A Woman's Voice

 "A woman with a voice is, by definition, a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult."  -  Melinda Gates, Philanthropist

I continue to struggle with finding my voice. Much of it has to do with self-doubt and allowing myself to be intimidated. The fear of making someone angry and the deep seated need to keep the peace, and that my silence will ensure it, controls me. I allow myself to be suppressed, even though I grew up full of questions about the world. I promised myself it would be different for me; sadly I failed at achieving that goal. I enable other people's insecurities and inferiorities into bullying me and controlling my actions. Silence is my accountability.

My voice is loud in my published books and short stories. In this, I am proud. When I write, I'm unleashing the voice. Expressions. Stories. Feelings. Thinking. Questions. Descriptions. Loud. Soft. 

While I continue to work on the latest book, the four below remain available. My voice is heard through the many characters waiting to tell readers a story. I appreciate all who have read them and listened to their stories. 

Williamsburg Hill. Daniel's Esperanza. Funny Pages. Billy's First Dance. All are available on Amazon or can be ordered through your local bookstore. The short stories, and eleven years worth of blog posts here are my voice. Mine. Once again, thank you to those regulars and those who drop in every now and then. Shout-outs, shares, recommendations, and recognition are appreciated.

There's Still Time...

As always, I appreciate orders of my books, photographs and art. There is still time to buy holiday gifts for family and friends. My latest book, Williamsburg Hill, is available for purchase in paperback for $11.95 via Amazon. If you're shopping in Memphis, it can be found at Novel Bookstore in Laurelwood, and at Cotton Row Uniques.

If Kindle is your thing, the book is a $4.99 download. However, for a short time, it can be read for free as part of the Kindle Unlimited program. That will end in January.

Of course, my photos, art and all types of gifts can be found on my photography website, www.veronica-batterson.pixels.com.

Your support means so much to me. All purchases are appreciated, and please let me know if you make one. Feedback is very important.

Thanks very much...Happy Holidays, and Happy Shopping!

Williamsburg Hill - Published

It has been a while since my last book was published, so I've forgotten everything that has to happen post-publishing...a lot! At some point, it's worthy of a blog post. So is the writing, proofreading, editing, rewriting, submitting, publishing process, which will include the nitty gritty of submitting to literary agents (and it's not pretty). But this post is about the finished product.

My book, Williamsburg Hill, is now published and available for purchase in paperback and Kindle on Amazon (Williamsburg Hill). A little back cover blurb is included below. It's mainly historical fiction, but crosses a few genres. If you're interested in the backstory of how this book came to be, a recent blog post explains it (backstory). The beautiful Ridge Cemetery plays prominently. Thank you to all who have purchased it so far. It's appreciated. Also, it's part of the Kindle Unlimited promotion on Amazon, so for those of you participating in that, it's a free read. That might apply to Prime members, as well. At any rate, thank you, and please, please, please...reviews are so very appreciated.
And that Halloween post isn't going to happen. Apologies, but I've been a little busy.

About the story...

When history touches the present through an old ghost town, its cemetery, and an ancestral piece of furniture passed down through the ages, a story connecting two generations and eras unfolds.  

Chicago, 2015.  One year after her divorce, Chicago antique dealer Rose Beecham suddenly acquires a beautiful 19^th century dressing table at auction. Intending to resell it, something about the piece of furniture makes her hesitate. Tagged with the maker’s mark Dunaway Carpentry, Established 1840, Williamsburg Hill, Illinois underneath it, Rose finds a hidden compartment in one of the drawers revealing a garnet ring and an old daguerreotype of a young couple.  One other item remains hidden within the drawer, just out of reach. Instincts tell her that is the answer to the item’s provenance, and she must find a way to retrieve it. But someone else is looking for the heirloom and is determined to acquire it at any cost. With the help of Robert Moray, the Scottish man who has reentered Rose’s life, they piece together the mystery, leading her to discover ancestors that she never knew existed, and allowing a reconnection with her adoptive family.

Williamsburg Hill, Illinois, 1880.  Evelyn Williams travels to Williamsburg Hill from St. Louis to visit her aunt, and to escape a ghost from her past. She meets Frederic Dunaway, a man descended from Potawatomi heritage whose family built much of Williamsburg. Can he protect Evelyn from the person who is in search of her because of the valuable land she will inherit?  As outlaws close in, and the new railroad threatens the future of the town and stagecoach line, things aren’t as they appear to be. With danger looming, including murder, will Evelyn heed the ramblings of a grizzled old loner named Erastus who says the dead speak to him?

The Backstory to Williamsburg Hill

My novel Williamsburg Hill will be published soon, and I thought I'd share the backstory of how it started.  The genre is historical fiction with a dual timeline (present day and 19th century).  The back cover blurb begins with the following:

When history touches the present through an old ghost town, its cemetery, and an ancestral piece of furniture passed down through generations…

The Backstory:

In early 2014, I began listing ideas for my next book.  Historical fiction was a genre that I wished to attempt, but it was important to me that the historical part of the book be something that wouldn’t present a lot of challenges with research.  I lived in the Chicago area at the time, so I assumed some localized history would be easy enough to research; if travel were required, it would be simple to do by car.  Easy and simple were far from reality, as I discovered, with legends and lore playing greater roles than historical documents in creating this book.

I read about a town in south central Illinois, once active due to its main street being part of the Old Anglin’ Road stage coach route, that became non-existent in the late 1800s.  The town of Williamsburg (or village as some referred to it) was founded in 1839, and the region was referred to as Cold Spring.  Established at the time with a mill, the stage line, a general store, a blacksmith and postmaster, a medical doctor, Masonic hall and Methodist church, it is difficult to imagine how progress ultimately crippled the area and made it a ghost town.  In 1881, the stage line was discontinued as train travel replaced it, and the railroad tracks bypassed Williamsburg.  Residents and businesses moved, most to nearby Lakewood, leaving their former town to waste away.   

Williamsburg was located on the south side of Williamsburg Hill which still stands as the highest point in the area at over 800 feet.  Some speculate the hill was formed due to glaciers; others seem to think it to be an Indian mound.  There is really no definitive answer to its existence.  But resting at the top of Williamsburg Hill is Ridge Cemetery, still accessible today.  And there was the basis of my story.

I traveled to Ridge Cemetery twice (in 2014 and 2016).  It isn’t a place that one simply discovers on an afternoon drive. It is a pre-planned destination; its isolation is assurance of this.  It also isn’t a place a person should travel to alone.  As there is much folklore but little history that I could find about the cemetery, I assume it originated around the time that the village of Williamsburg did.  The dates on many of the tombstones verify this, but there are recent burials there as well.  It is an old cemetery, yet a currently used one; it is serene and peaceful, while strange and a little unnerving; it’s beautiful, yet rugged; maintained but weathered.  And yes, it is somewhat creepy.

The cast of characters in this story are fictional, with the exception of J.P. Dunaway, J.W. Torbutt, Dr. Thomas Fritts, and Orville Robertson.  Their occupations in my book are true to their history.  What is a little sketchy about them might be the location of where they settled.  I was fully into writing when I discovered a first-person historical account by a Dunaway descendant indicating the family had lived in Findlay, Illinois, not Williamsburg.  Because I was too far into the story to change anything, I took liberties.  Documented history about the area wasn’t easy to find, but plenty of folklore existed, so much of what I wrote is based on this.  And most of the folklore indicates these four figures and their families were part of Williamsburg Hill, at least at some point during the town’s reign.  It was important, perhaps out of obligation, to briefly mention the town of Findlay at the end though, which I did.  I also interchanged Williamsburg and Williamsburg Hill within the story, because it seemed to me that people living there would’ve done this as a way of generally referring to their home.

Finally, there is nothing left of Williamsburg.  Ridge Cemetery is not private, but open to anyone who wishes to visit as long as it’s done during the daylight hours.  It is a place deserving of respect.  If visiting, observe its history, wonder about its past, and listen quietly.  Perhaps you, too, will then hear the voices and laughter dancing through the breeze just as my character, Erastus, did.    

Resources for Writers

The next step.  If you're a writer and looking for ways to get your manuscript traditionally published, visit www.writersmarket.com, and www.querytracker.net for the next prompts.  Both provide valuable information regarding literary agents, agencies, genres they accept, their websites, locations and timeframes.  It's important to visit the websites of each agency to make sure the agents aren't closed to submissions, then follow each agency's rules for submissions exactly.  Learn to be patient, and don't take rejections personally.  Remember: a legitimate literary agency does not charge a fee for submitting (it's free).  Best of luck!

The War of the Worlds

Between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. on October 30, 1938, listeners tuning in to the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) radio broadcast thought they were listening to live orchestral music from Park Plaza in New York.  What they weren’t expecting to hear were special bulletins and interviews interrupting the hour-long program.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars…Ladies and gentlemen…Seismograph registered shock of almost earthquake intensity occurring within a radius of twenty miles of Princeton. Please investigate…Could this occurrence possibly have something to do with the disturbances observed on the planet Mars? Ladies and gentlemen…It is reported that at 8:50 p.m. a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a farm in the neighborhood of Grovers Mill, New Jersey…we have dispatched a special mobile unit to the scene…Ladies and gentlemen…object itself doesn’t look very much like a meteor…looks more like a huge cylinder…I’ve never seen anything like it…Just a minute…something’s happening! Ladies and gentlemen…this is terrific…the top is beginning to rotate like a screw…she’s moving…the darn thing’s unscrewing…keep back, keep back! Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever witnessed…SCREAMS AND UNEARTHLY SHRIEKS…now the whole field’s caught fire…EXPLOSION THEN DEAD SILENCE.”

Then a little bit later, “Ladies and gentlemen…I’m speaking from the roof of the Broadcasting Building, New York City. The bells you hear are ringing to warn the people to evacuate the city as the Martians approach. Estimated in the last two hours three million people have moved out along the road to the north, Hutchison River Parkway still kept open for motor traffic. Avoid bridges to Long Island…hopelessly jammed. All communication with Jersey shore closed ten minutes ago. No more defenses. Our army wiped out…artillery, air force, everything wiped out. This may be the last broadcast. We’ll stay here to the end…People are holding service below us…in the cathedral.”

Now imagine what might have been going through listeners’ minds who had tuned in to the program midway through it, hearing claims that aliens from Mars had invaded New Jersey.  With the concerns of World War II imminent, hysteria and panic ensued; the phone lines at CBS were jammed with callers, and police officers arrived at the studio ready to shut down the production.  It wasn’t until the close of that long hour that all was revealed to be what it really was: a Halloween hoax, orchestrated by a young Orson Welles.  The above was taken as excerpts from the radio transcript airing that night.

The twenty-three-year-old Welles directed and narrated an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ (no relation) science fiction classic, The War of the Worlds, for an episode of the Mercury Theatre on the Air, complete with live bulletins and sound effects. While the novel’s aliens invaded Great Britain, Welles and company had the Martians landing in the United States with actors reacting to the fictional tale.  It stirred up a lot of trouble for the network and the actors, with the Federal Communications Commission launching an investigation into Welles that would eventually be dropped.  The actor even lamented that he feared his career was over.

Legend of the panic escalated and grew over the years.  Decades later, some say the panic was nothing more than myth and hype created mostly by newspapers taking vengeance against broadcasters. They argued that the Mercury Theatre on the Air had few listeners, and the newspapers sensationalized the coverage to place doubt with advertisers about the integrity of radio broadcasts.  It seemed to be about revenue.

Orson Welles didn’t disappear; he lived until the age of seventy, working in theatre, film and radio.  I first learned about the early radio broadcast during a film class in college.  We researched Welles and watched his 1941 classic, Citizen Kane (with Welles’ character based on newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst). Told in flashback, the movie is about a reporter who goes in search of discovering the meaning of Kane’s dying word, “Rosebud”.  While I won’t give away the meaning behind it, I do recall being rather close in what I thought it to be. I also remember thinking Orson Welles (as co-screenwriter) was very clever with that script; some probably believe he was just as clever in what he did with that radio broadcast three years earlier, even though he claimed there was no intent behind it.

Finally, as we near the 79^th anniversary of that infamous broadcast which instilled fear and belief that Martians were walking on earth, I’ll end with the final statement of the transcript.  Also, Happy Halloween, everyone.  May there be no Martians threatening tricks this All Hallows’ Eve.

“Orson Welles:  This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that The War of the Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be.  The Mercury Theatre’s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo! Starting now, we couldn’t soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night…so we did the best next thing.  We annihilated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the C.B.S.  You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn’t mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business.  So, goodbye everybody, and remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight.  That grinning, glowing globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian…it’s Hallowe’en.”

Part of the transcript for the 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds