The Next Big Thing: Authors tagging authors!

I am very pleased to be tagged for The Next Big Thing by Karen Aminadra, and to get to know Karen better.  I will tag other authors, they will answer questions about their coming work, tag other authors, and so it goes...

For now, I am called upon to answer questions about my next big thing - the sequel to my B.R.A.G. Medallion winner, Rebel Puritan.

The Reputed Wife

What is your working title of your book?
The Reputed Wife is the sequel to Rebel Puritan, the first book in my A Scandalous Life series about Herodias Long.  Both phrases come from 1665 Rhode Island court documents regarding Herodias’ divorce request after twenty years of pretended marriage.  She was referred to as George Gardner’s ‘reputed wife’ and they were admonished not to ‘lead soe scandalose a life.’

Where did the idea come from for the book?
I wrote Rebel Puritan years after finding my 8^th-great grandmother Herodias Long in my genealogy.  She is notorious for her marital escapades, of which we modern folk would take no notice.  However, Herodias was whipped in Boston for protesting even harsher sentences carried out against the Quakers, and that makes her a heroine in my eyes.  The Reputed Wife is about that episode, Herodias’ messy relationship with George Gardner, and struggles between New England’s Puritans and their liberal neighbors in Rhode Island.

What genre does your book fall under?
Historical fiction, biographical fiction, or fictional history.  Rebel Puritan has been called all three, but I describe it as historical fiction.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I describe my series as “Scarlett O’Hara meets The Scarlet Letter.” Naturally, Herodias Long will be played by Scarlett Johansson.  Herod’s first husband, John Hicks, should be played by Colin Firth as in “Shakespeare in Love,” though he has to lose the pearl earring.  George Gardner, Herod’s second husband must be Harrison Ford in “Witness.” Ooh, la la!  Herod’s third husband was John Porter, who was old enough to be her father.  Sean Connery has proven that older men can be deliciously sexy.

Whipping Quakers

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
I'm going to take two sentences to ask, How far would you go to defend religious freedom?  Herodias Gardner walked sixty miles to protest the abuse of Quakers, only to face Boston’s whipping post herself.

 Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Neverest Press

Like Rebel Puritan, I will self-publish The Reputed Wife through my Neverest Press.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Eighteen months.  I’m in the final tweak phase, and will send the mss to the printer in January.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Anya Seton’s The Winthrop Woman is by far the best example.  Ms. Seton’s works are a delicious blend of fiction, history and biography, and my love of them inspired me to try writing my own historical novel.

Rebel Puritan

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Herodias Long and her bold, scandalous life, of course.  When I read entries about Herod in Rhode Island’s court records, I wondered why nobody had written about her.  I wrote Rebel Puritan as the book I wanted to read.  The Reputed Wife continues Herod’s story.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Accused witches weren’t the only innocent persons hanged by Puritans, and some horrific acts are contained in Reputed Wife as the Puritans sought to preserve their religious and political purity.  Hanging witches weren't their only method, but some of their highly controversial acts have been forgotten.  By the way, I searched Rhode Island's records for witchcraft incidents, but there are none.  Zero!  The Rhode Islanders were outcasts from Puritan colonies, and that made them much more sensible than their Puritan neighbors.

Include the link of who tagged you and this explanation for the people you have tagged.
I thank Karen Aminadra for tagging me, and for now I have tagged Ellen Marie Wiseman.  I'm on the prowl for others to tag, and I hope that you all had a Happy Thanksgiving!

Karen is the author of Charlotte: Pride and Prejudice Continues, Life and Loves, and Relative Deceit, which is hot off the presses!
http://kaminadra.blogspot.co.uk/

Ellen Marie Wiseman is also the author of a hot-off-the-presses book, The Plum Tree.  I've read this Holocaust story, and heartily recommend it.  She will post her answers on December 17th.
http://www.bookpregnant.blogspot.com/


Message for the tagged authors and interested others:

Rules of the Next Big Thing
***Use this format for your post
***Answer the ten questions about your current WIP (work in progress)
***Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.

Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing:
What is your working title of your book?
Where did the idea come from for the book?
What genre does your book fall under?
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Include the link of who tagged you and this explanation for the people you have tagged.
Be sure to line up your five people in advance.

What's In a Name: Part 2

Mayflower.jpg

Thanksgiving is over, and we’ve remembered our beloved Pilgrims’ first feast.  Like us, they called it Thanksgiving Day, but wait – did they call themselves Pilgrims?  As it turns out, many of our most familiar names are not what people actually called themselves.

The Pilgrims called themselves Saints.  In practice they were Separatists, because they wished to separate themselves from the Church of England.  Were all of the Plymouth Thanksgiving celebrants Pilgrims?  Not at all.  The Saints were joined on their voyage by Strangers and Adventurers, as William Bradford called them.  A few came to invest in the New World, hoping to find gold or stores of furs.  Others were valued tradesmen – John Alden was a cooper, hired to tend the Mayflower’s cargo.  Myles Standish was a professional soldier, and valued for his military experience.

The Puritans did not want to entirely separate themselves from the Church of England – they wanted to purify it of Catholic-style trappings.  Ornate robes, music, and plaster saints distracted the eye and the mind from worship, and they thought that the Anglican hierarchy was corrupt.  That desire to “purify” the church led to the derisive term “Puritan,” but that is not what they called themselves either.  As early as the 1560s, Puritan writings described themselves as “God’s elect.”

Quakermeeting.jpg

The Puritans applied an insulting name to the Religious Society of Friends that we remember today – Quakers.  Friends, as they called themselves, said that they “quaked before the spirit of the Lord,” so the Puritans called them Quakers, and the name stuck.  The Shakers gained their nickname in a similar manner, because members of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing were said to “shake” when touched by the Holy Spirit.  The Mormons got their derisive name from the Book of Mormon used by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  They prefer to be called “Latter Day Saints” but find Mormon tolerable.

Religious societies are not the only groups to be remembered by a name they did not choose.  When explorers and settlers met indigenous groups, those peoples were often supplied a name for them by their neighbors.  Those neighbors were not always friendly, and neither were the names they supplied to Europeans, but those are the names we remember.  I am most familiar with North American tribal people and names, so here are a few American examples:

IroquoisLonghouse.jpg

“Iroquois” was used by French fur dealers, who obtained the term from Wyandot enemies who called the New York tribes “black snakes.”  The Iroquois prefer Haudenosaunee – “They are building a Longhouse.”

“Sioux” is another Algonkian name for the more westerly Lakota or Dakota tribes, and means “foreign speaking.”  Not necessarily insulting, but true – the Lakota spoke a different language than the Algonkians.

That trend continued across the United States, with one group naming another.  “Navajo” was used by the Spanish settlers in the southwest to describe the Dine, or Children of God, and comes from a Hopi word for “corn stealer.”  It is amazing that the Navajo tolerate that name; the Papago, or “tepary bean eaters” (as the Pima Indians named them) have officially changed the tribe’s name back to the one they prefer: Tohono O’odham.

MesaVerde.jpg

When asked by the Spaniards who had built the beautiful pueblo ruins which still grace the Four Corners states, the Navajo said it was the “Anasazi” or “Ancient enemies.”  The term Anasazi is now being replaced by “ancestral Puebloans,” because those peoples were the ancestors of today’s Hopi and Zuni tribes.  They don’t wish to have their ancestors described as enemies, and neither would we.

As for personal names, who among us hasn’t been given a nickname they despised?  I will close with a woman near to my heart saddled with an undesirable name – Herodias Long.  Her baptismal record has not been found, and she was called Herodias only on a transcript of her marriage license.  Harwood, Horod, or Horred is the form used on her marriage license allegation, and in contemporary New England records until her children and grandchildren began using the full name Herodias again.

Given the distressing nature of Herodias’ biblical namesake, who instigated the execution of John the Baptist, it is not surprising that Herodias Long contracted her name to a less-recognizable variant.  Did she dislike the name Herodias, and would she have wanted her descendants to call her Horred?  If so, Herodias Long is not the first person – or peoples – to be remembered by a name they did not choose.

HerodiasSheldon.jpg