How I Accidentally Wrote a Historical Novel: On the Record Interviews
The background to one new novel
I am pleased to host Lancelot Schaubert’s article on my blog today. ‘Bell Hammers’ sounds fascinating as does the backstory for it. Details of Lancelot’s novel can be found below.
Homebase, for me, resides either firmly in the speculative fiction or literary genres and therefore I never wanted to write a historical novel because it seemed like too much research. I figured writing a novel — a good novel — comes with enough hard work and long timescales that there’s no need to add to the workload and publication delay. If I wanted to do research before writing, I would do more academic work: the folk who hit the books the hardest write those books such folk hit. Researchers beget researchers. I wanted no part in that sort of library grind just to dig up authentic details for my characters to use.
Yet BELL HAMMERS surprised me.
See, my grandpas would soon die. Not in a year, not in two, necessarily, but institutional and generational memory in Southern Illinois is so dadgum scarce, I knew if we would retain anything for future generations, I needed to start interviewing the older men on the record. Create something like a database of wisdom for the family. I actually started with my uncle. Then moved to my dad. Then started unearthing, between my grandpas, all of these pranks no one had ever heard they pulled on folks in the area. And then, with a bit more digging, they started saying, “I should have got an attorney” over and over again. They directed their ire at an oil company that had razed our homeland, displaced persons, and poisoned wells for profit. And one directed me to a bit of historical research: a book about the Herrin massacre. One implied he had… connections to it. And in the midst of family secrets joyful and dreadful, an idea bloomed for a novel. I started writing it. They both died during the drafts, back to back funerals on back to back Christmases.
But research came unbidden. The thing I never realized about such interviews — the drastically underrated primary source grind — is most of the historical research comes baked in. Of course that makes sense for modern-day journalism, but I never thought about it for novels. I never needed to research the kind of worm gear grandpa used on a specific drill because his story told me. Or to look for a local factory because he talked about Spur Cola. I never needed to dig for the kinds of fabric they wore to a party because he sang the lyrics from this Dottie Stevens song:
… and told me that a whole crew of them wore just that to a Junior Chamber of Commerce conference in Chicago. (Would that I could find Chicago JCC's pictures from that year). The details I normally agonized over came unbidden from his lips. Granted, this feels rather hard to implement for, say, the medieval era, but I believe a historian worth his salt would yield up the same information in a one-hour conversation over tea. And as Gaiman says, Google will give you a billion answers but a librarian will give you the right one. Doubly true for experts in a given field.
Once the details and the frame story came into place, I made a habit of the following Wiki searches on odd and unfamiliar phrases they uttered. These phrases led to other tidbits:
· "I bought some books that year" in 1955 (which told me dirty old men had access to Loilita)
· "Old Adlai was a wild governor of Illinois" in 1949 to 1953 (which yielded a wonderful bit about a law passed for cats)
· "The critics didn't like It’s a Wonderful Life" (which offered up a juicy anecdote about the FBI’s response to the film: they thought it was a tricky from “communists”)
The list goes on, but the interviews worked as a sort of launching point for research. The farther I spelunked into the dark corners of the world they built and the deep context behind the conflicts they encountered, the more I found the lion’s share of research had already been laid out before me down in that research cavern, banquet to beggar. I would never have written a historical novel had they never offered me nostalgia as a launching point. I recommend turning on the recorder and interviewing your family and neighbors over dinner.
You’ll never know what you might find...
• • •
Original Title
Bell Hammers
ISBN13
9781949547023
Edition Language
English
Setting
Illinois, 1941 (United States)Southern Illinois, 1941 (United States)Nashville, Tennessee, 1966 (United States)
PRANKS. OIL. PROTEST. JOKES BETWEEN NEWLYWEDS.
AND ONE HILARIOUS SIEGE OF A MAJOR CORPORATION.
Remmy grows up with Beth in Bellhammer, Illinois as oil and coal companies rob the land of everything that made it paradise. Under his Grandad, he learns how to properly prank his neighbors, friends, and foes. Beth tries to fix Remmy by taking him to church. Under his Daddy, Remmy starts the Bell Hammer Construction Company, which depends on contracts from Texarco Oil. And Beth argues with him about how to build a better business. Together, Remmy and Beth start to build a great neighborhood of "merry men" carpenters: a paradise of s’mores, porch furniture, newborn babies, and summer trips to Branson where their boys pop the tops off the neighborhood’s two hundred soda bottles. Their witty banter builds a kind of castle among a growing nostalgia.
Then one of Jim Johnstone’s faulty Texarco oil derricks falls down on their house and poisons their neighborhood's well.
Poisoned wells escalate to torched dog houses. Torched dog houses escalate to stolen carpentry tools and cancelled contracts. Cancelled contracts escalate to eminent domain. Sick of the attacks from Texaco Oil on his neighborhood, Remmy assembles his merry men:
"We need the world's greatest prank. One grand glorious jest that'll bloody the nose of that tyrant. Besides, pranks and jokes don't got no consequences, right?"
• • •
BELL HAMMERS by Lancelot Schaubert comes out October 12th, 2020. 6,600+ want-to-reads on Goodreads.