Memorial Day

Memorial Day is observed in the U.S. on the last Monday in May to honor those who have died in military service. It was established in 1868, after the Civil War, but was called "Decoration Day" at first, because the day was used to decorate the graves of Union soldiers. 

Those honoring Confederate soldiers held their own day, which began in 1866. When the North started doing a similar thing, Southerners changed theirs to "Confederate Memorial Day." Eventually these two days were combined into "Memorial Day," which we still celebrate today.

National cemeteries, like Arlington, decorate each grave with an American flag. Memorial Day is also often seen as the start of the summer season, and people who can do so might flock to the shores and beaches over the long weekend. Barbeques are also a common Memorial Day activity. A variety of other celebrations take place across the country.

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Running from God

Read Jonah 1 - 2:1-7

When God called Jonah to go to Nineveh, he ran in the other direction. You'd think a prophet of God would know better, but we've all done the same thing in one way or another at some point in our lives. In doing so, Jonah became disobedient and broke the special bond he'd had with the Lord. All of a sudden he thought he knew what was best more so than God. He couldn't understand why God would give the cruel Assyrians a chance to repent. Why didn't he just destroy them for their evil ways?

Instead, Jonah hurried to Joppa where he boarded a ship bound for Tarshish.  Nineveh would have been about 400 miles to the northeast from Israel. Tarshish (the area we now know as Spain) was 2,000 miles  to the southwest. In fact, Tarshish was pretty much at end of the known world of Jonah's day. The prophet was running as far as he could.

But notice that even though Jonah had abandoned God, God had not abandoned him. He'll never leave any of us, His children, either. Jonah must have breathed a sigh of relief when he boarded the ship. Now he could leave the travel to the sailors. He must have also been exhausted after his long, hurried journey to Joppa, so he went below and fell asleep. How many Christians have fallen asleep to God's plans for their lives? Is today's Church doing the same thing?

While Jonah slept a great storm came up - one so much worse than these seasoned sailors had ever seen before. The wind and waves crashed around them, tearing apart the ship. They prayed to their gods, threw as much as they could overboard, and tried to battle to control the ship, but nothing worked. Finally, the ship's captain went below to wake the prophet and decide what to do. We'll pick up here next week.

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A Writing Marathon 

When I was much younger and in school, before my knees became weak, I used to run. However, I was a long-distance, endurance runner and didn't have the speed to sprint. Maybe that's due to a stubborn streak that can persevere and sometimes refuses to give up.

I find a similar thing true in my writing. More than any other genre, I am a book writer, mainly historical fiction but also contemporary and a little non-fiction. Even as a reader, I don't want anything less than 100 pages, because I'm never happy with how the short novellas develop (or under-develop) the character, plot, or story. 

Surprisingly, I've found this true with how I write too. I'm not good with short periods to write with a lot of starts and stops. I do much better when I can find a block of time. After I've written for over an hour, the words began to flow much easier and faster, and time whizzes by without me realizing it.

Take this last week for example. I wrote 20,000 words on my new book, In from the Storm, set in Wyoming in 1875. But I found some good hunks of time to lose myself in the writing. With my busy schedule, that's not always possible anymore.  It's not my best record by far, however. When I stayed at home to be my mother's caregiver, I once wrote 18,000 words in one day and completed an 89,000-word rough draft in three weeks. I don't even think about doing that in my present situation, but 20,000 words in a week is still good.

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Splitting the Appalachians in the Civil War

When Luke, my main character in Uprooted by War, realizes he's not going to be able to stay out of the Civil War, he chooses to travel into Eastern Tennessee to join the Union army. Many men from Western North Carolina did this - about 5,000 of them before the fighting was over. Many more were quietly Union sympathizers. Historians who study the era often cite the low rate of slavery there as the main reason for this. However, the independent attitude of the mountain people and the fact that they valued liberty, freedom, and rights likely figured in as well.

 At the same time, about 20,000 men from the region would end up fighting for the Confederacy, but the huge majority of these would be conscripted. Only about 8,000 would volunteer for the Confederate army, and most of these came around the beginning of the war. The total population of Western North Carolina was about 68,000 at the time. An example of the lackluster support for the Confederacy can be seen in Wilkes County, who had the largest white population of any county in Western North Carolina but had the lowest enlistment rate at 2.7%.

General Samuel P. Carter was sent to Tennessee on special duty from the War Department by request of then Senator Andrew Johnson (who would become the Vice President in Lincoln's second term) to organize and train Union troops. He was a native son who had been born in Elizabethton, Tennessee.  Luke became part of his brigade for training after he'd gone to Tennessee to enlist. What would follow was a long, hard war that left very few feeling truly victorious.

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The City of Nineveh

In Jonah's time, Nineveh was a stronghold of the terrorist of that day. The Assyrians were a cruel people who tried to cultivate a reputation that would intimidate all their enemies. They were bent on conquest and terrorism. Yes, the story of Jonah definitely has application to modern times.

The Assyrians were obsessed with waging wars and invading the nations around them. They were known to cut out the tongues of prisoners, skin men alive, split open torsos, and I won't mention what they did to the women. They executed people at will and stacked their skulls into pyramids outside the city gates. In fact, they often made close relatives carry the severed heads of their loved ones in parades through the city. As part of their worship to pagan gods, they burned children alive. The list of atrocities go on and on.

The Assyrians had also built a large capital city. It took three days to walk across Nineveh. Yet, as spread out as it was, a 200-foot high wall so thick that three chariots with horses could drive side by side on top of it encompassed the city. This wall also had 1,500 towers on it, and Nineveh had about 120,000 inhabitants. All this would be impressive in our day, much less in Old Testament times.

These things contributed to why Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh and give them a chance to repent. First of all, he feared for his life. He felt they were very likely to skin him alive too. And these were his enemies, the enemies of Israel. He didn't think this cruel, barbaric people deserved forgiveness. When you get down to it, Jonah was prejudiced and thought he knew better than God. He hadn't understood the message that God wants all people to come to Him. God didn't treat Jonah like he deserved either, and He's ready to give grace to anyone who repents and turns to Him. Are we following God or following what we think about the world around us?

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Series or Standalone

The question came up about how I decide when a book will be a standalone or part of a series. If you asked five different authors this question, you'd probably get five very different answers. The first seven manuscripts I wrote made up two series. I didn't decide this ahead of time. When I finished the first book, I knew the complete story had not been told, because I still had other characters, situations, and scenes rolling around in my mind. I write until the characters quit speaking to me with additional information and the new scenes stop playing in my mind. Each book in one of my series will still have a definite ending and not require the reader to purchase more to get a complete story. I want them to buy others in the series because they enjoyed the first one so much, not because I left them hanging. In my opinion, a book's ending should never have a cliffhanger.

The Appalachian Roots series contains four books. I had thought there might be a fifth book about the Moretz twins, but they never brought me their stories beyond the first skeleton bit of information, and I had no scenes that kept coming to me. You see, my characters drive my stories, and I write what comes to me and won't go away. I've also been asked where I get my ideas. I don't know, because they seem to find me. But all this makes writing as exciting for me as reading is.

After those first two series (one is a contemporary trilogy that has yet to be published), I wrote three standalones. I self-published When Winter Is Past, set in colonial Pennsylvania, while I waited for Uprooted by War to get through the publishing process with my publisher. The second one, Through the Wilderness, set on the Oregon Trail, may be the next one I publish. The third one is a contemporary that I want to polish some more before I seek to publish it.

Wyoming

In the meantime, I've been working on a five-book series set in early New Mexico, and I have three of the rough drafts finished. However, a new standalone set in Wyoming in 1875, In from the Storm, has become so clear that I'm going to write it before I go back to finish the last two books in the New Mexico series. I like to have the complete series finished before I start to release the books. Then I can make any changes without being locked into what has already been published. I can't wait to see if In from the Storm might become part of a series on double rescues or not. There's also a series on betrayals that is not quite clear enough to write yet. But the writing life remains exciting as I get to time travel all over the place.

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Bushwackers, Raiders, and Scavengers

During the Civil War, bushwackers, raiders, and scavengers became a real threat to citizens, especially in the Appalachian Mountains. Raiders came in all forms. Bushwackers were a lawless group, mainly made up of deserters. They preyed on the small, remote farms that dotted the Appalachians, and they enjoyed terrorizing others. Scavengers usually did so to find food and basic needs, and, as the war progressed and supplies dwindled, the armies became scavengers. 

The first guerrilla raids in the North Carolina mountains spilled over from Tennessee in 1862. Then, beginning in 1863, Kirk's raids became notorious. Since so many of the records from his activities come from Confederate sources, it's hard to determine how true they are, but the reputation that preceded him certainly brought terror to citizens. However, George Kirk was a Union soldier and had been commissioned to do what he did. Many others had not.

In my newest historical novel set in the Appalachians, Uprooted by War, Leah and the others with her at the farm had to contend with all these groups at one time or another. Here's what happened when Kirk's Raiders came:

     The Union soldiers rode in bent on destruction. Leah met them at the side of the house. Some soldiers had already started to uproot plants in the garden, pulling up cornstalks from horseback and trampling other plants.
     “Stop that this instant!” Leah shouted at the top of her voice.
     The colonel looked at her and laughed. He had a wild, reckless look about him. “We support the Union,” she told him quickly. “My husband is off fighting in your army.”
     “Sure he is, like every other farm in North Carolina. Most of them are Union sympathizers when we come.”
     “Stop them, and I can prove it.”
     “Hold it a minute, men. I want to see this.”
     The men rode their horses back to wait behind their colonel. Leah ran to get Luke’s enlistment papers. When she came back out, Patsy stood behind Moses, watching.
     “If you’re Union, what’re you doing with slaves?” the colonel asked.
     “They’re not slaves. Patsy’s free, and here are her papers to prove it. Moses ran away from a plantation. He can’t talk, because some owner cut out his tongue. Here’s my husband’s enlistment papers.” She handed him the papers, and he looked them over.
     He looked up at her with a different expression. “My apology, Mrs. Moretz. I’m Colonel George Kirk. My men were sent to North Carolina to help some mountain boys get out of the grips of the Confederacy and into Tennessee to fight for the Union. My troops have also been destroying some Confederate strongholds to aid in the war effort, but there are enough Rebel places to hit. We don’t need to be making things hard for the families of our Union soldiers.”
     “Thank you, sir,” she said as she took her papers back.
     “The best to you, madam.” He tipped his hat, and they rode away.

(All my profits for my books go to a scholarship fund for missionary children.)

But Kirk's Raiders had not been as bad as the bushwackers would. They would not only threaten material goods but also the family's very lives.

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