A Little Nostalgia from 2015

I ran across this blog I contributed to a site in England back in 2015. I hope you enjoy the nostalgia as much as I did.

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The Writing Deak - Mastodon - 11 March 2015

https://tonyriches.blogspot.com/2015/03/guest-post-balos-war-historical-novel.html?m=0 

Guest Post

Balo's War, A Historical Novel About the Plan of San Diego by Alfredo E. Cárdenas

Balo's War uses a variety of characters, real and imagined, to tell the story of a people who went from being Spaniards to Mexicans to Americans in just 30 years. They struggled to hold on to their land, their language, their culture, and their history—against insurmountable odds. At times, this struggle resorted to violence.

Available at www.MCMBooks.com

on Amazon US and Amazon UK

Writing a historical novel presents many challenges, not the least of which is getting the history right. In my first novel, Balo's War, A Historical Novel About the Plan of San Diego, I had no problem getting the overarching history right from the start. I had been researching this obscure event, on and off, for 30 years. There was plenty of material to draw from as building blocks.

The real challenge for me did not come to light until I started the final edits of the manuscript. It was the little things that needed to be checked and rechecked. Too often, we subconsciously slip into our present-day way of thinking, and we resort to words and idioms that were not in use at the time of the novel.

My novel took place in 1915. It is a novel steeped in political and regional antagonisms. I resorted to phrases such as 'fascism', 'human rights', and others that did not come into use until later on. I had to double-check whether Lone Star Beer was already a product, what types of rifles were in use, and how much a suit and tie cost.

But the area where I had the most problems was in transportation and travel. I assumed I could go from Brownsville, Texas, to McAllen, Texas, 60 miles away, in about a day; after all, I could do it in less than an hour today. But, wait, I had my characters in a wagon pulled by a mule. Just how fast can a mule go pulling a wagon? Well, as it turns out, that trip would take about three days. I had characters walking, riding horses, and taking trains. Just how fast can you get to a place by those means of transportation? It was a little daunting trying to make sure the timelines were right, depending on what mode of transportation my characters were using.

Another challenge I had not anticipated was ensuring that my characters’ ages aligned with the events in the novel. If my main character were 10 years old in 1888, he could not have been 24 in 1915. So how old did that make his brother, sister, and parents? Did all that align as the story unfolded? And then there was the issue of ensuring your character descriptions matched throughout the book. In one chapter, I had one of my characters with brown hair, but towards the end of the book, I had her with black hair. My protagonist had black hair at the beginning of the book, and later he had auburn hair. One character I had at 6’3” and later at 6’2”.

Getting all these little facts to work was the bigger challenge than getting the history right. That was the easy part.

Early on, I sought others’ opinions on my writing style. I’m an old newspaper man and have done quite a lot of writing of government reports. I feared I could not write in a literary style. Sure enough, the biggest criticism I got was that my story lacked enough description. I was telling the reader rather than letting the reader discover through the description. Aside from coming from the Joe Friday school of writing—“give me the facts, just the facts, ma’am”—when I read a book, I gloss over the descriptions. I want to know what happened, how it happened, and who said what to whom. I'm a meat-and-potatoes sort of guy; I don't pay attention to the garnishments.

So my novel is strong in dialogue, history, culture, geography, politics, and ethnic relations, but if you are looking for classic literature, Balo's War may not be for you. But if you want a good read on an important piece of the history of South Texas, then this certainly will be worth your time. But I am out of time and word count, so you will have to buy the book to find out the rest of the story.

Alfredo E. Cárdenas