Better now, without teeth

Posted on November 21, 2016 by Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, Author

Cono visits his grandpa. (No Hill for a Stepper, except- based on a true story)

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Pa and I are sharing a piece of Ma’s famous peach cobbler when I ask, “Pa, what happened to yer teeth?”

“Cono, now I’ll tell ye. My teeth started to achin’ and smellin’ so bad that I figured I needed to take ‘em out, harvest ‘em like an overripe crop.”

“All of ‘em? Ye pulled all of ‘em?”

“Shor’did. I got myself a pair’a pliers, sat there on the front porch and pulled out the ones that were botherin’ me the most. The good ones left felt funny bein’ in there without company, so I jes’t took them out too.”

“Damn!” I say. “They don’t stink no more?”

Pa laughs. “Ain’t nothing left te sniff.”

“He’s an old coot’s what he is,” yells Ma from the kitchen, overhearing the story.

“I’m surprised ye noticed, Ma,” he yells back. “Ye cain’t see two feet without yer glasses.” He turns back to me. “Don’t ye fret none about it,” he gums out. “Ever since them holes healed up? I kin eat a steak jes’t like ever’ body else. I chew a little longer s’all. But my whistlin’s gone to hell in a hand basket.”

Daily prompt: Aromatic

Don’t mess with the Madam

Posted on November 20, 2016 by Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, Author

Madam Fannie Porter vs. Mayor Hicks: Excerpt from The Last Bordello

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“Pull the reins back, Mayor. Sadie’s not evil. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He was using Sadie as an excuse, a reminder I hadn’t moved into the mandated zone a stone’s throw down the road.

“If she could pull a knife on a man who harmed a friend, what measures would she take if she thought she had been wronged? It’s no secret she hates the temperance women.”

True. “What are you getting at? Do you still think that just because she found a yellow scarf, she’s guilty of a crime? Had something to do with the missing girl?”

“It’s likely.”

“It’s preposterous. Now, is there anything else?”

“She was there at the meeting. You know it as well as I do.”

“That’s no secret.”

“Too bad for her it’s not.” He stood, approached the front door, and yanked his jacket off the hook. “Not looking good for her. Nor for you and this place.” He waved an index finger around the parlor like a gun. “I’ll be watching.”

I didn’t escort him to the door, but watched him exit at the same time thunder rattled the porch. Good. For all I cared, he could glide back to the office on his own slime.

Two sets of eyes peeked over the swinging doors and into the parlor. “Okay, nosy children,” I said and joined Meta and Reba in the kitchen. “What happened to those good old days when Bryan Callaghan was our mayor?”

“We’s been scorched by a stinkbug, that’s what.” Reba palmed her newly straightened and gelled hair.

Meta’s expression remained grave. I had the feeling she felt a kinship with the missing girl.

Scorched

The Shape Of Meta’s Being

Posted on November 17, 2016 by Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, Author

“I’m going to bet on MY ‘underdog-ness’ and give this a shot. Some might sigh a bit when they see a fellow blogger try to promote their work. But try we must.” CD-W

In a previous post titled, The Shape of our Being, I mentioned how our experiences shape our humanness, including the Carolyn Being (a work in progress). My “shape” shows up in my novels. In this excerpt from The Last Bordello, Sadie, a prostitute in a 1901 bordello, escorts the virtuous Meta (who accepted Madam Fannie’s offer to be the bordello’s pianist) on a tour of the city.

And truly, thanks for hanging with me!

“Meta, I know this is your first time to a big city. I want to be fair. There is something I want you to understand.” She paused, gathering my attention. “People in town know I’m a painted lady, a prostitute. Or, as some like to say, a lowly whore.”

“But—”

Sadie held up a hand. “Being seen with me is almost as bad as being a prostitute yourself. People will judge you. Your reputation could be tainted by merely being seen in my presence. I truly don’t want any harm or ill will to come to you. I don’t want you embarrassed by my company.”

Perhaps this was Aunt Amelia’s concern, what she wanted to tell me. If the public thought less of me for playing the piano at a bordello, I didn’t care. Weren’t even prostitutes and their customers entitled to the magic of music?

Unlashing Sadie’s grasp, I stepped a foot to the side. “Sadie, I appreciate your honesty. Now,” I said, my grin widening, “shall we walk back arm in arm like schoolgirls?”

Sadie’s white teeth glistened in the February sun. “Yes,” she said, interlocking an elbow with mine. “Onward to the next stop.”

Excerpt from an Amazon review:

“She uses the issues of the day to create a timely portrait of strong women supporting each other and taking control of their lives. Who would have imagined that these themes would still be as relevant as they are?”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women’s right activist

Words from my Emma June

Posted on November 16, 2016 by Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, Author

Eleven year-old Emma June from The Moonshine Thicket says:

“And then I remember. Betty had told Mama her husband died. Frank said his Daddy left. Betty Bedford lied to Mama. She’s a low down, no-account, good-for-nothing, loose-knee-ed, tarty, liar-mama.

I picture walking up to Betty’s shabby-shack and knocking out her teeth when she answers the door.”

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Daily Prompt: Tart

Eerie is researching an Insane Asylum

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, Author

via Daily Prompt: Eerie

Beginning in 1889, the Southwestern Insane Asylum thrived in San Antonio. The facility occupied 640 acres and could hold 500 patients.

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Excerpt from The Last Bordello:

“Ticktock, ticktock, they’ll put you under key and lock,” she’d said. Lucinda had made good on her threat.

Too skinny from institution mush, my skin peeled off a layer at a time. Curled on top of a thin, lumpy mattress on a rusted bed frame, I traced the scratches on the wall made by another’s bloodied nails, the dark red stains proof of another’s determination to escape a world unworthy of its inhabitant.

Earlier, the attendant had pushed my forehead back and forced open my jaw. Unnecessary effort on his part. The medicinal haze thickened. I found myself calm but without spirit.

Strange how I felt erased, yet without the rubber remnants to remind me I once existed.

Any bits of green paint that had remained on the wall, I peeled off the first day. I didn’t know if I had been there three weeks or three months.

The cell remained still, inactive, and almost empty. A bucket to catch my excrement. The bed, fetid like the bucket; the whole place a shit hole.

A cockroach scurrying across the floor would have been a welcome sight. Or a black widow working tirelessly to create a fine net to catch its prey. I stared at my idle hands.

I wanted to float outside where flowers bloomed, where the great oaks of San Antonio provided shade from the sun. The rattle of trains and trolleys would have been welcome sounds over the never-ending cries and moans of despair.

Despair. “Do not cry. Do not cry,” I told myself. But tears came anyway. It didn’t matter. If they heard, they never came.

My eyes blurred as if I were drunk. I trembled like the women escorted to surgery before their reproductive parts were cut away and discarded like the contents of my shit bucket.

I heard the click of a door key. It wasn’t mealtime. They had already drugged me. What did they want? Confusion—as potent as a heaping spoonful of laudanum laced with arsenic.

The attendant in white stood firm, stoic. “Come with me.”

Eerie indeed.

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How Research Creates Historical Novels…

Posted on September 14, 2016 by Carolyn Dennis-Willingham, Author

… And helps with historical treatment.

I hated history in my youth. But now? I love research. It takes my mind to places that existed long before and can exist again in a historical novel.

The Library of Congress – Historical Newspapers – can take you back to the late 1800’s. I needed 1901 so I found myself in good shape (except I spent hours upon hours finding interesting articles that had nothing to do with my MS, The Last Bordello.) Once I focused, ALL these articles played a pivotal role in my plot line. (I had many more, these are just a few.)

Let’s start with the secondary, still-important, characters and work our way down to Madam Fannie Porter.

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union:

Now, for a sense of place:

The politicians, Mayor Hicks, former Mayor Bryan Callaghan, Captain James Van Riper:

The “then” never solved murder of Helen Madarasz.

The outlaws:

Now, Madam Fannie Porter:

After reading this article, I found a writer’s connection to the man Madam Fannie may have married, and the location that was plausible for meeting Butch Cassidy for the first time.

If you are writing historical fiction, The Library of Congress is a great place to start!

Keep writing,

Carolyn

Carolyn Dennis-Willingham

author perfectly flawed

Tag Archives: History