Book Review: “The Tin Ticket”
There are so many things about this book that aren’t “me” that I never would have picked it up if it hadn’t been highly recommended.
The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australia’s Convict Women by Deborah J. Swiss is non-fiction and covers an overlapping section of the history of the United Kingdom and Australia. While I do enjoy history, I don’t normally gravitate toward non-fiction tomes, especially ones which discuss recent history (the past 200 years or so) in foreign lands (i.e. not the United States). However, this book does have a few things which peaked my interest: mainly some very strong female characters and an almost conversational writing style.
The book follows the journey of three women (the back of the book says four, but one was not mentioned as in depth as the others) from Europe to Van Dieman’s Land, which later became Tasmania. The women were exiled forever from their homelands for stealing some silverware or stockings in the early to mid 1800s. In Europe at the time, the poor were starving. The Industrial Revolution wasn’t providing jobs quickly enough and famine was forcing farmers to the city in a vein attempt to find work. The rich were getting richer and the poor were dying.
It was the policy of England at the time to ship their convicts off. First to the “New World” of America and later to the colony of Australia. The policy really served two purposes: it got those “undesirables” away from the “respectable” society and it populated the colonies. The seven year sentence most women received was really a life sentence since the former convicts would have no way to return to their homelands once released from the prisons.
So these women were exiled to the other end of the world. Some didn’t survive the four month voyage by sea. But many did.
In The Tin Ticket, Swiss not only covers the policies which forced the women to Australia, but follows them as they forge ahead after their releases. These were the women who helped shape Australia into the country it is today–their version of the pioneers.
The story Swiss tells is compelling and fast paced. In addition to putting “names and faces” on the convict women, the author gives enough historical background that the reader doesn’t feel lost. Swiss also included almost one hundred pages of documentation on the specific women she chose to highlight in the book. What comes across is a story of strong, independent women on both sides of the law who did what was necessary to survive.
It wasn’t the story I expected.
Let’s be honest. I have a strong sense of justice and a rudimentary understanding of the legal system in the UK. I normally think that the judges and lawyers do their best to present a clear and compelling case and that the facts will win out. Okay, I’m not truly naive enough to think the system always works and I know there are grave mistakes in justice. But I also think it’s the best system out there and will support it.
Given my predisposition on the subject, I could have had some serious issues with this book. We’re talking about women who were convicted of crimes. But Swiss doesn’t lecture on the justice system of the day. She presents the facts as she finds them and allows readers to come to their own conclusions.
Would I recommend this one? Yep. In fact, I already have. If you’re looking for a book that will teach you something without reading like the history books of your youth or a book with female role models who made the most out of a terrible situation, I would recommend picking up The Tin Ticket.
If you do, let me know what you think of it!
Nichole
The ups and downs of NaNoWriMo
November is National Novel Writers Month. I’m not going to go into what that is or why people participate. I’ve done that before on various blogs. Instead I’m going to give a “Day 2″ update.
November 1 I was on a role. I’m not sure if that’s because all the stars were aligned just right or if it being the first day of deer season was a contributing factor. Whatever the reason, the house was quiet and I was able to crank out more than 600 words before lunch. Another 1100 followed and I ended the day with 1700–almost 40 words above the daily goal. Not a lot of wiggle room, but I was feeling good about it.
Then came November 2. This was a day that saw “The Mighty Hunter” start to butcher his kill. And he was just so darn proud of himself that he wanted lots of pictures. It was also a day that one of my web design clients needed some timely updates to their site, but didn’t have the formatting of the documents correct. I spent hours getting the documents to format correctly.
I only wrote about 600 words all day. I’m disappointed in the total, but not the effort.
NaNoWriMo is about getting those words out. I’m fully aware some (if not all) of what I spew this month won’t be worth saving. But that’s truly what the editing process is for. I don’t care how quickly or how slowly you get those words out, the first draft isn’t going to cut it. Editing is crucial.
NaNoWriMo 2011 will be, for me, the time to re-build the writing habit. And that’s a promise to myself.
Nichole
Second Wind Blog Post
I blog at http://secondwindpub.wordpress.com on the 28th of each month. This month, I compared a chocolate pie to writing a novel.
What do you think?
Nichole
25 or 40? Which direction do I go?
I found a pin a few weeks ago at a shop in a mall in Pierre, South Dakota. The pin was so “me” that I had to buy it. It’s got a 1950s-style woman with the words “Even if the voices aren’t real, they’ve got some really good ideas.” The whole design is on a bottle-cap type background. It’s a great pin. And it fits me. But it also sums up my biggest problem right now.
This past year hasn’t been kind to my writing life. There have been computer crashes and family changes; outside obligations and inner turmoil; too much to do and too few hours to make it happen. I’ve neglected my craft in favor of my life.
Having said that, I have learned a lot this past year. A lot about the business of writing, a lot about the people I love, a lot about me. And none of that is a bad thing. But now I’m finally getting my “poop in a group” as one of my good friends would say. I’m working on Sleeping Bear, the sequel to Ghost Mountain, and plan to have it completed by the end of January. I’ve been able to listen to those voices again.
Well, I never actually stopped listening to them. I just let the embodied voices of humans over-ride them.
Now that my mind is more tuned into the writing muse, however, I’ve found another set of voices vying for my attention. My problem is that this set isn’t as well defined as Cerri was when she showed up in my mind’s ear. And I’ve learned that ignoring the ideas floating around in my head only works for so long. It’s similar to a dieter craving chocolate: you can put it off for a little while and still be fine, but if you keep avoiding the chocolate truffle eventually you will devour the entire cake and the pint of ice cream with it! The longer I avoid writing this new story, the louder the ideas become. Like in life, though, louder doesn’t make for more coherent.
So I’ve compromised with the voices in my head. I will finish Sleeping Bear during my “regular” writing time, while working on this new series as my NaNoWriMo project. (Oh! Friend me there. I’m listed as just Nichole.)
The “Pens and Needles” series will take place in a small South Dakota town where my protagonist moves. She purchases a home and rents a storefront on the town’s main drag. The store, Pens and Needles, will be a combination book and craft store—”pens” for the books and “needles” for the crafts.
I know how the first murder takes place, and even have an idea of the culprit. I know why my protagonist, Allison, gets involved and some of how she solves the case.
Like a stereotypical woman, however, Allison won’t tell me her age. Some days I imagine her 25, an orphan who inherited her money. Other days she’s a 40-year-old divorce who moves to the Black Hills for a fresh start. Some days she has no family to speak of. Other days she’s a single mom. Either way, Allison does not want to be a cliche. Or maybe I don’t want her to be one.
So here’s my question: How old do you think Allison is? Is she just starting out? Or starting over? Which do readers prefer?
I would love some input!
Nichole
Book Review: “Merry, Merry Ghost”
Yes, I’m fully aware that this is September. Christmas isn’t for months. The temperature in the beautiful Black Hills last week reached the upper 90s.
Sounds like a great time to pick up a winter book, doesn’t it?
Okay, maybe most people wouldn’t select a book set in late December as their summer beach reading, but I did.
Merry, Merry, Ghost by Carolyn Hart is the second of the paranormal cozies featuring Bailey Ruth MacNeill, a heavenly emissary who returns to her former hometown of Adelaide, Oklahoma, in an effort to help people out.
Bailey Ruth is a spunky, free-thinking woman with a heart of gold. She is one of those souls who truly wishes to help people, even if that means breaking the rules. I imagine her motto is something like “the ends always justify the means.”
That’s not to say she doesn’t suffer the consequences. Wiggins, who is in chard of Heaven’s Department of Good Intentions, has laid out a number of precepts for emissaries to follow (he hates the term ghost), and Bailey Ruth manages to break them all: from allowing humans to see her to conversing with the recently departed.
In Merry, Merry Ghost, Bailey Ruth is dispatched to protect a young boy. Keith, an orphan, is dropped off at his grandmother’s estate in Adelaide right before Christmas. Bailey Ruth’s job is to protect him until his grandmother can have her will changed to include him. Unfortunately, a murderer decides that sharing the inheritance isn’t a good idea and offs the grandmother before the will can be signed.
This leads Bailey Ruth on a mission. She takes the role of Keith’s protector seriously and does whatever it takes to ensure his future, which actually causes the bending (if not breaking) of a number of Wiggins’ precepts.
I’ve read the first in this series—Ghost at Work—and enjoyed it, so I had high hopes for the sequel. I wasn’t disappointed. This is a quick read and Hart combines the mystery with the supernatural, and just a hint of the past.
Nichole
Book Review: “The Dark Horse”
Ready for a secret? Even though I live about an hour from Wyoming, I’d never read a Craig Johnson novel before. I know, I know. He’s an award-winning author. He’s from “around here.” I saw him a few years ago at Mayhem in the Midlands.
I’d never read one of his books.
That has changed.
I picked up The Dark Horse awhile ago. I know it’s not the first in his Walt Longmire series, but it was the earliest that the book store 
had in stock at the time. There were a few things against the book right off the bat. First, I prefer female protagonists. Nothing against guys, but I seem to connect more with women characters—ya know, wives, mothers, daughters, I seem to have something in common with those types. Second, I also prefer cozies. In a cozy, I’m pretty much guaranteed that the violence will take place “off page” and that’s fine with me. Johnson isn’t as “cozy.” Don’t misunderstand, there was no gratuitous violence, but he does lean more toward the noir then my normal reading. Third, and this is probably the one that really kept me from picking up one of Johnson’s novels, I’m not a big fan of cowboy stories. I’m not a huge horse lover, cowboy hats and boots don’t turn me to jello.
The Dark Horse had a lot going against it when I cracked the spine, but I was willing to give the story a chance. I’m so glad I did.
It was easy to understand why Johnson is an award-winning, New York Times best-selling author. His descriptions were superb. Both the scene setting and the character depiction were spot on. I’ve seen the landscape Johnson describes. I imagined Absalom to look a lot like Buelah, Wyoming (population 33). Another bonus to the novel was that I didn’t feel lost. The Dark Horse is the fifth in the Longmire series and I had no problems jumping into the story. Johnson gave enough back story to catch first time readers up without seeming like the past was being bogged down. And he made it look effortless.
As for the story, it was fast paced and easy to read. Johnson drew me in early and kept me interested with the twists and turns he created. The premise of the story is that Mary Barsad has been sent to Walt Longmire’s jail as she awaits trial. Walt discusses her alleged crime of killing her husband (a man many wanted dead and few would shed tears over), he starts to believe she might actually be innocent. Walt travels from his Absaroka County offices to Absalom disguised as an insurance adjuster. The predominate theory for the murder is that Mary’s husband had set the barn on fire, killing all the horses inside. That pushed Mary over the edge and pushed her to murder the no-good man.
Once in Absalom, Walt finds no shortage of people glad or indifferent to the death of Mr. Barsad. It’s up to Walt to find the truth.
The story kept me guessing (no, I didn’t see that ending!) and I even convinced my hubby, who’s taste runs more toward non-fiction and traditional westerns, to give it a shot. There’s enough mystery to satisfy me with enough western setting and characterization for him to enjoy.
Have you read The Dark Horse? What did you think?
Nichole
Is September the “Writers New Year”?
In the spirit of full disclosure, I totally stole this blog topic from a group on Ravelry. (What? You don’t know what Ravelry is? *sigh* The short answer is it’s Facebook for crafty folk.) This was a question someone asked on the “knitters who write” board.
My first thought was “Nope. That would happen in November.” I mean, most of the authors I know at least discuss National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) where some of us who don’t regularly play with a full deck opt to try and crank out 50,000 words in 30 days. So when you’re working on a new project, November would be that “new year.”
But that didn’t seem right, either. At least not for me. I am not the kind of person who can sit down at my computer and crank out an entire novel without some planning. On the other hand, I don’t know every move my characters are going to make from beginning to end. I know where they start and where I’d really like them to end up, but that stuff in the middle is sometimes as much of a surprise to me as it is to the reader.
To plan out a new work for NaNoWriMo, I really do start in October. Years I opt to participate in NaNoWriMo, my office is covered in sticky notes by November 1.
So I came to the conclusion that October must be the writers New Year.
The more I thought about it, however, I started to agree with the idea that September starts the New Year. So much of our lives really do start over at this time of the year. School starts. Many clubs and organizations that take a summer hiatus begin again. The weather starts to cool off and people are less inclined to spend time outdoors — well, at least in the upper midwest.
It makes sense, then, to think of September as the Writers New Year. It’s a time when so many of us are trying to recover from the break of summer, a time when the tourists have left the Black Hills and life returns to “normal.”
Yes, I think September is the perfect time to start the new writing year. It’s logical. It works.
So to all my writing friends out there, break out the bubbly and let’s celebrate a fantastic New Year of publication!
Nichole
What is paranormal? And why write about it?
par·a·nor·mal
adjective
of or pertaining to the claimed occurrence of an event or perception without scientific explanation, as psychokinesis, extrasensory perception, or other purportedly supernatural phenomena. (Source: Dictionary.com)
Have you ever had that feeling of de’ja vu? Or been a witness to what can only be described as a miracle? I have. It’s an amazing feeling. A little comforting, a little spooky.
There’s a lot more to the paranormal, though, than that feeling of de’ja vu. There’s ghosts and spirit guides and angels. There’s ESP and auras and dream interpretation. There’s Numerology and Tarot and Astrology. Well, you get the idea.
I’ve written my entire life. As a child, I published a small newspaper about the events in my neighborhood. Each press run was one copy, done on leftover school paper with crayon-drawing images that I pretended were photos. As I grew up, I went to college to be a journalist. I joined the Air Force to be a public affairs specialist (any other DINFOS-trained-killers out there?) and to pay for the rest of my college eduction. Now I spend my days writing fiction. Of course, there is that possibility that I wrote fiction in the military, too, but let’s not go there.
I’m diligently working on a sequel to Ghost Mountain. This one also takes place in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Bear Butte this time. I’m also toying around with another series. I have some of the preliminaries done, but am having trouble finding the perfect “paranormal” aspect to include. I’m open to suggestions there.
What I’d really like, however, is to hear your tales of the unexplained. Have you been touched by the paranormal? Do you have “gifts” that are tough to explain?
Hope to hear from you soon!
Nichole
Here we go again…
I’m not sure if anyone will notice, but this is a new blog. A completely new blog with a new address.
I recently switched hosting services and lost all my old blog posts. But that’s okay. Sometimes you have to start over, right?
So, thanks for stopping by. I hope to post at least once a week. Well, that’s the plan anyway!
Nichole
My Goodreads Bookshelf
