Two Authors, Suzanne Adair and Ann Parker, Chat About their Characters

Award-winning novelist Suzanne Adair is a Florida native who lives in a two hundred-year-old city at the edge of the North Carolina Piedmont, named for an English explorer who was beheaded. Her suspense and thrillers transport readers to the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War, where she brings historic towns, battles, and people to life. She fuels her creativity with Revolutionary War reenacting and visits to historic sites. When she’s not writing, she enjoys cooking, dancing, hiking, and spending time with her family. For more information, check out her blog (www.SuzanneAdair.typepad.com) or web site (www.SuzanneAdair.com).

Ann Parker is a science writer by day, scribbling verbiage for science R&D national labs and solar energy start-ups, and an historical mystery writer by night. Her award-winning Silver Rush historical mystery series featuring saloon-owner Inez Stannert is set in 1880s Colorado, primarily in the silver-mining boomtown of Leadville. The series includes (from first to most recent) Silver Lies, Iron Ties, Leaden Skies, and Mercury’s Rise. Ann’s ancestors include a Leadville blacksmith, a Colorado School of Mines professor, and a gandy dancer. Ann and her family live in California, whence they have weathered many boom and bust cycles. Website: www.annparker.net

 

Two Authors, Suzanne Adair and Ann Parker, Chat About their Characters

  

Suzanne: Kaye, thanks for giving Ann and me this opportunity to chat on your blog!

Ann, let’s talk a few minutes about our fictional characters and their eras. In the first book of my series, Paper Woman: A Mystery of the American Revolution, the main character, Sophie Barton, is thirty-something, twice widowed, and runs her father’s printing press in a small town on the Georgia frontier.

History provides us with numerous examples of women who operated or owned such businesses out of necessity or choice during the War of Independence. However from the beginning, townsfolk regard Sophie as a little eccentric because she’s been without a husband for eight years. And she’s obviously in no big hurry to remarry.

Fancy that: a single woman who likes running a business and not being tied down to a man by the court system! Ann, this is a great time for you to discuss the main character for your series, Inez Stannert.

Ann: Sure Suzanne... My protagonist is thirty-year-old Inez Stannert, part-owner of the Silver Queen Saloon in Leadville, Colorado, 1880. She is truly a part-owner, on a handshake deal among her husband, her husband’s business partner Abe Jackson, and Inez herself. This may seem unusual, but then Mark Stannert (Inez’s husband) and Abe are unusual men!

Suzanne: As the Civil War was still fresh in memory for some, yes, a business ownership split between a black man (Abe), a woman (Inez), and the woman’s husband (Mark) was an unusual arrangement.

Ann: Saloon-owner may seem an unlikely occupation for a woman during this timeframe, but it wasn’t unheard of. In 1880 Leadville, there were approximately 300 saloons in Leadville. Of those, three were run by women. So, the way I see it, Inez is a woman in a man’s world, and she has learned how to maneuver in this world to survive and thrive. Her favorite weapons are words, her wits, and her Remington Smoot No. 2 Patent pocket revolver. Inez pours the drinks, keeps the accounts, and keeps the peace (or attempts to) in the Silver Queen, even as murder and mayhem constantly dog her from book to book.

That’s the same situation with your characters, Suzanne. They are all businesswomen, independent, and tough in their own ways, doing what they had to do. What about Betsy Sheridan?

Suzanne: “Tough” doesn’t begin to describe Betsy Sheridan, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Sophie Barton, and the main character for the second book, The Blacksmith’s Daughter: A Mystery of the American Revolution. Betsy is the accountant for her shoemaker husband’s business in Augusta, Georgia. That’s all quite proper and seemly.

Then her husband backs himself into an espionage corner and hightails it out of town to avoid arrest. Betsy, who is four months pregnant, dismisses advice from “proper” ladies in Augusta and runs after her husband, straight into the deprivating heart of war in neighboring South Carolina. In doing so, she reveals herself to be a chip off the Sophie Barton block. For Sophie ended up chasing her father’s killer all the way to Cuba in the sort of hellish journey that no “proper” woman would ever have made in the year 1780.

Clearly these ladies have more important matters on their agendas than conforming to society’s ideal of behavior for women. And speaking of this ideal of behavior, Ann, let’s hear about your fascinating secondary character, Frisco Flo.

Ann: Even though Frisco Flo comes across as a bit of a ditz in the first book, Silver Lies, she definitely comes into her own in the third book of the series, Leaden Skies. Frisco Flo begins as a prostitute in a high-class parlor house and eventually advances to running the house itself. She’s one smart cookie, much like Inez. I based bits of Flo on a couple of real-life Colorado madams from this timeframe: Mattie Silks and Jennie Rogers. They were both described as very competitive, astute in matters of business, and good-looking. It’s interesting how little is known about their early lives. Women “in the trade” tended to take pseudonyms and change them frequently. They were also both unlucky in love (which is ironic, given the nature of their business). Mattie liked to say that she’d never been a working girl, but started right off as a madam.

Suzanne: Madams who were unlucky in love? I also find that ironic. You’d think men would be lined up to claim the virtuosas. :-)

Ann: Oh, they were, Suzanne. But sometimes, they were just after the money. And when these hard-headed practical women fell, they often fell hard. Now, you have another character, Helen Chiswell, who “worked her way up” from society page journalist to war correspondent. Tell us a bit about her and how this came to be?

Suzanne: Helen Chiswell, a widowed, ambitious journalist in her late twenties, is the protagonist of Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution. In 1780, a representative of a government with interests in the outcome of the Revolutionary War might visit an army’s camp to monitor how well his country’s investment was being used. But he wouldn’t be considered a war correspondent because there were no war correspondents as we know them today.

However it wasn’t unusual for women to write the Society page for a magazine during this time. That’s where we find Helen at the beginning of the book. When her publisher wants an exclusive profile on the commander of the British Legion, Banastre Tarleton, she jumps at the opportunity and agrees to visit the Legion’s camp posing as the sister of an officer. All very exciting for Helen -- until she’s caught up in a winter battle campaign in South Carolina. Then her eagerness to explore new journalism territory is submerged by her will to survive. Modern war correspondents can find themselves in the same predicament.

Ann, one of your secondary characters does her own bit of exploring new territory: photojournalism, if I remember correctly. Tell us more about her.

Ann: I have a secondary character who is at the fringes of the “printing” business. Susan Carothers is a photographer, a young woman who has come West to “make her mark,” if you will. I see her as a low-key, self-possessed young woman who doesn’t make waves (as Inez is prone to do!). Although I’d come up with Susan on my own, I discovered while researching my most recent book, Mercury’s Rise, that there was a female photographer working out of Manitou Springs, Colorado: Anna Galbreaith! I even have a cabinet card that is a photograph she took in Williams Canyon in “The Narrows.” I was fascinated by Anna G, but could find very little about her.

Suzanne: That’s cool! And not by a long shot was Anna Galbreaith the only woman photographer back then, so keep looking. The book Awesome Women by Leslie Sackrison lists two-dozen women photographers in the 1800s. You know there must have been even more.

Ann: Thank you! I’ll check out the reference. You have a character that also runs her own business. Like Inez and Frisco Flo, Kate Duncan’s business caters almost exclusively to men. Could you tell us more about Kate?

Suzanne: Sure! In her mid-twenties, Kate is a supporting character in Regulated for Murder: A Michael Stoddard American Revolutionary Thriller. She‘s widowed and owns White’s Tavern, formerly owned by her uncle, in Wilmington, North Carolina. The court system and inheritance laws of the time didn’t usually confer ownership of property on women, but laws can be circumvented. Kate has a shrewder head for business than her younger brother.

Notice that most of my main women characters are widowed. Married women during the Revolutionary War were legally subsumed in their husbands’ lives and had almost no rights. “Unlucky in love” definitely describes Kate. Her husband married her to grab the tavern while continuing an affair with his mistress. Women who’d been delivered from such a matrimonial hell by the deaths of spouses were understandably reluctant to remarry.

Ann: At least, the smart ones were reluctant to remarry, right? ;-)

Suzanne: Right! All our women characters are doing what they have to do, engaged in business, showing the innate, capable nature of women, not some trend of early feminism. For the supporting cast that shares the adventures, life is certainly more comfortable when expectations of women are straightforward and women do what they’re “supposed to do.” The minute these women start down new paths, they’re labeled “eccentric.” And there’s some fear and envy involved in that label.
What personal experiences of yours led to your development of Inez, Frisco Flo, and Susan?

Ann: I grew up in the 1960s, at a time when girls were required to wear skirts or dresses at school. I can still remember the fervour caused in my senior year in high school (this would be 1970), when one of my classmates wore a very nicely tailored pantsuit (as they were then called) to school. She was immediately pulled out of class and ordered to go home and change!

Of course, at that time, the roles and rights of women were changing dramatically, just as fashion was. No longer were the stated choices for “women’s careers” limited to nurse, teacher, and secretary. (I still remember as a third grader saying I wanted to be an archaeologist... who knows where that came from?... and being gently put in my place.) In college, I studied physics, a field with very few women. It was not uncommon for me to be the only woman in a class. After college, I went to work in a scientific R&D organization as a technical writer at a time when every single tech writer in the group was male (and mostly engineers).

What about you, Suzanne?

Suzanne: Whew, I hear ya. I was about five years later in the days of “roles and rights” changes. By then, high school administrators had realized that pants were not the Great Evil, because girls were wearing micro-miniskirts to school. Administrators need to pick their battles, yes? :-)

I grew up watching the contrails and first-stage separations of the Apollo missions from the roof of my house. It’s probably why I became interested in science. At one point, I declared my intention to become an astronaut. I was promptly shut down by a family elder who expressed doubt at my ability to handle the math. Nevertheless, I became a microbiologist. My classes were on the pre-med, pre-dent, and pre-vet tracks, with about a 3:1 ratio of men to women. Like you, I migrated later to tech writing.

In the early 1980s, I did a considerable amount of world traveling, even living in England for half a year. Much of the traveling was done in association with plant pathologists from other countries. Many were women. That’s when I learned that the United States was way behind in turning out women scientists.

Ann, why did you fashion your women characters as you did?

Ann: When I was working out who my female characters were in the series, I figured I could write “woman in a man’s world,” having lived it myself (albeit in a different time and location). So, I picked roles and occupations for my female characters that would be unusual, but not impossible for the times. How about you, Suzanne?

Suzanne: Same here. I found that modern readers had a mistaken impression of women’s roles and occupations during the Revolutionary War. That made me determined to enlighten those readers. I also factored in some of my experiences, particularly the wariness I received from some people when they realized I was a scientist, or (much later) divorced. The centuries pass, but some things just don’t change that much.

So, readers, we ask you: What was the last novel you read in which the protagonist's occupation struck you as unusual, maybe non-traditional? What did you think about it?

The South's Other War by Suzanne Adair

Award-winning novelist Suzanne Adair is a Florida native who lives in a two hundred-year-old city at the edge of the North Carolina Piedmont, named for an English explorer who was beheaded. Her suspense and thrillers transport readers to the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War, where she brings historic towns, battles, and people to life. She fuels her creativity with Revolutionary War reenacting and visits to historic sites. When she’s not writing, she enjoys cooking, dancing, and spending time with her family. Check her web site  and blog  for more information. Or hop over to her Facebook  and Twitter  pages to say “hi.”

  
 

The South's Other War

by Suzanne Adair 

You've seen the bumper stickers and T-shirts:

"The South Shall Rise Again!"

"Forget, hell!"

"Dern tootin' I'm a rebel!"

Obviously we're talking about the Civil War—for many people, the only war of significance in the South. From school history classes, Americans receive the impression that the Civil War was fought almost exclusively in the South, while the North claims the Revolutionary War.

People forget that North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were part of the original thirteen colonies. The fact that Florida was strategically important for King George III is almost unknown. In fact, St. Augustine, Florida is the oldest city in the United States. It was settled by Spaniards in the sixteenth century, decades before the English founded Jamestown. During the Revolutionary War, St. Augustine belonged to the British, and they also had strategic bases in Pensacola, Florida and Mobile, Alabama.

While I was a child growing up in Florida, these omissions annoyed me enough that I resolved to find a way to put Florida on the map historically for the general public. I wanted to show the importance of Florida, considered a Southern state, before the time of railroad barons Flagler and Plant, before the Civil War. Florida, important in the war that's so often attributed to the North, the Revolutionary War. That opportunity arrived with my first published novel, Paper Woman. The Florida Historical Society awarded me the Patrick D. Smith Literature Award for it.

In subsequent novels, I’ve continued to press home the fact that in the Revolutionary War, major, decisive battles occurred in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The South is where the British strategy to subdue the colonial insurrection finally collapsed. Most historians now believe that more battles were fought in South Carolina than in New York. But almost none of that information makes it into history texts. So I keep writing, because I’m still irked that the South draws the short straw for recognition when it comes to the Revolutionary War.

Literature by Southerners is some of the most lyrical writing on the face of the earth. However, writing from the South can receive a more skeptical reception than that from other regions. Southerners have deep roots in folklore. Sometimes, we embrace folklore so well that we fail to distinguish it from fact. When that happens, we shoot our own credibility in the foot. Here’s a great example of what I mean.

I once received email from a columnist at a small Georgia paper. (I'll call him "Jimmy Olsen," for the cub reporter in "Superman.") Mr. Olsen wrote a piece about how the South's contribution during the Revolutionary War has been downplayed. He wanted feedback from me, a novelist who writes about the South in the war, to substantiate his views. I asked him to email me his article.

When I read it, I cringed. Not only had Jimmy Olsen gotten facts incorrect about the Revolutionary War in the South, he'd accepted as fact tales of Southern folklore. Maybe he meant well, but the bottom line was that we Southerners had shot ourselves in the foot. Again. Why should anyone bother to take the South's claims of significance in the Revolutionary War seriously when Southerners cannot even get their facts straight and believe in myths and boogey monsters of the war?

I submitted a letter to the editor that supported Jimmy Olsen's overall premise and gently corrected his mistakes. The paper never published my letter. Did I irritate them? Embarrass them? I certainly hope I did. What's disturbing is that Mr. Olsen told me he also teaches high school. That means he's perpetrating factual errors upon subsequent generations.

More than 225 years ago, Southerners fought hundreds of crucial Revolutionary War battles within the Southern colonies. Today, Southerners are fighting ignorance about their own history. This ignorance is perpetrated in a vicious cycle from school texts to schoolteachers. Even Hollywood doesn't get the story right; "The Patriot," released in 2000, purported to show facts of the war in the South but only reinforced folklore.

The best way off this rat wheel is to study the history. I’m the first to admit that poring over dusty tomes of non-fiction in a library basement is hardly a glorious way to spend a summer afternoon. So I’m going to put you in the hands of some excellent writers of Revolutionary War fiction. In honor of Independence Day, 1–7 July 2011, I'm posting an entire week of essays by historical novelists on my blog, The British are Coming, Y’All!   I invite you to join us. Each essay will have an Independence Day theme. Authors like J. R. Lindermuth and award-winner Charles F. Price will be giving away their books in drawings. If your TBR pile is running low, all you have to do to qualify for a book drawing is leave a relevant comment about the associated essay. Mark your calendar for the first week of July, and join us for fun at my blog.

But that’s ten days away, so let’s have some fun right now with Southern myths. What’s the biggest chunk of balderdash most entertaining myth, legend, or folk tale that you’ve heard about the South? (Let's keep it PG-13, folks.)

Of Fairy Tales and Dragons by Suzanne Adair

Suzanne Adair writes a mystery/suspense series set during the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War. Her first book, Paper Woman, won the 2007 Patrick D. Smith Literature Award from the Florida Historical Society. In 2009, Camp Follower was a finalist for both the Daphne du Maurier Excellence in Historical Mystery/Suspense Award and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. Check her web site or blog for more information.

 

 

 

Of Fairy Tales and Dragons

by Suzanne Adair

When I tell someone that I'm an author, it usually generates a query about what I write. My response is that I write historical crime fiction set in the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War. Categorizing my fiction satisfies people, stimulates additional interest among those who like reading that type of material, and earns me expressions of social acceptance.

Imagine the reactions, instead, if I told people that I write fairy tales.  They'd frown and recoil, as if I'd sprouted warts over my face, and find a polite excuse to leave my company. They'd think, Suzanne Adair's elevator isn't going to the top floor.

But I confess that I really do write fairy tales. At their cores, my novels published thus far — Paper Woman, The Blacksmith's Daughter, and Camp Follower — are each fairy tales. And I continue to write fairy tales, unabashedly.

The prolific English writer G. K. Chesterton said, "Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."

Not all dragons possess the same strength. Some require extra effort to be slain. Thus fairy tales teach children about creativity and perseverance — good traits for them to develop in the midst of a copycat, instant-gratification culture.

Extra-powerful dragons have names like Disease and Poverty. What's interesting is that the same extra- powerful dragons that imperiled Assyrians, Celts, and Huns threaten us in the 21st century, in first-world countries. Consequently, when I write about these dragons in the 18th century, readers recognize them.

Historical fiction, like speculative fiction, removes the pressure to regard what's written as an in-your-face tale with an All-Important Lesson. What I'm actually doing is sneaking in stories about how people in the past might have dealt with dragons that have names like Psychopath, Addict, Shell-Shocked Soldier, and Child Molester.

Look for a traditional fairy tale that doesn’t terrorize children on some level.  You won't find it. In those old tales, lessons are taught well through fear. It is fear, not reward, that motivates heroes to slay dragons. When the hero stands beneath the dragon's shadow, the hero realizes that his/her existence is at stake. The dragon must be slain. Otherwise, the dragon will continue to imperil the hero's existence.

Some dragons will not be slain, no matter how a hero strives. But the hero doesn't stop striving, just because he or she cannot kill the dragon. As the Pirkei Avot says, "You are not expected to complete the work, but neither may you cease from doing your part."

What is my "part" as a writer of crime fiction? I believe mysteries and thrillers are actually fairy tales for adult readers. They appeal to people who have been denied justice in the real world or who have seen loved ones denied justice. These readers embrace crime fiction so they can see wrongs righted. They read to escape the grimness of a world in which some dragons will not be slain.

Each time I receive letters from my readers who thank me for helping them forget about a real-world dragon for a few hours, I believe I've done my part. By writing what I write, I make a difference in the lives of others — but not just by helping them escape.

You see, fairy tales aren't fluff. Every time you read one, whether it's traditional or contemporary, you're exposed to dragons that hobble the human race. You see them from different, often fresh, angles. These angles challenge you to ponder prickly issues anew, search yourself for resolutions perhaps invisible behind the defenses you've erected about your own soul.

The next time you read crime fiction, look for the dragons. Look for the angles. And ask yourself, "What is my solution to this dilemma? Might my solution benefit others?"

What dragons have you slain, and how?

The Things We Do for Research by Suzanne Adair

Suzanne Adair writes am ystery/suspense series set during the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War. Her first book, Paper Woman, won the 2007 Patrick D. Smith Literature Award from the Florida Historical Society. More recently, Camp Follower was nominated for the 2009 Daphne du Maurier Excellence in Historical Mystery/Suspense Award.
Check her web site or blog for more information.
















The Things We Do for Research by Suzanne Adair

Writers of mysteries, suspense, and thrillers dabble with ligatures, poisons, blades, and firearms. They read up on sociopaths and schizophrenics. They pester cops, hack hard drives, sketch plans on cocktail napkins for invading countries, study how to build bombs and organize cults, and verify procedures for manufacturing street drugs.

What fun! And to think that my ex-husband labeled me weird, obsessed, and admitted that my interests scared him. Poor fellow.

So why do we pursue these activities and risk being labeled odd birds? Well, one of our goals is to suspend our readers' sense of disbelief so they'll buy into our fictional worlds. No getting around the fact that world building requires a chunk of research. You must make sure that things work right, or readers will dismiss you.

On the Guppies discussion list several years ago, a subscriber confessed that she'd had her husband duct-tape her mouth, hands, and ankles, then close her into the trunk of her car so she could determine the difficulty of escape. (Note: That's a fate she'd planned for her protagonist in her manuscript.) My initial thought was, "Wow, I never would have trusted my ex to do that." But as I recall, she rewrote the scene because she learned just how difficult it was for a human being to escape duct tape. Do you think she was weird?

The things we do for research are unique and amazing. In my case, early into the first draft of Paper Woman, I realized that I take modern technology blissfully for granted. You know, stuff like indoor plumbing, central heat and air-conditioning, refrigerators, automobiles, cell phones, even the grocery store. Convenience and accessibility underpin my culture and shape my values and reactions. But during the Revolutionary War more than 225 years ago, very little was convenient or accessible. Danger and scarcity shaped decisions, especially for the middle and lower classes.

How well could a woman of the 21st century comprehend that from reading books and interviewing subject matter experts? Rather poorly, in fact. If I intended to create believable fiction about people who lived a couple of centuries ago, I had to get inside my characters' heads — learn what clothing of the era felt like, which everyday challenges people faced, how their world smelled, tasted, and sounded.

That's why I originally became a Revolutionary War reenactor. My family and I — yes, obsessed as I am, I dragged my family into this hobby — spend a typical reenacting weekend at the site of a historical battle, camped in white canvas army tents with no mosquito screens, dressed in eighteenth-century clothing made of natural fibers such as wool and linen. Our menu is limited by what meals we can prepare over a wood fire. Food sometimes gets eaten scorched; the temperature of an open fire isn't as easy to regulate as the temperature in an oven. Running water? Sometimes available. Flush toilets? If we're lucky. Heat or air-conditioning? Ha ha ha!


This is undoubtedly what prompted one interviewer to tell me, "Honey, you really suffer for your art!" My "suffering" is temporary, a mere forty-eight hour sample of what our foremothers and forefathers dealt with 24/7. My hat's off to them. They were hardy folk.

But the peculiar payoff from hands-on research is the world-broadening effect it has on the researcher. At almost every weekend event I've attended, I've encountered an experience that no one could accurately anticipate from reading a book or interviewing an expert. These experiences have supplied me with a far deeper understanding of the trials faced by eighteenth-century people.

For example, learning to load and fire a musket with powder only, no ball. (Note: Reenactors use only powder. Otherwise, there'd be litigation issues and arrests.). Nothing I'd read prepared me for the noise of the musket, how hot it gets after firing, the weight of it, or how long it takes to reload. One time, I fired a ball in a secluded location, so I could feel the difference in the musket's kick when fully loaded. My smugness over hitting a pine tree at human heart level quickly vanished when I realized the musket ball could have ricocheted and killed someone. How often did that happen in skirmishes 225 years ago?

How about learning to start a fire from flint and steel? (Note: This is an exercise in hyperventilation.) Not until I'd fumbled this feat a few times did I comprehend the impact of natural variables, such as wind and humidity, on establishing a fire when you don't even have the convenience of matches. Try starting a fire with flint and steel on a windy, wintry night.

And learning to move in a petticoat. Imagine the difficulty of doing so when sweat plasters your shift to your upper thighs beneath the petticoat, or a brisk wind provides the "Flying Nun" effect while you carry firewood, or your petticoat becomes soaked with rain. No reference book could have prepared me for how quickly a sudden breeze whipped my petticoat into the campfire at one event. Did you know that being burned was one of the top causes of death for women in the eighteenth century? (Note: Every year, a few reenactor women have to be extinguished after their petticoats catch fire.)

Not all my moments of enlightenment have been so blatant or instantaneous.

My family and I reenact on the Crown forces side. For every battle, I watch the three most important guys in my life don scarlet coats and line up on the battlefield with their weapons. Across the field from them is a swarm of guys in blue coats. So I get asked the inevitable questions at booksignings and reenacting events, sometimes shyly, sometimes with indignation. Why have I chosen to portray a loyalist, rather than a patriot? A loser, rather than a winner? A villain, rather than a hero?



Initially, I sought the Crown forces camp because the protagonists of my first two books are neutrals. Since school age, I'd had the patriot point of view drilled into me, and I felt I needed the other point of view to create balanced, believable neutrals on the page. But I remained in the Crown forces camp because I absorbed another truth while there. Soldiers who fought for King George the Third in the colonies didn't see themselves as villains or losers. Neither did many colonists see them as such. History is, indeed, written by the victors, and there are two sides to every conflict. I don't forget that when I develop my characters. The pièce de résistance from my research has been raising two sons who have learned to pause and value the other side of an argument.

Research gives me a panoramic, three-dimensional perspective. It enables me to texture my stories differently from those set in contemporary times — and those stories should be different. How believable are fictional worlds in which historical characters are, beneath their period clothing, merely people with their hearts and heads in the 21st century?

My blessings upon you the next time you unroll the duct tape, take fencing lessons, leave another message on the answering machine of an elusive crime reporter, or read up on Charles Manson or Jim Jones.

Thanks for stopping by Meanderings and Muses today, and a big thanks to Kaye for having me as her guest.

What's the wildest thing you've done for your own research?