Coming Apart: The Houses

There are three houses in Coming Apart, and they all mean different things. 

The first is Ava's house in Scovill Run, the coal town in upstate Pennsylvania where she has lived her entire life. Scovill Run is fictional, but based on many coal towns in my research, all of which grew up around the mine, and none of which were particularly nice places to live.

Ava's house is one half of a twin. There are two bedrooms upstairs, and a sitting room and kitchen downstairs. There is no electricity, and water is supplied by a shared pump in the yard. The other plumbing needs are taken care of by an outhouse. Most of the heat in the house comes from a wood stove in the kitchen; there is a coal stove in the front room, but it is only used on special occasions, because coal is expensive and the men who mine it can't often afford it.

Claire lives in Philadelphia, in one of my favorite houses on Delancey Place. All the houses on the street are either brownstone or brick, three and four stories. They were the houses of the wealthy then, and for the most part, that block continues to be single-family homes. The house I chose for Claire stands out because of its round front. I've always liked it, and jumped at the chance to let her live there. 

Not only that, it was up for sale several years ago, so I have a pretty good idea of the interior layout.

There is a third house in the book, which will only be explained in oblique terms because of spoilers, but it is a house I actually lived in during the late 1980s. It's also in Philadelphia, several blocks south of Claire's house, and was built before the Civil War to house mill workers. 

It's what Philadelphia calls a trinity house (Father, son & holy ghost), with one room on each floor. The entire house was no bigger than a standard two bedroom apartment. But it was pretty cool, living in a place that old, and knowing that the underground railroad had used several of the houses on the block as shelters for runaway slaves making their way to freedom.

I have pretty clear memories of this house, but again, it also was up for sale a few years ago and the renovations that were done after my time there as a renter were pretty significant. They couldn't make it bigger, but they made it nicer. One of the few things that's still the same is the clawfoot tub in the third floor bathroom, which my roommate had painted gold on the outside. Thirty years later, it's still gold.

I wonder what my characters would have thought of a gold bathtub?

Coming Apart: The Husbands

Daniel Kimber and Harry Warriner are as unalike as their wives.

Daniel Kimber is a miner. That's all he's ever done, and all he wants to do. But the Depression and the Scovill Mining Company's attitude toward union organizing means his job is always at risk. He started in the mines at the age of ten, and to him it's a big deal that his eldest son stayed in school until twelve before going to work. Daniel worships his wife for her strength and ability to manage their family on next to nothing. He's never looked at another woman - they met in grade school and paired off almost immediately. .

My choice for Daniel is Colin Farrell in a more scruffy moment. Daniel doesn't actual have a mustache, but there's something in the bleakness of his expression here that works for me.

The only son of a wealthy businessman, Harry Warriner made it to nearly forty before acquiring a young wife who met none of his mother's exacting standards. He knows his place in Philadelphia society, but it isn't what he would have chosen for himself, if he'd had a choice. Marrying Claire is his one rebellion, but he doesn't always see how difficult it has been for her to fit into his life.

Harry, at the start of the book, is fifty years old, with a precise trimmed mustache and spectacles. He can't see two feet without them. His upbringing has made him very restrained, but he does love Claire and wishes he knew how to make her happy.

Coming Apart: The Sisters

Coming Apart has two main characters, sisters Ava Kimber and Claire Warriner.

Both were born in a fictional upstate Pennsylvania coal town of Scovill Run, a small town entirely owned and operated by the Scovill Mining Company. Their mother, Lillie, was an Irish immigrant; their father was a Polish coal miner. Ava and Claire are children numbers four and six of Lillie Kovalevski's seven children.

Three years older than her sister, Ava married young, to her childhood sweetheart, and duplicated her mother's life of hard work, grinding poverty, and frequent pregnancies. She is often angry and always exhausted, but she wouldn't trade her hardships for her sister's blessings.

Claire graduated high school, got a job in Scranton, and managed to snag herself a wealthy husband. She moved to Philadelphia and has rarely been seen since by the family she left behind. 

Not surprisingly, Ava holds a bit of a grudge that her sister has more or less abandoned them, but she's also too proud to accept any help that would be offered, because she's managing just fine, thank you very much.

Claire may be thirty years old and wealthy beyond anything her family can conceive, but she's not happy. If she could only give her husband a son, maybe her mother-in-law would stop bullying her, and maybe she wouldn't be too embarrassed by her background to go home and visit the sister she misses desperately.

Both these photos were found while wandering the internet. Claire is pale and blonde and perfect; she has little else to do but keep herself looking that way. I found the inspiration photo for Ava when researching 1930s hairstyles. It's the only thing that's not accurate - Ava hasn't cut her hair, but the "I tolerate no nonsense" expression on her face is completely Ava.

What comes next: Coming Apart!

I'm really excited about the next book. I know, I'm excited about every book, but that's because every time I write one it makes more space in my head. It gets crowded in there. 

This is the one that in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. The original title was My Sister's Child, but I changed it because there is a psychological thriller out there with the same title, about a woman who kills her sister and takes her baby, and even though they are very different genres, it's a recently published book and I didn't want to use the same title. 

So now it's called Coming Apart. One of my favorite things is that I am able to use a family photo (my great-aunt Margaret and Uncle Dick) for the cover. Even though the title has changed, the ambiguous photo of woman and child - which sister's child is he? - will be the same. I can't wait to show the cover design, but I'm waiting until we have a final page count, so my designer can change the title and also do the full wrap cover for the paperback.

While still historical, this book has no real historical figures in it, and so, in the weeks and months leading up to publication, I'll be sharing character bios, location information, and some of the fascinating Depression-era history I've uncovered while writing. 

Stay tuned!

Sometimes old is best

Technology is all well and good, but sometimes you just have to go old school and break out the index cards.

Working on my Great Depression book - currently called Dear Sister - and I got stuck at about the 3/4 point. The chapters were supposed to be alternating between the two sisters, and for the most part had been cooperating.

Then I hit a snag, which I didn't realize until I was 3/4 of the way through my second draft. I'd been so busy thinking about changing the point of view from third to first, that I forgot I had this issue where each sister had two consecutive chapters and they threw the timeline completely out of whack.

The whole point of writing from both their viewpoints is to contrast their lives, and there I was, leaving readers in one place for far too long, with nothing to compare and contrast with. Thus the cards.

Each scene is written on a card, with the character's initial and a general idea of the date. I laid them all out, figured out which dates were written in stone (i.e., something that happened for real) and which were not. Then I drank some coffee and rearranged. More coffee, more futzing. Shampoo, rinse, repeat.

I finally got the storyline where I wanted it and took two days off writing to let the ideas marinate. And last night, before bed, I realized that I didn't actually want the second sister's POV in the book after all. It takes away from the character I really want to write about, and Clare's story, and the all-important contrasts therein, can be shared in their frequent letters, which is where the Dear Sister title comes from.

So, draft 3. I see you.

Research

So despite my afflictions (which are getting better, BTW, though I'm still ridiculously red-eyed), I've been getting a lot of writing done.

Since one of my eyedrops is to keep my eye dilated, I'm a little light-sensitive, so typing in sunglasses has been the order of the day.

But I've hit 65,000 words on the new book and I'm happy with it so far. Obviously it's a first draft and there will be massive rearranging, swearing, rewriting, and various other forms of self-inflicted writer torture yet to come, but still.

65,000 words is no slouch.

One of the fun things about writing historical fiction is the stuff you get to research. Instead of the Tudor era, like my other book, this one is actually set in times where I can access newspapers, which I did. I made a very, very organized list of things I needed to know, and got myself a seven day free trial of Newspapers.com, and knocked out most of my list, including a few things I hadn't planned on researching, but that fit the time period and themes of the book, so they got included.

Some topics that got researched: bootleg coal mines, the Lindbergh baby, the Bonus Army, the prices of everything in 1931-1933, Hoovervilles and orphanages in and around Philadelphia. Also, what it's like to have many children - something I obviously don't know firsthand, but an online friend was kind enough to answer a long list of questions so I feel like I know my main character a little better.

I sometimes read, but doubt I would ever write fantasy: I'd rather research a world than make one up from scratch. I read, but am not sure I would ever write contemporary, either, since one of the reasons I write is to get away from the present.

New Project

Can't stay with one book forever. Now that my Tudor-era historical is with a publisher, and I've already made it through first pass edits, I'm knee deep in something new.

When I first talked to the publisher's rep, she asked if I had ever thought of turning my book into a series (series are hot right now and I understand that especially from the writer's standpoint--you don't have to research and create another entire new world, you can just continue on with the one you've made), but I said no. I felt like I'd taken my characters as far as they needed to go. Maybe some day I'd consider doing something with one of the side characters, but otherwise not.

So I've gone from 16th century England to 1930s Pennsylvania. How's that for a switch? I've always been fascinated by the Great Depression, the creativity and resilience people needed to survive. My family, of course, being the people that they were, lived through the Depression but wouldn't talk about it because it wasn't "interesting." As if telling the same fourteen stories about the neighbors was fascinating.

So I'm going my own route. It's a tale of two very different sisters--one still lives in the coal mining town where they were born, and the other, who married well, lives in Philadelphia. It's interesting to see my own city through a scrim of 1930s history, what was there, what wasn't, and what I need to make up to fill in the gaps.

I've been searching the internet, as one does, for inspiration photos, and this is a collage I've put together of images that fit the project.

Let me know what you think, and if you/your family have any Depression tales to share, I'd love to hear them!