When We Were Young by Belle Calhoune

Recently I've been suffering from nostalgia. I find myself yearning to go back in time and relive

certain portions of my childhood. It always seems to me that those times were far less complicated,

and as a child, I was able to view everything through rose-colored glasses.




I grew up in a small suburban town about ten miles outside of Boston, Massachusetts. I had a really

great childhood. One of five kids, my parents were devoted to anything and everything that

enriched the lives of their children. The grand three-story home we lived in was located directly

across from a  public library. It's no small wonder I became an author since I was always across the

street with my nose in a book. Our house was always a bustling place--lots of laughter and chatter

and debates.

Since my mother was a doctor and my father was a biologist, there was also a lot of scientific

discussions.  Those were never my favorite but I learned a lot.

Summers were spent at our summer house in Cape Cod where we would swim, sit in the sun

(suntan lotion wasn't a big thing back in the 70s), catch crabs and boil the occasional lobster.

We had a favorite place to drive to for ice cream once the sun went down. Four Seas Ice Cream.

I remember my father always ordered the Pistachio while my mother loved the sherbert.

One of my funniest memories is when a lobster escaped the pot and my mother screamed

the kitchen down until my father rescued her. Sadly the lobster was eaten and his escape was short-

lived.

I think a lot of this is tied up in missing my mother who passed away in 2000. Sometimes

we think we're past the grief, but then unexpectedly it rises up again and plunges you into yet

another stage of mourning someone you love.

I miss the sound of my mother's voice and the tinkling of her laughter. I miss being mothered

by her.

I miss her tiny wrists and her wisdom. I miss her being only a phone call away.

I miss my father calling her  Anne. I imagine I'll never stop missing these things.

My dad is going to be selling the house I grew up in. It's really too large for him and he's

held onto it for far too long. Although I know this in my head, my heart is already mourning

the loss of my childhood home.  So many beautiful memories were made within those walls.

The winds of change. The permanence of grief.

It all makes sense to me as I ponder the way I've been feeling lately. Memories transport us back in

time to a place where the ones we've lost are still present. They are comforting and tie us to

our past.

Setting: Making the Ordinary Extraordinary by Jo Ann Brown

Throughout my writing career, I’ve enjoyed writing about distant times and places. That requires a lot of research, because what did I know when I first started about Regency manners

or the hills and valleys of the Middle East or the gold fields of the Yukon? Not that I’m complaining. I love doing research, finding all the ways people and their lives in other times and places are different from ours...and how they’re the same. Sometimes I found facts I hadn’t expected and which made me change my story to fit the reality. I was astonished—and more than a bit pleased—to discover during the Yukon gold rush, Canadian saloons were closed on Sunday in honor of the Sabbath. A tidbit I could share with readers to make them feel the same aha moment I’d had when I found the information.
Finding a fact that makes my story real is a reward for me after hours of research and trying not to be sidetracked by other information that doesn’t have anything to do with my story, but would be oh, so delicious to track down to its origins.
Being able to learn more about other eras of history and faraway places was what brought me to writing in the first place. I’d been working on the Mayflower Puritans and suddenly, instead of facts and figures, I found myself wondering what it must have been like for those people traveling from their homes to the New World. The words flowed for what would become my first completed short story, one that I wrote wholly for myself. But that story set the path for my writing for years to come. I’d write about, as the song says, “those faraway places with the strange sounding names.”
Then I happened upon the tidbit during research that inspired the Amish Spinster Club series. I needed to figure out where I should set the quartet of books. I knew the Amish had begun buying farms in the Whitehall, New York, area. That’s about thirty miles north of the small town where I’d grown up. Common sense suggested I put the series in my home town, but a part of me balked. Wasn’t I supposed to write about exciting places instead of an ordinary little town?

I began to think about other books I’d enjoyed and how the authors had placed their stories in their hometowns. Those towns weren’t familiar to me, so it was fun to walk the streets along with their characters.
I realized it could be the same for readers if I introduced them to the small town of Salem, New York.

All I needed to do was find a way to make the ordinary a moment of extraordinary discovery for readers. I recalled what I’d liked about growing up in that town and what I hadn’t. I thought about the stories I knew of those who’d lived there before me and after me.
With that, Harmony Creek Hollow was born in Salem, and my characters soon were settling in and walking along the streets as they did their errands and lived their lives. What startled me was how much research I still needed to do. I realized I didn’t know the mileage from Salem to many other places around the area which I’d driven many times. I hadn’t paid attention then, but I had to for my characters and the time line in my books.

So I guess it’s not true that you can’t go home again. I’ve been going home again while writing the series...and I hope the readers I’ve taken along with me have enjoyed getting to know my hometown just as I have all over again. The Amish Bachelor's Baby, the third book of The Amish Spinster Club, is available now in print and will be available on March 1 as an ebook. C'mon along and visit my hometown!