| Green Light, Kid! We Did It! |
[Feb. 6th, 2013|07:39 pm]
|
I hit another history bump in Arizona last week. That's what I call it when I am doing spot research on the section I'm writing about and realize that I didn't do quite enough research on a previous section, and history is kicking dirt on my shoes as a result.
In this case, I'd been writing about the excellent relations that most of the Hispanic and Anglo residents of southern Arizona had with each other during the 1850s. They did business together, had parties together, and did quite a lot of intermarrying and other related shenanigans. So stopping a little short of where I needed to go in my research, as I found out later, I slid into the Civil War, Navajo War, and Apache War of the early 1860s while missing the Sonoita Massacre, which wrecked Anglo-Hispanic relations for years.
Long story short, after a white fellow was murdered and the Anglo community blamed a member of the Hispanic community who'd just be tied up and whipped for being part of an alleged rebellion, a vigilante mob went around southern Arizona driving out all the Mexicans they could find, including women and children, and including folks who owned the land they were living on. At one point they came to a mescal-making enterprise, and when the workers ran the Anglos opened fire, killing four Hispanics and one Yaqui. The result was a mass desertion of Mexican workers who took years to be wooed back, and even then there were lingering suspicions between the two groups--which has never stopped to this day.
At any rate, it was an easy fix--I jumped back two story years, wrote a scene about the massacre, and added another small one today that was a ramification. History and story fixed. I do live by the mantra of Research Everything--sometimes I just don't know that I've stopped too soon. I'll have to work on that. Better to find it out now, though, than after publication.
In other news, To Murder an Empire, my historical fantasy novel about King Alaric of the Goths and his Sack of Rome in A.D. 410, is now off to the publisher that accepted The Matter of Camelot. I temporarily halted work on Arizona last week to jump back to the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. and finish all the edits on Empire--figuring that since a publisher has already purchased one of my historicals, any more procrastination on getting out another would be sinful.
Now the metaphorical breath-holding starts. But I'm pleased with how I've learned over the years to get other stuff done while locking my lungs. I wrote To Murder an Empire in its entirety while badly distracted and awaiting a critical outcome, for all that. |
|
|
| Comments: |
History can be tricky that way!
Tricksy and slippery, it is. | |
madwriter
hopeful