheyenne Indian like Catholicism? Juxtaposition and duality are at the heart of my fiction. As one of my first readers put it, my work has layers. It’s not either/or. It’s and.
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My Pen Name
I was born Jennifer Becker, but I have never felt like a Jennifer. In another context, it would have been a lovely name. After all, Jennifer is a form of Guinevere. But in my generation, there were Jennifers everywhere. In high school, I had an advanced-level French class with five students in it—and three of us were Jennifers! I got tired of turning my head every time someone said “Jennifer” or “Jenny.” They usually weren’t talking about me. I was an individual. I wanted a unique name that reflected that.
So when I was fourteen years old, I started going by my pen name, which at the time was Elyse. (It’s pronounced EH-LEES, not EL-SEE, thank you.) For most people, using a pen name is about anonymity, so this choice may seem counter-intuitive. But for me, using a pen name is about expressing my true self.
I still go by Elyse in my daily life, though I later revised my pen name to Elizabeth Bell. Elyse is a diminutive of Elizabeth, and I decided the original sounded more dignified. Unlike Elyse, Elizabeth Bell is easy to pronounce and spell, which are important in the publishing world.
I’ve always been an Anglophile and in love with 19th-century literature in particular. The name Elizabeth honors the Victorian romantic poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose work I use in a few epigraphs. The name also recalls Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Austen’s heroine in Pride and Prejudice. Bell was the pen name used by the Brontë sisters and was also the maternal surname of Charlotte’s eventual husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls. If I had to choose a single favorite novel, it would be Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
I suppose I am hoping a little of that Elizabeth/Bell goodness will rub off on me.
Image uploaded from Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jane_Eyre_title_page.jpg
In the public domain.