A blog I wrote in lieu of indulging a creative block or how I found a subtext in my novels

In my five year gap between stints at Lesley, I did a semester at UMASS Amherst.  I hated college for a lot of reasons and that year I found it particularly tedious because I was also working at Higgins Armory where I was essentially getting (and learning with better retention because I had to turn around and teach on tours and demonstrations) a major in medieval and Renaissance history.  I was at UMASS to study theater, but the only class that stays with me twenty years later is the one I took on American women’s history (Part 1 – which meant we covered the 17^th-19^th centuries).  I kept most of the books from that class.  I also kept an idea for a story or two or five or twenty.

At that point I still had dreams of filmmaking – which considering my focus was on history and theater explains why that went nowhere.  But I did have the thought that it would be cool to have a series that followed two women and their women descendants through the significant decades of American history.  I might have thought about a book at one point because I have a vague recollection of making it an epistolary novel.  Maybe I even wrote one or two letters that are in a file somewhere.  I have to say I wrote a lot of plot outlines at UMASS when I didn’t want to do schoolwork or participate in a party scene in which I had absolutely no interest.  I guess that shows where my heart was and that it has taken me this long to hear it.

So now that I’m listening, I pulled that idea out from the back of my mind.  Sort of.  Except it isn’t two women and their descendants.  It’s one woman, who has the very forgiving trope of time travel and a childhood/early adulthood with the Sidhe in Ireland. I say forgiving because it frees me to give her a ‘modern’ voice and the presence of magic is my loophole from complete historical accuracy.

It’s also a fascinating lens through which to see our American history.

I use the name Sidhe (pronounce ‘she’) because I think fairy has so many childish and regretfully homophobic connotations.  Now they are an ancient race or legend or divinity.  So again, there is leeway for interpretation.  They are peripheral to my stories, so I think the construction of their world will progress with each novel as I need them.

But for now, there are two significant details that are essential to my character and her journey(s).

1. The Sidhe steal children.

2. The Sidhe are sexual beings.

It’s funny.  I’m squeamish about that last sentence.  I’m squeamish about how to describe that part of their nature.  Which really, simply is nature.  Maybe that is the hauntings of my castoff Catholic upbringing and beliefs.  But it is also very much because our vocabulary for such a reality is squeamish.  Or its darker cousin, shameful.

So indulge me a paragraph or two as I try to find this language to describe them and living with them.  There is no shame.  (No, that does not mean bestiality or rape or whatever sick twisted logic the morality police use.)  By no shame, I mean nakedness is just a oneness with the earth.  They are ancient Celts – who fought in battle naked (not sure I really get how that helped against the swords and arrows, but whatever).  They didn’t have polyester or machines to weave plastics into threads quickly.  Covering up skin was not logical when survival required other things like food – or fighting enemies who drive you into the mounds.

There are also – and this is very important to my ‘first’ novel – no words for a female who enjoys her sexuality.  No bad words.  Maybe healthy, confident and self-aware.  Nothing akin to our modern expressions like slut or whore or dirty or impure.  She is a goddess.  Not a sinner who cannot look on god.

I could go further with this, but before I end up writing a book on this topic instead of writing the book, let me come back to that lens.

My character whom you can know right now as Leigh – goes through time with an upbringing that does not know this shame.  Can you imagine?  The culture shock of landing in decades where her face and hands are the only pieces of her that can be exposed or where there is that constant judgment of goodness and worthiness based on ignoring that part of herself.  What if she wakes up on the North Shore of Massachusetts in 1692 (sorry, that’s going to be book 8 or something) or works in The Royal Worcester Corset Company in 1882 or has the freedom of choosing her desire taken away from her in 1776 or is seen dating a recently widowed Congressman with a lot of political enemies in the 21^st century with a chorus of cyber trolls and gossip that spreads across the internet in seven seconds?

The reason she jumps through time is to escape the Eden-esque land of the Sidhe to return to the humanity that was robbed from her.  But I kept asking myself why she keeps running away from one time into another.  I think writing this blog, I found a reason.  

I’ve also found a different way of looking at history.  At those ‘sweet’ romantic Regency periods or the American Revolution.  Or the suffrage movement.  Or how we talk about women in the media RIGHT NOW and to one another.  What if we stopped using shame in our dialogue today? What if we saw the goddess and not the tramp?  

I promise you Leigh – no, now you can call her Morgan is not a tramp.