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Sisters of Mercy

by | October 21, 2021 | | 2 Comments

“It’s all connected. If you leave God out of sex, it becomes pornographic; if you leave sex out of God, it becomes self-righteous.”

Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016

My high school friend Judith had the hair of a gypsy and the voice of an angel. Perched on a floodlit stool in the Two Moon Coffee House, there in the basement of the Congregational Church, she strummed her guitar and sang in her clear, pure soprano of love, loss, death and redemption. I huddled in the shadows, at the back of the audience, caught halfway between lust and worship.

“Suzanne takes you down

To her place by the river.

You can hear the boats go by

And you can spend the night beside her…”

I was sixteen. I didn’t understand yet that a woman could physically desire a member of her own sex. All I knew was that something about Judith called to both my soul and my body.

With her jet black curls tumbling around her heart-shaped face, she could be wickedly merry one moment, in utter despair the next. Her poems spoke of revelations and tragedies. She wore long patchwork skirts, bright scarves, loose peasant blouses that revealed her pale, slender throat and hinted at her delicate breasts. When she sang about Suzanne, it was she I imagined, “wearing rags and features from Salvation Army counters”. I had a sense that she appeared my dreams, but I could never recall the details, a rarity given my usual vivid and memorable visions.

She was never my lover—back then, I couldn’t begin to imagine what that meant—but I believe now that she could have been. In the real world, I never touched her, but as the song says, I’d touched her perfect body with my mind.

I thought of Judith a few years ago when I learned that Leonard Cohen had passed away. I owned a copy of his first album; overflowing with teenage angst, I played and replayed his moody tunes. They offered glimpses into another world, a world of passion that was simultaneously physical and spiritual. Later, I read some of his poems as well as his haunting novel Beautiful Losers. I wrote a lot of poetry myself in those days. He expressed some of the same emotions I was trying to capture, with far more skill and depth.

She came to mind again last weekend, when my high school class celebrated its fiftieth reunion, back in the suburban town where I spent so many dream-filled, passion-ridden years. I’ve been poring over the photos from that event on Facebook. (Between my overseas location, Covid-19, and starting a new job, there was never any chance I’d be able to attend.) There’s no sign of Judith. I wonder where she is, how she’s managing, as we all approach our seventh decade.

I’ve reconnected with several old friends from that period in the run-up to the reunion. It was a bit of a thrill to hear from people who’d been important to me, whom I hadn’t thought about in many, many years. Some bonds do endure.

The quote from Leonard Cohen that opens this post appeared in one of his obituaries. There could hardly be a more apt description of why I write erotic fiction. For me, the sexual and the spiritual are intimately entwined. Throughout my life, sex has been a doorway into self-understanding and a deeper level of peace.

I sometimes fantasize about what it would have been like, to spend the night with my Suzanne. I have some sense the connection between us might have been reciprocal. She wrote a tender message in my yearbook, calling me “beautiful lady”, an appellation that I found astonishing at the time. If we’d stayed in contact, would our relationship have developed into something more than a high school crush?

At some level, it doesn’t matter. My memories convince me that spirit and flesh are not opposites, but two aspects of the same reality.

 

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“The Ruined Girl”: Illicit Love in 18th Century Germany

by | October 18, 2021 | | 2 Comments

When you’re completely immersed in 18th century German church records—as I must confess I am—the one word you see over and over is “legitimate.” In birth, marriage, and even death records for children and unmarried youth, the “legitimacy” of a daughter or son accompanies each entry as if it were a middle name.

I began to wonder if any child was ever noted as “illegitimate.” Soon enough, those records began to emerge as well. As one might expect, these irregular situations got more attention from the priest scribe. The formula of date of birth, name of child, name and residence of parents and godparent required additional discussion of the identity of the father or the lack thereof.

As we storytellers know, the unusual situation gets more attention from the reader as well. Thanks to the services of a kind family member who has studied Latin, we can get a glimpse into dramas of illicit love in 18th-century Germany.

My first example actually dates back to the 17th century, which shows that extramarital relations most definitely did not begin in 1963, as the poet Philip Larkin suggested in his brilliant poem of social commentary, “Annus Mirabilis.”

On the contrary, we have evidence in these church records that extramarital sex occurred several times all the way back in 1677. That’s when a woman named Margarethe, who was not given a surname, gave birth to a boy she named Hieronymus.

In the church record, the priest notes: “The identity of the father, or fathers, is thought to be one of the soldiers from Lünnenburg who were here this year in the wintertime.” One assumes he knew there could only be one biological father, but Margarethe’s interactions with a number of different soldiers was apparently noted and condemned in the record for twenty-first-century readers to ponder.

Not all of the villagers were as judgmental. Young Hieronymus Reber agreed to stand as the babe’s baptismal sponsor, and my seventh-great-grandfather, Nicholaus Hufnagel, served as an additional witness. It was unusual to have two people stand as sponsors. I like to think that Grandpa Nick understood that poor Margarethe was doing the best she could and needed the extra support of her friends.

During the 18th century, the mothers of illegitimate children tend to be out-of-towners, with unusual surnames, making me wonder if they sought to have the birth recorded in a neighboring parish so as to escape the sanctioning eye of the neighborhood. Generally the priest names a father and the circumstances through which his identify was discovered. One father was a French commissar, another a traveling salesman, men who could escape responsibility easily. Sadly, many of the babies died soon after birth.

In one case in 1720, a sick mother who had recently lost her illegitimate child was being cared for by friends in the parish of Somborn. The priest visited her every day and his kindness apparently swayed the Protestant woman into considering conversion to Catholicism. The priest notes that the woman passed away before she could officially convert, but he absolved her of her sins before she died and buried her in a Catholic ceremony anyway.

I can’t but help see the exultation of victory in the way he underlined “Catholic rite” in et in Ca’met: Somb: ritu Catholica Sepulta est [buried in the cemetery in Somborn by the Catholic rite]. Hopefully St. Peter took note when the woman passed through the Pearly Gates.

While illegitimate births were rare in the 17th and 18th-century records, the 19th century sees an explosion of children born out of wedlock. Perhaps the Napoleonic Wars made young people more willing to seize pleasure in the moment?

In 1821, Magdalena, the wife of Jakob Kreis who was a soldier serving in Austria, gave birth to a son fathered by a local widower named Konrad Schreiber. Although the record is disapproving, a modern reader can’t help but imagine the two providing comfort for each other in their loneliness.

In 1828, there were FOUR illegitimate births on a single page! Two of the children were subsequently legitimized by the marriage of the parents, as noted in the margins.

The 26 April entry for Johann Georg, illegitimate son of Christina Roos, notes that the sponsor was “Joanne Roos, fratre corruptae.” My helpful Latin expert suggested possible translations beyond the literal “corrupted girl.” Brother of the adulteress, brother of the ruined one, brother of the seduced girl, brother of the misled girl—all heap ignominy upon the woman who had a lover out of wedlock, but her brother stood with her in adversity.

Another Hufnagel who found fame in the church records was a certain Heinrich Hufnagel who admitted to fathering the child of Katharina Egold, born in November 1826. The child died 6 days later, and surely the priest hoped that the couple would learn from their disgrace. However, a year and a half later, in February 1828, the couple had another child and “Heinrich Hufnagel confessed that he himself was the father of the infant.” This child did not die, nor it seems, did the couple ever marry. Clearly they were ahead of their time in seeing marriage as just a piece of paper.

I’ll conclude with another story of Hufnagel solidarity and serendipity. In 1826, my third-great-aunt Maria Anna Hufnagel had an illegitimate child named Christina, father unnamed. Maria Anna’s brother Lorenz was my third-great-grandfather through my maternal grandmother’s father. The sponsor for the child was Christina Franz, who it just so happens was my third-great grandmother through my maternal grandmother’s mother.

Christina Franz was unaware that her granddaughter would marry her friend’s brother’s grandson in 1888 in Pennsylvania. Neither Anna Maria Hufnagel nor Christina Franz ever saw the sacred book which told the story of a friend supporting the mother of an illegitimate child. However, thanks to the internet, her great-great-great-granddaughter can appreciate her gesture of solidarity with a “ruined girl.”

Write on!

[The Nursery (1770) by Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons].

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Happiness is…

by | October 13, 2021 | | 2 Comments

We’ve always been told that our basic rights include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” That part about the pursuit of happiness is a great idea, but there’s one thing missing—how do you recognize it when you think you’ve found it?

Happiness seems to mean different things for everyone. Those who are materialistically motivated are only happy when they have all the toys in their playpen. The more expensive the toy, the happier they are. Some people get that glow if they’re the center of social or political attention. An offshoot of this same personality type only seems to find joy when they can demean or bully others. Then there are those who think happiness and true love are joined at the hip.

A friend once asked what makes me happy. I had to think about that one, because I didn’t have a ready-made response. While I find comfort in financial security, or career success, or the joys of a great relationship, I can’t really tag one as the standard. There are times when I’m happy after enjoying a night out with friends. A vacation at my favorite getaway spot makes me happy, until I get home and realize it’s over. A terrific book review makes me feel like doing cartwheels in front of my house. Fortunately, I’ve never done that, which probably makes my neighbors happy.

I’ve come to believe that happiness is relative to where you are in your life. When I was a child, doing fun family things made me happy, especially around holidays. As I got older and discovered the joy of girls, dating one who caught my eye was my idea of happiness. Getting a raise or good performance evaluation when I was on the job always brought out the happy hormones, too.

I came across a list of 7 common myths about happiness. I won’t include all of them, but a few struck a chord with me, and they might with you. I think these hit me between the eyes because I’ve been guilty of this kind of thinking.

“If I have lots of money, I will be happy.” An infusion of greenbacks can get you a lot of things, but beyond your basic needs and financial security, the upgrades really don’t make that much difference. There have been times in my life when I didn’t have two quarters to rub together, but I still found something to be happy about.

“I have to be better than just OK to be happy.” This sounds like the credo of Overachievers Anonymous. Is the follow-up line “And as long as I’m better than you, I’m even happier”? I’ve known people with this Type A personality trait and I always avoided them, lest I get run over in their race to the happiness finish line. The problem is that the finish line is a moving target, and people with this mindset never seem to get there.

“When I find true love, then I will be happy.” This is probably the most erroneous myth ever. While it may help some of us tell compelling romance stories, it’s also a painful thing if it doesn’t work out. Love can be the greatest feeling in the world, but keep your eyes open, and be careful what you wish for. I have a woman friend who has been searching for what she considers true love for twenty-plus years. She hasn’t found it yet because she set some very high standards for a potential mate. Suffice to say, she never seems to be very happy, either.

“When life is normal again, then I can be happy again.” For this one to come to fruition, you first need to define “normal.” With what we’ve been through the past couple of years, it has changed on a weekly basis. What was once considered normal has taken on a different meaning. Why not adapt to what is now the norm in your own life and make the best of it?

There’s no hard-and-fast qualifier for happiness. It’s really what you choose to make it. Many people are happy when they’ve finished their day’s labors and can relax at home with their favorite TV show. Others find joy in hitting the winning home run for their softball team. Outdoorsy-type folks derive great pleasure from fishing or camping. Other adventurous souls become overjoyed when they stumble across a sale at their favorite store, and their credit card isn’t maxed out.

What lights up your happy button?

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My Favourite Writing Exercise

by | October 6, 2021 | | 4 Comments

By Ashley Lister

 I can’t remember if I’ve shared this before or not but it’s always worth revisiting. My favourite writing exercise is the swifty. What, you might ask, is a swifty? (other than a rather awkward rephrasing of the term ‘quickie’). According to Merriam Webster a ‘Swifty is a play on words taking the form of a quotation ascribed to Tom and followed by an adverb. Here’s a good example: “The thermostat is set too high,” said Tom heatedly.’

The form takes its name from the main character (Tom Swift) in a series of adventure books ascribed to the authorship of Victor Appleton. In the series Appleton was meant to have a weakness for adverbs, attaching an excess of them to dialogue in order to add colour and variety to the narration.

“I’ve got a knife,” said Tom sharply.
“Get to the back of the boat,” said Tom sternly.
“I like the herb you’ve used for seasoning,” said Tom sagely.

I like these because, as a writing exercise, they’re a fun diversion from the seriousness of writing, they allow a little bit of silliness into the otherwise formal world of fiction writing, and they teach a valuable lesson about the way the artifice of some adverbial tags can distract a reader from the content of dialogue.

“Baa,” said Tom, sheepishly.
“I have a thing for redheads,” said Tom, gingerly.
“Have you ever tried figging?” asked Tom, gingerly.

It’s a relatively easy exercise – simply write a swifty – but it is a liberating process that reminds us of the fragile balance between dialogue creation and speech presentation. I’d love to see your examples of swifties in the comments box below.

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You Could Make This Stuff Up, But You Don’t Have To

by | September 27, 2021 | | 2 Comments

Anyone who has been enjoying Donna George Storey’s posts about history in this blog knows that, despite what most of us were taught by our parents, our ancestors actually had sex. And even though most sex has taken place in private settings, research can turn up interesting and suggestive facts. Several years ago, when I decided to “make up” a lesbian identity for a woman activist in the women’s rights movement of the early twentieth century, it seems I wasn’t far from the truth. Several of them lived together in “Boston marriages” which may or may not have included sexual activity, but these relationships were clearly more important to the women in them than most friendships.

On the subject of unconventional relationships, an interracial couple, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter, kicked off the fight for marriage equality when they got married in Washington D.C. in 1958 because their home state of Virginia (seat of the Confederacy during the American Civil War) had racist laws against “miscegenation.” Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the marriage of the Lovings, ruled such laws unconstitutional, and paved the way for same-sex marriage. A movie titled Loving was made about this couple. They could not have had a better name.

Looking up information about the Tudor era, I learned that Anne Boleyn, the tragic second wife of King Henry VIII, was admired by Sir Thomas Wyatt, the courtier who is given credit for introducing the sonnet form into English literature in the 1530s, before Queen Anne was executed on trumped-up charges of adultery, which counted as treason if one’s husband was the king. Sir Thomas was briefly imprisoned, but luckily, he escaped the fate of several other men-about-court, who were accused of being Anne’s lovers and executed with her, including her brother George.  I couldn’t resist writing about a tryst between Anne and Sir Thomas, while her lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour is occupied elsewhere. (King Henry married Jane eleven days after Anne’s execution.) And I couldn’t resist writing a love-sonnet from Sir Thomas for Anne.

My local-colour erotic novel, Prairie Gothic, is finally in print, and it includes real-life local scandals, including the mismanagement of funds that destroyed the Conservative Party of Saskatchewan in the 1990s (when my novel is set), and the murder trial of 1995 in which two young white men from prominent families (aged 18 and 20) were convicted of killing an Indigenous sex worker for sport. This crime has left repercussions in the town where I live to this day. My grown daughter was a teenager in the 1990s, and the killers were in her circle of friends, which still raises the hair on my head. My daughter was born to me when I was married to a Nigerian man, and her closest friend at the time was the daughter of another single mother, an Indigenous activist.

Did the two young white men consider their brown female “friends” to be different from the sex workers they routinely picked up? If they did, that’s a small blessing, but I’ll probably never know.

They say that no news is good news, and of course, records of criminal proceedings reveal a lot about laws that aim to regulate sexual activity. Oscar Wilde, a wildly successful Irish playwright of the Victorian Age, was convicted of “sodomy” in London exactly a hundred years before my daughter’s “friends” were convicted of murder. He had made the mistake of suing the father of his current “protege” for libel because the father referred to Wilde as a “posing somdomite,” which looks like a misspelled version of a word commonly used for man-loving men at the time, as though they were all inhabitants of the sinful city of Sodom in the Bible. This trial opened the door for damaging information about Wilde’s association with other young men to be used against him in a criminal trial. He was sentenced to prison for consensual sexual activity, and it ruined his life. After his release, Wilde (who was fluent in French and even wrote in it) went into exile in Paris, France, where he died before 1900.

My spouse, Mirtha, was hired  on a government grant to organize a group for LGBTQ senior citizens, people over age 55. One member of the group is my retired colleague from the English Department of the local university who used to run a small theatre troupe. He has proposed directing a reading of Wilde’s last play, The Importance of Being Earnest, to be performed in the LGBTQ bar and community centre in October.  This play is a romantic comedy of manners with no obviously queer content, but it seems poignant because of the context in which it was first written and performed.

Anyone who wants to write an interesting plot only needs to surf through social media, watch the TV news, read some historical sources, or sift through their own memories. Sex in various forms runs through history and literature alike. Real life doesn’t need to be embellished—or not much—to be turned into a gripping story. The research can be as much fun as the actual writing.

———————

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I Have No Idea What I’m Doing

by | September 24, 2021 | , | 1 Comment

For the longest time, I wasn’t sure I was going to finish this article. Or even start it, for that matter. In fact, I’d just about decided to email Lisabet and tell her I wouldn’t have anything this month.

Because when it comes to my writing, I usually have an idea of what I’m going to say well in advance, and then I usually spend days going over the article until I feel like it’s fit for human consumption.

But this time around, I didn’t think I had the energy because on top of my deadline for ERWA, I’d also added a few more because my ambitions are many while my resources (time, sleep, sanity, etc.) are few.

I had an article on depression to post to Medium, a flash fiction story to post on Simily, a short story that I’d been trying to edit for days, another short story to submit for a horror contest next month, agents to find for the children’s book I’d just had edited, my other children’s books to send to the same editor for polishing, the first book in a sci-fi series on its second or third revision and a pesky screenplay I’ve been meaning to get back to.

And it was during my writing of the article on depression that I literally wrote the line, ‘The only one pushing me, is me.’

I wanted to smack myself upside the head. I probably would have, if I hadn’t been so tired.

In the interest of sanity, I decided I would set a limit as to how much I could legitimately get done. I would revise this post once, and then publish it, regardless of how ugly it might be. Because forward momentum is great but there is a difference between moving forward and crashing forward and I would like to avoid one at all possible.

If I weren’t as white as a ghost, I would say I was practically freestylin’, but even writing that down makes me feel awkward.

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how I’m going to end this article. The only thing that comes to mind is a quote from a famous author whose name I can’t remember about how procrastinators and perfectionists are their own worst enemies and I know I can find that quote if you give me a second, hang on. Don’t fail me now, Google. Okay, here we go. Pro-cras-tin-a-tors and per-fec-tion-ists are their own worst…dammit…

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AI versus Writer’s Block

by | September 21, 2021 | | 0 Comments

By Lisabet Sarai

Erotic Artificial IntelligenceImage by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

It happens to all of us. You’re tooling along with your new novel, banging out a chapters as a regular pace, when all of a sudden your creativity hits a brick wall. You generate a sentence; you edit the sentence; you put it back the way it was; you delete it and start over. Hours, days, weeks, go by, and your word count remains stuck. Before long, you’re avoiding your WIP altogether, because it’s so aversive to sit there staring at the screen or the page and not be able to write.

There are many causes for writer’s block, including stress. Indeed, since the experience of being blocked is in itself stressful, the situation can degenerate into a downward spiral. Of course, sometimes inspiration simply expires, for no particular reason. Sometimes a period away from the work can rekindle your ideas or your enthusiasm. Ultimately, authors learn that writer’s block is a somewhat mysterious experience we simply have to live through and deal with, however we can.

Now, however, computer scientists at Pennsylvania State University claim to have built an artificial-intelligence-based system to help conquer writer’s block. You can read about this research here: https://news.psu.edu/story/666920/2021/08/24/research/new-tool-could-help-authors-bust-writers-block-novel-length-works

The essence of their approach is to break up the work into units of (for instance) 100 sentences, analyze the concepts in those sentences, then map the concepts to common narrative units called semantic frames, basically categorizing their content. Given a set of semantic frames from what has already been written, their system then predicts the semantic frames likely to follow. The researchers claim that translating these forecast frames back into word clouds and showing them to authors could kick-start the writer’s creativity by suggesting how the next part of the book might develop.

The system has been trained with existing novels. It has learned what semantic frames tend to follow what other semantic frames. Basically, the system has abstracted common plot arcs and tropes, as well as the sequential patterns in which they tend to occur. Given what you’ve written so far, it will suggest likely following frames based on these patterns.

Alas, I think these computer scientists live in a totally different universe from us authors. Or at least from me! In my writing, I’m constantly striving for originality. I want to surprise and delight my readers with character and plot developments they do not expect. Indeed, when I get stuck, it’s often because I don’t seem to be able to rise to the challenge of creating something new and exciting. I feel like I’m rehashing my own previous books – or someone else’s.

The last thing I need is a set of suggestions that will make my book more predictable, or more like other books on the market.

Of course, as I’ve lamented in previous posts, erotica and erotic romance have become disturbingly homogeneous and stereotyped. The books on offer may mix and match tropes and kinks, but their narrative repertoire is limited. It’s becoming more and more difficult to find stories that generate the amazement I seek in my reading – the “Oh, wow – how did the author ever think of that?” experience.

If these scientists come around offering their system to me, I’ll say no thanks. However, the longer term implications of this research are even more chilling. How long will it be before AI-based systems can generate an entire novel, with no author involved? No more than a couple of years, by my estimate. What will happen when Amazon is flooded with hundreds of alpha billionaire daddy shifter hotwife reverse harem books, composed by the computer?

I’m willing to bet that readers will buy those books, too, because the stories will predictably arouse them, pushing the buttons promised by the tropes.

Will this be the final demise of indie authors? After all, computers don’t get writer’s block.

I’m not optimistic. On the other hand, I know there are some readers who, like me, reject all the sameness, working hard to find creative and original books, books that could not have been composed by a computer because they break the rules.

All I have to do is find those readers.

Can someone create me an AI system to do that?

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Love on a Frosty Night: Marriage in 18th Century Germany

by | September 18, 2021 | | 2 Comments

By Donna George Storey

The intimate lives of our ancestors in the 1700s and 1800s will always be a mystery to us. However, as this column has shown, the dedicated writer of historical fiction can discover many windows to the past that allow us to enrich our imaginative stories with fascinating facts.

This summer, I decided to take a break from genealogical research at a subscription site. I expected I’d be filling my time with projects other than family history research. How wrong I was!

I happened to check out a free research site called Matricula.com which provides access to digitized records from some Catholic dioceses in Central Europe, especially Germany and Austria. I knew that only a fraction of available records had been scanned, so I had low expectations. To my delight, the records of the parish of Somborn, Germany, home to three of my great-great grandparents, were available dating back as far as the 1670s.

On the face of it, these records, written in Latin by a succession of priests with varying skills in penmanship, mainly provide only the basic facts of my ancestors’ births, marriages, and deaths. But if we read between the lines, we can discover some interesting details about the daily life of all of those Hufnagels, Dornheckers, and Von Rheins in 18th century Germany.

Marriage records are of course the natural focus of a writer of erotic fiction. We can find evidence of honeymoon consummations in the baptismal records, as most couples had a child within the first year after the wedding. I’ve yet to find any obvious “premature” babies among my ancestors, but I found records for illegitimate children, generally from out-of-towners–a topic I will examine next month.

One big surprise was how different marriage customs were from our own day. For example, the most popular months for weddings were January, February, and November. “Das Jubelpaar” [by Hermann Bethke (1825-1895) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons], a painting of a German couple celebrating their golden wedding anniversary, might be set in any of those months, with the snow sparkling in the dim winter light. I assume that when the fields were fallow, the villagers had more time to tend to their own fertility.

In the twenty-first century, the wedding is marketed as a gala event full of unique personal touches where the bride and groom are stars of the show. In 18th-century Germany, the church was open for weddings on weekdays—Tuesday being especially popular. Six to ten couples were married one after the other, rather like City Hall weddings today. I’ve found numerous instances where siblings were married on the same day and shared the same witnesses. Perhaps this indicates some practical economy, as the parents could host a midwinter feast of roast goose, sausages, and new wine for two children for the price of one.

After the celebration, when the couple retired to their marriage bed, they surely had to huddle together to keep warm with all that frost trimming the windows. As erotica writers, we can imagine a sweet union for bride and groom, the first time they could be alone together. A respectable couple living under the watchful eyes of parents and neighbors would have had more pressure to refrain so their children would be registered as “legitimate” in the church registry.

Married life seemed to be agreeable to the villagers in the parish of Somborn. Church records show that widowers of any age were quick to marry after the death of their spouses.

For example, Anton Zwergle married my sixth great-grandmother, Anna Maria Schaffrath, six weeks after his first wife died. Anna Maria waited a year and a half after her husband Melchior Schneider’s sudden death at age 33 to marry Anton in November 1732. She brought three young children into the marriage and had several more with Anton. No doubt before microwaves and washing machines, a wife was missed on long November nights. A husband’s economic support was likely missed just as keenly.

Peter Von Rhein, both my fifth and sixth great grandfathers, had three wives. He married his first wife, Katharina in 1729. Katharina died in 1750 while giving birth to their tenth child. Peter then married Eva Poer on 2 July 1753. Eva died on August 11, just one month later, and Peter went on to marry my ancestor, 31-year-old Elisabeth Peter, on 24 January 1754 at the age of 56. The couple had four more children, the last when Peter was 66.

 

Two of those Von Rhein daughters, Gertrude and Katharina, married two Hufnagel brothers, Lorenz and Andreas. The great-grandson of Andreas, Peter Hufnagel, ended up marrying the great-great granddaughter of Lorenz, Catharine Hufnagel, in Pennsylvania in 1888. Peter Hufnagel and Catharine Hufnagel were double third cousins—and my great-grandparents, pictured above! (For those of you who have not joined the genealogy craze, this is some serious-fun discovery for a family historian).

Most couples in the 18th and 19th centuries had a baby every other year until the wife was in her forties. Some births were closer, but this usually meant the previous baby hadn’t survived long. In my genealogy research, I assemble a list of births for a family, then check the death registry. I’d guess that over half of the babies born didn’t survive past the age of 3. And yet my ancestors soldiered on, marrying, birthing, and dying generation after generation, through the Thirty Years War and Napoleon’s advances and retreats, until many decided to try their luck in Pennsylvania–which still has the most residents named “Hufnagel” in the country, a fact that surely makes other all other states very jealous!

So, my dear reader and writer, remember that inspiration for our stories lies in many surprising places, including dusty church records that were once meant for the eyes of a few local priests. Armed with hard-won facts, and our vivid imaginations, we can surely celebrate our ancestors’ wedding days and nights once again.

Write on!

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Dear Advice Lady

by | September 13, 2021 | | 2 Comments

I read a Dear Abby letter that hit close to home for me as a writer. For the record, I don’t always subscribe to her advice (nor that of the self-proclaimed Goddess of Love, Amy Alcorn), but this one letter made me think “Been there, dealt with that.”

It was from a woman who writes romance novels as a hobby and side business. (Hmm, sounding familiar yet? Read on). She pointed out that she’s happily married to the man of her dreams. It seems that her husband becomes sullen and irritated after reading depictions of the men in her stories, believing that they’re based on an actual person or former boyfriend, even though she insists that they aren’t.

Dearest Abby’s advice was that if the man of her dreams couldn’t accept her explanation, he should stop reading her books. Gee, why didn’t I think of that?

This brought back a few flashbacks for me, and possibly for some of you. Like many of us, I have recited the “This is a work of fiction…” speech so many times I don’t have to be fully awake to launch into it. Some people ignore the disclaimer we all put after the title page, and that’s the danger of your friends and family reading your books. They become convinced that you used a mutual acquaintance or relative as the basis for a character. I don’t mind answering that question, but when they ask if any of the intimate scenes were based on personal experience, I merely smile and keep my mouth shut.

I’ve gotten so cautious that in one of my crime thrillers, I went one better. The publisher included the usual warning, but I added one of my own. I stated that while the location of the story was real, the characters, places and events I depicted were not intended to resemble an actual person or occurrence. I had a good reason for taking this extra step: the story had my hero going up against the Mafia. I didn’t want to answer my door in the middle of the night and find two guys inviting me to go for a ride.

The Dear Abby letter reminded me of an anecdote I read about Ian Fleming. His James Bond adventures were very popular in the 1950’s but apparently, his wife was a literary snob who didn’t think much of her husband’s work. She was quoted as saying “I wouldn’t soil my hands with that filthy rubbish.” This likely explains why Fleming had a mistress. I have a friend who has been successful with his erotic fiction, but his wife also refuses to acknowledge or talk about it, even though it supplements his retirement income.

This brings up the deathtrap we all have to cope with regarding content. There is currently no formal rating system for books like there is for movies, music, TV shows, and video games. As writers, we should be responsible enough to alert readers if our books contain adult material. This is not only considerate, it’s good business. I don’t want to lose potential customers because one reader became offended and told their friends not to buy my stuff because I write “dirty books.” I have also tempered my sales pitches at book signings when I’m approached by younger readers.

I’ve been fortunate that I’ve never had to answer the dreaded question about character similarities from anyone I’ve been romantically involved with. They’ve all read my books and while they may have picked up on a personality trait or physical characteristic, I’ve not been asked if they were inspired by someone real. If the question had come up, I would’ve been honest —“Why no, of course not, honey! You know what an active imagination writers have.” If that didn’t work, I suppose I could always fall back on poetic license and hope for the best.

It reminds me of the feud between Mario Puzo and Frank Sinatra over “The Godfather.” It was widely assumed that the character of Johnny Fontaine, a mobbed-up pop singer, was based on Sinatra’s life and career. Naturally Puzo denied it, saying it was a composite of several entertainers, but Sinatra refused to believe it. (And I thought I was overly sensitive!) The whole thing might have died down had it not been for Sinatra’s pal, Dean Martin. When asked about it during an interview, Martin gave a wink, a smile and said “One never knows, does one?”

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The Importance of the Newsletter

by | September 6, 2021 | | 1 Comment

by Ashley Lister

I read the following in a recent Forbes article extolling the virtues of the newsletter: “Newsletters are imperative in taking your brand marketing to the next level.”


They went on to say: “An email newsletter is basically an email used in a marketing campaign. It contains important news and updates to make your audience aware of your brand or products and other significant information. It’s a cost-effective medium used to boost business.”

Prior to my sudden conversion to marketing and self-publishing, I had no interest in newsletters and deliberately avoided creating one. My excuses were as follows –

1. Who would want to read my newsletter?
2. Wouldn’t it just piss readers off to receive a regular newsletter?
3. What would I put in a newsletter?
4. Does anyone ever get sales from a newsletter?
5. If I did decide to annoy readers with a newsletter, where the hell would I start?

I’ll go through each of these points individually, below.

1. Who would want to read my newsletter?
Newsletters are popular. If you’ve written something, whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, a blog post or something/anything else, it will have been read by someone. If that reader enjoyed what you wrote, there’s a strong chance they would welcome a newsletter from you pointing them in the direction of more of your writing.

2. Wouldn’t it just piss readers off to receive a regular newsletter?
Not really. Studies have shown that readers love it when writers reach out to them. In the simplest terms, if a reader isn’t reading your newsletter, they’re reading one from a potential competitor. Some people (and I’m one of them) do occasionally get pissed off with unwanted newsletters and they then hit the unsubscribe button. Those who haven’t unsubscribed aren’t pissed off.

3. What would I put in a newsletter?
You know your readers. Tell them about what you’re writing. Share links to stuff that you’ve published. Share parts of your life that you’re comfortable with making public. I’m fortunate in that I share a house with a photogenic dog. Is his existence relevant to my writing? No. But I’m sure there are some readers out there more interested in his development than they are in my writing and I believe they only buy the occasional book because they’re hoping the royalties I make will be spent on dog food.
Include links to your writing, links to sales areas and links to reviews. Include links to anything that you think your readers will find interesting or relevant.

4. Does anyone ever get sales from a newsletter?
Short answer: YES. I sell most of my work through Amazon and this means I can monitor sales through the app Book Report. On the two days following the sending of a newsletter I will invariably see a marked increase in sales. Because this pattern is so consistent, I can only conclude that the sales are related to the newsletter.

5. If I did decide to annoy readers with a newsletter, where the hell would I start?
I’m currently using Mailchimp for my own distribution but there are other newsletter tools out there such as Mailjet, ConvertKit, Mailerlite etc. Personally I find Mailchimp easy to use and the fact that it’s free until I reach 2,000 subscribers means that it’s currently cost efficient.

I’m building the mailing list through BookFunnel, which is allowing me to get my work seen by a substantial number of readers who wouldn’t previously have had an opportunity to see my work. Some of those might see my writing and decide they were happier before they’d read my writing. Others (the ones who will stay subscribed) enjoy what they’ve read and want to see more.

 

As it said in the article from Forbes: “it’s time to realize that newsletters are an important component of effective email marketing and branding. Ignoring them can restrict brands from growth.”
And, although we know that size doesn’t really matter, I’m sure we can all benefit from a little growth.

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