A House on the Beach

The Morris house in ‘The Dictator’s Children’ and the Summerlin/Salas house in the Women in the Sun novels — written as Sienna Santerre — are variations on a theme. They are similar houses in similar locations on the Naples FL beach. They have similarities in their history. Indeed, when I first started on ‘One Summer in the Sun’ I considered making them the same place, tying the two series together. It just didn’t work with the established chronology of the Wilk books nor with the projected date for the ‘Sun’ novel. That is one reason I chose to go with the pen name, to provide some separation.

In both incarnations it is a not overly large two-story ‘cottage’ near the pier, built before WW2. Some of those remain in Naples; some have been demolished to be replaced by more grandiose houses. Even at the time the novels are set, the beachfront property beneath them was more valuable than the homes themselves. Of course, I have drawn up floor plans for both houses. I do that sort of thing for most of my fiction.

‘The Dictator’s Children’ and the two Women in the Sun novels are available at the Arachis Press site (arachispress.com) in print or as free ebooks.

Silk Road

I’m currently reading a history of the Silk Road, the caravan route across central Asia. My protagonists travel that route in the novel ‘Wilk,’ set shortly after the First World War. Through most of history the more southerly route across the Tarim Basin was more used, as it was safer, albeit a more arduous route. By the time of my story, concerns for bandits and other human dangers had greatly decreased so I sent Jean Wilk and his companions to China via the northern route, through the Dzungarian Gap.

Why? Lower mountains, mostly. Getting their truck or airplanes across the pass into Sinkiang would have been difficult, if not impossible. I’ve learned since the roads were very sandy along that way, as well, making them largely unsuitable for wheeled traffic. That was probably pretty much as true in 1919 as it had been in centuries earlier.

So I made the proper choice there, sending men, truck, and, yes, a couple disassembled aircraft north on the railway from Tashkent and then east into China. That journey is far from being the entire novel but makes up a decent portion of it.

 

Qala/Tes

Qala the Pirate Queen appears in four of my (Stephen Brooke’s) fantasy novels. She was introduced as a secondary character in ‘The Eyes of the Wind,’ in which she is still the leader of the pirates. ‘The Crocodile’s Son’ and ‘The Crocodile God’ chronicle her adventures in retirement as a member of the landed gentry (and the mother of a demigod). We turn to her childhood as a refugee in the decaying city of Tesra in ‘The City and the Sword,’ when she was known as Lellie. Later she took the name of the city as her own, becoming Tes the pirate captain before rising to the position of queen.

 

It is as Tes she appears in the novella ‘Storm Stone,’ to be released in about a month (June 28). This is a tale of her days as a young pirate on her way to the top. All the books are available in print or as free ebooks at arachispress.com

Hill Farm

A collection of pictures I found here and there online of the place in the Hocking Hills of Ohio we named the Hill Farm when I was a kid (and visited and sometime lived there). Although Fry Farm in my novel ‘These Remembered Hills’ is not exactly the Hill Farm, it is based fairly closely on it. And the ‘Seven Caves’ are pretty similar to (but, again not exactly the same) the Saltpetre Caves there. The novel, of course, is available from Arachis Press (arachispress.com) in print or as free ebooks.

Big Pine Creek flowed through the property. At Fry Farm we have Hemlock Creek. The picture here could be anywhere on the creek’s flow; it is definitely not the swimming hole in the novel but the low cliffs and the gravel spits are similar features.

Cliffs of that sort are everywhere. The ones here are on the way up to the caves. Easy enough to go over if one isn’t careful — at least I feared they were as a kid!

I remember squeezing through here on the way to the first cave. And, of course, had to include that in the story.

  

This big open rock shelter cave is very much like the spot where Jim’s sister was pushed to her death — and where he fought for his own life later on.

Bobcats

another post brought over from my soon-to-be-defunct These Remembered Hills blog:

Ohio University, in the city of Athens, plays a somewhat central role in ‘These Remembered Hills’ and will continue to do so in any sequels. Athens is some twenty miles down the road from Logan and should be about thirty miles from the Fry Farm. That would depend on the route one chose to drive, though most come to a fairly similar figure.

Jim Fry, who already has completed a couple years of college at Ohio State plus a four year hitch in the navy, chooses to enroll at Ohio University both because it is conveniently close and because of the reputation of its art program. Art is what he has decided to study after leaving the service. Also, an old friend of Jim — or of his late sister — is an instructor there.

The university is spread on relatively low land near the Hocking River and is — or was — known to flood with some regularity. This is alluded to in the novel but we have yet to experience it. That is a definite possibility in a future story.

The art building is at a bit of a remove from the rest of the campus and I have noted this in the novel. Much of the rest of the geography of the university and Athens in general I have fudged a bit — the businesses and such, in particular. It’s fiction, after all. I haven’t been strict about any of the other locales in the novel either, but in general it is all close enough. No blatant rearranging of the scenery!

I might mention that Ohio University has also popped up in other novels in another series, written under a different name. That would be the Women in the Sun books (‘One Summer in the Sun,’ ‘One Christmas in the Sun’) which appeared under the Sienna Santerre pen name. A young athlete, a friend of the protagonists, chooses to attend the college. The university itself, however, does not actually appear as a location in the stories.

So we can expect the university to appear in any sequel to ‘These Remembered Hills’. Maybe the Bobcats football team, too. Jim will definitely be driving to classes in Athens come Fall. He might even take his bike to ride around campus.

Cliffs

 

I was curious about what had become of the farm in Ohio’s Hocking Hills where I had done some of my growing up, so I went to Google (knowing the street address — it was just a rural route number back then) and found the street view picture. Very little is left of what was there more than a half-century ago when last I saw the place. Only the same sandstone slabs by the road that underlie everything! The trees have grown up so much that the cliffs on the ridge behind are no longer visible from this roadside angle.

Those cliffs play a starring role in ‘These Remembered Hills.’ Fry Farm in that book is closely based on our ‘Hill Farm,’ including the cliffs and the vultures that nested on them through the summers. I could look out my bedroom window on the back of the old farmhouse (replaced now) and see the rising sun shining on them, the vultures launching when it grew warm enough for updrafts. If one were standing in the road there, the creek would be to ones back, with its own cliff walls. Cold water but a swim was welcome on a hot summer day.

There are quite a few such cliffs around the area. Easy to fall over — or to be pushed from, and so gave me a starting point for my mystery story.

Buckeye Lake

Though it is not in the Hocking Hills area, Buckeye Lake has been a popular vacation spot in central Ohio for a century or more. Originally more a swamp than a lake, dikes and dams were thrown up and it served as a ‘feeder’ for Ohio’s canal system from the early 1800s. As canal use fell off with advance of the railroads, it became a destination for tourists and weekenders around central Ohio—Columbus in particular. The lake lies nearly due east from Columbus.

In the mid-Twentieth Century, the amusement park and dance hall attracted visitors. Many of the best-known big bands of the era played there; my mother went to see some of them in the Thirties. Our whole family would visit the amusement park on occasion in the Fifties. Needless to say, this is a setting I could easily slip into a Hocking Hills story. It is a pretty straight shot up from Logan or Athens.

I remember the big hotel there, which was deteriorating badly when I was a kid. The Catholic church (Our Lady of Mount Carmel) was using it for Sunday school lessons. This was when we lived in Pickerington and drove over for mass. That would have been in the late 50s. I do remember my father (who was not a church-goer) would buy doughnuts at a local bakery. Some would be left by the time we got back to the car! These are just the sort of details from life that can be used in ones fiction, to add that needed touch of realism.

Many weekend cottages lay around Buckeye Lake. Whether those remain, I couldn’t say; I haven’t seen the place in more than half a century. I do know my father took my mother there more than once when he was courting her and when they were newly-weds. I also know they rented one of those cottages briefly when I was a baby. No memories, of course!

I’m posting a picture here of Dad rowing on the lake in 1940, just around the time my parents married, and one of the entry to the amusement park, sometime in the Fifties.

 

The Farm

Fry Farm, the central setting for ‘These Remembered Hills,’ is based on a very real location where I spent some of my childhood. Although I have changed some place names and slightly tilted the directions, one could probably locate it from the description given in the novel.

And yes, there were caves—the very real Salt Petre Caves that are now operated by a nonprofit organization. Back then, it was my grandfather’s farm and my own father did some of his growing up there, roaming the hills, hunting, spending time in the caves. It was not much of an operating farm even then, but a country place for my grandfather, who had made his fortune in Columbus, in construction and lumber.

I’m including a photo of one of the caves as they are now. I may dig out some old photos later and scan them to post here. My descriptions of the caves and of the farm do come pretty close to the real place but I’ve allowed myself some artistic license here and there. Sometimes when I just didn’t remember details and only had maps to go by!

 The areas around the farm are very much ‘real.’ Logan, Athens, the various state parks (though I did rename the one closest to the farm). Columbus, too, which we visit in the course of the story. More on some of those places later.

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note: This is a re-post from my Hocking Hills blog. I intend to move all the material from it here and close it down. 

American Magic

In the Seventies and Eighties there was a brief surge of American ‘magic realism.’ Pynchon’s ‘Gravity’s Rainbow,’ Helprin’s ‘Winter’s Tale,’ Delany’s ‘Dhalgren’ — all three of these books have been characterized on occasion as science fiction and/or fantasy, but I consider them neither; magic realism is essentially a sort of surrealism.

You, of course, are free to disagree. It doesn’t much matter whether any of us are right or wrong about it. All categorization is ultimately arbitrary.

I was much more impressed with these novels when they first appeared (and I was young and at least a little less experienced). They feel somewhat contrived now, exercises in literary theory. That does not prevent them from being still worth reading.

And though you find little surrealist tendency in my work, that does not mean I in any way object to it. I would consider Woolf’s ‘Orlando’ as good a work of magic realism as any of those I named, as well, perhaps, as a more enjoyable read.

Surrealism drops in the unexplained (and perhaps unexplainable) and treats it as simply the way things are. It does not create a true self-contained world with its own logic and laws as does speculative fiction (i.e. fantasy and science fiction). It is intended to jar the imagination with the illogical.

Unfortunately, that sometimes results in mere silliness, in whimsy, in tricks of illusion performed purely for their own sake. It can become conceptual showmanship with little true substance, an exercise in self-indulgence. Not that other sorts of fiction are immune to bad writing!

Of the three novels mentioned above, I find ‘Dhalgren’ to be by far the best. Again, you are free to disagree. Delany makes the unreal feel real, which is the point of magic realism. There are echoes of real cities in his abandoned Bellona, and of real people in the vivid characters who roam its empty streets. It is both familiar and unfathomably strange. And the author knows how to tell a compelling story, even if there is not exactly a real plot.

I suppose it — as Pynchon’s work — would also be pigeonholed as ‘literary fiction.’ It is certainly more literary, i.e. informed by literary theory, than the average popular novel. Ultimately, only time will decide whether any of them are great novels. And even time is known to change its mind.

Surfing in my Novels

Surfing has long been a part of my life, so it should not be at all surprising it has shown up in my fiction. These are the novels that reference it in some degree:

“The Middle of Nowhere” — in my first novel (a young adult), surfing is only mentioned in passing by a local artist and sometime sub teacher (golly, I wonder whom I based that on).

The three Cully Beach crime novels, “Shaper,” “Waves,” “Smoke” — the main character and first-person narrator is an aging surfer and surf-shop owner, known as ‘Shaper.’ I shaped a few surfboards myself in bygone days so I know at least a little of what I’m talking about.

The two Women in the Sun novels (written under the pen name Sienna Santerre), “One Summer in the Sun,” “One Christmas in the Sun” — teens in the late Sixties, some of whom are surfers and all of whom hang on the beach. The books are set in the Naples in which I grew up in that period.

“Asanas” — again, mostly mentioned in passing, as the characters reminisce about their younger days (and dating surfers).

Although several of my fantasy novels feature more-or-less Polynesians, I haven’t put any of them on surfboards. But there is definitely canoe surfing.

All available, of course, from Arachis Press (arachispress.com) in print or as free ebooks.