Elaine Cougler is the award-winning author of historical novels about the lives of settlers in the Thirteen Colonies who remained loyal to Britain during the American Revolution. She uses the backdrop of the conflict for page-turning fictional tales where the main characters face torn loyalties, danger, and personal conflicts. Her Loyalist trilogy comprises The Loyalist’s Wife, The Loyalist’s Luck and The Loyalist Legacy, all available on Amazon, Kobo, and Audible. Her latest book is The Loyalist’s Daughter, the prequel to her Loyalist trilogy.
Elaine also wrote the Amazon #1 Bestseller The Man Behind the Marathons: How Ron Calhoun Helped Terry Fox and Other Heroes Make Millions for Charity. Byron native, Ronald G. Calhoun, was the chair of the Canadian Cancer Society team who managed the Marathon of Hope, Terry Fox’s run in 1980. Ron also managed the Jesse’s Journey walk across Ontario and later across Canada, as well as Steve Fonyo’s Journey for Lives and the blind Ken McColm’s Incredible Journey across Canada. Ron’s honours are many and well deserved. Elaine is delighted and humbled to be the author of this important book, a different kind of Canadian history.
Elaine leads writing workshops and speaks about her books to many groups. Through her website she blogs about the writing and reading world and more. She lives in Ontario with her husband. They have two grown children.
Links:
Elaine can be found on YouTube and LinkedIn and through the following links: @ElaineCougler www.elainecougler.com http://www.facebook.com/ElaineCouglerAuthor
The Loyalist trilogy audio books, about those settlers who opted to stay loyal to Britain during and after the American Revolutionary War and who found their way to Canada, are finally available for the world to hear.
The Audio Book Journey
Once the books were available in print and in Kindle and Kobo e-books, I started thinking about audio books because of the number of people who told me they could not see well enough to read any more. They needed to listen to audio books. The mother of one of my friends was just waiting for me to get the audio books on the market. Unfortunately Elsie passed away before that happened.
I also noticed the huge numbers of people driving to and from work every day. Often as not they are caught in traffic jams on major highways. Add to that our delight in listening to books in the car when traveling and I recognized an awesome market just waiting for new stories. Why wouldn’t I take part?
The first book took about four months to record. I had lots to learn and Jack had to fine-tune his equipment. We suffered through motorcycles revving up on the street outside so loud they permeated Jack’s insulated studio. One night a train several blocks away spent about ten minutes shifting back and forth and Jack’s sensitive equipment picked it up. We had to wait again. And summer lawn mowers played havoc with our recording times and, one night, a thunder storm stopped us completely.
Click for Amazon listing.
For all of those interruptions, most of the time our sessions went off smoothly. I had a water bottle to keep my voice from getting too husky, Jack stopped me whenever he wasn’t satisfied with what he was hearing and I kept my pen in hand to mark something that needed to be changed in the revision of that first book. (It seemed a perfect opportunity to fix the few errors that had been driving me crazy whenever I was out doing an author gig. Ah, the life of a perfectionist!)
Finally Jack presented me with a thumb drive and a number of CDs containing my audio version of The Loyalist’s Wife. I learned about ACX Audible and tried to get my book up on their platform. Oh. I live in Canada and they only took work from authors in the US and the UK. Never mind that Canadians could buy Audible’s books here. We authors just couldn’t sell.
I tried to do a work-around and got my nephew and niece to let me use their US address, but then the IRS became the problem. Finally, I just concentrated on recording book two, The Loyalist’s Luck, and writing book three, The Loyalist Legacy. Believe me, my days were full enough. I figured I’d find another company to host my audio books.
Click for Amazon listing
None of my author friends were spending any time recording audio books. The only authors who were seemed to have big organizations behind them. I concentrated on my newsletter, my website, my speaking gigs, and even took a flying leap into screen plays.
Jack and I finished recording book three in August, 2018, but a couple of weeks earlier I had noticed an article in the newspaper where my daughter lives in western Canada. Audible was coming into Canada. That got my attention. My husband and I came home and I went to my last recording session with Jack bearing that newspaper article. Such a good omen just when we were almost done the third book.
In the third week of August I logged into Audible ACX and uploaded the first two of my audio books. Then we went on holiday for a couple of weeks, expecting to get the go-ahead when we returned.
My Inbox was a disappointment, however, as book two was accepted and placed in ACX’s production queue, but book one was rejected. I immediately forwarded their email of technical mumbo-jumbo to Jack. This started a series of back and forth correspondence between us and ACX as we tried to figure out what they needed. Apparently the volume we’d recorded at was not acceptable. That was strange because it was exactly the same volume as book two (that they had accepted). Jack emailed them for clarification.
Finally, after 2-3 weeks of silence, I found the phone number for their company and managed to speak with a real person. He was very helpful and did his best to solve our communication problems and I grew to love listening to his southern drawl as he and I talked. We figured out that their production people didn’t want to talk with Jack as he was not the person whose book it was. He had no standing in their eyes. I sorted that out very quickly and we got the third book uploaded. By this time the second book had sold a copy!
Click for Amazon listing.
Another week or two went by and I got the longed-for email. Book three was in the queue and had been accepted. In a week or two it would be up on Audible, iTunes and Amazon. Meanwhile Jack was adjusting the levels for Book one in real time, a lengthy process. Finally I got the flash drive and uploaded it. Oops, one of the files was missing. (You have to give them a five-minute sample as well as opening and closing credits.) Jack emailed me the missing files and I added them to my project on ACX, crossed my worn-out fingers and pushed Send.
Since my books were accepted out of order I really couldn’t move ahead with advertising and finding the markets for this new venture. It did not make any sense to advertise without having the first book ready. I did a lot of thinking about it, though, and even a little research on just where I could sell audio books. Last week I got the notice that the first book had been accepted and would be available on all the sites in a week or two. I was ecstatic! And just this Friday morning ACX informed me that The Loyalist’s Wife is up on Audible, Amazon and iTunes.
Takeaways From My Audio Book Journey
Audio books are well worth pursuing as only about 5% of books are made into audio books. That means the competition for readers/listeners is much less stiff.
Depending on the market for your books audio books can be more or less appealing. My historical fiction market appeals to middle-aged women for the most part. It also appeals to those drivers to and from work.
If you’re going to try this, do it sooner rather than later.
Don’t be afraid to do your own recording as I did but only if people tell you they “could listen to you read the whole book” as one of my library groups did. You have to have a bit of the performer in you.
If at all possible, when you are stumped by the online instructions talk to a real person.
Don’t expect to get through this journey without flat tires and running out of gas.
But just as you wouldn’t walk away from your car because of one of those misfortunes, don’t run from your project. Keep at it! You will succeed.
Of course, if you still prefer to hold a book in your hand, try these.
Click on the Loyalist Trilogy books below for great historical stories with satisfying endings:
This morning I woke up and started thinking about all the exciting things in my life at the moment. Almost immediately I felt my pulse quicken and my eyes pop open wider. Today I’m expecting big things. But with those big expectations comes raw fear.
You see, my editor should be getting back to me about her take on my latest book. OMG what if she hates it? What if she tells me to toss it in the waste basket? What if The Man Behind the Marathon, which has taken a year and a half of my time so far, never sees the murky light of a late March, 2019 day?
And I have asked 3 people for back cover quotes and a week later have only received one reply so far? (It’s a yes, by the way!) Will the others agree or will they just never reply?
And I thought a lot about a family member who seems to be avoiding me and I have no idea why. Usually we get along so well. This one is really puzzling and hurtful and my thoughts keep returning to her. What if we never get back to where our relationship used to be?
So. I had the heebie-jeebies first thing when I woke up this morning. Does this ever happen to you?
I made my breakfast and sat down to my computer. What to do? I clicked on this website’s homepage and started the video of an interview I did a couple of years ago for a local TV station.
Elaine discusses her joyful writing career.
I felt a little better. This person is happy!
The Outlook file where I keep replies to my newsletter called to me and I answered. Loads of wonderful readers gave me lovely kudos about my mailings.
I felt even better.
I went looking for another video and during the search found a file with all kinds of family videos of my two wee grandchildren. What a delight to look at them a few years ago and to see how they’ve matured.
I felt wonderful. And still do. This is a trick that I’ve used throughout my life. Instead of letting the negatives get me down, I try to find the bright and cheery things in my life.
A few years ago my daughter and I started a daily Gratitude Journal. Believe me, not all my days are shiny and perfect. No one’s are. But I stretch my mind and my heart to find good things every day, even when tragic things happen or I’ve had to take an ambulance ride. (Yes, that happened once!) I’ve looked long and hard for good things to write on days like that.
Whether you’re a writer or not, try this simple strategy to manage your own mood. It works! And just to lighten your mood, here’s my poinsettia plant from a couple of years ago brightening up my December office that winter.
Have a happy, grateful day!
Click on the Loyalist Trilogy books below for great historical stories with satisfying endings:
With traffic and travel and time constraints so big a part of most people’s life these days, finding enough time to read has become challenging. Years ago I faced this same thing when I was balancing my teaching job, being a mother, being a wife, and finding time to read. I started what has become a lifelong habit–reading for about 20 minutes before turning out my light at night.
Today book lovers have another option. They can listen to books while they drive, paint, work (at some mindless jobs), and jog or shop. I see runners all the time with their ear buds connected to some unseen source.
A little over 3 years ago I took note of that and started the process to make my books accessible that way. With a local studio I began recording my own books. For the first book I took quite a bit of time as the process was all new. When the second book was ready I was a lot faster and the cost was about 2/3 of what the first had been. This past few months my same technician (who is a dream to work with, by the way) and I got the third in my trilogy in the can.
My problem had been that the company I wanted to carry my audio books, Audible’s ACX, did not take submissions from Canada. They operated with the U.S. and Great Britain only. I needed a U.S. address and arranged to use my nephew’s which was acceptable.
Next problem? The same one I had with Amazon and the IRS: I needed an ITIN so that I wouldn’t be charged an exorbitant income tax rate. My accountant husband tried three times to get this paperwork done but had problems with the IRS and getting clear and consistent answers. At one point the government shut down and our stuff was caught in that fiasco.
My husband finally found a solution to that problem but the Audible one was still out there.
I just got frustrated and carried on doing what I could, hoping that an answer would come. It did. I happened to pick up a newspaper a couple of months ago in Victoria and read an article about Audible/ACX coming to Canada. Immediately I followed up.
The Loyalist’s Luck Second in the Loyalist Trilogy
You may be wondering why the second book is listed there now but not the first, The Loyalist’s Wife. There are some issues with the files for the first book and my technician is working on those at the moment. I hope to have the corrected files sent in to ACX within the next week.
We also have the third book, The Loyalist Legacy, recorded and I’m waiting for the final files for it.
Once you get the files sent in to ACX, you have to wait 2-3 weeks for them to review them. If they find issues you have to fix them and, presumably, wait again.
Meanwhile anxious readers can check the books out on Amazon. The books can be read out of order but I suggest starting with the first for the broadest and most satisfying reading/listening pleasure.
For any authors thinking of doing this, I found the ACX process of uploading chapter by chapter very simple to follow. I’ll announce in my newsletter (link at left) when all of the books are fully accessible as audio books.
Click on the Loyalist Trilogy books below for great historical stories with satisfying endings:
For those of us who love a good story, especially one of which we loyalists are a part, join me in reliving Part III of this story first printed in the Loyalist Trails magazine that lands in my InBox every Sunday. Thanks, Loyalist Trails and UELAC!
The “Very Clever” Loyalist Wife: Part Three
Reprinted with the permission of author and copyright holder Stephen Davidson UE
At 46 years of age, Margaret Jefferson Hutchinson was a widow and a refugee. Her husband and three of their sons had died during the course of the American Revolution. Nine years after emigrating from Yorkshire, England to New Jersey, Margaret and her three surviving children were among the thousands of loyalists who fled the United States to seek sanctuary in Nova Scotia.
After arriving in Annapolis Royal in October of 1783, the four Hutchinsons made their home in nearby Cornwallis. It was here that the family began to attend St. John Anglican Church and it was here that Margaret met the newly arrived pastor, the Rev. John Wiswell.
Born in Boston, Wiswell had been sent to Cornwallis to succeed the Rev. Jacob Bailey, the Church of England missionary who became the clergyman for the Anglicans of Annapolis Royal. The 52 year-old Wiswell had only been in Cornwallis since August of 1783, arriving just two months ahead of Margaret and her children.
Accepting the position in Cornwallis would prove to be a turning point in the life of John Wiswell. The Anglican minister, a father of two sons, had been a widower for the past eight years. A man who had known better times and circumstances, Wiswell was now all alone in a refugee settlement in the wilds of Nova Scotia.
No one thought to record what drew Margaret Hutchinson and John Wiswell to one another. Was it the common experience of losing a spouse? Suffering as a loyalist refugee? Or was it the very practical need to provide a stable home for children traumatized by war? Whatever their reasons, Margaret and John were married less than five months after their first meeting. The Rev. Jacob Bailey, the man who had preceded Wiswell in serving the Anglicans of Cornwallis, married the couple on Monday, February 23rd.
It is Bailey who described Margaret as “very clever” and “sensible and . . . prudent in the management of family affairs…” — a woman with “the gleanings of a very ample estate“. The new Mrs. Wiswell brought a “dowry” to her marriage. She had the monies from the sale of a house in New York and the promised inheritance of her late husband’s personal estate.
In July of 1786, Margaret sought compensation for John Hutchinson’s wartime losses when the Royal Commission on the Losses and Services of American Loyalists (RCLSAL) convened in Halifax. In addition to the personal testimony of Thomas Millidge, New Jersey’s former surveyor general, Margaret had “certificates” verifying her late husband’s loyalty from Brook Watson the former British commissary general in New York City, General Courtlandt Skinner of the New Jersey Volunteers, Chief Justice William Smith of New York and David Ogden, a loyalist judge of New Jersey’s supreme court. Francis Hutchinson, now a young man of twenty-two, also testified on his mother’s behalf. What is puzzling about both the testimonies of Margaret and Francis is that they each only referred to the death of two Hutchinson brothers where other documents speak of the wartime deaths of three brothers: William, Major and Ralph. Why would Margaret and Francis fail to mention all three?
The RCLSAL commissioner did not immediately make a decision on Margaret’s appeal as he needed to see John Hutchinson’s will. Over a year later, when the compensation board met in Montreal, the RCLSAL finally obtained the loyalist’s will from his New York City lawyer and made its decision to compensate the loyalist widow.
With the completion of the last bit of unfinished business from the American Revolution, Margaret Wiswell could now focus on her new role as the wife of an Anglican minister and watch her children as they became contributing members of Nova Scotia society.
On December 9, 1789, Margaret attended the wedding of her only surviving son, Francis, and Bathsheba Ruggles. Like the groom, the bride was also the child of a loyalist– and the granddaughter of General Timothy Ruggles, one of Massachusetts’ most noteworthy loyalists. Over the next ten years the young Hutchinson couple would have six children. Bathsheba died in February of 1800. A year later Francis married a widow named Fanny Lowden Nixon. In 1815, Francis died in a drowning accident — the same cause of death as his father John and brother Major more than 35 years earlier. Margaret Hutchinson, just 19 years old when her family sailed for Nova Scotia, married James Allison on November 8, 1792. The couple would have eight children over the next 19 years. Ann Hutchinson, Margaret’s youngest daughter, married Henry Burbidge in February of 1798 when she was 26. It is not known if this couple had children. Ann died sometime before 1831.
What is amazing to consider is that despite the difficult times she had endured as the wife of a loyalist, Margaret Hutchinson Wiswell lived to see all of her grandchildren. Sadly, she also attended the funerals of all of her children as well as her second husband, John Wiswell. The “very clever” loyalist wife took her last breath on Friday, August 6, 1830 in the refugee settlement that had been her home for the last forty-seven years. Margaret Jefferson Hutchinson Wiswell died at the age of 93.
But this is just half of a loyalist love story. Learn more about the Rev. John Wiswell, Margaret Hutchinson’s second husband, in next week’s Loyalist Trails.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at [email protected]
Click on the Loyalist Trilogy books below for great historical stories with satisfying endings:
For those of us who love a good story, especially one of which we loyalists are a part, join me in reliving Part II of this story first printed in the Loyalist Trails magazine that lands in my InBox every Sunday. Thanks, Loyalist Trails and UELAC!
The “Very Clever” Loyalist Wife: Part Two
reprinted with the permission of author and copyright holder Stephen Davidson UE
The loss of her son William and the family’s New Jersey estate in the summer of 1780 must have been overwhelming for Margaret Hutchinson who only four years earlier had arrived in the New World filled with dreams of prosperity and happiness. Tragedy struck again when her son Ralph “died within British lines”. The story passed down through the family is that he was thrown from his horse while serving with the New Jersey Volunteers. At some point in the war, the Hutchinson’s third son —Major — drowned while with the same loyalist regiment.
Having lost three sons, Margaret and her husband John made arrangements for Francis, their seventeen year-old boy, to board with a farmer in Pennsylvania as they waited for the expected victory of the king’s army. The family acquired a farm four and a half miles north of New York City on the road to Kingsbridge (now in the northwest Bronx).
Mourning the death three sons and the separation from a fourth, Margaret then had to come to terms with the unwanted but necessary absence of her husband John in the fall of 1781. Historical records do not say whether his motivation was to seek out compensation for his wartime losses or to make arrangements for his family’s return to England, but Hutchinson had been making careful preparations for a transatlantic journey.
On November 15th, John drew up a will, seeing to it that his extensive property in New Jersey would be divided among his remaining family members: Margaret, Francis, his daughter Margaret, and Ann. As his wife Margaret would also receive all of his personal estate. Major Thomas Millidge, a fellow New Jersey loyalist, was one of the executors listed in Hutchinson’s will. Having settled his family and his affairs as best he could, John Hutchinson then boarded a ship for England. It would be the last time he would see his family and his newly adopted country.
At some point in 1782, Margaret Hutchinson learned the devastating news that she had become a widow. Word reached New York that during its passage to England, John Hutchinson’s ship had filled with water and sunk. John had drowned in the shipwreck.
As she waited for the defeat of the patriot forces, Margaret arranged to have Francis, her remaining son, leave Pennsylvania and join her in New York. And then came the stunning news of the defeat of the General Cornwallis’ army at the Battle of Yorktown. For all intents and purposes, the war that had taken Margaret’s three sons and husband was over. Returning to Hanover Township was an impossibility for the loyalist family. But where would Margaret and her three children go?
By August of 1783, the forty-six year old widow made her decision. With the help of Samuel Brownejohn, a New York City loyalist, she sold the farm on the Kingsbridge Road and prepared to join the thousands of loyalist refugees who sought sanctuary in what remained of British North America. Having the proceeds of the sale of her house as her only financial resources, Margaret left the United States of America on a ship bound for Annapolis Royal on Nova Scotia’s western shore. Twenty year-old Francis, 19 year-old Margaret, and 11 year–old Ann sailed with their mother.
Major Thomas Millidge, a family friend and an executor of John Hutchinson’s will, sailed on the brig Nancy, and so it is very likely that Margaret and her children were also passengers on this vessel. Among the other ships in the fall evacuation fleet were the Michael, the Robert and Elizabeth, the Betsey, the Lehigh, the Cato, the Skuldham, and the Hope. The voyage could not have been an easy one. Three ships in the fleet, the Joseph, the William and the Henry made it as far as the Bay of Fundy where they encountered hurricane winds that drove them south to Bermuda. The three sailing ships did not arrive in Nova Scotia until May 1784.
The Rev. Jacob Bailey, an Anglican minister and fellow refugee who would come to befriend Margaret Hutchinson, was a witness to the 2,500 loyalists who flooded into Annapolis Royal in 1783. He commented on the desperate housing shortages that saw the local church, courthouse and stores crowded with refugees. Bailey noted, “Hundreds of people of education and refinement have no shelter whatever”.
Margaret and her three children eventually settled in Cornwallis, a community 13 km outside of Annapolis Royal. And now what would this “very clever” loyalist widow do?
The establishment of St. John Anglican Church in the refugee settlement would signal the beginning of the next chapter in Margaret’s life. Her new congregation had called upon a minister that many of them had known when they lived in Falmouth, Massachusetts (modern Portland, Maine).
The story of Margaret Hutchinson and the Rev. John Wiswell, a loyalist widower from Massachusetts, will be told in next week’s Loyalist Trails.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at [email protected]
Thanks to Stephen for allowing me to reprint part II of his excellent story. We had a great flurry of emails back and forth when I contacted him. Seems we have a lot in common!
Click on the Loyalist Trilogy books below for great historical stories with satisfying endings:
For those of us who love a good story, especially one of which we’re a part, join me in reliving this story first printed in the Loyalist Trails magazine that lands in my InBox every Sunday. Thanks, Loyalist Trails and UELAC!
The “Very Clever” Loyalist Wife:
Part One
reprinted with the permission of author and copyright holder Stephen Davidson UE
Piecing together the story of a loyalist woman is not an easy task. Too often she is simply a checkmark on a ship’s manifest, an irrelevant detail in a claim for compensation, or merely a name cut into her husband’s tombstone. Typically, more of her life is revealed if she became a widow during the American Revolution, able to tell her story in her own words in a petition or a will. Margaret Hutchinson, a woman described as “very clever…sensible and…prudent in the management of family affairs”, left enough of a paper trail in the records of the loyalist era for us to make her acquaintance. This is her story.
Margaret Jefferson was born about 1737 in Yorkshire, England. At eighteen, she married John Hutchinson on September 22, 1755 in Wensley. Two children were born over the next two years. In 1758, William joined them. A son named Major was born, followed by Francis in 1763, Margaret in 1764, Ralph in 1767, and Ann in 1772.
Just two years before the Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, the Hutchinsons and five of their children were passengers on the York Packet, sailing from Liverpool to New York City. William, the oldest, was 16 and Ann, the youngest, was just two. (Family lore suggests that the two adult first-born Hutchinson children remained in England.)
John Hutchinson acquired 200 acres in Hanover Township in New Jersey’s Morris County where he planned to raise the “remarkable fine horses and some stallions he brought from England”. Given the importance of horses for transportation in the 18th century, John was his era’s equivalent of an imported automobile dealer—offering the best in British horses to a colonial clientele. Upon buying his American property, John drained and fenced the land, and built stables for his livestock.
There are no details of the Hutchinsons’ new home outside of the fact that its furnishings, provisions and farming utensils were valued at just over £563. Clearly, the Hutchinsons were a prosperous family. They could pay for an Atlantic crossing that involved transporting horses and then buy enough land to support their livestock. The Hutchinsons also had at least two servants to manage the household, the stables, and grazing fields. Some of these may have come with the family from England. Given that slavery was prevalent in New Jersey, these “servants” could have, in fact, been African slaves.
It did not take long for the Hutchinson horses to come to the attention of New Jersey’s gentlemen. Just a year after John and Margaret’s arrival, a May 1775 edition of the New York Gazette reported that the “last famous bay stallion imported by Mr. Hutchinson, called Bold Forrester” would be in Troy, New Jersey. No doubt Margaret was pleased with the early success of her husband’s business.
But her happiness would not last long. Revolution was in the air. Both patriot and loyalist neighbours courted the newly arrived Hutchinsons, trying to persuade them to choose sides in the war. However, John Hutchinson remained “uniform in his attachment to Great Britain” and “conducted himself always as a loyal man”.
Although the specifics of John’s personal service to the crown are not given, he is known to have sent two of his male servants into the British army. Enlisting one’s servants or slaves to bear arms in one’s stead was a common practice for both loyalists and patriots. About one sixth of the total rebel army was comprised of soldiers who were considered the property of white colonists.
But the loyalist family also made a far greater sacrifice than contributing two servants to the war effort. In 1786 — ten years after the Declaration of Independence– Margaret Hutchinson testified before a British commission that her husband had “sent” William, Major and Ralph, the couple’s oldest sons, to serve in the loyalist militia. How Margaret Hutchinson felt about sending her sons to war goes unrecorded. Francis –just 13 years old—stayed in Hanover Township with his sisters, Ann and Margaret, and his parents as the war’s events unfolded.
The older Hutchinson boys served with the New Jersey Volunteers, a loyalist (or “provincial”) regiment. General Cortlandt Skinner and Major Thomas Millidge, both officers with the Volunteers, would later lend their support to Margaret at the end of the revolution.
Following the patriot victory at the Battle of Springfield on June 23, 1780, rebels captured William Hutchinson at a “Mr. Veal’s barn” and took him to General Washington’s headquarters at Morristown, New Jersey where he was charged with spying for the enemy. Rivington’s Royal Gazette reported that “Mr. Hutchinson” was “lately executed at Washington’s camp”. The family remembers this incident in the words that William was “done to death in public without trial”.
The patriot victory at Springfield and William’s execution may have emboldened Margaret’s neighbours to threaten her family with violence as 1780 is the year given when John Hutchinson (and presumably the rest of his family) “came into” British lines. In other words, Margaret and her three youngest children sought out sanctuary in New York City, the headquarters for the British army during the American Revolution.
The story of Margaret Hutchinson’s wartime experiences as a loyalist wife concludes in the next edition of Loyalist Trails.
To secure permission to reprint this article contact the author at [email protected]
Thanks to Stephen for allowing me to reprint his excellent story. We had a great flurry of emails back and forth when I contacted him. Seems we have a lot in common!
Click on the Loyalist Trilogy books below for great historical stories with satisfying endings:
Terry Fox and the Marathon of Hope. Painting by Cliff Kearns, used with permission.
Here are some points that might both explain how I’m writing the biography of Ron Calhoun (Behind the Marathon of Hope: How Ron Calhoun Helped Terry Fox Raise Millions for Cancer) and give some guidance to others contemplating writing a biography themselves.
This book is about a living person rather than an iconic figure from the past which fact presents me with a huge advantage. I have been able to get the story directly from the star’s mouth; in fact, I’ve been interviewing Ron over the course of the last year, sneaking out time whenever our busy schedules have permitted. We’ve talked about Terry Fox, the most famous of those Ron has assisted; John and Jesse Davidson of Jesse’s Journey; Steve Fonyo, a Cancer survivor whose run presented huge challenges; and blind Ken McColm who ran across Canada to aid Diabetes research.
Ron received his honorary doctorate.
Either at my home or his I set up the tiny recorder and push record. Ron and I have about a two-hour discussion as he explains documents in front of us, tells stories from the past and answers my questions along the way. I have a sheet of topics and questions for him to explain and that leads to many interesting conversations. I’ve discovered that my interviewing style is more like a conversation where I even share salient points from my history which fit in with what he’s saying. Ron first worked with my mother in the Cancer Society and our families have a long history, making this conversational style most appropriate.
The question I am having to ask myself is whether to use or how to use all the information Ron gives me. Ron has many unique documents some of which I’ll put into an appendix at the back of the book but I’ll try to keep the narrative of Ron’s life a flowing story. Footnotes are useful here as well.
I like the third suggestion in the following very simple list from the web particularly as these questions start my own brain thinking about what might be good for my particular project.
Find out the basic facts of the person’s life. Start with the encyclopedia and almanac.
Think about what else you would like to know about the person, and what parts of the life you want to write most about. Some questions you might want to think about include:
What makes this person special or interesting?
What kind of effect did he or she have on the world? other people?
What are the adjectives you would most use to describe the person?
What examples from their life illustrate those qualities?
What events shaped or changed this person’s life?
Did he or she overcome obstacles? Take risks? Get lucky?
Would the world be better or worse if this person hadn’t lived? How and why?
Do additional research at your library or on the Internet to find information that helps you answer these questions and tell an interesting story.
Write your biography.
One of the surprises I’ve had is the amount and the variety of information available to me for this project. Just now I’ve had to resort to putting everything into the chapters as I’ve laid them out in my chapter list at the beginning of the book and not worrying too much about writing perfectly integrated information. That narrative quality will be more important in editing but just now I really want to see the shape of the story. I need to get control of the process and this is how I’ve chosen to do it.
I have sixteen chapters and am planning a prologue. Some of the chapters are very long, some short, and others almost empty as I haven’t got to them. Once I organize the information in this way, I’ll revamp the whole thing with a view to evening out the chapters, making sure I end each one so the reader will have to turn the page, and giving the book a rising action quality, as much as is possible with a biography.
This book is a different kind of history for me, whose historical fiction books started my writing career. There I could use the actual historical facts as a framework upon which I imposed the fiction part. A lot of the book came out of my imagination. I’m pretty sure Ron Calhoun, his family, friends and the rest of the world actually want me to make this whole book factual, so my approach to it has to be quite different.
I’ve contemplated using sidebar boxes with related information but have decided to go the appendix route. That will give the biography a narrative quality. I’m telling a story. Yes, it’s a real person’s story but it’s a story and I want it to read like one and not like a list of facts. With Calhoun’s exceptional stories this format is working well. The appendices will be substantial with Ron’s documents. Pictures will be included as well.
Another narrative quality here is my use of direct quotations, possible because my subject, though eighty-four and having outlived every other person on that Cancer Society team back in 1980, is still very much alive. Ron was the chair of that committee. He gets to tell the story. A weird thing that has been happening as I write the story is that I often find myself using Ron’s own phraseology. He’s a wordsmith himself. That means I can hear his voice in the writing making this a biography that is almost alive with his very personality. That may diminish somewhat in revisions but I hope to retain that flavor.
Photo by http://www.charlestonfootprints.com/charleston-blog/calhouns-moving-grave/2014/01/07/
Now if you happen to be American and are not quite so conversant with Terry Fox’s name I must tell you that Ron Calhoun is related to a Vice President which John F. Kennedy included in his list of five most important vice presidents of the United States: John C. Calhoun. Like John C., Ron can trace his Calhoun lineage back to the twelve hundreds. And Ron even engineered help from a local historical society in Charleston, South Carolina, to get his famous ancestor’s gravestone repaired. The man takes on any cause he possibly can!
The last point necessary to address today is the question of what to do with all the information you find about your biography subject that doesn’t make it into the book. I have two thoughts. Come up with a guideline for choosing what will make it into the book, either in the main biography or in the appendix. Then take those items which are just too far away from the main topic of the book and use them for marketing tidbits, blog posts, Twitter bits, Facebook articles, or any other similar venues. They can lead nicely into your main subject matter for a speaking engagement. They might link your subject matter to a newspaper article. Do not simply discard any of the research you’ve done.
My deadline for completing this rough draft is the end of August. Then I’m setting it aside for a month and living my life outside of writing. When I get back to it, I’ll be looking at the whole project with fresh eyes and the revisions will begin. Publication is sometime in mid 2019. Meanwhile, here are my beloved historical novels to tide you over.
Click on the Loyalist Trilogy books below for great historical stories with satisfying endings:
When you think of it, every story we tell is historical. As soon as we use the past tense, as in “my daughter woke up in the middle of the night with red spots all over her chest”, we are dealing with history. To be considered a part of the historical fiction category, though, the subject matter should be at least fifty years in the past, a rule set and followed by the writing community.
That idea of categorizing sometimes leads us writers to wonder just what genre our new story actually fits into as it may have historical elements but they are more fantasy than history. Or it may have historical elements as the backdrop for a murder that needs to be solved. Is it historical or is it crime fiction?
This leads to agents having difficulty knowing where to sell a story. It may be excellent but their job is to sell it and they do all they can to figure out where their market might be. At lunch yesterday this very problem led me to suggest my author friend might be better to self-publish her book as it does not clearly fit into one category or another and I wondered if an agent would struggle to find a market for it. The book is extremely creative in its structure and story line, something readers love to see, but the author must decide how best to actually get it to those readers. Should she try to traditionally publish or do it herself?
In a similar vein, the new book I’m writing started out as creative non-fiction but I’ve completely restarted it as a biography. You see, the framing device that I had thought was so clever, actually began to be extremely unwieldy, so much so that a few weeks ago, lying awake at three o’clock in the morning, I decided I had to start over and write this thrilling and uplifting story about Ron Calhoun and Terry Fox and a lot of other amazing people as Calhoun’s biography.
That decision is allowing me to use a more sequential time line and include a rising action aspect just as I do in my historical fiction. And it relates to my historical fiction very well as I’m telling the story of a man born in 1933 who came to be so connected with historical figures during his long lifetime (and he’s still going!). My working title for this is The Man Behind the Marathon of Hope: The Story of Ron Calhoun and How He Helped Terry Fox Raise Millions for Cancer.
Click on the Loyalist Trilogy books below for great historical stories with satisfying endings:
I’m all for putting my nose to the grindstone and working hard to achieve my goals and I’ll bet most of my readers are, too. Sometimes, however, it’s good to switch gears, to shut off my computer, my laptop, my iPad and put a “Nobody Home” sign on my writing business. My husband and I did that a couple of weeks ago.
We met our daughter and ten-year-old granddaughter in Toronto airport and boarded a plane for New York City for six days. Here are some pictures of our discoveries.
This is a water exhibit at Grand Central Station. Blue drops of water continually seemed to drop on us as we stood underneath the moving exhibit. Beautiful. We also bought gorgeous milkshakes at a place so busy lineups were continual.
I was entranced with Library Walk, also called Library Way and described in the photo above.
In the Museum of Modern Art we stood and watched the beautifully falling huge flakes of snow. On the news we heard this was a really huge storm but to us Canadians it was gently falling snow making the walking wet and a little slippery. No big deal. The trees were lovely, though.
This bronze work was exciting to see beside the famous outdoor skating rink that has been featured in so many movies.
A must for tourists, the Empire State Building did not disappoint. Here Chelsea and I posed for a shot up in the clouds.
Radio City Music Hall was a thrill to see. They gave us a great tour and we even got to ask questions of one of the famous Rockettes.
We came into the main entrance hall from above and looked down to see the staff preparing for the crowds later that night. If you wonder what is on the floor, I did, too. Those black things that look like dead bodies are actually clothing and paraphernalia they were organizing for sale in the gift shop there. This is a gorgeous foyer!
Also at the Museum of Modern Art we viewed Van Gogh’s famous Starry Night, a thrill to see. All the people vying for shots were not so thrilling.
Our granddaughter was very excited to see the Statue of Liberty and we liked our second glance when we all took the Staten Island ferry over to the island and right back again to NYC. A beautiful day for an historic view.
On Thursday Ron had signed us up to see Live! with Kelly and Ryan. In Kelly’s place that day was Carrie Ann Inaba whom we well remember from Dancing With the Stars. She was guest host along with Ryan Seacrest that day. Most enjoyable. I particularly liked their delightful personalities when the camera was turned off.
The last day we shot some pictures of Times Square which was quite close to our hotel and which we passed through every day on our way to shows and scenic places. We saw Carole King’s story, Beautiful, Jersey Boys, and Aladdin. All were good but Beautiful was my favorite.
Another shot of Times Square.
And yet another.
For a final shot, one of the city from high above once more.
We all loved our trip but as the days went by brushing up against lackadaisical workers who had no interest in being friendly and helpful took its toll. We’re Canadians, eh? We flew home on the Saturday, glad to be going home and looking forward to another week with our daughter and granddaughter on our own turf. Long talks, fun games, times with the whole family and just waking up to breakfast together in our jammies were the icing on a lovely holiday. All too soon, we left home at 4:00 a.m. to drive them to the airport nearby and kiss them goodbye until the next time.
The next morning I was back at my computer, anxious to attack my current WIP and to field the emails being pitched at me from dozens and dozens of places. This writing life is pretty much a dream come true.
Click on the Loyalist Trilogy books below for great historical stories with satisfying endings:
In November of 2017 I was lucky enough to notice that the Elsie Perrin Williams estate called Windermere in northwest London was going to be open to the public and many of the rooms furnished temporarily as they would have been in her time. Immediately I put it on my calendar and my husband and I had a lovely tour there shortly afterwards.
We first noticed this unusual name when we attended university in London. Both of us wondered if this woman’s name meant she was related to my husband’s mother whose name was Jane Perrin Williams. By the time we made the connection Jane had passed away; we were not able to ask her about the similarities. We do know, however, that Jane was related to an owner of the Grand Trunk Railway and the Williams Fly Spray people but we’ve never delved into those intriguing fragments of knowledge. I suppose it is conceivable that the two were related just because of the circles those business owners would have traveled in.
On our visit to the estate we learned more about Elsie and her husband, Hadley, and the person who stayed with Elsie until she, too, died, and to whom Elsie gave a sizable bequest. The website gives a clear account of some of the history. The property was left to the city of London along with enough money to maintain it but some shenanigans on the part of London politicians meant that the money was siphoned off for the building of the new public library in downtown London. The Williams estate fell into disrepair after the death of its caretaker.
The large room where wedding receptions today are held.Here is a shot of me in the kitchen where the preparation of food was well displayed.
My husband’s family history has another chapter to it which I learned when he received a small inheritance from his mother’s grandfather. The family owned apartment buildings in New York City which gradually fell into disrepair as over the years crooked lawyers sucked as much money out of the estate as they could. My husband’s uncle was high up in Chesebrough-Ponds and took frequent trips to New York where he succeeded in wresting the properties away from the unscrupulous lawyers and the small inheritance was divided up. The family story is that these buildings were tenement dwellings by the time the lawyers were ousted but I don’t know details.
And still today we wonder if Elsie Perrin Williams was any relation. Perhaps one day when we find a few hours of leisure time we’ll look into this. Meanwhile Elsie’s estate is there to look at and to book for occasions. If you want to read more about the estate and the people here is a link to an article about the book, Elsie’s Estate, written by Susan Bentley.
Click on the Loyalist Trilogy books below for great historical stories with satisfying endings:
