Elaborating historical stories

 I write quite a bit of historic fiction but I like it to have some historical base. Bubbles in the Cauldron is  set in the 1820 uprising but I've had a lot of fun with other situations. One of the sources I've used is the Bible. I did the story of the harassed innkeeper in the Christmas story with everyone from shepherds to Oriental gentlemen coming to the door and then there was Pharaoh's butler, who knows where to get a man to interpret Pharaoh's dreams but doesn't want to remind Pharaoh he's been in prison. I was so pleased with them, I put them into Bees in my Bonnet.
Now what? There's the two spies sent to investigate Jericho. The gates are shut and they need to hide. Where? Well a prostitute isn't going to turn away a client. They promise she'll be safe but when they get back to Joshua, they find the walls are going to fall down and the prostitutes house is in the walls. Now they have to get in before the soldiers, who aren't likely to ask who is who once they start to deal with the inhabitants. These are the original James Bonds. Maybe they are brothers, one is impetuous and the other has to get them out of trouble. The second is the one to insist on going back in. The story could have another setting but the idea comes from the Bible.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did the trees talk to me?

Image
  For Bees in my Bonnet, I wrote a short story about trees thinking. It’s called Have a Good Day because it purports to be a conversation between the President and two scientists, who wish each other ‘Have a good day.’ It was speculative, but then I came on Peter Wohlleben’s book, The Secret Network of Nature and read that when Roe Deer bite the bark off a tree, they leave saliva, the tree detects the saliva and produces bad tasting sap. If the scientists just broke a piece off leaving no saliva, the tree just produce healing fluid. I then realised I’d inadvertently been working on a really possible scenario. It seems the trees also communicate to other trees when they are running short of water, allowing the others to reduce their intake and conserve the resource. Wohlleben comments that unfortunately pests tune in to this communication and attack the trees in trouble. Harping back to my story, maybe trees do talk to me after all. http://sullatoberdalton.com/pen-sullatober/s...
Read more

Ghost writing

Image
 I’m moving along to do some non-fiction again because it opened up so many character sketches and short story lines as well as being enjoyable and getting me involved with other people. Let me do a bit of show don’t tell – I was researching the history of a wine farm and went to interview one of the past owners to get some colour. She told me it had been hard making the place pay and that the farmhouse was haunted. Someone had been sitting sewing in the front room when a young woman dressed in the style of the early 1800’s walked through. The person sewing had asked everyone in the house who it was, but no one else had seen the young woman. They realised it had been the ghost of the original occupant, who died as a young woman in the house. A spirit on a wine farm was too good a promotional gimmick to miss so the owner and her partner, glad of anything that would help bring in money, spread the news around. Unfortunately, at that time, the fashion was to pick the grapes at midnigh...
Read more

Muse Fuse.

Image
Dead or dying I’d have described my muse over the last year or so but my Writing Group triggered a remarkable recovery with a challenge to write a short story on the subject of photography. I struggled for a while but, as a last resort, used this mind mapping thing and found several story lines. There was a kind of James Stewart Rear Window, where the cameraman saw something that have a clue to some criminal activity; petty or otherwise according to choice. Then there was the bride who fancied the best man and as the cameraman, or woman, checked the focus, they saw them smile to each other – had the groom been set up for a scam? In this focus moment, there are other interrelationships that could be seen, jealousy between the bridesmaids maybe, even the in-laws. In the end I settled for a group all smiling until the lawn sprinkler at the reception venue came on and created a rainbow effect – beautiful picture but it makes the mascara run. I don’t know if it was having to dig for a s...
Read more