GUEST BLOG: BRENDA WHITESIDE

This post is the last stop of Brenda's Virtual Book Tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Leave a comment for a chance to win a 1940's double feature night at the movies which will consist of two DVD movies from the era starring the movie idols the heroine mentions often in the book - one Betty Grable movie and one Tyrone Power movie - plus popcorn and a box of candy!

When girls were girls and men were men – those were the days! Or at least those were the days in the movies I grew up watching. During the hot afternoons in Phoenix, Mom would draw the living room drapes and turn on The Channel Five Movie Matinee which ran the old black and white movies from her teenage years, the 1940’s. They were reruns to my mom but delightful first runs for me. Between the old movies and my mom’s tales of growing up in the 1940’s, I fell totally in love with that decade. So romantic, so colorful.

My research started years ago, in the living room watching The Channel Five Movie Matinee. It was Hollywood’s version but movies do reflect the times.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers tapped across the stage, her glittery dress flowed around her ankles, and he bent her backwards in a graceful maneuver that netted him a kiss. I sighed at the black and white images. The actor with the funny nose made cracks and the pretty redhead batted her eyelashes. I laughed at an old black and white Bob Hope and Lucille Ball movie on television while curled up with my little sister in a corner of the sofa.

Saturday morning, I’d carry my cup of hot cocoa and my white bread toast dripping with butter to the blanket spread in front of the television to watch an old movie starring Shirley Temple.

Movies were set on sound stages mostly and they didn’t worry about too much realism. My heart pattered over Gene Kelly dancing in the rain, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing around a perfect garden under perfectly spaced stars and Dorothy dancing through the Land of Oz.

The time period following World War II is the setting for Honey On White Bread. The two families, the Russells and the Flanagans are the people who move through the novel. Both families are poor but rich with love and family.

My heroine, Claire Flanagan, is caught up in that fantasy called Hollywood. She loves those old black and white movies on the silver screen as much as I did. Of course, for her they’re not old. In her eyes, her hero, Benjamin Russell, is as dashing as any movie star idol.

My mother provided firsthand accounts of the era. Listening became an important part of gathering facts – but I’d been doing that all my life. Her stories fascinated me. She was raised the daughter of a crop worker, poor and without a mother. Her accounts of hopping freight trains, going to Sunday school with cousins, victory gardens, rationing of sugar, D-Day and the way romance was conducted were an important part of the notes for my book.
,br> The balance of my research tied together my story components with all the little details that make a time period unique – the particular slang of the era, the dress styles, conveniences or lack of, geography of the settings, etc. My personal library has several books that speak to the era. Mom’s photo albums gave me a visual history. The dictionary of slang helped immensely. And of course there is Google!

Writing Honey On White Bread let me submerge myself into those magical, romantic movies I grew up watching; in a time that seems simpler by today’s standards. As a result of my starry-eyed fascination with that era, the book of my heart took form.

About the Author:

Convinced she was born to be an artist, Brenda never took her love of writing seriously. And then one day, sometime after college, after marrying a man doing a stint in the army and the birth of her son, she found more satisfaction filling a blank page with words than an empty canvas with color. She left her paints behind. After publishing several short stories, she turned to writing novels. Regardless of the length of her story, the characters drive her forward, taking her on their journey of discovery and love. Brenda and her husband are gypsies at heart having lived in six states and two countries. Recently, they moved to prairie country in Arizona and are enjoying the wide-open spaces while tending fruit trees and veggie gardens. They share their home with their dog, Rusty. When Brenda isn’t at her laptop writing, she enjoys hiking, motorcycle riding and the company of good friends.

Visit Brenda at www.brendawhiteside.com.
Or on FaceBook: www.facebook.com/BrendaWhitesideAuthor
She blogs on the 9th and 24th of every month at http://rosesofprose.blogspot.com
She blogs occasionally on her personal blog http://brendawhiteside.blogspot.com/

When seventeen-year-old Claire Flanagan is wrenched from her father and deposited at the Good Shepherd’s Home for Wayward Girls, all dreams for Hollywood stardom are lost. But when twenty-year-old Benjamin Russell helps secure her release, she starts to believe in a happy future with him…until she discovers his ex-girlfriend is pregnant.

In this post WWII coming of age novel, Claire discovers the silver screen can’t compare with the fight she takes on for the leading role in her own life.

GUEST BLOG: CIJI WARE

L&S: A Light on the Veranda is a stand-alone sequel to Midnight on Julia Street, the earlier novel that was set in New Orleans, and features a number of the same characters. Why did you choose to move the action to Natchez, Mississippi?

CW: Well, there were two reasons, actually. The first was that I was afraid a second time-slip novel would seem too similar in tone and scenery if I set it again in New Orleans, and secondly, a great friend of mine whom I'd gotten to know in the Big Easy, fellow writer Michael Llewellyn, was about to launch into a big research project The Ghost Castle Murder. His book was based on a true story that happened in Natchez, a small town four-plus hours due north of the Gulf of Mexico. (His novel is due out later this year, by the way, so watch for it!)

"What better spot to set a time-slip historical than in 'The Town That Time Forgot?'" Michael said very persuasively, pointing out that he had a number of friends there in the hospitality industry, along with the owner of the town's only bookstore, who might open doors for us both. "You are going to love this town of 18,000 souls and more antebellum mansions in five square miles than you'll ever see in one place in a lifetime."

I was sold.

L&S: So were doors opened? Do you think you glimpsed the "real" Natchez and not just what the tourist board might want you to see?

CW: Oh, yes! There was, of course, the famous Southern hospitality extended to me by virtually everyone I met, but I found people remarkable open to talk about the issues concerning racism and poverty that have dogged Mississippi's history. They also legitimately could point to the positive changes in that state that have taken place there during our lifetimes. It turned out to be the perfect romantic and realistic setting for a book that takes place in the same location during eras that were nearly two hundred years apart, but with essentially the same cast of characters in both. A bit of a brainteaser for this poor writer, for sure, doing research in both time periods and keeping the story lines in both tales clear and intriguing to the reader. In my view, my friend Michael had a much more straightforward assignment: tracking down what he thought actually happened in the 30s murder case and then constructing a straight narrative -- and he's pretty sure he solved the case! However, he was braver going into the research, having no guarantee that, in the end, he could make a novel out of all that work if he didn’t find an answer to the murder that was convincing. Both of our “challenges” as writers researching in Natchez kept life interesting!

L&S: Given the plot in Veranda, you obviously encountered a lively music scene in Natchez. Did you know that going in?

CW: The jazz and blues music that Natchez produces was one of the enticements Michael emphasized early on in his campaign for me to set VERANDA there since he knew that the heroine, Daphne Duvallon, was a musician, albeit a Juilliard-trained classical harpist. At first I didn't see how I could weave in that “uptown” aspect of her background until one of those wonderfully serendipitous things happened. I was doing an Internet search about harps and harpists--having always wanted to learn to play the harp, though I can't read a note of music--and suddenly up came the name of Deborah Henson-Conant with an accompanying photo of a wildly pretty woman in leather hot pants, black fishnet stockings, stiletto heels, and wielding a bright blue, electrified small-sized harp! Who knew there were such things as jazz harpists?

Up until I'd encountered Deborah (whom I tracked down and interviewed for many hours over the phone and also viewed her concert videos), I'd never even heard the jazz harp played! However, the minute I saw that image of Deborah on the Internet, I knew exactly what was going to happen to Daphne when she returned South for the first time in nearly three years following her disastrous aborted wedding where she had left her philandering fiancé at the altar in front of 500 guests about five seconds before she was supposed to repeat "I do!" What really topped it all was that a very famous jazz club I knew in San Francisco, where I live, had actually been founded in Natchez and still was going strong in both locales. Biscuits and Blues becomes one of Daphne's hangouts when she comes to Natchez to play her classical harp at her beloved brother's wedding. Simon Hopkins, the dish-y nature photographer in Natchez for a few months to film the birds that John James Audubon painted in the area nearly two hundred years earlier, takes her to Biscuits and---

Well, let's just say that in this novel, all the pieces came together effortlessly...which truly made it a joy to write.

I've loved being a guest on your blog and welcome readers at www.CijiWare.com and to visit me on www.facebook.com/pages/Ciji-Ware-Novelist/1026221349810555