Month: November 2017

I’m back at it and I hope you’ll continue to follow and read my weekly blog posts. Thanksgiving and the upcoming Christmas holidays are meant to be shared with friends and family. Perhaps the closest person my main character Bill Valencourt would ever call a friend is Don Julio, aka Juan Carlos, aka “Top Shelf.” I mention his formal names once in my manuscript and call him “Top Shelf” the rest of the time. The migrant worker comes to Bayou Cove via bus to work at Boudreaux’s walnut farm on the other side of town from Bill’s Cajun House of Pleasure. Top Shelf enjoys life and is a fun character to be around.

My former girlfriend created Top Shelf back when we enjoyed visiting Bayou Cove. Not only does top shelf mean high quality, the British used it when referring to material with adult content. Placing such items on the top shelf make them less visible and harder to reach. Top Shelf is a loyal worker at Boudreaux’s and a faithful patron of Bill’s. For a small guy, he can drink for hours before feeling the affect of alcohol and liquor. Even in his acts of questionable morals, he still respects the person he takes advantage of.

Top Shelf has an amazing skill of dexterity and ingenuity. I currently don’t have a backstory of how he developed these skills. Maybe one day I can write a compilation of my character’s backstories. Gathered together in that tome would be the intriguing, and maybe sad, stories of how all my characters end up in Bayou Cove. I believe following Top Shelf from his home in Mexico to the swamps of Louisiana would be a great adventure. He’s bound to have some pearls of wisdom to pass along. Whether they will help you or not, remains to be seen. History doesn’t write itself in situations like this.

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What I’m Reading – Many readers I know like to inquire what their favorite author is reading. At the end of each blog post, I’ll let you know what book I have my nose in. I may not be a published author yet, but I hope my choice of reading material inspires you to read. I finished reading Forever Vacancy, an anthology. My review is on Goodreads and Amazon.com. I’m currently reading Lady Copy Makes Trouble by Amy Stewart. I encourage you to read a variety of topics.

“All the world’s a stage,” said Jaques in As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII. When you write historical fiction, you can stage any part of the world as the backstory for one of your characters. I did this with Peggy, one of the soiled swamp doves of my forthcoming book, Bill’s Cajun House of Pleasure. She dreams of being a trapeze artist and her name in lights. I had to give her a reason to leave the circus and come to Bill’s house of ill repute. I searched for circus disasters in Google and found the Hartford (Connecticut) Circus Fire of 1944. 167 people lost their lives in the fire. Nearly five hundred were injured. Officials estimate seven thousand were under the big top when the show started. This is the worst circus disaster on record.

Peggy arrives at Bill’s in 1951. I had seven years to build her backstory and bring her from her dream of performing with the Great Wallendas to entertaining men in a more intimate environment. The horrific fire didn’t dash her dreams in Hartford. They came crashing down later in St. Louis when the swing broke. The doctors removed her infectious right leg above the knee. Unable to use a one-legged trapeze artist, Ringling Brothers left her behind. Peggy worked in low-budget circus and sideshows throughout the rest of the forties. Her life spiraled into the gutter when the circus manager suggested she can stay on board if she offered herself to the men so he wouldn’t have to pay them as much.

Poor Peggy had a terrible life for a few years. She escaped the misogynistic circus bastards and made her way to Bill’s. It wasn’t much of an improvement in managerial style, but she made money and put a swing in her room. In her swing, she found everything else tolerable. History doesn’t write itself, but it’s a great asset to have when writing your character’s backstory.

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What I’m Reading – Many readers I know like to inquire what their favorite author is reading. At the end of each blog post, I’ll let you know what book I have my nose in. I may not be a published author yet, but I hope my choice of reading material inspires you to read. I’m still reading Forever Vacancy, an anthology. I encourage you to read a variety of topics.

Sorry for being late, folks, but the time change this morning really threw me back more than a measly hour. Many Americans complain about switching clocks back, or forward when Daylight Saving Time begins and ends. I suspect this is a common protest in all places that use DST, and probably even those that don’t but need to know what time it is in the places that do. For instance, if you’re in Western Australia and follow the markets in New York City, your schedule just got shifted back an hour because of our time change. There is no time change in Western Australia. And heaven help everyone who now has to figure out what time it is in Arizona and parts of Indiana that do not participate in DST. In my opinion, it’d be great if we didn’t have to go off of DST.

DST is not a new or solely American problem. The ancient Roman’s used different scales in their water clocks for different months to reflect a flexible schedule. Germany and Austria-Hungary first used DST on April 30, 1916, to conserve coal during the Great War. America adopted the practice in 1918. Next year we can throw a centennial party for DST!

Whether it does what it was intended to do, save money by burning less fuel for electricity, we’re now in Standard Daylight Time until March 2018. Enjoy these shorter days.

Two historical anniversaries to note for this week. Neither of these is mentioned in my forthcoming book, Bill’s Cajun House of Pleasure. Maybe I can do a flash fiction piece for a contest and expand Bill’s world. On November 1, 1966, the New Orleans Saints became the sixteenth NFL team. Forty-nine years ago today, Richard Nixon was elected President of the United States of America.

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What I’m Reading – Many readers I know like to inquire what their favorite author is reading. At the end of each blog post, I’ll let you know what book I have my nose in. I may not be a published author yet, but I hope my choice of reading material inspires you to read. I finished reading Mourner’s Bench by Sanderia Faye. My review is on Goodreads. I’m now reading Forever Vacancy, an anthology. I encourage you to read a variety of topics.