Am I History?

When I began this blog/website, I had just sold the first two books in my Prospect Series. I was so excited. I love history and it seemed I’d hit a sweet spot with my tales set in the 1880’s gold rush era of British Columbia. I wrote another Prospect story, but then it was time to explore other areas. So, I wrote a story set on the Prairies before WWI. I loved it, my critique partners loved it, even an editor loved it, but couldn’t buy it. This was at a time when “marketing” was a growing influence on acquisition decisions.

I put that story in a drawer and wrote a sequel. I had to do a lot of research on battlefield conditions and front line first aid stations. What I learned was heartbreaking and I wove it into my story, but I didn’t have enough knowledge to finish the book to my own satisfaction.

I wrote some present-day short stories, but even there I spent more time researching than writing. Technology, communication, travel, purchasing, entertainment — these things changed so quickly my stories were often out of date before I’d finished them. Since there is no teenage in my house, and am a slow writer, I was always behind up with the trends.

Lately, my writing has consisted of this blog and a few others — the fiction ideas languish in a drawer further and further from realization.

Then a writing group colleague asked me what I thought about writing now and I had a new idea. I might write a tale set in my own youth — a time I already know well. Since the ’50’s are now considered “historical” in genre fiction I’d be going back to my roots as a writer. 🙂 No need to research earlier generations, no need to find a teenager to set me straight on today’s mores. 

My grandmother lived for nearly one hundred years. Her progeny often marvelled at the changes she had seen–from horse and buggy to man on the moon. She sent her sons to two world wars, lived through the Great Depression, saw women in Canada get the vote, and put away the lantern in favour of an electric switch. We thought none of us would ever witness the amount of change she lived through.

But I’ve begun to question that assumption. For Baby Boomers, life rolled out in peace and progress — none of the earth-shaking events that shaped my grandmother’s world. But then came the internet and e-mail, and Facebook, and Google, and instant communication around the world. We hailed this invention as more good news — until the dark side showed up. Evil lurks in cyberspace. Now AI has arrived, bringing with it great promise for good and terrifying promise for evil and destruction. 

The advent of these technologies is one thing but the speed of change they have wrought have left many people feeling overwhelmed, disenfranchised, and fearful. Maybe I am witnessing the earth-shattering upheaval I thought belonged to my grandmother — and at the speed of disaster. In retrospect, the youth that I knew does belong to another era.

What about you, dear reader? Do you consider mid-20th century to be history? Would you care about romance in an age of party-line telephones, really big cars with no seatbelts, and hats and white gloves for going to church? 

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