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A true delight to get to participate in Bait/Switch, an innovative, inspiring “call and response art publication” where creatives are given a piece of art as a prompt to then create a new piece of art.
I had the best time creating my cyanotype, “On the Move,” and had a blast talking art, letter-writing, and more with multitalented editor and executive director Lu Valena. Check out the latest/fall 2022 issue for the work of wonderful creatives here: clickety.
Extra props and a very special shout-out to powerhouse of art and dear friend Christine Tierney. Many thanks for your encouragement to submit to Bait/Switch and for the marvelous poetry and life conversations. Such a joy to be publication twins with you, and kudos on your group show! 🥳Check out Christine’s gorgeous collage art and interview in the issue as well as her fabulous poetry book, chicken+lowercase=fleur .
To continued artistic inspiration!
Splendid news: I’m honored to be published today in Film Shooters Collective, a very inspiring resource and encouragement for photographers who practice the art of film photography.
I had the pleasure to take a pocket camera (sometimes called a “spy camera”) for a whirl recently, and after shooting two rolls of 110 film, I wrote about it. 🥳Curious? Remember these unobtrusive dynamos? Thinking about taking your own pocket camera for a spin or getting one? Clickety to read and learn more. The article is packed with tons of insights, photo examples, and tips to get you started.
Many thanks to the super talented Amy Jasek for her interest in my 110 camera shoot and her enthusiastic camera and cyanotype camaraderie. Please check out Amy’s amazing photography and wonderful cyanotypes.
To the marvels of film photography!
Super amped to have work in the The 50-Word Stories of 2022: : Microfiction for Lovers of Quick Reads alongside talented, innovative writers from across the world. Many thanks to Jessica Bell and Elaina Battista-Parsons for compiling such a marvelous collection of stories!
Perfect inspiration for writers, readers, and teachers alike!
Super excited that my article, “Hop on Your Horse and Gallop Back in Time: 4 Strengths of Historical and Time-Travel Stories,” was published today at Women on Writing.
Image courtesy of unsplash.com and Kayla Koss
Care to learn more and explore this fun subject as you create your own stories? Ta-da! My latest online class, Leaping Worlds, begins on Friday, September 30th and is is open for sign-ups now.
Read on for my article:
”Hop on Your Horse and Gallop Back In Time: 4 Strengths of Historical and Time-Travel Stories”
By: Melanie Faith
Creating characters whose lives take place in another time can be one of the most enlivening and meaningful writing experiences an author can have. Let’s take a look at four assets writing these stories can bring into the lives of writers and readers alike.
Historical fiction offers maximum flexibility in developing the protagonist. There is no one cookie-cutter image for who the protagonist of your story might be. There are historical fiction main characters of all ages, backgrounds, and nationalities. Protagonists can live in literally any place and time (or multiple places and times, should you choose a time-travel tale) that you can imagine and recreate. You even have the flexibility to braid the stories of multiple protagonists within this genre.
Historical fiction protagonists in all types of narratives must have a purpose for being in the story, and that purpose is to inspire change through their actions; to be changed by events, people, or the place(s) where they live; or (ideally) both. All you need to get started is a setting, a time, and a protagonist with a big obstacle to push up against that’ll impact them and the wider world for days, years, or perhaps even decades to come!
This genre also offers great flexibility of era. Have you always had a passion for the Roaring ‘20s or an interest in ancient Rome? What about a predilection for the early days of TV? Or even (gulp!) the early days of the internet? All include history well worth exploring. Whether a story is set two thousand years ago or twenty-five years ago, the past is at the core and the story is literally limited only by any era or eras that suit your fancy. A great deal of the fun in preparing to write, drafting, and editing within this genre is researching music, clothes, expressions and idioms, and more from the epoch you’ve chosen.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay at Pexels.com
Historical fiction is not a one-trick pony when it comes to styles and formats. Variety, thy name is this genre! Whether you want to pen a magnum opus novel or a flash fiction of a mere 45 words, there’s a style and a format to fit every writer and every project. Great historical fiction time-travel stories, for instance, can be told within a chapbook of stories connected by character or by place or by era, in a novella of a few thousand words (I had a fun time a few years ago writing a Regency novella, Her Humble Admirer, which in the tradition of many historical romance writers, I pen named), or equally well in linked historical-fiction poems (I wrote a collection of thematic poems set in 1918 a few years ago called This Passing Fever ). Historical fiction and time-travel stories also lend themselves well to creating a series. Want to write books about three cousins during the American Revolutionary War: one a Loyalist, one a Patriot, and one a pacifist? A series is born; go for it. Historical fiction allows for great versatility in how stories can be connected, divided, and crafted for maximum reader (and writer) interest.
At its best, historical fiction sheds a light not only on another time but also on our modern lives. These stories can make us reflect on how far our lives have come and on how far we might go. They can remind us of our own struggles and hopes and setbacks, and they have the power to entertain us as well. That’s a lot of reading happiness in one literary package!
Try this prompt: Pick a place, a time, and a protagonist. Your protagonist can be a real historical person or a completely fictional person. You don’t need to know everything—or even a lot—about your main character at this point: a name and an initial detail or two will do, even if you end up changing these details later. What does the protagonist, place, or era need the most that it doesn’t have yet? Who or what is blocking positive change? What most excites you to write about this era? Write for twenty minutes. Go!
Hello, September!
I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately: how we organize it, how we anticipate or dread it, how we save it through the things we make and the things we share, how it is ever-malleable—both jet-speed propulsion and gelatin slow and everything in-between.
So, I made this thematic pen-and-ink drawing. Writing the interconnected and interrupted “ticks” was relaxing. There’s something very meditative about making something by hand, even something imperfect, as this doodle most certainly is. 😁
Also, my new class about writing historical fiction and time-travel stories, Leaping Worlds, is accepting registrations and will start Friday, September 30th. Can’t wait! Clicky above for more deets. I’d love to work with you and a friend. 📝
If it’s mid-August already, then that means my mind is happily scampering towards thoughts of crisp mornings, crunchy and colorful leaves, and my fall classes.
This fall, I’ll teach a new online class I’ve created, Leaping Worlds—Writing Historical Fiction and Time-Travel Stories. The course starts Sept. 30th and runs for five weeks. Now open for registration at Women on Writing!
Anticipating autumn also makes me start to think about Thoreau, Emerson, and the Transcendentalist writers that my high-school students always used to read from the Norton’s Anthology of American Literature every fall semester during my first years of teaching.
Thoreau in particular always offers up golden nuggets of observation and thought that shimmer in my mind. I notice something different each time I read excerpts of his work, which is one of the pleasures of reading literature more than once and over time.
I made some quote memes recently to share a few of his quotes that resonated during my latest literary perusal. Enjoy!
Once upon a time (circa 2015), I started writing a Jane Austen fan-fiction story that over a few months turned into a novella, it was so irresistible to keep writing. Happily, it was published as an e-book a few years later by Uncial Press.
In the time-honored tradition of Romance writers, I pen-named it. Recently, I had the great joy of writing an article for The Uncial Letter about why it’s so fun to read the Regency genre.
Read my article below, and then do pop by the Uncial Press website and/or Amazon to treat yourself to some of their many fabulous books in genres as diverse as Fantasy and Science-Fiction, Westerns, Paranormal, other Historical Fiction eras, poetry, and more.
To subscribe to The Uncial Letter is also a must and easy-breezy: just send an email to uncial-letter-subscribe@googlegroups.com, and you’re all set to receive the latest book updates and many other fine articles, too.
Without further ado, I’m so pleased to announce my featured article:
Enjoy plucky protagonists with minds of their own and strong convictions? Like historical times and places? Want something--anything--today to make a modicum of sense? Regency romance may just be the perfect balm for these tumultuous, wearying days of 2022. Read on!
Regency tends to be character-rich. Readers follow lords, ladies, commoners, clerics, dukes, and duchesses as they populate a British town or city and, best of all, take part in the growth experience of the protagonist. Let's talk about this protagonist for a moment. She tends to be youthful and, while a bit inexperienced, filled with hopes and ideas about how the world works. She's a young woman of conviction with goals that frequently don't pan out as easily or even in the same way as she'd hoped, especially when it comes to her experiences with love. Yet, by the tale's ending, she's realized life lessons about herself and become a more thoughtful, less selfish, more accepting person to her friends, to her family, and to her love interest.
The pleasures of escaping into another world. While I was researching my novel, Her Humble Admirer, it was a great deal of fun to enter back into a place and a time where flowers had secret meanings, from undying friendship to unrequited love to secret passions and more, based on the colors of the blooms. A world where calling cards were on everyone's desk, and ladies and gentleman who were single were only allowed to dance one dance in a row with each other, lest they raise gossipmonger's eyebrows by scandalously dancing away the evening together in public.
The mores and customs of Regency England are far different from 2022, and that's a great thing. Nobody in that era has heard of a thing called Covid nor felt worried and annoyed again because the cost of rent and groceries and gas have skyrocketed yet again this month because of inflation. Nope: readers can time travel and drop in by the fireplace for a cozy conversation (and a bit of village gossip or a reading of the latest Lord Byron poem that's the talk of the Ton) or enjoy an afternoon's carriage ride to visit a relative or the scintillating excitement of a costume ball in a fortnight. Spending time in a different era via characters and scenery is a staycation for the senses that won't cost a penny (and no jetlag!).
Bring on the happy ending! What do we most crave in times of stress and drama? Times when our lives have been upended and are still being put back together? That's right: familiarity. A pattern, order, the sweet pleasure of our expectations being met. What more satisfying pattern could there be than what Regency delivers time after time: the spark of first feelings, obstacles to those feelings, more misunderstandings and a clash, followed by an upturn, a tender admission or a quick reunion, and then together again, this time forever.
While everyday life certainly offers headaches and hassles that don't frequently tie themselves together with a neat little bow, it's a soothing experience to enjoy the protagonist's HEA, page by page. Now, more than ever, that vicarious joy is an especially delightful part of our entertainment, and one in which Regency particularly excels.
So, go ahead: grab a Regency novella or novel today and prepare to encounter another world, a heroine to root for, and a HEA that makes 2022 a bit more palatable and a lot more entertaining.
~*~
We couldn't have said it better. Immersing yourself in a Regency can allow you to escape from yesterday's scandalous headlines that have barely been assimilated when today's upheaval makes news that's followed far too quickly by tomorrow's disasters.
We have a great assortment of Regencies for your pleasure, in all lengths and moods. A great place to start is with Lucy M. Loxley's Her Humble Admirer, a sweetly traditional story with its share of quirky characters, including an innocent maid who is ready for love, a faithful swain who seems interested only in being a good friend, and a sophisticated gentleman from London who wants something from Miss Livia Hightower, but is hesitant about telling her exactly what. Caught up in the summery swirl of country society, Livia weaves romantic dreams about the future...but will they ever be more than hopeless fantasies? [ISBN 978-1-60174-232-2, $3.99]