How Ready Are You?

The horrible earthquake in Japan reminded me of how natural disasters can impact all aspects of life.

Here's an article I wrote for our chapter's new letter several years ago, right after one of the large brush/forest fires that routinely hit Souther California.


How ready are you?

As I’m sure you all know, the San Diego area has been on fire for the last week. We live in a suburb of San Diego, and last Sunday morning when I got up the air smelled of smoke the sun of just a orange ball (you could look directly at it) because of the smoke. This was at 7 am, and the TV told me the fire was forty miles away.

Well, brush fires are not uncommon in Southern California, so we went on with our usual business.

By noon, the fire was only twenty miles away, so I told my dh to get a box out of the garage and I started putting all the thing I couldn’t live without in it in case we had to evacuate.

I put in the important papers (birth, marriage, DD214, etc), and photos of weddings and graduations, etc. The good jewelry my husband bought me. A bag with a couple of changes of clothes and underwear, a book (with four novels) and some needlework just in case I got stuck in a shelter for a few days.

And of course, I packed all my back up disks with all my mss, letter to editor/agents, articles I’ve written, any thing to do with my writing. And just as I entered my office to pick up these disks --- the power went out. What if I’d waited to do the back up??

As it turned out, they stopped the fire about ¼ mile from our house. We and the neighbors spent all afternoon and evening at the end of the street watching the flames come closer and closer.

So we were lucky, just a lot of clean up and unpacking and a hard time breathing until yesterday when the weather changed.

The moral of this to all you writers is WHERE IS YOUR BACK UP FOR YOUR WRITING?

Even in my critique group, when we finish a ms., we put it on a disk and give it to someone else in the group, or take a copy to work. What good will it do if your back up disk is next to your computer when it burns down?

Yes, and I knew there are ways to do off site storage on line, but I’m too computer inept to deal with that, so as long as disks work, that’s how I’ll do my back up.

Just as a side note, when I taught a workshop on POV at our chapter, I went back and found, on disk, the first draft of a scene from my first ms., where I’d changed POV every paragraph. Although I’d written it in WordPerfect 5.1 (the best !!), my WordPerfect 10 pulled it right up, and I used the first draft against the final version at the workshop to show how I changed from switching POV every paragraph for four pages in to one POV change, and made the scene work better. And all because I had the back up disk to go back too.

So thanks for letting me share this with you. And go make those back up disk and update it as often as possible.

Terry Irene Blain
(cough, cough)

How Much Historical Accuracy?

I joined several other authors for tea this last weekend, and one of the things we discussed was how much accuracy do we want or need in historical romance.



Being a history teacher, i like stories to be as accurate as possible. At our tea we generally agreed that as long as the plot doesn't turn on a historical inaccuracy, error or anachronism, then it was acceptable. What I strive for is authenenticity for the time period I'm writing.


But again, because of the teacher background, I include Author's Notes in to explain anything Imight have changed or altered that the reader might question.

All this is easier to show by example, so here are the notes from
Colorado Silver, Colorado Gold.

Author's Notes

Writing fiction can be difficult for the historian. The fiction half of me says 'what if' when the historian half of me says 'but it happened this way'. So I have compromised, bending history ro fit my story and hope these notes will be of insterst to those readers who want to know the factual history.



Although the Pinkerton Agency is more wll know, the Wells Fargo Company did, in fact, have its own detective force. Among these notables wer Fred Dodge and James Hume. dodge once held down a job as a deputy in Tucson while working undercover for Wells Fargo. James Hume, the cheif of detectives, was one of the pioneers in the field of scientific investigations, catching the notorious stagecoach bandit Balck Bart, by tracing a laundry mark on the bandit's handkerchief. Wells Fargo also employed a corps of young boys to ride messages around San Francisco at twenty-five cents a message.



In the 1880s thre were no laws rstricting the conduct of a law enforcement officer. A detective of that era wasn't constricted by such concepts of forcible entry, illegal search and seizure or jurisdictions. Wes's activities in pursuit of his job would have benn considered legal and acceptable.



For the purpose of my story Ihave made some changes and additons to Durango's fire. The fire actually started on July 1st, but Ihave moved it ot several weeks later. A stiff wind fanned the blaze which burned over seven blocks. Half a million dollars in business and residential property went up in smoke as the residents tried everything, including dynamite to stop the fire. The actual cause of the fire was never determined, so I have supplied one out of my 'what if'.



The two major smelters that operated in Durango eventually consolidated due to the business climate in the late 1890s. The way Wes shows Julie to refine gold using quicksilver was one of the standard small scale methods used at the time. Today more is known abaout the hazards of mercury poisoning.



For events in Philadelphia, those familiar with histry will recognize that I have anticipatd history by a few years, and have borrowed the concept of Hull House in Chicago which opened in 1889 as a model for the Bradley Center. I similarly borrowed the idea of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1910 for he scandal involving Julie's sister.



And last, condoms make from latex rubber haave benn available since the 1840s and were called, appropriately enought, 'rubbers'. The primary prupose was for the prevention of sexually transmitted disease with the side benefit of contraception.




So, how do you feel about historical accuracy in your work? As a reader, how much do you care about historical accuracy and authenticity?