Elizabeth Bell, Author

Undeniable Love. Unflinching History. Unforgettable Fiction.

Writing

On Second Thought…

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"Ring out the old, ring in the new…"
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam (1850)

In November-December 2021, I completed a new edit of the entire Lazare Family Saga. I am a perfectionist; I could honestly go through these long books every year and find things to change. But I shall endeavor to be satisfied with Version 2021. My primary purpose was to make certain I was happy with the text of all four books before they become “set in stone” in audio format. This should happen in 2022, depending on how long it takes me to find a narrator and his or her availability.

As for the ebook and print editions, the beauty of being an indie author is that I can make changes at any time. These edits weren’t substantial enough to qualify as a revised edition; they were mostly a scattering of line edits for clarity.

I did tweak some scenes with Joseph and David. I have always loved these characters, because—not in spite of—their flaws. But I’ve realized that some readers find them difficult to like, so I’ve tried to soften some of Joseph and David’s reactions to keep them more sympathetic. One of my earliest readers said I have a tendency to “turn it up to 11,” referencing the hilarious film This Is Spinal Tap. And yes, yes I do. Teenage me who conceived these characters wasn’t satisfied with wounded heroes; they had to be profoundly screwed up so that their redemption was as dramatic as possible. But I sometimes crossed the line into melodrama. So I’ve tried to rein in my over-the-top impulses while retaining Joseph and David’s authentic Catholic/Victorian wounds.

I also realized that a scene between Clare and Verily was more focused on the heroism of White mistress Clare teaching her enslaved Black maid Verily than it was on Verily’s agency and desire to read. This was a holdover from an earlier draft and a less socially conscious version of myself. Shame on me, regardless. So I tweaked that scene too.

The other significant edit I made was in changing the first name of the English-born plantation steward Mr. Cromwell—most characters use his last name—from Byron to Lucas. He’s a tricky man to name because of his duality. (HERE BE POTENTIAL SPOILERS.) Cromwell is gorgeous and brilliant—and ruthless. Multiple characters mistake him for a good guy, even a romantic figure—which is exactly what he wants them to think, because he’s actually a villain.

What would you name this man?

This model is a decent physical match for Cromwell, although his attire is more Regency, a few decades before the 1850s when the character appears in my story.

(Image source: Servian Stock Images via Depositphotos)

In my early drafts, Cromwell’s first name was Lyndon. I liked the idea that “a boy named Sue,” a young man with a “weak” name, became tougher because of it. But in a pivotal scene in Book 4, Cromwell forces a female character to say his first name, and I didn’t want something “wimpy” in this context of sexual threat. Since Cromwell is Byronic—”mad, bad, and dangerous to know” in the immortal words of Lady Caroline Lamb—I changed his name to Byron. But I was never really happy with it; Byron was too on the nose, and it was “de trop” to name him after two larger-than-life English historical figures. (“De trop” = excessive, literally “too much” in French.)

The Cromwell half had to stay. In fact, this is the only character name that hasn’t changed over the course of three decades. As I explain in Book 2, this name is meant to recall the ambitious and ruthless Oliver Cromwell, “the butcher of Drogheda” (the real place in Ireland, not the fictional one in Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds). I also love the sound of Cromwell, the harsh opening and the soft conclusion—back to that duality.

I needed a first name with more subtlety, but I couldn’t find it. Then I listened to the audiobook of Courtney Milan’s A Kiss for Midwinter in-between December 2021 edits, and the name of one of her supporting characters lit a lightbulb in my brain: Lucas! It was perfect! It recalls both Lucifer, a traditional name for the Devil, and Luke from The Thorn Birds. Yet Lucas also sounds proper and sexy. Thank you, Courtney Milan! (Seriously, check out her books. She’s awesome.)

Changing Byron to Lucas created a small domino effect: I had to make sure that my find and replace function didn’t eliminate the times I still wanted to say Byron (the poet). I also had to change the name of a minor character in Book 3 who was called Luke, and I had to make sure that find and replace didn’t eliminate the times I still wanted to say Luke (the saint). Oh, the joys and challenges of being an indie author with technology at my fingertips!

An update to my formatting software, Vellum, also allowed me to add this lovely background image to the first pages of each chapter in my print editions: roses with falling petals. The symbolism is perfect for my garden-inspired love stories.

Please note: although all of these changes are now live on Amazon, they’ll take a few weeks to show up in the copies you can buy from other places like Bookshop.org. It’s complicated! And if you buy a used copy of my books, none of these updates will be present. (I the author and publisher also won’t receive a penny of compensation from such a purchase.)

Why didn’t the name Lucas—or any of these other text changes—occur to me earlier in the three decades I’ve worked on this series? I can only quote the saying: “Hindsight is 20/20.” I’ve been so close to this series for so long, I had whole passages memorized. It’s difficult to edit in such a state. Only several months’ distance and a larger pool of reader feedback have provided me with the perspective I needed.

I do apologize to any readers currently in the middle of The Lazare Family Saga who are tripped up by these changes, in particular Byron Cromwell becoming Lucas Cromwell. Hence this explanatory blog post. As Joseph would say, “Mea culpa.” You have witnessed the imperfect and dynamic creative process. 🙂

What I’m Working On Now

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Now that I’ve published all four books in my Lazare Family Saga, I’ve had interviewers and readers asking about my next project. My answer will disappoint many. It disappoints me too. I wish I had the luxury to write full-time, to dive into something new.

The reality is, I do not. My time and energy are severely limited by the “real job” that keeps a roof over my head—not to mention all the other unavoidable crap that eats up your “free time” when you’re an adult. Scintillating activities like car maintenance and dishwashing. That’s why the Lazare Family Saga took me nearly three decades to research and revise. Most weeks, I have only a few hours to devote to something of my choosing. That’s it.

The other reality is: I had to publish this series independently, and I’ve spent thousands of dollars I could barely afford in order to get the Lazare Family Saga into readers’ hands. I simply can’t do that all over again. This series has truly been a labor of love and my life’s work.

My challenge now is to make the most of my magnum opus. I need to devote my precious few free hours to learning marketing, which I absolutely loathe. But I have to reach new readers and make the last three decades worthwhile.

I’m also planning new formats: hardcovers and audiobooks. I’m particularly excited about the latter. I adore audiobooks and listen to an average of two per week. Audiobooks are how I experience 99% of my fiction and much of my nonfiction—it goes back to that limited free time. With audiobooks, I can multitask.

Vintage books with headphones plugged into them

Once upon a time, I dreamed that a miniseries would be made of my novels—after all, miniseries inspired me. I know now this won’t ever happen. But if I can find a great narrator, audiobooks will be the next best thing. Unfortunately, great narrators are expensive, so it will be a slow process.

I’ve had people try to tell me I have more books in me, but I don’t think I do. I’ve filled this series with the things I love, and the struggles and triumphs of the Lazare family are extremely personal for me. I feel as if I wrote every word of this saga with my blood.

If you enjoy the Lazare Family Saga, please recommend it to other readers, and please leave reviews of my books. I cannot adequately express how important those are or how much they mean to me. And please consider rereading my series in a few years. I’ve carefully crafted each scene and line with foreshadowing, callbacks, subtlety, and symbolism. I think you’ll get more out of my books the second time. Savor them!

Red feather pen writing "With Love" in blood

Please note: While there are other authors named Elizabeth Bell, the only books by yours truly are Necessary Sins, Lost Saints, Native Stranger, and Sweet Medicine, the four books of the Lazare Family Saga.

The Sweetest Medicine

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The title of the fourth and final book in my series, Sweet Medicine, used to be the title for the whole story, back when I thought that story was a single novel. I like the phrase because it’s a seeming oxymoron—a pattern I ended up using for all my titles. How can medicine be sweet? Isn’t it an unpleasant necessity?

I also like that the word medicine has multiple meanings; and on the surface, those meanings are in opposition. Broadly, medicine refers to either science or spirituality. My saga involves both these definitions, rooted in my two primary settings: Charleston, South Carolina and the American West.

One of my main Charleston characters is a doctor. He represents the “science” part of medicine. He attends medical school in Paris and practices in Charleston. He dissects cadavers, uses a microscope, and prescribes drugs. In Sweet Medicine, this character performs a procedure on himself that is not only straight from Victorian medical texts but also utterly horrifying. This medicine is anything but sweet.

An engraving of the human heart that could be from a Victorian text and a vintage microscope

My chapters set in the American West focus on the Cheyenne Indians, or Zizistas as they call themselves. For the Zizistas, the word medicine can be an adjective that means “holy,” as in the tribe’s sacred possessions, the Medicine Arrows. If someone or something has medicine, it has spiritual power. Zizistas medicine also involves healing, but of the whole person, body and soul.

Even the phrase Sweet Medicine comes from the Zizistas. It’s the name of a Zizistas prophet who predicted the coming of white men. Sweet Medicine himself was named after a medicinal plant.

The word medicine has other meanings that I unpack in my work. One of these is bound to surprise you. Sweet Medicine is about healing many different kinds of wounds, wounds that go all the way back to Book 1 in the series. Ultimately, love is the sweetest and most powerful medicine for my characters.

Cover of the novel Sweet Medicine by Elizabeth Bell
Sweet Medicine releases in just one week!

What’s in a (Character) Name?

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In Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare famously wrote:

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.

But he gave those words to a lovestruck teenager. I suspect Shakespeare himself felt differently, that all writers do. Names matter. It matters whether you call someone “a slave” or “an enslaved person.” It matters whether you call a person Zizistas (their name for themselves, which means “the People”) or Cheyenne (another tribe’s name for them, which means “we do not understand their language”). It even matters what you call a rose, as my character Joseph discovers in Lost Saints.

The rose called Maiden’s Blush—or less demurely, Cuisse de Nymphe Émue. If you don’t speak French, plug that into Google Translate for a rough idea of why it’s naughty. For a better translation, read Lost Saints. 😉
Photo by Nadiatalent

I’ve agonized over the names of every one of my characters. Across the quarter century I spent writing the Lazare Family Saga, I changed their names many times till I found just the right ones. In this post, I’ll share some of the character names I rejected after finding they didn’t fit and explain why I chose the names I did.

In early drafts, Joseph’s relationship with Tessa (Necessary Sins and Lost Saints) was only backstory to David, Clare, and Ésh’s love triangle (Native Stranger and Sweet Medicine). My fictional priest wasn’t yet a point-of-view character. At that time, he wasn’t Joseph and she wasn’t Tessa.

Instead, my priest was named Thierry, a classic French name. I liked the sound of it: TEE-i-ree, with a silent h and lovely rolling r’s. But for a main character, it’s too French; English speakers are sure to mispronounce it. For a while, I switched to Étienne, also sadly too French. Not wanting to lose Thierry or Étienne entirely, I gifted them to more minor characters, Joseph’s relatives.

For my priest, I chose Joseph, naming him after both Biblical men with this name. Old Testament Joseph is enslaved, but his sufferings have a purpose; because of them, he’s able to save his family. He’s also famously chaste. So is New Testament Joseph. In Catholic iconography, Mary’s husband Joseph is often portrayed not as his young wife’s age but as an old man with white hair, reinforcing the Catholic dogma that he and Mary never had a sexual relationship. Not even after Jesus was born. Heaven forbid she should be so “defiled”! No, Saint Joseph is beyond all that. So my character Joseph’s name is a reminder of this impossible standard of “purity.” My Joseph tells himself that God gave him Tessa as He gave Mary to New Testament Joseph—to admire but not to touch. Ever. Really?

Saint Joseph with the Infant Jesus by Guido Reni, circa 1635

Tessa was initially named Aisling (pronounced ASH-ling). I loved the Irish legend behind the name, a legend about a beautiful woman who foretells change the way this mortal woman changes Joseph. Aisling means “vision.” An Irish character should have an Irish name, I thought. Not so fast. As I got deeper into my research, I realized that a good Catholic family like Tessa’s would never give their daughter a pagan name like Aisling. I needed to find a saint’s name. Furthermore, because the British Crown controlled Ireland in the 19th century, Irish people had Anglicized names.

So decided to name Joseph’s beloved after Saint Teresa of Ávila. She’s called Tessa, which sounds softer and more feminine. It also invokes the heroine of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), a work to which I am indebted for some of my themes. Even before he meets Tessa, Joseph has a relationship with Saint Teresa. He marvels at Bernini’s statue of the saint in Rome, and Tessa herself deeply admires her patron saint. I explain why in Necessary Sins.

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Photo by Benjamín Núñez González

Until the final few drafts, Tessa’s daughter was named Cara. Her father wanted to name her Carolina after his state. Tessa and everyone who really loved the girl called her Cara, which is both Italian for “dear one” and Irish for “friend.” Perfect, right? But like Aisling, Cara wasn’t Catholic enough. There aren’t any saints named Cara. Her final name, Clare, honors Saint Clare of Assisi. It also honors the beautiful Irish county where Tessa grew up.

The Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland, where my characters Tessa and Liam were born

David was initially named Donatien (do-nah-TYENH), a French name meaning “gift.” Yep, same root as the English word “donation.” Again, I loved how it rolled off my tongue; but again, it was too French, and English speakers were sure to mispronounce it. When I learned it was the first name of the infamous Marquis de Sade (who is nothing like David), that was the nail in Donatien’s coffin.

Instead, I named Joseph’s nephew for the Biblical King David, whose name means “beloved.” King David sins about as badly as a man can sin. He covets Bathsheba, who’s already married to David’s friend Uriah. So David has Uriah killed to get him out of the way. Yet the Catholic Church canonizes King David as a saint. God not only forgives David, He blesses the fruit of his sin: Bathsheba bears David sons, and their descendants are both New Testament Joseph and the Virgin Mary. Scholars doubt that Bathsheba married her husband’s murderer willingly. So the name David ties into my “necessary sins” theme: it invokes grace and good coming from bad.

With both Cara/Clare and Donatien/David, I kept the first letters of their names the same. Sometimes a letter simply sounds right for a character, so I concentrate on names that start with that letter till I find one that fits.

My saga’s fifth major character was initially named Iye. I found this name in Connie Lockhart Ellefson’s The Melting Pot Book of Baby Names, one of many name books I consulted as I pondered what to call my characters. This was before websites like “Behind the Name“—I was researching old school.

Connie Lockhart Ellefson’s The Melting Pot Book of Baby Names (1990)

This Melting Pot book was my favorite because it organized names by cultures and countries and told me how to pronounce those names. Under the North American Indian section, I found the male name “Iye (EE-yeh): smoke.” It didn’t mention a tribe of origin, but it was close to a Scottish name I wanted to use for this character’s “white” name: Ian.

Yet again, I realized few readers would pronounce this name properly. Even if they did, Iye was a bit too close to Eeyore from “Winnie the Pooh” or the nonsense syllables “E-I-E-I-O” in the nursery rhyme “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” My work is for adults. My heroine is going to be saying this name in intimate scenes, and nobody should be sniggering.

I sense a pattern here: younger me had a penchant for giving characters exotic-to-me, difficult-for-English-speakers-to-pronounce names. Research, revise, and learn. Bizarre, anachronistic names are a sign of an amateur writer who’s pleasing her own fancy and doesn’t care about authenticity.

Most importantly, this fifth character was Zizistas (Cheyenne); he needed a Zizistas name. I could write a whole post about Zizistas names. To be brief, I settled on Ésh, short and sweet with an appropriate meaning: “sky.” Unlike Zizistas babies, this (mostly) white baby was born with sky-blue eyes.

One of my early readers asked why the name Ésh has an accent over the É. Acute accents (´) usually signify emphasis on a syllable, so monosyllabic words don’t need them. My reader was wise to ask. In fact, the word Ésh has two syllables, but I’ve elided one (omitted it). The word should properly be spelled Éshe. The Zizistas language has whispered syllables, meaning that final e is almost but not quite silent, like a breath. I thought leaving it off aided with pronunciation, so that readers wouldn’t say “Esh-eh” or “Eh-shee” in their heads. I retained the accent mark because I thought “Esh” looked less foreign and had less dignity. To my Charleston characters, Ésh is an “other.” His thought processes are different than theirs. He’s the primary “native stranger” of Book 3’s title, and I wanted his name to reflect that.

You’ll notice I’ve been purposefully vague about who Ésh actually is. If you want to find out, you’ll have to read my saga. 😉

When the Research Rabbit Hole Leads You Back Home

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It’s funny how I’ll puzzle over a story problem for months only to realize that the answer has been all but staring me in the face. Although most of my historical series, the Lazare Family Saga, is set in South Carolina and (what is now) Wyoming, I live in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C. That will soon be relevant. Journey down the research rabbit hole with me…

The Lazare Family Saga grapples with racism and slavery in the antebellum American South. Sweet Medicine, the fourth and final book, takes the characters into the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. I had to figure out what the Lazare family should be doing during this momentous period in American history, something that would make a fitting capstone to my saga and “bring it all together.”

The title of Book 4, Sweet Medicine, has multiple meanings. One of these is literal: two Lazares are medical doctors. Another meaning is figurative, referring to spiritual healing. For one particular character (I’m being deliberately vague to minimize spoilers), I wanted his Reconstruction choices to encompass both literal and figurative healing. Although he is a physician dedicated to helping others, he is himself psychologically wounded.

I wanted this character to be involved in educating newly freed African-Americans as a way of reclaiming his ancestry and healing his fractured identity, since the Lazares are a multiracial family who have been “passing” as white for most of the series. Before Emancipation, penalties for teaching an enslaved person to read included imprisonment and hefty fines. An enslaved person caught with a book would be whipped and often sold because his/her master considered an educated slave dangerous. Both during and after slavery, when an African-American learned to read, it was a way of declaring his/her personhood, of declaring that (s)he was worthy of more than manual labor. During Reconstruction, whole families—from children to grandparents—eagerly attended classes. After the devastation of slavery, education provided a means for African-Americans to heal themselves spiritually. White supremacists understood the symbolic and practical importance of education and frequently targeted schools and teachers.

But how could I pair this pro-education idea with literal medicine? The Reconstruction part of my story appears as an Epilogue. I don’t have fully fleshed out scenes to go into great detail. My characters’ Reconstruction choices must pack a satisfying emotional punch within a few paragraphs. Since the character in question commits a felony in South Carolina earlier in Sweet Medicine, I had to keep him away from that state. Beyond this limitation, the possibilities were mind-boggling. This is the part of historical fiction where the author conducts much more research than she’ll ever use, because she needs to eliminate possibilities.

At first, I placed my character at Hampton Institute. Today, this is Hampton University, located in my adopted state of Virginia but a solid 2.5 hour drive from me. I liked that enslaved people first escaped to Union lines near Hampton. I liked that Hampton University continues to thrive today, one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities a.k.a. HBCU (meaning their student bodies are primarily African-American). But there was no medical connection with Hampton.

Another central subject in my work is Native Americans. They too were educated at Hampton, which would seem to be a vote in its favor. However, Hampton was one of the colleges where the white teachers sought to “kill the Indian, and save the man”—in other words, to strip the Native students of their culture.

Even with its black students, Hampton focused on vocational and agricultural degrees. This was actually called “the Hampton Idea.” Instead of being offered a “higher education,” students were trained to do manual labor because many white people thought freedmen were not (yet) intellectually capable of more cerebral careers. Even black people like Booker T. Washington advocated the Hampton Idea, which argued that African-Americans should “stay in their place,” accept racial segregation, and not expect to become social equals with white people. By placing my character at Hampton Institute, I felt I would be endorsing harmful prejudices.

So where should I place my character during Reconstruction? As it turns out, I have lived near the solution for over a decade and have borrowed books from its library many times: Howard University in Washington, D.C. I knew Howard was also one of the HBCU. I vaguely knew it was founded just after the Civil War (1867). But I didn’t realize how special Howard was.

Howard consisted of multiple colleges from the beginning: law, theology, normal (for training teachers), and medicine. Its founders understood that given an equal chance, African-Americans are every bit as capable of succeeding in intellectual professions as white people.

Not only that, Howard’s advanced curriculum was open to all races and both sexes from its 1867 founding. Howard admitted at least a few Native American students. Two of its medical professors in the 1870s were men of color, and one professor was a white woman. The #1 fear of white supremacists is black men intermingling with white women—and that very “amalgamation” was happening at Howard during Reconstruction.

Considering the segregation to come, Howard University circa 1870 was ahead of its time and Too Awesome Not to Use. Eureka! I’d found the perfect capstone to my family saga—practically in my own backyard.

Dr. Isabel C. Barrows earned her degree at Woman’s Medical College of New York City in 1869 and also studied in Vienna, Austria. She was a professor in Howard University’s Medical Department from 1870-1873 (a year too late to appear in the below group photo). She specialized in diseases of the eye and ear.

You might notice that the professor on the far left is a man of color, Dr. Alexander T. Augusta. In fact, so is the second man from the right, Dr. Charles B. Purvis.

Dr. Alexander T. Augusta was born to free black parents in Norfolk, Virginia. He earned his degree at Trinity Medical College in Toronto, Canada in 1856. He was the first black medical officer during the Civil War, commissioned as a major and appointed head surgeon of the 7th U.S. Colored Infantry. Dr. Augusta was also the first black hospital administrator in the United States; the first black medical professor, teaching at Howard from 1869-1877; and the first black officer buried at Arlington National Cemetery (1890). You can see a photograph of him looking dashing in his Union uniform here.

Dr. Charles B. Purvis was born to free black abolitionists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He served as both a nurse and a surgeon during the Civil War and earned his degree at Wooster Medical College in 1865. Dr. Purvis was a professor in Howard’s Medical Department from 1869-1907. After the Financial Panic of 1873, the university was in dire straights and could no longer pay its faculty. Dr. Purvis continued teaching without a salary for three decades because he believed in Howard’s mission. Without him, the medical school probably would not have survived.

You’ll notice from these photographs that Dr. Purvis could have passed as white. He identified as black and was refused admittance to the American Medical Association because of it. Dr. Purvis’s father, Robert Purvis, was born in Charleston, South Carolina and was active in the Underground Railroad. Finding him was another lovely “full circle” moment in my research, a real-life echo of my fictional Lazare family.

All images in this post taken from the book Howard University Medical Department: A Historical, Biographical, and Statistical Souvenir by Dr. Daniel Smith Lamb, published in 1900. You can view the book in its entirety here: https://dh.howard.edu/med_pub/1

For the history of Howard as a whole, check out Howard University: the First Hundred Years, 1867-1967 by Ralph W. Logan, published in 1969.

Why Go Indie?

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The short answer is: I had no choice.

The slightly longer answer: If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t know my novels exist.

But let’s back up a moment. You may be asking yourself not why but “what is indie?” It’s a term that’s also used in music and film. “Indie” means “this artwork is independently produced; it isn’t bankrolled by a large company and isn’t beholden to their demands.” Indie artists are usually a little different; we don’t quite fit the mold demanded of our contracted colleagues.

In my case, “indie” is short for “independent author.” This is our preferred identifier because it signifies that we are professionals. We don’t just slap a first draft on Amazon and expect the adoring public to flock to it. It’s fine to call us self-publishers, but don’t call us vanity publishers. We know our work has worth, but we can also take constructive criticism. We know we can’t do it all by ourselves. We have editors and cover designers. We have printers, but we are our own publishers. We’ve cut out the middle man between ourselves and our readers.

Now, for the why. At the age of fourteen, when I vowed to become a published author, I thought I’d be “traditionally published” by a major press. I thought I’d have a literary agent who’d be like my fairy godmother. I thought the title pages and spines of my novels would say Hachette or St. Martin’s. I thought my novels would be in brick and mortar bookstores. I thought my publisher would send me flowers on my release date, and I’d go on a national book signing tour.

Yes, I really thought like this: I might not have much, but like Cinderella, if I only worked hard enough, eventually my fairy godmother (literary agent) would reward me.

None of that has happened or likely ever will. After almost three decades of researching, writing, and revising my Lazare Family Saga project, I spent four years seeking traditional publication for the first book in the series, Necessary Sins. I researched how to query literary agents and which agents were the best fit for my work. I wrote and rewrote my query letter, sent query after query, and pitched to literary agents in person at writing conferences. I’m an introvert, so the latter was particularly terrifying. In all, I approached well over 100 agents. Some editors at publishing houses allow you to query them directly. When my agent well ran dry, I tried that too, submitting to about 15 editors.

I got a few nibbles. My biggest excitement was the enthusiasm of an agent at Writers House, who called my work “masterful.” She imagined she could sell it as a hardcover original. (That’s a big deal and was part of my dream.) She requested a “partial,” the opening chapters of Necessary Sins. The agent then requested the full manuscript, which she received while she was attending a music festival. She related how she frantically searched for WiFi so she could download the rest of my novel and find out what happened next. We had long conversations over the phone.

But neither this interaction nor any other led to a contract. The most frustrating thing about querying is that authors rarely get a why. More than half of the agents and editors I queried didn’t bother to respond, which is typical in the publishing business. Most of the others sent form rejections, the same canned response they send to other hopeful writers, whether those writers followed all their guidelines and were querying a project in the agent/editor’s preferred genre or whether the writer sent gobbledygook. “Not right for our list,” etc. etc. ad infinitum.

Knock till your knuckles are bloody. The gatekeepers aren’t listening.

By pitching in person and speaking to other querying writers in my genre, eventually I was able to cobble together a why, which came down to: “Your work is risky. Agents and editors are afraid of risk; they want an easy sell. You are a knee-jerk rejection.” Why is my work risky?

  1. The agents and editors who claim they’re seeking historical fiction really want women’s fiction in a historical setting. Preferably a 20th century setting. In other words, a female protagonist, and she’d better be ahead of her time to make her “relatable.” My protagonist in Necessary Sins is—gasp—a man, and he’s very much a 19th-century man. (Read this blog post to understand my why.) The Publishing Industry knows most readers are women, and it thinks women want to read about women. So the moment an agent/editor/their assistant realized my main character was a man, they rejected my novel.
  2. My work is “too long.” Necessary Sins is about 140,000 words, which works out to nearly 500 pages in a paperback. This isn’t really that long, considering I was inspired by epic historical fiction / family sagas from the 1970s and 1980s that are nearly twice that length. But the 21st century is the age of Twitter. The Publishing Industry has decided that readers have short attention spans. They want debut novels of about 80,000 words. Shorter is even better! Longer books cost more to print, so if they fail, the publisher has lost more money. Unless you know someone in publishing and/or you’re a man (preferably both), publishers don’t care if your novel is a meticulously edited masterpiece that really needs to be longer than average. The moment an agent/editor/their assistant realized my book was over 100,000 words (the absolute limit), they rejected my novel.
  3. My work is not “own voices.” Many of my point-of-view characters are people of color and I am white. It doesn’t matter how many years of research I’ve done or how nuanced my characters are. It doesn’t matter that the Lazares’ ancestry is mostly white and they are so light-skinned they can “pass.” This is the reason that Writers House agent finally rejected me; I am a marketing problem. At this point, agents/editors/assistants probably reject all queries with characters of color in which the author doesn’t declare her/himself to be “own voices.” Even if I made it past the first two hurdles, this one is insurmountable—at least for an unknown debut author with no connections in publishing.

So after almost three decades of dreaming and labor, after more than three years of pleading at the pearly gates of publishing, I finally had to admit that my work wouldn’t be traditionally published any time in the foreseeable future.

Anna Lea Merritt’s “Love Locked Out” (1890)

Now for most writers, this would be a temporary setback. They would have another completed project or at least another story idea. This other novel would be more marketable. Then maybe down the line, once they’d acquired an agent and publisher and proved themselves via the success of the other project, the author’s agent might potentially accept the risky project later on.

But I don’t have any other novels. The Lazare Family Saga is my passion project, my labor of love. I have sacrificed everything else in my life for twenty-seven years to complete this story. I don’t have the time, energy, or money to do that again, and no other characters are demanding my attention the way the Lazares did. I have health issues and a full-time job that leave me only slivers of time for writing. I can’t wait around for a bolt of lightning that may never strike.

If I’d queried for another couple of decades, there is a teeny, tiny chance an agent would have thought my work worth the risks. But then she’d have to find an editor who agreed with her. And that editor would have to convince her publishing house. I have a better chance of being struck by lightning. And the more I learned about traditional publishing, the less keen I was to offer it my soul—and my writing is my soul. This may be partly sour grapes, I admit. But I have heard so many horror stories. There are no fairy godmothers in publishing, but there are a lot of mercenaries who don’t care a fig about authors.

Maya Angelou wrote: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” For me, the agony of an unpublished story is even greater. You’ve done all the work. You’ve forged a completed novel you’re proud of. You believe it’s an important novel, and the people who read it praise it—but that handful of people are the only ones who’ll ever know your novel exists.

Unless you stop clinging to those pearly gates and find another way. Unless you go indie. That is why.

My arms are tired, but I’ll get there!

The Importance of Warts

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My fellow historical novelist M. K. Tod invited me to write a guest post on her excellent blog A Writer of History. From Colonial Williamsburg to historical novelists, I argue that those interpreting the past should strive for authenticity, even—especially—when it’s not pretty. Or as I like to call it, The Importance of Warts. Read my post here.

You’ll find a clickable list of all my guest posts and interviews here. That page is also linked to the bottom of my About Me page.

What’s Your Genre?

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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.