Ancestors by Diane Burton

 As I wait for the edits to Numbers Never Lie, I’m catching up on a lot of things, along with relaxing . . . somewhat. Last week, something happened that sidetracked me from the financial stuff with my books. Darn.

My sister received an email from our grandmother’s sister’s granddaughter via Ancestry.com. Apparently, Ellen found my sister because she’d gotten her DNA done through Ancestry. I contacted Ellen and that spurred me to get back to working on my genealogy—something I’ve done sporadically for about forty years. Even less so since I’ve been writing.

I remembered Ellen’s mother (my dad’s cousin). I think she came to my wedding. Since that was back in the dark ages, though, I’m not positive. 😉

As I looked over my family tree, I was surprised by how much I didn’t know about my generation: their marriages, children, and grandchildren. My sister is the family connector. She calls cousins, visits our sole surviving uncle and our dad's cousin, generally keeps in touch. She never married and, perhaps, this is her way of maintaining a family.

Somewhere in my office (that needs organizing) is a box with wedding invitations, birth announcements, etc. I have all the info I need to fill in the info, just not at hand. One thing I was pleased about is Ancestry’s privacy policy. Living members are hidden from the public. Yay! Originally, I was afraid to add them for privacy reasons.

A couple of days ago, Betsy Ashton wrote about being keeper of the "box." That's me. I have letters from my grandfather to my grandmother when they were courting. I need to scan them so my brothers and sisters can read them. Same with old pictures. 

I’ve always thought it was important to know where I came from. Not for inheritance sake, like my grandmother and her cousins thought. Hubs joined Ancestry to organize all the “stuff” he’s collected and stories from his mother, dad, and aunt. He’s stuck on his grandfather. According to his aunt, the one time her sister asked about his family, Grandfather teared up and their mother forbade them to ask again. Too bad. That’s a mystery Hubs is still trying to solve.

In a post here several years ago, I mentioned my grandmother and her cousins hiring a genealogist to trace their family history. According to legend, their ancestor (Anneke Jans Borgardus) who was the daughter of the king of The Netherlands married against his will and was disinherited for seven generations. Gram’s cousins were certain they were the seventh generations and would inherit buckets of money. Since this was in the 1930s, amid the Great Depression in Detroit, it’s easy to understand their desire. And to throw money at the genealogist who told them (repeatedly) he was almost there. Unfortunately, the legend was just that. A legend.

Amazingly, much of what his report said can be backed up with documents, especially through the DAR. However, many assumptions the family had proved false. Hence, no inheritance. Darn.

While on this journey to find out where I came from, I talked to (or corresponded with) several relatives in my grandmother’s generation. It was great reading about our grandfather’s courtship of our grandmother through the eyes of her sister with whom she lived. With the exception of one of my dad’s brothers and one of his cousins, the people of that generation are no longer with us. Gone, too, are their stories.

It looks like I’m the family storyteller now.

What a scary thought. The responsibility of keeping the family stories alive is mine. Enter technology. While people gripe about how technology is taking over our lives, I’m applauding the ease with which things can be shared. Scan in pictures and letters then send electronically to someone in California. Easy peasy.

When we first joined Ancestry, I didn’t realize that I could share all that knowledge with my family, whether they are members of Ancestry or not. I recently discovered my youngest cousin (same age as my daughter) is on Ancestry. I happily shared what I know with him. It will be wonderful that our family history will live on. That is a big relief. The burden can be shared.

Now, it’s time to get back to the other chores awaiting me. And the next book.

BTW, here's the cover for my soon-to-be released romantic suspense.

Diane Burton combines her love of mystery, adventure, science fiction, and romance into writing romantic fiction. She blogs here on the 16th and 30th of each month. She shares snippets from her stories every weekend on her blog. Her newest romantic suspense, Numbers Never Lie, will be released next month.

Character is king (...or queen) by Leah St. James #amwriting

The Plot Master (TPM) and I watched The Martian the other night. I had never read the book by Andy Weir, but the story of the self-published novelist rising to mega success, followed by a mega hit movie, always inspired me, and it's been on my "watch" list since it came out.

For whatever reason, TPM wasn’t all that keen on watching, but I talked him into it. Within the first few minutes as we followed the adventures of the Mars explorers, I was hooked, exclaiming things like, “This is fascinating!” Meanwhile TPM was watching half-heartedly and playing solitaire on his tablet.

When the crisis stranded poor Mark Watney (Matt Damon) on this uninhabitable piece of rock, his crewmates thinking him dead, I was curled up on the couch in a fetal position, biting my fingernails, and TPM had started to take interest.

According to the movie’s website, the film lasts 143 minutes, although I was completely unaware of the passage of time. In fact, I only paused the video once for a break...which is significant since I’m a serial pause-for-breaker. Somewhere in there TPM put down his tablet, and when the final credits rolled, he said, “That was excellent.” High praise from TPM. Even more striking, for once he had no comments on what he would have done differently, plot-wise, no suggestions for improvement.

It got me thinking about plot vs. character and which drives a story. (It also convinced me to put the book on my reading list!)

As a reader, I generally tend toward the character end of the see-saw. I read to find out what’s going on with the characters and their relationships, and how they react to the action around them. To me the pickles they get themselves into are sort of secondary, or interchangeable. Substitute car chase for martial arts butt-kicking—that type of thing. Or in a romance novel, substitute discovery of the hero’s past mistake for discovery of something he did two days ago. So for me, the story isn't so much about what the characters do as how those plot turns affect them.

But with The Martian, I was completely absorbed in the plot, while almost ignoring the character. Not that Mark Watney wasn't likeable, just that the situation was so compelling he was almost secondary.

But then I thought about it a bit more.

Certainly any of the astronauts on the mission would have done what they could to save themselves. Probably, since they are all scientists of one form or another, each would have approached the situation methodically, forming a hypothesis for each problem, then testing the theories. At least in the beginning. But how many would have persevered through the seeming insurmountable challenges, right up to the final moments, as Watney did? (I’m trying to NOT give away the ending for any who haven’t seen the movie or read the book.)

Finally I decided it was that component of his character (calm, steadfast perseverance in the face a situation that would have reduced most of us to a wailing pile of self-pity) that drove the plot, and ultimately the story. So for me, it’s a character story after all.

Then I got to thinking about all my favorite books and movies and tried to figure if it was plot or character, and again, I chose character.

Gone with the Wind, for example: Aside from this Yankee's curiosity of the setting in the ante-Bellum South, it was the characters and their relationship that intrigued me more than the story of war.

Or Kristen Hannah’s The Nightingale:  Two sisters in German-occupied Paris (WWII) and how they deal with the horrors of war. While the situation and setting are compelling (emotional and heartbreaking), how the sisters react is what tells the story.

What about romance?
Since the ending of a romance novel is, to a great extent, predetermined by the genre, romance writers have to be pretty clever and skilled to create suspense, either plot-wise or relationship-wise, to keep readers turning the pages. But again, that’s why I read: To find out how the characters react to those plot twists and how they achieve their HEA/HFN ending.

What do you think? Plot or character—which drives the story for you?

.....................

Leah writes stories of mystery and romance, good and evil and the power of love. Learn more at her website, or visit her on Facebook.

Storytelling - A Family Affair? by Alison Henderson

I'm not one of those writers who always knew she wanted to write. I didn't keep a journal, write fan fiction stories about my favorite singers or movie stars, or scribble wild flights of fantasy when I was growing up. I always hated creative writing assignments in school, because I never thought my ideas were any good. I had no clue how other people managed to come up with such imaginative stories. I assumed I didn't have it in me. Or did I?

When I was lying awake in the wee, small hours this morning--as I so often do--a memory popped into my mind for no reason I can think of. It was the memory my father sitting on the side of my bed when I was four or five, telling me and my younger sister bedtime stories. I don't remember the story lines, but I'll never forget desperately wanting to know what happened next.

My father was a Harvard-trained lawyer and not someone you would expect to have a particularly vivid imagination, but he made up stories that held us rapt. Actually, it was one long story, told episodically, like the 1930's radio serials he had grown up with. The heroine was Iva Marie, a plucky young lady of uncertain age but old enough to have adventures of her own with her maid/sidekick, Nettie Jane. The two girls were accompanied (and chauffeured) on their escapades through New York City by Tony the Taxicab Driver. As I recall, their adventures included all manner of "baddies", and at one point Tony had to drive the cab, with the girls inside, into the Hudson River to escape. With that kind of influence at an early age, I guess I shouldn't be surprised I ended up as a writer.

Fast forward thirty years to my own days as a young parent. When my daughter was born, I quit my job and stayed home with her for eight years. For the first three years, I was her primary playmate, and I loved it. I didn't create fantastic bedtime stories like my dad, but we did act out elaborate situations with her collection of Cabbage Patch dolls. While she was in charge of the stories, my job was to invent and maintain a different voice for each one. It was more of a challenge than you might think. 

Somehow, subconsciously, the time I spent with these two natural storytellers must have spurred me to try my hand at writing fiction. In my mid-thirties, as soon as my daughter started preschool, I began my first book. And although that was many years and seven books ago, some things haven't changed. I still want to know what happens next.

Alison
www.alisonhenderson.com

P.S. - as a retreat from the mid-summer heat or an antidote to political hoopla, my short story collection Small Town Christmas Tales is on sale for $0.99 all month!