In The Flow of Time – August 26, 2024 I’m reading a marvelous non-fiction work built off the journals of the Societé d’Economie, which started in New Orleans in 1836, and lasted to the 1950s. Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood did not disappoint. It is… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – August 24, 2024 How history makes it into fiction. I can’t write a novel in this time without at least mentioning a pivotal battle in the history of the United States. Yes, it happened after the peace treaty had been signed, before anyone involved… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – August 21, 2024 Oh my god. Sometimes imagination becomes real. Back on July 7, I wrote about my plan to have a jazz funeral in the story. With only a little twitch, I can have a jazz funeral when her husband dies. Cool. Today… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – August 16, 2024 I am starting to plot, which really means, I’m making up a story. It’s fiction! I have this truly massive pile of facts that exists in and around antebellum New Orleans. I’ll make stuff up or move stuff around to stick… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – August 13, 2024 Ah, history, she can teach a thing or two… I doubt this event will make it into the story, but… it is instructional. We flash back to June 2 1858, the Know Nothing “riot” in New Orleans. Armed men under the… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – August 10, 2024 I thought I’d try to convey the random (?) fun of burrowing down rabbit holes. I’m not taking notes about how I do it when I’m doing it. So this story is really a “like this” exposition, not a precise accounting… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – August 10, 2024 Life is full of “stuff” like music, song, dancing, games… so as part of understanding the world I’m going to write about, I look into all sorts of topics. Some are more “tangential,” not part of the central narrative. So I’m… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – August 9, 2024 I’m gradually transitioning from research. More and more, I see a tidbit, I take a note, and I start imagining how this might fit into a story that doesn’t even exist yet, except in broad outline form in my imagination. There… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – August 8, 2024 Along the way I’ve read two standard biographies of Marie Laveaux. One was very academic, a dissertation turned into book, and written through a lens of female empowerment. The other had extensive footnotes referencing parish and historical records. That’s the one… Continue reading
In The Flow of Time – August 7, 2024 Underlying the evil of slavery was a very simple belief: slaves are things. Simple? White superiority – or more tellingly, Black inferiority was like the sunrise. It was there, it was always, it was so obvious it was beneath notice. It… Continue reading
