Velda Brotherton's Blog (9)

GO WEST YOUNG WOMAN

This story is atypical of many groups who headed west in the earliest migrations. Getting a late start, a small group of wagons left Sapling Grove, Missouri on May 12, 1841. In the group were 35 men, 5 women and 10 children. about 20 miles west or Independence, MO., and not one of them had any notion of what lay ahead.

Of the women in the group three were married, one was a widow and one was a girl of marriageable age traveling with kin. Totally…

In researching for Western Historical Novels, I've run across some strange historical facts. I thought I'd share a few of them here, and illustrate how some showed up in my romance novels.

Frank James quoted Shakespeare, and he and brother Jesse liked to have their pictures made. In Images In Scarlet, they kidnap Allie Caine to take those photos.

If you think the Civil War actually ended when Lee surrendered, then it’s back to the books. The final battle took place out west at…

Researching and Writing Regional History

Have you ever wondered where a writer obtains historical information or interviews? I began writing regional history long before the advent of the Internet as a feature writer for a weekly newspaper. Searching for the same facts today is much easier if we’re computer literate. Yet nothing beats contact with the people who have stories to share.

During the nine years I wrote for the newspaper, I must have interviewed…

Many times I'm asked where I get ideas for my western historical romances. It's simple, really. In fact I have enough stuff scribbled down to write these books for another twenty years or so. I prefer to write about the 1860s through the 1880s, though that's not a set rule. Each time I go on a trip through that era in my research the most fascinating thing happens. Characters begin to appear and talk to me. Tell me what it's like to live in the time and place I've stepped into. They speak to…

When was the last time you cried or laughed aloud while reading a book? Do you remember why the story affected you so? Let's discuss what it takes as a writer to create fiction that will make our readers laugh or cry.

Is it the story? The answer to that is yes and no, for a story alone has no power to make the reader's emotions erupt. Yet a bad story can ruin everything. Most importantly, for emotions to come to the surface, the reader has to have people to care about. Real…

When was the last time you cried or laughed aloud while reading a book? Do you remember why the story affected you so? Let's discuss what it takes as a writer to create fiction that will make our readers laugh or cry.

Is it the story? The answer to that is yes and no, for a story alone has no power to make the reader's emotions erupt. Yet a bad story can ruin everything. Most importantly, for emotions to come to the surface, the reader has to have people to care about. Real…

Besides being a writer, I’m a woman, a wife, mother, grandmother and a great grandmother. And I’m a human being, an American, a daughter of pioneers.

Over the past 28 years that I’ve written and been published, I’ve seen the role of women in novels and stories evolve from the meek to the mighty. Some could say this has happened much too slowly, some could add that the female role has become a bit ridiculous in some instances. Women who fight and conquer monsters might seem to…

RECONNECT TO PAST

On a lovely day almost forty years ago I drove south from my new home in Winslow, Arkansas, intent on revisiting my childhood past. Though Highway 71 had changed a lot, I had no trouble at all recognizing Old Creek Road. Back in the early days it was rutted and narrow and meandered through the remote hollow where more than a dozen families lived. I turned off with some reluctance. This would be hard, for what I had always known was gone. Deep down in the…

Yesterday I received a post from my daughter forwarded to her from friends. It was a wonderful revelation of the story clotheslines once told about a family's life. I had to laugh at the rules listed, for they were exactly those my mother and later I followed. There was a special way to hang out the clothes. Oh, yes, we once actually hung our washed laundry on lines out in the sunlight and wind.

Though we lived in the country when I was small, a place where there were no clotheslines…