Behind the Stories

Serendipity happens in my life a lot. I used to dismiss it as coincidence. I now like to think of it as my intuition paying attention. It happens in my writing, too, and here's how it showed up in Chapter 6 of Dancing at The Royal Jade, entitled "The Knight Alone."

Movies often show up in my fiction. But I picked one to use in a scene in my novel that wouldn't actually have been playing in that time. This triggered a series of considerations about the use of historical facts in fiction. Dozens of authors have bent history in various ways and/or depicted events that never actually occurred in the lives of real people. Where am I willing to draw the line in the name of fiction?

On the evening of April 2, 1968, American living rooms were graced by an unprecedented moment on national television. During an NBC musical special called Petula, British singer Petula Clark and the iconic Harry Belafonte shared a stage, united by song and a brief, gentle touch. That fleeting moment of human connection spiraled into a controversy that reflects the era’s tumultuous racial tensions.

For several years now, I’ve actively sought anything that would contribute to my understanding of intuition and how to tap into it, especially in my writing. Still, it has seemed out of reach for me, a fantastical superpower for only a few divinely gifted souls.

What we read cannot help but influence what we write...not in a copycat way, but as inspiration that sometimes is so subtle we may not even realize it.

At the end of Chapter 1, “Alleys and Shadows,” in my serialized novel Dancing at The Royal Jade, nine-year-old Libby Billings sneaks to watch Dark Shadows, a show I was not allowed to watch either. That’s probably not 100% true. I was prone to nightmares as a child so even though I was fascinated by the show and my parents weren't all that strict about what I watched, my fears kept me from tuning in. It was creepy, y’all.

For generations, children throughout the U.S. have played Hangman doodled on chalkboards or scribbled on notebook paper. Often seen as a child’s pastime, this simple word-guessing game has a problematic history laced with cultural influences and contemporary controversies.

If you grew up on Nancy Drew books, you may know Carolyn Keene as the author of 29 of those novels as well as countless other books. But would you believe me if I told you she never existed?