Hello there!
For those who visited last week, I posted about Travel and Writing, and also about using our local area as settings for our stories. This led to some interesting comments and emails on the topic. Chances are better than extremely high that you've heard of voracious author, Roland Yeomans, who has manipulated his local area, New Orleans, to tremendous effect in his urban fantasies. I've asked him to share with us today...
Locale as Character.
Denise has allowed me to talk about why I chose New Orleans as the setting for so many of my urban fantasies.
How could I not? New Orleans is called the most haunted city in America. One of the first serial killers lived among the social elite in the 1830's. Voodoo was big business. Slavery even more so.
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| {Image courtesy of the talented Leonora Roy} |
And criminals flourished here thanks to pirates like Jean Lafitte. Did you know the term FENCING ITEMS was born here ... behind St. Louis Cathedral in its beautiful garden?
When my young hero, Victor Standish, and his ghoul friend, Alice Wentworth find themselves transported to the New Orleans of 1834 ...
to say it is a culture shock is an understatement!
The old French Market, New Orleans. Late 19th century street scene with cotton and other wagons rolling down cobblestone street; shops including hardware store, clothing store, seen in background.
{This image (and the four following) are in the public domain because their copyright has expired.This applies to Australia and the European Union }
Doing the research for UNDER A VOODOO MOON and THE RIVAL (where the bulk of Victor's 1834 adventures take place) was almost as much fun as the writing of the fantasies.
To say "Old" New Orleans was exotic is to understate the reality:
And the personalities living there were equally as colorful ... and dangerous:
1.) Madame Lalaurie:
A Louisiana-born socialite and serial killer known for her involvement in the torture and murder of black slaves -- with the gleeful assistance of her equally sociopathic physician husband.
Victor and Alice provide the truth behind their mysterious disappearances.
2.) Annie Christmas:
Sometimes a madam -- Annie Christmas was also a keelboat pilot on the lower
Mississippi, a strong women and bully killer.
She was six feet eight inches
tall, and weighed 250 pounds. Her mustache was blonde and curled, the finest and
widest on the river.
Just let her hear a man say," I'm the bully of the town!"
and he never said it again.
Annie takes the diminutive Alice under her not so tiny wing!
3.) James Bowie:
His family settled on farms in present-day Catahoula Parish, where he and his brothers matured into adults.
The Bowies were active community people, and James is said to have been the largest local slaveholder, supposedly having at least twenty slaves. James often traded slaves with the pirate Jean Lafitte.
Alice provides the explanation why Jim Bowie went to the Alamo with only nine fingers. Outraged at the source of his wealth, Alice had a "finger sandwich!"
Then, there was the culture:
Duels:
{Listen to Victor speak of it on his way to duel President Andrew Jackson}
The most
identifying trait of humanity was our ability to be inhumane to one another.
In New Orleans, during the days of the French
and Spanish rule, duels were often fought in St. Anthony’s Square, a garden
that was located directly behind St. Louis Cathedral. In 2005, I raced the Soyoko, evolved raptors, across that garden.
Sheltered from
prying eyes by the garden’s bushes and shrubs, sword fights continued until
first blood was drawn. But New Orleans
was now American … with the American obsession with fighting to the death.
Some duels were now fought in a place on the Metarie Road called Les Trios Capelines, because of the three ancient Spanish moss-draped trees that grew there.
The
most celebrated of dueling grounds, however, was a giant grove of trees simply
called The Oaks.
The spot was located on the
plantation of Louis Allard which in 1834 was some distance from the city. In the year 2005, it was part of the grounds
of the city park.
Victor's duel on horseback with drawn sabers against President Jackson is based on the very real duel between Col. Schaumberg of the U.S. Army and Alexander Cuvilier who fought on horseback with broadswords. The only casualty was Schaumberg's horse.
2.) GAMBLING ON THE RIVER BOATS -
The New Orleans, or Orleans, was the first Mississippi steamboat.
Launched in 1811 at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for a company organized by Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton, her designer, she was a large, heavy side-wheeler with a deep draft.
Her low-pressure Boulton and Watt steam engine operated a complex power train that was also heavy and inefficient.
Gambling took many forms on riverboats. Gambling with one's life with the boilers aside, there were sharks around willing to fleece the unsuspecting rube.
As cities passed ordinances against gaming houses in town, the cheats moved to the unregulated waters of the Mississippi aboard river steamers.
{Saloon of Mississippi River Steamboat "Princess" 1861 gauche and collage painting by M Adrien Persac - Public Domain}
Let Victor Standish tell you of the most exotic, fine
riverboats in New Orleans:
Gambling on the Mississippi River had become an established
institution. Steamboats were the
floating palaces for the elite of gamblers. THE AEGEAN QUEEN all agreed was the Xanadu of them all.
When we walked into the saloon of THE AEGEAN QUEEN, Alice hushed in a breath.
I couldn’t fault her. The ceiling
had to arch forty feet above us.
Crystal
chandeliers slowly rotated, shedding rainbows of light down upon us. The elite of New Orleans aristocracy ambled
among themselves.
There was a buzz
whenever we passed a cluster of them.
Whispers poorly kept secret the fact that we were expected to die on
board in some spectacular way.
The way
the women tittered in anticipation made me antsy. The men laying bets on which of us would die
first made me want to bust some heads. I
rubbed the inside of my right jacket arm, smiling mean.
Waste not.
Want not. I didn’t think the dead riverboat gambler, John
Powell, would mind me taking his derringer.
Her jade mask gleaming creepily under the shifting lights of the
chandeliers, Meilori seemed to glide up to us.
“Let me show you to the main gambling room, dear guests.”
I smiled, “My, what big eyes you have Grandmother.”
Her eyes sharpened. “I have read
that Brothers Grimm tale, Standish.”
I tried to put that same edge to my smile. “Then, you know how the wolf ended up.”
Meilori laughed without one trace of humanity. “This is not a fairy tale, Victor Standish.”
Sam took her gloved hand, kissing it lightly and straightening said,
“Threats only cheapen your loveliness, Your Majesty.”
“You have not seen my face, Sergeant McCord.”
“Ah, but the night is young.”
The look in both of their eyes was making me feel older by the
second. “Can we get this showboat on the
road?”
Meilori turned to me and bubbled a laugh.
“When I shall have killed you, Standish, I will miss your strange
sayings.”
Alice murmured, “Over my dead body, Empress.”
Meilori shrugged, “If you insist.”
Bowie snapped, “I hear a lot of threats.
But I do not see the kidnapped President Jackson.”
Meilori laughed brittle. “All in
good time, gentlemen and ghoul.”
So there you have why and how I used New Orleans as the setting for my 1834 New Orleans tale of time travel and the supernatural -- it even has a young Edgar Allan Poe in it!
Your novel has to occur someplace -- make that place live for your reader -- and your tale will live for her/him as well.
Thanks for sharing with us Roland. I loved learninbg more of the history of this amazing city. It makes your stories even more real.
- How about you? Do you research the history/culture of your locale as a background to your stories?
