My WriteOn Joliet co-leader Tom Hernandez likes to suggest writing themes and prompts for members of the group, carrying on a tradition that the original founder started when writers were stuck on their works in progress and didn't know what elese to write.
A prompt wakes up the muse, gets the words out, and, hopefully, engages writers with the current projects.
One time, along, long time ago (back in 2013, I think), Tom's prompt was to write a review. So I wrote a restaurant review of Sue's Diner in the BryonySeries - complete with phone number and website.
One writer in attendance that night actually started looking up the venue on her phone and was disappointed when I told her neither Sue's Diner nor Munsonville, Michigan (where it's located) is real.
But it was a huge compliment.
Some writers (me, included) loves stories so real, they feel transported into the other worlds. The characters feel so real, the readers wouldn't be suprised if those characters walked into the room.
A new reader to the BryonySeries sent me this message last week:
Your characters are totally real and believable...Also about 1/3 through Visage and loving it! I’m sorry it took me this long to get hooked on the trilogy...just love the realness if it. Like we talked about last week, I love your character dev. They feel so real. And the situations and scenes are not stretched or strange, even in a vampire story. You do such a great job making a spooky atmosphere out of daily/normal life. It’s awesome.
It's easy to consider the people in a story as characters, too. But I think "place" can also be a character that has its own personality, history, and development.
And that leads me to the most recent telegram from Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara.
One last piece of commentary from me: Good writing takes time and work. And I'm encouraged that, at least in a small part of the (real) world, the effort on both is paying off.
Dear MOMI
An absurd quest begins with an absurd question.
I am reading the BTB series midway thru the Bryony Simons installment where many things unclear and speculative have lifted like February winter into the trappings of March. I waited far too long to read these books and my wonder of these four main characters lavished (editor's note: languished?) in ignorance. Never have I read an author so meticulously focused on the tastes of the times, but in food and blood. So right were you to include the hardships of the past, mostly endured by the under privilege common folk which made up the vast majority.
Things were possible then in the new world that are quite unlikely anywhere else in the 1800s and have become impossible in post industrial times. Munsonville is described as a settlement born of a single man’s vision with the necessary recourses, scant as they may be, to buy up an entire plot of land large enough to become a zip code. Towns and even cities, share this type of history all around the New World and so grew the Western nations…east and west; north and south. Farms, factories, train station stops, and stables grew into urban development on an absurd scale as did the names of the men and in some small instances, women, gave their names to the streets and places that grew beyond their time and place.
But are they real?
Yea and nay, I would insist. ( I’m insist because just saying so would have created an unintended rhyme and I make too many limericks to waste on a mere letter.) People and places have a way of inventing their own mythology. Such is the right and duty of an Irishman, but hey, everyone is a wee bit Irish. Let’s get back to the absurd.
You’ve been telling your readers that in fact Ed Calkins is a real person despite the legal document I signed stating that though I may have at one time have been, I now am the property of the BryonySeries.com which holds the rights to all existences metaphoric, historical, or otherwise. So, too, is Tara a real place in Ireland and in the imagination of Ed Calkins, though one is said to exist outside of any imaginations. I dispute this. Before someone’s imagination, Ireland was just an unnamed Island, Tara an unnamed hill. Does anything ever exist unless someone imagines it first?
We could run down that rabbit hole with metaphysics or existentialism…or we could ignore the question in favor of one more absurd. So, I have to ask; Is Munsonville, Michigan a real place as described by the series? I’ve been online asking that very question and have gotten only so close. There is a place named Hunsonville that seems to be in the right part of the map, with the right history to be the one famed Munsonville of the series. But that is only a guess.
I need to know the truth in this….or at lest a convincing myth because my quest it to travel there! I want to tell any locals that will listen that their places in the world has been elevated by vampirian (spell check says its not a word, but I just made it one), legend. I want to go to its library and donate the series. But most of all I want to go to the place of my death and place a roadside shrine in my honor, dedicated to the carrier who gave his life in service of newspaper delivery. You may recall the 12th carrier of Gettysburg, but what about the other 11 that did not survive? Did anyone put up a shrine in their names?
So, dear Goddess, I need to know…is Munsonville real and is it known by another name?
Ruthlessly yours,
Ed Calkins
P.S. I am serious about taking a road trip to Munsonville some time this year.
And then, because the email quickly got buried and I missed it, Nancy Calkins sent this message a couple days later: Edward asked a question about Munsonville.. is there a real town that you think of when writing. If so what is the name of the town or the area and what state is it in.
Sadly, I had to send Ed and Nancy this reply:
Alas, Munsonville, Michigan is only real in the BryonySeries.
Although there is a Munsonville, New Hampshire, which I did not realize until I'd already written
"Bryony."
But you could always buy a plot of land with your retirement funds and start one. ;)
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