Many of my closest friends are liars.
Those friends may prefer the title storyteller extraordinaire. Tale-weavers. And whether the literary yarn they spin is set in an actual place or based upon real life events and historical characters, like me, they are authors of fiction.
As novelists, we have chosen to write fiction, not fact. But even so, is the story we weave truly and completely made up?
Not the best stories. All compelling fiction resonates with readers. Why?
The best stories are rich in truth.
Two Brides Too Many, Too Rich for a Bride, The Bride Wore Blue, and Twice a Bride
In writing each of my historical novels, I try to create an honest story world, premise, and character journeys that provide a platform for emotional and spiritual truth that deepens the realness of my fiction. While I’m not telling my story in The Sinclair Sisters of Cripple Creek books, part of the authenticity comes at the points in which my life experiences—physical, spiritual, emotional, relational—intersect with my characters’ experiences.
Celebrating the completion of my debut series with the October release of Twice a Bride, I thought I’d offer you insight into a few of those intersections.
- Like Ida, Kat, Nell, and Vivian Sinclair in Two Brides Too Many, Too Rich for a Bride, The Bride Wore Blue, and Twice a Bride, I am one of four sisters.
- One of the sisters is a writer who, like me, began her career writing for a periodical.
- I buried my father twenty-one years ago. Like me, one of my characters in Twice a Bride stands at a crossroads beside her father’s grave.
- Our beloved Miss Hattie shares many of the amiable, mentoring characteristics of my dear friend and prayer partner, June Adams.
- A character in Too Rich for a Bride was institutionalized with melancholia. Although the circumstances varied greatly, the grandmother my husband never knew was hospitalized with melancholia in the early 1900’s.
- Like Deputy Carter Alwyn in The Bride Wore Blue, both my hubby and my father served in law enforcement and shared his compassionate and courageous stand for justice.
- Before giving birth to my two daughters, I suffered two miscarriages. The circumstances and dynamics are not the same, but many of the emotions are, when one of the characters in Twice a Bride shares that experience.
- Boney Hughes serves the series as a quirky sidekick and an unlikely mentor. Or is he a guardian angel? Mr. Boney shares many of my father’s Johnny-on-the-spot traits.
- Like Willow in Twice a Bride, several of my family members have experienced a second chance for love and romance.
Even though my Cripple Creek tales weren’t formed in actual reality, my hope is that the setting and characters, action and themes, and my emotional investment as the writer, offer a tapestry of honesty that can make a work of fiction feel more real, at times, than life itself.
Thank you for joining me here. I so appreciate your interest in my historical fiction with WaterBrook Multnomah.
What do you enjoy most about reading fiction?
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