Christians Read

By Marilyn Turk

Last weekend I watched a professional tennis tournament. As a social tennis player, I was amazed at the difference between how the professionals play and how I play I’m sure that most of the spectators shared the same thought I had, “I wish I could play like that.” But then the absurdity of that thought hit me. There are several reasons I don’t play like they do, and many of those reasons could apply to writing as well. Comparing my tennis game to the pros is like comparing my writing to that of best-selling writers. And this is why:

• Professional tennis players weren’t born professional. They developed their skills over time. Writers too, don’t usually start out writing best sellers. Writing skills must be developed over time. Professional tennis players have been playing much longer than I have. Most best-selling writers have been writing much longer than I have too.
• Practice, practice, practice. Professional tennis players practice every day. They know that if they want to get better, they must practice. For the same reason, writers should write every day.
• Professional tennis players try to improve their game. They don’t just play, they try to get better at their sport. In the same way, writers need to try to improve their writing.
• Professional tennis players listen to their coaches. If a coach tells a player what they do wrong, the player tries to correct. It. Writers have editors and critiquers who tell them what they do wrong, and how to correct their writing. Only by making the changes will a writer improve their writing.
• A tennis player who wants to increase their ranking must stay focused on the game and not be distracted by things going on around them. Writers, too, need to shut out the distractions so they can focus on their writing.
• Professional tennis players know their commitment means they must give up other time-consuming habits to play tennis. Writers too, must give up other things, for example, TV, that takes time away from writing.
• Tennis players sometimes lose games, but they don’t give up. Writers get rejected, but maintaining a positive attitude is essential to progress.
• Tennis can be lonely for these professionals who travel often, so they bond with other tennis players. Writing too, is a lonely activity, but developing relationships with other writers builds support and camaraderie.

To summarize, to be a good tennis player requires dedication to the goal. Good writing also requires staying dedicated to the goals of finishing,      improving, and succeeding. If I want my writing to be as good as top writers, I must be willing to make the investment they make. If not, my writing  will never get any better, and I’ll have no excuse to say, “I wish my writing was as good as …………”

“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13-14 NIV

As a fiction author, I understand that sometimes professional historians have little use for historical novels because they think these books often have no basis in truth. But if the author has done her job, fictional stories can surreptitiously teach readers some wonderful historical facts.

When I was teaching college English and Humanities classes, I attended a faculty meeting during which our department head mentioned he was reading a fascinating book about the flu epidemic of 1918. Everyone around me groaned, but I said, “Cool. What’s the title?” I’m always on the lookout for books that contain important information about the past. One day I might write a book about WWI, and that flu epidemic must not be overlooked. Needless to say, I’m very enthusiastic when it comes to historical details.

I fell in love with history when I was about ten years old and my family visited the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. There I learned about a few courageous men who stood against a vast army and inspired other Texans to fight for their independence.

At about that same age, I fell in love with fiction when I saw Mary Martin play Peter Pan on black and white television in the 1950s and learned the joys of make-believe. As a teenager, I loved historical novels such as Jane Eyre, The Robe, and Tale of Two Cities. Even the movies I watched were more often historical in nature rather than contemporary: Laurence Olivier’s Pride and Prejudice, Errol Flynn in Robin Hood, and Robert Stack in John Paul Jones.

When I was an English and humanities professor, I was often dismayed by the lack of interest in and knowledge of history among my students. David McCullough, the author of many popular histories, including John Adams and 1776, said, “If we raise generation after generation of young Americans who are historically illiterate, we run a great risk. You can have amnesia as a society, which is just as dangerous as amnesia for an individual.”

Author J. M. Hochstetler says: “The results of history tests taken as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Nation’s Report Card) show that our children aren’t learning some of the basics of our nation’s past. Historians, educators, and even lawmakers are very concerned. They’re afraid that our students are losing touch with the great ideals and principles that are the foundations of who we are. And they’re concerned about what the consequences of this will be for our future.”

But what can be done to remedy the problem?

We can agree that it’s vitally important to teach the truths contained in history so our children can grow up to be responsible, contributing citizens and to ensure that our nation doesn’t fall prey to the mistakes of the past. But in practical fact, how are we going to help students to realize that what happened in the past has everything to do with who they are and the life they’re living today? How can we teach them that history really belongs to them?

Everyone loves a story. When we listen to or read a story, we unconsciously lower our defenses and open our hearts to underlying universal themes such as love and hate, fear and hope, revenge and forgiveness. Well-written, carefully researched historical fiction allows readers to identify with the story’s characters and experience a world that is only outwardly different from their own—in other words, to really GET history on an intimate level and to CARE about it.

With this desire to teach history through my own fiction, my own novels, I have developed a strong conviction about presenting historical facts as accurately as I can.

Most of us have no objection to an author telling a story set against a backdrop of actual history for the purpose of entertaining readers. However, if an author or moviemaker decides to twist historical facts to suit some other agenda, those of us who love history are prone to take exception. Above I mentioned the movie John Paul Jones, a biopic of a great American naval patriot who helped the United States win its independence from Britain.

But I must hasten to add that Hollywood has always loved to mess with history. Why tell the fascinating truth about one of America’s first great heroes when you can tangle it up with all sorts of fictional intrigues? John Paul Jones had enough going on in his life without involving him in a love triangle with Patrick Henry and the woman Henry married. And since Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia in 1790, he couldn’t have been at Jones’s deathbed in Paris in 1792, as the film shows. Admittedly, John Paul Jones was filmed in 1959. But have the movie makers changed any over the years?

Consider this example of a more recent movie titled, The Aryan Couple, starring Martin Landau, one of my favorite actors. According to movie reviewer Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel, “The Aryan Couple is the worst Holocaust movie ever.” Moore reports that the film is riddled with impossibilities for its setting, Nazi-occupied Hungary in 1944. In the story, a wealthy Jewish man has been able not only to avoid being carted off to a concentration camp, but he also still lives a lavish lifestyle in his castle in the country—that late in the war. If a young person attending this movie is interested in learning about the way people lived in WWII, what a distorted and wrong picture they will see. As Moore says, “Hollywood is forever finding new ways to tinker with history.” Unfortunately, many young people learn about history and even great fiction of the past from such films as this one.

Another example of Hollywood gone wrong is a 1995 movie based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The heroine seemed to be taking her cues from the modern feminist movement. Someone said to me, “Well, this is just another telling of the story.” And one of my female students said, “If I’d lived back then, I’d stand up for my rights!” All I can say in response is that, in the time in which this story took place, women who acted out of line were shunned or drowned or hanged or burned as witches. That is history. Another one of my students wrote her assigned book report on The Scarlet Letter using the movie rather than actually reading the book. She had no clue that these two were substantially different, with the movie utterly distorting Hawthorne’s great story. And she was shocked to receive a failing grade. (At left, Hester Prynne, heroine of The Scarlet Letter.)

In producing a movie or writing a book, we should not change history. We shortchange our audiences, whether readers or moviegoers, students or adults, if we take today’s issues and place them in the past when such things were not possible. It’s so important to stick to historical fact. Each era of humankind has had enough issues of its own to teach succeeding generations what they need to know about the human condition. Let’s stick to reality. Let’s stick to truth about the past, as learned from trustworthy sources, so we can feel confident in the historical information we’re passing on to coming generations.

With that conviction in mind, when I set out to write any book, I commit myself to arduous and extensive research so to the best of my ability I would get it right historically. It’s always worth the journey.

So, what does a writer need to do to tell a good story? She must have characters with interesting internal and external conflicts and enough motivation to overcome them; a setting, which I define as time, place, and social environment; and of course, a plot, the storyline, the things that happen to and around the characters.

In order to turn history into fiction, I take three steps: first, develop those compelling characters my readers will identify with and care about; second, place them in real historical settings with actual events and real people, and third, start digging for the historical details that will flesh out my tale: the ideas our ancestors thought and the daily realities they dealt with. What were their philosophies, their struggles? How did they have fun? What did they eat? What kind of plumbing did they have. . .or not have? Digging out those details is like a treasure hunt to me.

I firmly believe we should use fiction to ignite interest in history and show students how interesting it can be. No one can ever know the absolute truth about every detail of history. In recent years, new information has come to light through documents and letters about the 1836 siege of the Alamo, where I got my first taste of delicious history. But nothing can change the fact that the courage of those who died that day in San Antonio inspired other Texans to fight for independence. In the April 2006 Smithsonian magazine, certainly a credible source, there are interesting questions raised about the recovery of John Paul Jones’s body. But nothing can diminish his heroic achievements in our American Revolution.

The unchangeable truth we can all agree on is that our children need to know American history and how it affects them, how their forefathers and foremothers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to ensure the freedom of future generations.

If it takes a fictional story, based of course in reality and historical truths, to attract our children to the importance of the past, by all means, let those stories be told!

(All pictures are from Wiki Commons and are in the public domain.)

Today is National Paperclip Day!

I know, if you are like me you’re thinking, really? There really is a day for everything, isn’t there.

But did you know…

Paperclips are not just for holding papers together. There are many other things that you can do with them!

• Replace a zipper tab
• Unclog a spray bottle
• Unclog a single serve coffee maker
• Hem holder
• Emergency hooks for broken necklaces

The Paper Clip Project

During World War II this small, universal office supply provided a visual method of protest at a time when any outward signs of objection could be dangerous, even in familiar company.

Early in the war, Norwegians were particularly persistent in their development of symbols. The paper clip represented “sticking together” for a time until the Nazis caught on and banned the wearing of paper clips.

According to a March 5, 1941, Provo, Utah newspaper article (The Daily Herald), the Norwegians switched to new symbols as quickly as the bans could be issued.
In 1998, a group of middle school students led by language arts teacher Sandra Roberts and associate principal David Smith began a project through a Holocaust education class. The voluntary after-school class, Whitwell Middle School principal Linda Hooper’s idea, would be the foundation for developing tolerance and diversity.

Inspired by the story of the protesting Norwegians and their paper clips, the students began to collect six million paper clips – one paper clip representing one Jew who perished during the Holocaust. Adults today still wrestle with how the Holocaust could occur. Imagine middle school students trying understand the magnitude of such an event on humanity.

The Paper Clip Project gained international attention and by 2001 the students collected more than 30 million paper clips. The school dedicated a Children’s Holocaust Memorial which displays an authentic German railcar filled with a portion of the paper clips.

For more information on this inspiring story, the book and film that followed visit www.oneclipatatime.org

After I read about The Paperclip Project I was both surprised and I admit I had a newfound respect for the paperclip. It just goes to show you, even the smallest of things can be used for good.

So, I hope you have a happy Paperclip Day.

All the best…

Mary Alford

http://www.maryalford.net

Welcome, Christy. We’re happy to have you here with us today. Can you tell us a little about how you started your writing career? 

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. The desire started when I began reading Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden in elementary school. After that, I was hooked. I even wrote a few books in high school (that will never see the light of day!).

Then I went off to college to get a degree in communications, figuring it was too bad I couldn’t get a bachelors in novel writing and instantly find a job. If only it was that easy! After college I got a job with a Christian publishing house, and I thought I’d found my purpose: editing.

But at 23 my father became ill with Alzheimer’s disease, and I had to make a choice. I decided to give up my job and move twelve hours away, back home to be with him.

It was while I sat by my dad’s bedside that I rediscovered my love for writing. I also began freelancing and became a reporter for my local newspaper. I continued to learn my craft by participating in critique groups and going to writer’s conferences. I got an agent, lost an agent, almost got signed to publishing houses, and got signed only to have those very contracts fall through.

Eventually my first book was published, and I discovered that even once you had a contract, publishing was still a rocky road. But I pushed on ahead, determined to do what I felt was a call on my life.

Fast forward eighteen years after I moved home to be with my father, and I’ve now published sixty-four books. I’ve garnered several awards and even a movie deal. I’m so happy that I was faithful to God’s call in my life. It hasn’t always been easy, but the journey has been worth it.

About Christy:

USA Today has called Christy Barritt’s books “scary, funny, passionate, and quirky.”

A Publishers Weekly best-seller, Christy writes both mystery and romantic suspense novels that are clean with underlying messages of faith. Her books have won the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Suspense and Mystery, have been twice nominated for the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award, and have finaled for both a Carol Award and Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year.

She’s married to her prince charming, a man who thinks she’s hilarious—but only when she’s not trying to be. Christy’s a self-proclaimed klutz, an avid music lover who’s known for spontaneously bursting into song, and a road trip aficionado.

Christy currently splits her time between the Virginia suburbs and Hatteras Island, North Carolina. She has more than sixty books published with over one million copies sold.

For more information, visit her website: www.christybarritt.com.

Christy’s latest series is the Lantern Beach Mysteries, featuring a detective that must go into hiding on a fictional island off north Carolina’s coast.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Christy.

All the best…

Mary Alford

This is my second post about my novel Son of Perdition, a coming-of-age story about the son of Captain Ahab of Moby Dick infamy. In my May 3 post, I mentioned a book I used for research about the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Charles Todorich’s The Spirited Years: A History of the Antebellum Naval Academy (Naval Institute Press, 1984).

While conducting his research, Charles uncovered first person letters and narratives that revealed the agony many of the academy’s young midshipmen experienced in deciding what to do once war was imminent. During their arduous training, these midshipmen had forged friendships they never expected to dissolve, much less that they’d ever be required to shoot at one other with intent to kill. But after the election of Abraham Lincoln, war was unavoidable, and each young man had to obey the calls of his home state, his parents, and his own deeply held convictions regarding slavery. The letters written during this traumatic time make it clear the midshipmen knew the war was over slavery, though some preferred…and still prefer…to couch it in the benign term “states’ rights.”

By April 1861, several southern students had resigned their commissions and gone home. “Their lives about to be forever altered by forces beyond their control, the midshipmen of the North and South bid each other farewell…the great events unfolding around them transformed the midshipmen into men, but this did not hold back the tears. Though soon to be their enemies in war, the seceders were treated as ‘erring brethren,’ not traitors, and the closing days of the antebellum Naval Academy saw many poignant scenes” (Todorich 195). ( At left is a line of antebellum midshipmen on the academy parade ground.)

I incorporated this account and others from Charles’s book in my story. Here is my rendering of one such scene. My fictional characters are Timothy and Hart from the north, and southern boys Beau and Wils. Midshipmen William T. Sampson and Charles W. Flusser and commandant Lieutenant Christopher R. P. Rodgers were real men who spoke the words repeated at the end of this segment.

****

Timothy looked at Hart and then studied his two southern friends. “What about you? Are you going to leave?”

Beau shrugged. “I wrote to my father. I guess I’ll do whatever he tells me. I have no doubt Louisiana will follow South Carolina in secession.”

Wils bent his head. “I expect Maryland will secede, as well. If we do, I’m bound to my home state.”

Timothy thumped his fist on the table. “Come on, fellas. What happened to ‘My country, right or wrong’?”

“‘Navy first, last, and always’?” Hart added.

Beau and Wils traded a look, and both shrugged. They all sat in silence for several minutes.

Beau put his head in his hands. “I can’t think of it. I just can’t think of ever firing on the Stars and Stripes. Why did that fool Lincoln have to get elected anyway? He received less than forty percent of the popular votes and not one southern electoral vote. You’d think our opinions didn’t even matter to the rest of the country.”

How Timothy burned to tell Beau whose fault it really was—the slaveowners. But he had no heart for a fight. Until coming to the academy, he had considered all slaveowners as nameless, faceless monsters. But Beau possessed a golden character. Loyal, fearless, strong, kind, generous … and completely blind to the evils on which his family fortune was founded.

“You think there’ll be war?” said Hart.

“Only if that Lincoln fellow causes it,” said Wils. “He just needs to let us go. We’ll establish our own country, and pretty soon we’ll have a treaty with the United States. Everything will be fine and neighborly. If he’s got a lick of sense, he’ll just let us go.”

Timothy stared at Wils. Did he really believe it was that simple? Lincoln had promised in his campaign to keep the country together. Yet looking at Wils and Beau, he could not think of fighting them. In gunnery practice, they had always imagined real-life enemies and gleefully demolished them. But to stare down the sight of a gun at one of these men … no, he could never do it.

As if reading his thoughts, Beau gazed at him, his eyes filling with tears. He shook his head and brushed them away. “It shouldn’t be this way. It just shouldn’t.”

Timothy, Hart, and Wils hummed their agreement, unable to say anything more.

The following week, Beau returned to Timothy’s room clutching a letter. It could mean only one thing. Timothy held his breath.

“I have to go,” Beau choked out. “My father said to come home right away.”

Timothy hung on his friend, trying unsuccessfully to hold back his own tears. He skipped class and helped Beau pack.

Once the job was done, the stewards carried the baggage downstairs to the waiting carriage. Wils and Hart, along with classmates Sampson and Flusser, joined Timothy to bid André Beauchamp farewell. They hung on each other and formed a procession on their way out of the barracks, singing discordant friendship songs in an attempt to bolster their spirits.

As they reached the ground floor and headed toward the Main Gate, the commandant, Lieutenant Rodgers rushed from his quarters, his eyes blazing. “What’s the meaning of this rioting? Why aren’t you men in class?”

Timothy could not speak, but Sampson said, “No riot, sir. We’re only bidding our classmate goodbye.”

Rodgers regarded them for a moment, then sighed, and gave them a sympathetic nod. “Ah, yes. Carry on, men.”

****

Sent to Annapolis to serve their country, bonded in friendship closer than brothers, these four young friends are wrenched apart by issues over which they have no control. If I have succeeded in drawing my readers into my story, by this point they will be grieving for all of them.

Historical fiction takes us away from our daily lives to another time and place, “the good old days,” when life was simpler, religion, morality, and manners were the mainstays of social order, and everyone knew his or her place, whether academy midshipman, plantation owner, or slave. Set against the backdrop of 19^th Century America shortly before and during the Civil War, Son of Perdition examines the way in which our concept of God can affect how we live. The power of a story such as this is the reader’s ability to live the experiences of the characters.

At right is a picture of the U. S. Naval Academy Superintendent’s home.

Unlike today, in the mid-1800s American society as a whole had a high consciousness of God’s movement in the affairs of mankind. When the Civil War pitted brother against brother, friend against friend, and Christian against Christian, each side believed its cause was God’s will. Is it possible for true Christians in all integrity to find themselves on opposite sides of major issues? What are the issues today that divide true believers in Christ as seriously as slavery did in the 1800s? Is there anything we…I…can do to help bridge the gap?

This is the end of our journey through the life Captain Ahab’s family. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you missed any segments, you can find them HERE. And of course, I’d be thrilled if you would purchase these books for your reading pleasure.

  Ahab’s Bride

 Hannah Rose

 Son of Perdition

This last Sunday, we celebrated the mother’s in our lives and they so deserve our honor. They do so much for us each and every day of our lives. Whether it be bandaging a scrapped knee, or mending a broken heart, mothers are always right there beside us every step of the way through our lives and you are never too old to need your mother. When the worries of the world beat us down, there’s no better place to be than your mother’s arms.

Mother’s are tough when they need to be, and gentle when we’re hurting. They impart words of wisdom whether we want to hear them or not. And those precious gems come to mind when we need them the most.

My mother has been gone for almost six years now, yet not a day goes by that I don’t think about something she told me, or did for me growing up. A mother’s lessons last a lifetime.

There are other women in our lives that help to shape who we are as well. They are the aunts, the step-moms, and the mothers-in-laws who play important parts in our lives and love us no matter what.

Mother’s Day is a great day to tell your mother how much she means to you, but showing our appreciation shouldn’t be limited to just one day. So, if you’re lucky enough to have your mother or those other special women in your life still, don’t forget to tell them how much they mean to you every chance you get.

All the best…

Mary Alford

http://www.maryalford.net

Past Sins – Available at Amazon:

She almost died at the hands of a madman. Will she survive another dance with the devil?

FBI Agent Samantha Morning Star barely survived a serial killer’s knife when the Night Slasher captured her, intent on making her his next victim. Samantha’s narrow escape still haunts her, sending her fleeing to the one place where she has always felt safe. The Durante Mountain Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Northern Wyoming. But Samantha’s past sins are all there waiting for her. The young boy she once loved and left behind is now all grown up and the chief of police for the reservation.

Chief Zack Standing Elk can’t believe it. The woman who tore his hearts to shreds is back. But Samantha isn’t the same person she once was when she left the reservation behind after her grandmother’s death, insisting that he not wait for her. Samantha is one troubled soul. It isn’t long before he realizes the reason behind the fear in her eyes, when the killer who took her hostage follows her to the Cheyenne reservation determined to claim her as his once more.

With the clock ticking on the Night Slasher’s latest victim, Zack’s past sins come back and haunt him as well. Can he find out the Slasher’s true identity before he takes another innocent life? And will he be able to stop the killer who is coming after Samantha full force?

Layers of The Truth – Available at Amazon:

When Cady Russell receives a heartbreaking call from Deputy Sheriff Aamon Lone Elk telling her that her sister has died in a fire that mimics the one that took her parents’ lives twenty years earlier, Cady knows she has to return to Wyoming to find out what really happened to Samantha.

Deputy Sheriff Aamon Lone Elk knows a little about grief himself. He lost his wife to a drunk driver five years earlier. Aamon still isn’t able to move beyond the pain. Yet meeting Cady Russell throws him. She is both beautiful and strong, and he is attracted to her right away.

Cady has been lost in the past as well, unable to move beyond the tragedy that claimed her parents. Now her sister is dead by the same means, and she is convinced the two fires are related.

As the attraction between then continues to grow, can Aamon keep Cady safe as they peel back the layers of lies connected to the two fires? Or will a killer bent on keeping his deadly acts secret send them both to their graves

Eye of The Storm  – Available now at Amazon:

Former CIA Agent Kate Reagan finds herself in the middle of storm that has disrupted her life for six years. When Kate’s entire team was killed by the terrorist they’d been chasing for months, Kate finds the only way to save her life is to pretend to lose it.

After moving dozens of times through the years, Kate ends up in the small mountain town of Soaring Eagle, Wyoming where everything about the place screams of the home she’s been longing for.

Running into Deputy Sheriff Brady Connors, Kate finds herself attracted to the handsome frontier lawman right away, but having a future is not possible while the enemy is still stalking her.

With Brady’s help, Kate is about face the showdown she’s been expecting for a long time, when the enemy coming after her proves to be closer than Kate could ever imagine.