From Sea to Shining Sea: Writing the American Historical

When you cruise the shelves at the bookstore, or the online listings, it’s easy to find stories of daring-do and hot clinches set in the Scottish Highlands, Regency or Victorian London or a country house within these periods, and occasionally take a trip back to the Medieval or Age of the Viking. But what about the history that is nearer to home for many of us – you know, American history!

Once upon a time, historical American romantic adventures were on equal footing with their European cousins. Then they seemed to vanish, fall by the wayside as the bodice rippers gave way to a different style of storyline.

And yet, editors and readers are looking for something different. They get burned out on their favorite periods occasionally. A solid diet of one setting can begin to lose its spark for acquiring editors and readers alike. And I say that despite having a reader tell me at a book signing that if I wrote stories that took place in Scotland, I’d sell more than I did with the American West as my stage. I doubt she had any idea how much research starting over from scratch would require, much less that I hated stories about men in kilts.

Spark is what grabs a reader’s interest. Spark is what American history can supply for your storytelling, too. The earliest settlement of English colonists dates back to 1607 at Jamestown, which means we have nearly 420 years to cruise to find the perfect stage for our characters. Oddly enough, the Jacobite rebellion in 1715 had Scottish prisoners transported to the American colonies as indentured servants, so if you do like guys in kilts, you could buy the services of one for seven years and lure some of those readers away from the Highlands.

Oddly enough, what you can bring to American (or Australian) settings are the same people used in the tales set in Scotland, in Ireland, in Britain, or elsewhere in Europe. You know, immigrants. They aren’t all poor and downtrodden, though many are. What all immigrants are is daring, bold, hopeful. Adventurous. Passionate. All wonderful traits for characters. Setting them down on a fresh new stage brings all that to the forefront. Plus, a bit of fear. At least for the first ones to arrive. But being daring, bold, hopeful, adventurous and passionate are traits they hand down to their descendants, who may be your characters, too.

So, bring that Highland laddie, that Irish rogue, the Regency dandy, the Plantagenet or Tudor lord, the roving Viking warrior to the New World. Match him with a heroine he might never have met in the Old World.

How do you decide where best to set this couple down? What neck of the woods or coast or plain, what period? That’s what we’ll do in a quickly moving 4-weeks. Consider the landscapes available from the earliest settlements to the Roarin’ Twenties or beyond and see how well American History works as a setting…a fairly untouched setting these days…to revitalize your storytelling or create a niche of your own. There’s plenty to harvest with these spacious skies, purple mountains majesty, and waving fields of grain…not to mention a cast that can be of Spanish, French, English, Dutch, or Native American blood.

Beth Daniels was a devoted Anglophile until she moved West from her home state of Ohio. Spending 22 years bouncing from California to Nevada to Arizona or Nevada to Arizona to California and back to Nevada as she trailed in first one then another husband’s job footsteps changed her mind about where to set her historical characters. She’s had 35 romances published, most as Beth Henderson, seven of which are historical romantic adventures set in the Old West but as Nied Darnell she dapples in Weird West Steampunk and Twenties Dieselpunk as well. Oddly enough, she holds a BA in American History with a minor in British Modern History, as well as an MA in English Composition and Rhetoric. Find her as Beth Henderson on Facebook at http://bit.ly/2GvFyog.