Why I write in the historical romance genre by Kaye Spencer #SweetheartsoftheWest #historicalromance #amwriting

An author interview question I often encounter asks why I write in the historical romance genre.

While I am drawn to the historical time periods of the Old West, Roaring Twenties, and 1950s more than other historical settings, I have written a few contemporary (or near-contemporary) stories. However, I don't spend much time in the here and now with my storytelling, and there are three reasons.

Reason 1—Research

Every historical romance I write allows me to follow rabbits down research rabbit holes. I’ve discovered the most intriguing and amazing tidbits of history in my historical research Wonderland. It’s important to me to have the details in my stories as historically accurate, but I temper the accuracy with the need to tell a good story. I am, after all, writing fiction as entertainment, not creating a historically accurate documentary.

 Reason 2—Living vicariously in the past

While I’m writing a story set in the past, I get to travel to a different place and time and live in someone else’s shoes and view the world through their eyes and perspectives. I’m like Anthony Marston in Quigley Down Under: “…Some men [women] are born in the wrong century.” When I’m researching, I'm on an adventure that can take me anywhere my imagination wants to go.

Reason 3—Challenge of overcoming inconveniences

I like writing stories that lack modern day conveniences. Without the amenities we’re accustomed to nowadays, there are so many juicy complications for the characters to face, deal with, and overcome that otherwise could be written away with a call on the cell phone or by hopping an airplane.

Let's explore Reason 3.


*Communication: When the hero and heroine have to depend upon letter writing and telegraph messages, both of which were slow (relatively speaking) and could more easily be intercepted or even lost, the villain has the opportunity to weasel his way into the heroine’s life and console her. Perhaps the heroine thinks the hero jilted her at the altar when he doesn’t show up for their wedding when actually the villain intercepted the telegram, which explains the legitimate reason for the hero’s delay.

 
*Transportation: Transportation wasn’t necessarily convenient or terribly comfortable. Horseback riding was functional, but for long periods of time over great distances is exhausting and full of plot-enhancing dangers and challenges. Stagecoach travel was cramped, dirty/dusty, really hot/really cold, and could be dangerous. It lacked privacy that women need. Obtaining a decent meal could be an on-going problem. Generally, stage travel was a grueling test of endurance.

Just imagine, the heroine might be kidnapped by a drop-dead handsome train robber or find herself stranded on the Texas prairie with nothing but a scoundrel of a gambler as her companion along with the one surviving horse from the stagecoach team after the Comanche attack.

Traveling by train was limited to where the tracks were laid, and it shared many of the same drawbacks as stage travel, plus the additional discomfort of soot and cinders coming into the passenger cars. Little sleeping privacy or comfort. The food wasn't the greatest or even available at times.

 *Contraception: Without our modern-day contraceptives, the possibility of pregnancy looms in historical stories as an ever-present consequence of a romantic dalliance. This is a great plot device for building the emotional tension between the hero and heroine. Fear of out-of-wedlock pregnancy and the real threat of dying in childbirth both add another layer of anxiety to the romantic relationship.

*Medicine: Sophisticated antibiotics as we know them were virtually nonexistent back in the ‘olden days’, which makes the recovery difficult and, sometimes, the character’s very survival tenuous given the physical torture/wounds/injuries we, as authors, inflict upon them. Lack of modern day pain killers and antibiotics makes the situation all that more dire for the hero when the female doctor extracts the arrow from his thigh.

Gladstone doctor's bag
puuikibeach, Gladstone bag made of ox leather, CC BY 2.0

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Until next time,

Kaye Spencer
Writing through history one romance upon a time

NOTE: Images, other than Gladstone bag, are courtesy Fotolia.com - author purchased license to use

Margaret Jewett Bailey

by Rain Trueax

As a writer of romances, often based in the historic West, learning about the 'real' people of that time has been part of writing about my fictional people. A lot of times, I think many, who aren't so fond of history, don't realize how much diversity there was in women's lives in the 1800s. 

Some years back, I got what was a nice review for one of my romances (Arizona Sunset back then but currently retitled as Outlaw Way). She dinged me rating points for believing what my heroine was doing was not realistic to women of that time.

'This story starts easy and seems to follow the traditional lines of a historical romance. The tale takes an innovative turn, when Abby rides to an isolated area for stolen mail bags, asks a rustler to take her along with him, and then gets married to the rustler she knows nothing about. The improbability of those events taking place in that era are far-fetched and unrealistic, although the interactions between the protagonists are heartwarming. Sam’s sensitivity and gentleness with Abby makes his character endearing and has the reader overlooking the fact that he’s a rustler and a man who lives by the gun. The character development is good and the plot moves smoothly.  Ultimately, “Arizona Sunset” is a story of second chances, destiny, and true love. A romance that will have the reader believing in improbabilities and cheering for happily ever after!'

I knew she was wrong. Many women did follow cultural norms, as many do today. Even then, there were those renegades though, ones who chose a different path. When we write a romance, our nontraditional women will have a happy ending. It is a requirement of the genre. Real life has no such rules. Being unconventional was even tougher for women in the Old West where there weren't so many options for a woman who broke society's rules. To be an independent thinker had a price attached, and so it was with Margaret Jewett Bailey, Oregon's first female novelist. 

Margaret Smith was born about 1812 in Massachusetts. Although her family did not approve, she had strong spiritual beliefs and attended Wesleyan Academy. She then secured a position allowing her to come to Oregon as a mission teacher. In 1837, she sailed from Boston with the Reverend David Leslie, his family, and H.K.W. Perkins. For disobeying her father, she was disowned.

Traveling via the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii today), the missionary party arrived in the Salem, Oregon area to be part of the Oregon Mission, which had been established in 1834 by the Reverend Jason Lee as a missionary arm of the Methodist/Episcopal Church.

As a single woman, possibly attractive, although there are no pictures I could find of Margaret, she was under pressure to marry. Complicating her situation, Rev. Leslie had told the Mission that she was a family servant. She didn't have a true position though she did teach. Outspoken and someone who thought for herself, Margaret found other pressures from the man with whose family she had traveled to Oregon, Reverend Leslie, as she fought with him. 

The elders in the church wanted her to marry William H. Willson, a single man, with whom she had boarded. While she had at one time thought she would marry him, she then decided he wasn't spiritual enough. To pressure her, Willson claimed they had been intimate. She at first denied it; but then said, yes they had. She evidently hoped they'd not expel her from the mission if she confessed. When it was made public, she was finished as a teacher there.  

She would have been 25 with no family behind her. What were her options? Marriage was often the only way for single women of that time.

At the time, she was being courted by Dr. William J. Bailey. He had had quite the history coming over from the British Isles with some question as to from where exactly, but he'd had some education as a doctor. Coming to America, he'd done some Indian fighting and killing, ended up with a face damaged by a hatchet from one battle. At the mission, he had been encouraged to resume his medical studies and became a skilled physician.

Despite this career and rather dramatic history, Margaret's friends objected to her marrying him as he had a reputation as a drinker and carouser. She went her own way, and March 4, 1839, they married in a very simple ceremony without so much as a wedding gown. They left on horseback immediately for the cabin he had purchased in French Prairie, close to Champoeg. 

Her first disillusionment came when, though he had earlier converted to Methodism, he said he'd no longer read the Bible or attend church. As a very spiritual woman, this was a huge disappointment; however, she set about making a home, taking care of cows, horses, pigs, and a garden. At some point, she learned she'd married a violent man-- especially when he was drinking. Although some felt their marriage was a good one, others weren't there the times she claimed it turned otherwise. 

Margaret wrote both poetry and articles before and during her marriage. In 1838, she had published letters in church papers, and poetry signed MJB appeared in the Oregon Spectator. One of her poems had been published February 5, 1846, making her the first poet to be published west of the Rocky Mountains.

In 1854, two big things happened in  Margaret's life. Using the pseudonym, Ruth Rover, she found a publisher for her novel-- supposedly fictional but using her own life-- The Grains. In April of the same year, she divorced William. Perhaps she thought she'd get a new start as a published author. 

Reviewers had a hard time putting the book in a genre. It can be seen today as the first example of a Pacific Northwest woman trying to empower herself by telling her story.

As historian Edwin Bingham observed in his foreword to the 1986 edition, The Grains is unusual because it is "part autobiography, part religious testimonial, part history and travelogue" and might even be called "a novel, the first novel written and published on the Pacific Coast." 

Following her divorce, even though her husband was a successful man, Margaret was left with $100, her clothing, and a piano. She had edited six columns for the Ladies Department in the Oregon Spectator and hoped to edit a newspaper of her own for women. But now she was a divorced woman and the Willamette Mission had all that gossip about her. She never published another book and once again found herself on her own with nothing to support her.  

In the persona of Ruth Rover, she confessed in Chapter One of The Grains: "I am avoided and shunned, and slighted, and regarded with suspicions in every place till my life is more burdensome than death would be. I have, therefore, … been impelled by a sense of justice due to myself and a wish that my future life should not be overshadowed by the gloom of the present.” 

Was she too honest in her telling of her life or did she fictionalize what she thought wouldn't make her seem sympathetic? The anonymous Squills of the Oregonian noted this was not the biography of a Napoleon or a Byron, but the story of a mere woman: "[W]ho the dickens cares, about the existence of a fly, or in whose pan of molasses the insect disappeared" (Oregonian, August 5, 1854). 

Squills added: "The immorality, not to say indecency of the work, is far too much in advance even for the fast ideas and morals of young Oregon" (Oregonian, September 9, 1854). Criticisms of "immorality" and "indecency," whether aimed at her writing or her character, continued to follow Bailey throughout her life.

Margaret didn't give up on a happy life, but for women of that time, even more than today, choosing wisely in a mate made the difference in terms of  quality life, especially without family behind them. For an outspoken woman, a woman who thought for herself, she never found her own happily ever after. 

Margaret Bailey's second marriage was to Francis Waddle, in Polk County, in 1855. They were divorced three years later. She then moved to Washington Territory and married a Mr. Crane (no information on him). Her third marriage may have ended no better because, she died destitute in Seattle on May 17, 1882. In my research, I could not find anything about where she was buried, but as a pauper, there was unlikely to be a marker.

Despite being the first novelist in Oregon, she's not a well-known northwestern pioneer. I learned of her from my daughter, who had given a paper on her while studying historical archaeology for her Master's in Anthropology. 

Champoeg is where Oregon Territory first formed its government. William Bailey was a part of that forming. The town site was mostly wiped out by the flood of 1861. My daughter was involved in archaeological digs in Champoeg and French Prairie where they plotted where homes had been and unsuccessfully tried to find Bailey's French Prairie home, which had burned sometime after his divorce. 

My daughter had told me of Margaret's story when we were discussing unconventional women of the Old West. She had read The Grains and said it wasn't an easy book to read. She said it was sensual, which likely explains why, though it was also spiritual, it didn't find popularity in its own time. She said Margaret made it clear she was a woman who liked men, but it also didn't make her feel like a person someone would like to know. While blaming others for her miseries and disappointments, they may have been mostly due to her own personality, but one has to also take into account the time in which she lived.

 

The Grains still available to buy at Oregon State University

As, is this book about that time in Oregon's history and more on Margaret and William Bailey

Champoeg: Place of Transition at Amazon

And my own book with a woman who fought against the traditions of her time but found a much happier ending thanks to the old adage that a woman's life, especially then, was mostly happy or not due to the man she chose.

Outlaw Way by Rain Trueax

Grooms with Honor Series by Linda Hubalek

Grooms with Honor...
What does the phrase make you think of?
Strong men, honorable men, decent characters, always putting their brides first...

Little did I know when I added six sons to the preacher's family in the Brides with Grit series that they'd have their own book series someday.  But it seemed natural to continue life stories on the Kansas prairie with these six brothers, in the prime of their lives, ready to find a help mate.

In each story the woman faces a serious threat, and the man comes to her rescue. Back in the 1800s you had to rely on the help of others rather than the state's or government's help, so I'm sure situations like these women found themselves in were very threatening and real. Hopefully there were men, and communities, to help them out.

Here's the description for Angus' Trust

A sweet historical romance set in 1886.

Angus Reagan grew up fascinated with trains and has done everything from stoking engines to applying the car brakes. Now, after being a train detective for years, he's thinking about heading home to Clear Creek, Kansas. He misses his family and community.

Daisy Clancy spent her childhood in the family-run café in Clear Creek, Kansas, but she left home to work in a big city when she came of age. Still single and finally lonely for family, Daisy decides to return home and open her own business.

Fate puts the two childhood friends on the same train and sparks of memories cause each to think of their future, maybe even together. But a train robbery sets them on another journey they hadn’t planned on.

This book series, Grooms with Honor, showcases the six sons of Pastor and Kaitlyn Reagan, first featured in the 1873 year-based Brides with Grit series.

"Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, be faithful unto her as long as you both shall live?"

The young men have heard Pastor Reagan say these words to many couples over the years, and they vow to treat all women this way as they walk through life.

Besides the Reagan brothers, the series will feature other men in their community.

(Note: Two Montana Sky Kindle World stories, Nolan's Vow on sale at 99 cents until May 31, and Elof's Mission, enter the Grooms with Honor series setting right before Angus' Trust.)

Thanks for stopping by the Sweethearts of the West Blog. Hopefully I've given you another reason to appreciate the old west...because of their grooms with honor...

Linda Hubalek

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Mail Order Bride Nightmares

The invention of the mail order bride was born of necessity. As men moved farther into the open frontier of western America, the need for family, and available marriageable women, grew.

The 1800's saw the vast wilderness of the west open to early settlers coming to make their fortunes as new towns seemed to pop up over night. News of gold strikes and riches untold sent men in droves to the farthest reaches but once there, those same men realized the wild untamed land was missing one much needed asset. Women.

In a bid to attract eligible women, letters were sent back east to churches, advertisements were made in newspapers and magazines and courtship through letters was born. Photos were often sent, along with promises, some genuine and some not, of lasting companionship and marriage. Women of all walks in life agreed and made the journey out west with nothing more than their clothes and a promise from a man they'd never met.

In my story, His Brother's Wife, a promise of wealth and stability was offered to Grace Kingston. She left everything she knew behind and traveled across country to meet the man of her dreams…or so she thought. What she found was a fourteen year old boy, angry at the world and not afraid to show it. His older brother, Rafe, was the center of young Jesse's grief and Grace was now stuck in the middle of it. Read below to see Grace's reaction to the news.

~*~

“He’s just a boy.” Grace felt her chest tighten before her heart started thumping wildly. No wonder everyone inside the station had laughed at her. Jesse Samuels was a child and no one bothered to inform her. They said nothing. Just stood there laughing at her while she made a fool of herself.

Grace glared at those she could see. They had the decency to blush and look away before snickering. She turned back to Jesse. The real Jesse. He was still staring at his feet, his hands shoved into his pockets. The hat on his head shielded his entire face but embarrassment tinted his ears pink.

She sighed, her shoulders dropping before she shook her head. How had this happened? Grace lifted her hand, laying it to her forehead and tried to think. What did she do now? “How old is he?”

Rafe cleared his throat and shifted his weight to one leg. “He’s fourteen.”

Her eyes widened. “Fourteen?”

“Almost fifteen,” Jesse said, managing to look up then. He still didn’t look her in the eye but he wasn’t a mute as she’d begun to think. He stepped up on the sidewalk and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “Well, in nine months I will be.”

“Fourteen?” Grace mumbled the number under her breath before her knees gave out and she sat down hard on top of her trunk. She'd traveled across the entire country to marry the man painted so eloquently in the pages of his letter and here she sat, staring up at a child not even old enough to shave the whiskers from his chin.

When she woke this morning her first thought had been of him, Jesse, the sweet, shy man she’d come to know through the letter he'd sent. He owned his own ranch, he’d said, with a herd of steer so large he lost count of them most days. He worked hard, had a grand two-story home on five hundred acres of prime Montana soil. But he was lonely. He wanted a wife. Someone to share all his fortune with.

And she’d been gullible enough to fall for every single word.

~*~

I'm sure Grace wasn't the only woman lured out west by promises not meant to be kept. To find out what happened to Grace, and to her young suitor, Jesse and his brother Rafe, read his Brother's Wife, avaiable in eBook formats.

His Brother’s Wife
by Lily Graison

Book 5 in the Willow Creek Series
Historical Western Romance
Format: eBook
Length: Novel

When Grace Kingston accepts a wedding proposal through a mail-order bride agency and travels across country to be married, she has no idea her bridegroom is a fourteen-year-old boy. There’s no way she can accept his offer but with depleted funds, and winter coming on, Grace has little choice but to stay. Things go from bad to worse when she meets Jesse’s older brother, Rafe. The attraction is immediate. He’s surly, rude and downright pig-headed but he makes her pulse race with a single glance.

Rafe Samuels thought to teach his brother a lesson by making him take responsibility for his rash behavior but one look at Grace and his plans go up in smoke. She isn’t the dowdy spinster he imagined and having her live in his house and not be able to have her is the worst kind of torment. But putting her out of his mind is impossible.

As fall turns to winter, Grace finds that living with the two brothers isn’t as simple a thing as she once thought. Jesse still thinks marriage is in the cards, and Rafe is a devilishly handsome distraction she doesn’t need. She can’t decide if he hates her or wants to kiss her. And how does she avoid breaking Jess’s heart when it becomes clear that the attraction between her and Rafe is mutual?
   

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About Lily Graison

USA TODAY  bestselling author Lily Graison writes historical western romances and dabbles in contemporary and paranormal romance. First published in 2005, Lily has written over a dozen romance novels that range from sweet to spicy.

She lives in Hickory, North Carolina with her husband, three high-strung Yorkies and more cats than she can count and is mother of two and grandmother of three. On occasion, she can be found at her sewing machine creating 1800’s period clothing or participating in civil war reenactments and area living history events. When not portraying a southern belle, you can find her at a nearby store feeding her obsession for all things resembling office supplies.

To see the dresses Lily has created, visit her Pinterest page.

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FINDING A SETTING FOR A STORY

The setting for all my books, as most of you know, is in Texas.  Recently, I began writing a historical short story that needed a town to get started. The time period is 1870 and the main part of my tale takes place in the fictitious town of McTiernan, a few miles north of Dallas. Actually the town will be built during the telling, but that's in the story.

In the book, Katie and the Irish Texan, the hero, Dermot McTiernan, came to Texas from Ireland to make his fortune in 1861. He becomes a ranch hand, working for land owner, Ian Benning. In 1863, they joined a brigade of Texas soldiers to help save the state from being destroyed like Georgia in Sherman's March to the sea. After the war ends, he returns to Ireland intending to marry his love and bring her home to Texas. Well, we know the course of life and love never runs smoothly and Dermot returns to Texas alone.

Sooooo, here he is in a saloon, in the middle of a card game, and about to be accused of cheating. He's not wearing plaid or a brightly colored hat and his name isn't Waldo, but where the heck is he? There are a myriad of places he could be, after all Texas is a pretty big state. While I peruse the internet, he starts to tell me a little more about himself and come to find out, he's been lumber-jacking in East Texas in and around the city of Jefferson.




Now, at this time, around 1870, Jefferson is quite the happening place. Toward the end of the war, she had been scheduled for destruction and to be set ablaze by the advancing Northern troops. Thankfully, she was spared this fate, unlike many of her sister cities, and by 1870, there were over two hundred buildings scheduled to be built. The town reached its peak population of greater than thirty thousand and became the sixth largest city in Texas.





Jefferson became a port for steamboat travel and at it's peak in the early 1870's, accommodated up to two hundred fifty steamers per year. She also was a major railway hub until 1873 when the completion of the Texas and Pacific railway rerouted rail travel  from Texarkana to Marshall bypassing Jefferson. After that her population diminished to about 3,500 residents.




Today, Jefferson is a lovely historic town, home to more state registered historic structures than anywhere else in the state. She truly lives up to being called, The Queen of thee Bayou, a unique and special place to be explored and shared.


I appreciate you stopping by and as always, I love to hear from you!

Hugs and have a great week,
Carra

Find me on my website: http://carracopelin.com
Facebook: http://facebook/carracopelin
Twitter: http://twitter/CarraCopelin

GONE TO TEXAS

 

I'm so excited to be a permanent member of Sweethearts of the West, and to be affiliated with such a wonderfully talented group of authors. Thank you!

In relation to my previous post on family and their immigration to the Southwest and Texas, I bring you a post on the phrase, Gone To Texas, and a brief story on my family's beginnings in Texas.

 

 

Gone to Texas, often abbreviated GTT, was a phrase used by Americans immigrating to Texas in the mid-1800's. They moved to Texas for many reasons, often to escape debt incurred during the Panic of 1819, to start over again or to begin for the first time, to get land or to look for adventure as well as for new fortunes. Obtaining "land" seemed to be the driving force for most of those who came to Texas. People became so obsessed with the hopes promised and the romance of Texas that "Gone to Texas" or "G.T.T." was often written on the doors of abandoned houses or posted as a sign on fences.

After Davy Crockett was narrowly defeated for re-election in Tennessee, he famously said, 

 

My ancestor, Amon McCommas, was one so obsessed. He came to Peter's Colony in December 1844 from Virginia, stopping for repairs successively in Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri. Accompanying him in his journey was his wife, Mary, their grown children, James B., John (my g-g-grandfather and a soldier in the Mexican war), Elisha, William M., Amon, Jr., Stephen B. (died a soldier in the city of Mexico, December 24, 1847), Rosa, Armilda, and Mary E.

Also along for the adventure were Amon's two brothers, Stephen B. and John C., and a sister-in-law Mrs. Lavinia McCommas and her children. 

Circulars printed for distribution and posted in public places advertising the rich lands of the Red River and Trinity Colony in Texas lured many to this area of North Central Texas. One advertisement stated that the Peters Colony was “peculiarly adapted to the successful growth of cotton and tobacco,” and, “Indian corn, rye, barley, oats, sweet and Irish potatoes, peas, beans, melons, figs, garden vegetables and all the fruits.” Circulars further claimed that “the country abounds in wild game, such as buffalo, deer wild turkies, prairie hens, quails, and grey squirrels, and the forest with wild honey.” With advertisements such as this, it is easy to see why so many families decided to emigrate to Texas.

Every family settling in Texas during this period was to receive 640 acres of land and each single man 320 acres, provided they lived on and work the land for three years.

I'm in awe of so many families, not just my own, starting out with their meager belongings to travel hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles to a complete unknown. When the McCommas' reached their destination, Peter's Colony, they set up camp on the banks of the Trinity River, where Elder Amon McCommas preached the first Sermon.
 

Amon settled, with his family, five miles northeast of where the city of Dallas now stands. At that time, Dallas contained only five or six families, settled along the banks of the river.  He was a Campbellite preacher (Deciples of Christ Minister) and he founded the Christian Church of Dallas in 1845 with twelve members. In 1846, Amon chaired the meeting that formed Dallas County and was later elected as the first Chief Justice of the Dallas County Commissioners Court. He was a farmer who owned the first "tread - mill "(grist mill powered by mules) in Dallas. He served as president of the first county fair, which later became the State Fair of Texas.

This is how the families of my Texas Code Series, the Bennings and McTiernans, came to be in Texas.  By the 1850’s, the Peters Land Company was reorganized under the name of the Texas Emigration and Land Company, which offered 320 acres to married men and 160 to single men, plus a "free cabin, seed, and musket balls.”







































Ian Benning and Dermot McTiernan came to Texas from Ireland in 1862, received their land, fought with Texas in the Civil War, then went back to Ireland, married and returned to Texas in 1875. These two novellas are works in progress that I hope to have ready in the next couple of months. Above are their covers that I'm excited to share.





In the meantime, my new release, CODE OF HONOR, Texas Code Series, Book One, is available for Kindle and print on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/muln4r9, and on http://createspace.com for print.





Find me on my website: http://carracopelin.com

Facebook: http://facebook/carracopelin

Twitter: http://twitter/CarraCopelin

Goodreads: http://tinyurl.com/mfynmj2

Thanks for stopping by today. Leave a comment and say howdy, I love hearing from y'all!

Carra

 

Christmas Pudding

When we think of a Victorian Christmas dinner the first image to come to mind is a large platter featuring a perfectly cooked Christmas goose. However, many rural families instead served beef or chicken. The one thing though, that every family did have was the Christmas pudding.

Sometimes known as plum pudding or plum duff, it was not an actual milk-based pudding like we think of today. Pudding was an old word for foods boiled or steamed in a bag. Plum referred to the sweet bits of raisins in the pudding.

The origins of plum pudding date back to Medieval times and was prepared on Stir-up Sunday, the Sunday before Advent. Originally the pudding was prepared with thirteen ingredients for Christ and the twelve Apostles. Primarily made of suet, bread crumbs, raisins, sugar and spices, the making of the Christmas pudding was a family event.

Each person took a turn stirring and made a wish for good luck. Some sources mentioned the pudding was stirred clockwise and another said east to west, in honor of the Magi who traveled in that direction. Either way, after the stirring was done a ring, coin or thimble was tossed into the batter.

Next the pudding was packed into a cloth bag and hung until Christmas day. Then it was boiled in beef broth for four to eight hours. After dinner it was turned onto a platter and sprig of holly was placed on top. It was then coated with brandy, set alight and carried to the table.

The head of the household sliced and served the pudding and gave a blessing for all who prepared it. Biting into the portion, a person found the ring it meant marriage.

A coin promised wealth and the thimble, a happy but single life.

There seem to be as many recipes for Christmas pudding as there are internet sites, but this seemed to be the oldest I found, though if I were going to try making it, I would probably use one of the modern one.

"The American Domestic Cook Book For 1868"

Plum Pudding - Take half a pound of flour, half a pound of raisins, stoned and chopped, and some currants washed picked and dried; use milk enough to stir easily with a spoon; add half a pound of suet chopped fine, a teaspoonful of salt, and four well beaten eggs; tie it in a floured cloth, and boil four hours. The water must boil when you put it in, and continue boiling until it is done.

 

NEW RELEASE! After a magical waltz in a winter wonderland with the only man who has ever made her believe she is beautiful, Madeline Winthrop doesn't think life could be anymore perfect--until the night of the Christmas ball when she learns everything James Sullivan has told her is a lie. Revenge against Madeline's brother forces James to do what ever is necessary to get back what was stolen from him, even if he has to use Madeline to do it. But the one thing he doesn't count on is the way she makes him feel.

Excerpt:
He pulled away, and she blinked up at him in a daze. His chest rose and fell as his breath escaped his parted lips in wispy clouds. He shook his head and smiled. “Ye are not clumsy, Maddy. And when ye are in me arms, ye’ll glide around the room like a swan.”

Her heart leapt. “Oh, James, it sounds so wonderful, but...”

“We’ll dance all night. I’ll not be giving ye up to anyone else.”

“People will talk.”

“Let them talk. I want to marry ye.”

Madeline gaped at him stunned. Surely he was teasing. “But I’ve known you less than two weeks.”

“Marry me, Maddy, and we’ll dance every night for the rest o’ our lives.”

James offered her a lifetime with his smile, and because she ached so desperately to believe he loved her, she said yes.


http://www.kathyottenauthor.com

ANOTHER WALTZ NEW RELEASE (Victorian Holiday Novella)
http://www.thewildrosepress.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=176_135&products_id=4993