The Politics of Murder, Then and Now: a guest blog by Sam Thomas

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Here's something you don't know about me: I am deeply, deeply interested in 17th century Puritanism. My history concentration in college was the English Civil War; in grad school; New England Puritanism. My thesis in Law School was on the influence of the English Commonwealth's theologians on the Massachusetts colony's attempts at creating a Mosaic civil law. (Have I made your eyes roll into the back of your head yet?) 

I find England and America in the 17th century endlessly fascinating, but the period is almost unexplored in popular fiction. Which is why I got so excited when I heard about Dr. Sam Thomas. Late of Wittenberg University and UA Huntsville, Sam jumped off the tenure track to teach at University School in Ohio. He's also (lucky for me!) taken to crime fiction with The Midwife's Tale, which our own Rhys Bowen enthusiastically blurbed. Here's the cover copy for The Midwife's Tale:

 

It is 1644, and Parliament’s armies have risen against the King and laid siege to the city of York. Even as the city suffers at the rebels’ hands, midwife Bridget Hodgson becomes embroiled in a different sort of rebellion. One of Bridget’s friends, Esther Cooper, has been convicted of murdering her husband and sentenced to be burnt alive. Convinced that her friend is innocent, Bridget sets out to find the real killer. 

What most interests me about the turbulent 17th century? The many parallels with our own 21st century culture. Today, Sam is going to tell us one of the ways the past informs the present.

In the immediate aftermath of the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, the nation came together, united in support of the victims and their families. And then, at varying speeds, partisans in America’s culture wars returned to the ramparts intent on linking the killings to larger social ills. Those on the left took a practical approach, pointing to the woeful state of our mental health system and decrying the free and easy access to assault weapons. Some (though by no means all) on the political right have offered a different narrative, passing over the weapons the killer used in favor of the culture in which he lived. Charles Krauthammer went some distance down this road, and the NRA criticized “blood-soaked slasher films” and “vicious, violent video games with names like…Grand Theft Auto.”

While few observers can profess genuine surprise at these developments it is worth noting that the politicization of murder is no new thing. In the seventeenth century, England found itself in the midst of its own culture wars, as the nation split along religious lines between Puritans on one hand, and more moderate believers on the other. But whatever a faction’s religious leanings, when the blood started to flow each tried to turn it to their advantage. By looking back at these early modern conflicts, I would argue that we can gain a new perspective on our own society’s reaction to such a tragedy.

One Sunday in 1668, an apprentice named Thomas Savage slipped out of his master’s house and, instead of going to church, went to a brothel. When his money ran out so too did the fun, so one of the prostitutes urged him to rob his master and return. Thomas took this advice, but was discovered by a fellow servant who reprimanded him for his sinful life. He responded by beating her to death.

After his execution, a group of Puritan ministers published a book about Savage’s crime, and it is in their retelling that politics were injected into the story. According to the authors, Savage represented England’s depravity: he was a drunkard, a whoremonger, a thief, and a murderer. What is more, he killed his victim when she pointed out his sin and urged him to repent. From the Puritan perspective, this was how the world worked: They warned sinners of their impending doom, and the sinners responded with violence rather than thanks.

A few decades earlier, however, it was Puritanism’s enemies who spun a gruesome murder to their advantage after a young man named Enoch ap Evan murdered his brother and mother with an axe. While it is likely that Enoch was insane, this was not the explanation favored by Peter Studley, a virulent anti-Puritan.

According to Studley, Enoch represented the logical outcome of Puritanism. He was a religious fanatic who saw himself as one of God’s Elect, singled out for salvation no matter how sinful his life. In Studley’s telling, Enoch killed his family in a dispute over whether communion should be taken while kneeling, which Puritans viewed as a form of idolatry. As evidence of Enoch’s Puritanism, Studley cited his habit of walking for miles in search of Puritan preachers, and his over-heated dedication to religion. While Thomas Savage killed because he was not religious enough, Enoch killed because Puritan religion had filled him with pride.

What ties these cases together is that whether they are writing in the seventeenth century or the twenty-first, these culture warriors describe the world as they would like to see it. The Puritans who wrote about Thomas Savage imagined an England free from sin and dedicated to the Lord, while Studley envisioned an England united in belief as it had been before the rise of Puritanism.

In the same way, when those on the left look at Sandy Hook, they hope it will serve as a catalyst for better health care and tighter regulations on guns. The NRA, in contrast, imagines an America with fewer guns in video games, but many more in its elementary schools.

I suppose it is up to us to choose which vision of the future we wish to pursue.

Note: This interpretation of Enoch ap Evan’s case is drawn from Peter Lake, “Puritanism, Arminianism, and a Shropshire-Murder,” Midland History, Volume 15 (1990), pp. 37-64. The interpretation of Savage’s case is my own.

Something you've always wanted to know about Puritans? Or maybe you want to weigh in on your own favorite historical period - and its fiction? Join us on the back blog. One lucky commentor will get a copy of The Midwife's Tale!

You can find out more about Sam Thomas and read an excerpt from The Midwife's Tale at his website. You can friend him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter as @SamThomasBooks, and delve into all things historical fiction at his blog, A Bloody Good Read. 

Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays...

 
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING:  Twas the day after the day after Christmas(1), and all through the house, not a creature was stirring... certainly not the kids, who have decided the winter vacation means they get to sleep until one in the afternoon. 

Yes, parents, it's the most wonderful time of the year, when your collegiate offspring come home dragging giant duffle bags of dirty laundry and your high-schooler gets to revel in fun and friends, until December 29, when he will suddenly remember he has a twelve-page research paper due the day he gets back to school. Oh, and his teacher insists on references from books - can you drive him to the library?

How to survive the infestation visitation of your own little Magi? Here are a few tips:

1. Try to rein in the nocturnal lifestyle of your kids. Left to their own devices, teens and young adults will fall into a vampiric rhythm; rising close to sunset and staying up until the dawn. This means you'll only have a tiny slice of "family time," each twenty-four hours, as you are nestled all snug in your bed at 10:55, ready to watch the WHDH-TV 7 news(2) and then turn out the lights. 

Don't bother to demand your kids adhere to a bedtime - their laughter (or polite amusement) will only humiliate you. Instead, try the guerilla approach: wake everyone for snow shoveling detail at 8:00am. A couple days of dawn patrol will turn the creatures of the night into--well, not humans,  exactly, but at least they'll be more like the Cullens.(3)

2. Speaking of dragging them outside, your teens will tend to fall into one of two camps. The first will refuse to come out of her room except for meals, spending all her time instant messaging her friends on some social networking platform that you won't even know about until two years from now when the New York Times does an article namechecking it as the hot new trend.(4)

The other kid will only appear as a blur in the corner of your eye, as he slams out the door headed for the slopes/the gym/his friend's house/the dance club. 

If you are the parent of the shy woodland creature, try laying a trail of Cheetos and Diet Dr. Pepper from her doorway into the family room. You can then trap her into watching TV with the rest of the family.(5)  If your teen is Action Dude, it's even simpler to get him to participate in family fun: just withhold the money he needs for lift tickets/gas/snacks/admission. Offer him five bucks for every property he can accumulate in Monopoly, and watch board game night take off!

3. On the subject of money - and your teen or young adult will rarely stray off  the subject of money - prepare for the unexpected expenses of his or her stay at home. Your weekly shopping trip will turn to daily dashes to the store, as your high schooler consumes an entire loaf of bread, jar of peanut butter, and gallon of milk daily.(6) Your college kid, who has discovered ethical locovorism, will only eat guaranteed cruelty-free organic meats raised by farmers in your area code. 

Even if their exercise consists solely of walking from the table to the TV, both offspring will take daily half-hour long showers. Your electrical bill will not be spared, as your teens cannot be in a room without turning on the TV/radio/stereo/computer. Needless to say, turning off electrical devices and lights is not one of their skill sets. There is nothing, really, that you can do about these added expenses, except reflect that your child's room and board bill is perhaps not as unreasonable as you first thought.

4. After a few days wallowing in the detritus of crumpled wrapping paper and thrice-heated leftovers, everyone needs a break. I suggest the movies. There are some wonderful films out there right now that brilliantly illuminate family life:
 

     Les Miserables: What awaits you if you don't finish those college applications and get them in by January 2nd!
     The Hobbit: Will irresistibly remind you of your last family trip, complete with lousy food, unexpectedly bad accommodations, and that one person who really doesn't want to be there and lets everyone else know it.
     Jack Reacher. Did you know Jack Reacher is a West Point grad? It's true. Wouldn't you like to be like Jack Reacher? Get the damn application in, already. 

Good luck, my fellow parents. With patience, humor, a couple bottles of wine and a Zoloft or two, you can get through the vacation intact. If you have any other gems of wisdom, dear readers, please share it with the rest of us on the back blog. At the very least, when your kids come wandering through and ask what you're doing, you can tell them you're hanging with your online homies on some social media site they've never heard of.
            

(1)Yes, fellow liturgical fans, I  know it's really the Feast of St. John the Evangelist. I wasn't born in a barn.

(2)Help Me, Hank!

(3)Twilight reference, oldsters. Pale skin and deep circles under their eyes. If your teen actually glitters in sunlight, seek professional assistance.

(4)By that time, everyone under the age of thirty will have long abandoned it for something else you (and the New York Times) doesn't know about.

(5) Be ready to sacrifice Sixty Minutes and How I Met Your Mother for some obscure cable show about zombies or time-travelers. Feign enthusiasm: you may be able to entice your kid to show you her fanfiction on AO3. If she uses the word, slash, don't look. Take my word on this.

(6) How does he do that? I mean, really? Does he have reticulated jaws and an infinitely stretchable stomach, like a python? 

The Yin and Yang of Writing: a guest post by Jenny Milchman

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: The day after Christmas, thoughts tend to turn toward - well, yes, toward returns and post-Christmas sales, but also toward the New Year. A time to start fresh: a new calendar, new prospects, new resolutions. For many of us who write, the New Year will be marked with one important resolution: get that novel started. Or finished. Or both.

Jenny Milchman knows this resolution well. It took her eleven years, twenty-two drafts and a one hundred and eighty thousand word manuscript to get to the place she is now: awaiting the January 15th publication of Cover of Snow, a stunning thriller that's gotten rave pre-pub reviews from Lee Child, Laura Lippman, Louise Penny and Yours Truly. Obviously, the years spent honing her craft were well worth it. But how does a writer keep going? How does he or she handle the crazy ups and downs of the literary life? Jenny is going to tell us how to stay motivated and make that resolution a reality:

Writing is a craft that wears two faces. You know the ones I mean. There is the part where the writer finishes his or her day’s work, sits back, and smiles like the Cheshire Cat bathed in cream.

“Man, am I a good writer. Not a good writer. A great writer. In fact, a word has not been invented yet to describe what a fantastic writer I am. Maybe I should coin a word to describe what a great writer I am, like Lewis Carroll coined the word chortle. Lucky I’m such a great writer.”

A few days pass. Maybe the writer gives those pages out to some trusty readers. Maybe he or she submits them somewhere, or begins querying on the project. The feedback and rejections start trickling in.

“Man, do I suck. What made me think I should let anyone even read this dreck that just came spilling out of my incompetent fingertips? I am such a bad writer, not writing isn’t sufficient consequence for me. I shouldn’t stop writing, I should stop living.”

Right now you’re either nodding in recognition, or looking at me like I’m crazy. Maybe I am crazy. I’m a writer. This passion of ours could drive a person nuts.

I started writing my first novel in 1998 (I’m not including that Victorian-esque thing I wrote when I was studying English Lit in college, or the ones with magic marker illustrations from when I was six.) I was an intern pursuing a graduate degree in psych, and I had this very intense case. I think the reason I’d never finished a real novel before was because I thought I had to write something like the classics I’d studied, and hadn’t come to the fairly obvious realization that you should write what you like to read (even if you’re not going to write what you know).

What I read was suspense. Thrillers. Mysteries. And now I had a case that was right out of a suspense novel, and don’t we all start with something autobiographical? So I created a sleuth who was, what else, a psychologist-in-training. And got her into all sorts of fixes. 180,000 words later, I was done. My novel wasn’t, but you couldn’t tell that to me. I was firmly embedded in the every-word-I-wrote-is-a-freaking-miracle phase, and refused to revise until a handful of kindly agents showed me the error of my ways.

There’s another aspect of writing that wears two faces, like one of those tragedy/comedy masks from theater, and that’s publishing.

Cruelest business in the world. It could make you long to be a coal miner. (I fully understand that coal mining is harder than any day ever spent at a computer. Just sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.)

A hasty auto-sent rejection might be the only response you see to your carefully crafted query and the pages you suffered through the aforementioned yin and yang of writing to create. And that’s if you’re lucky. You might get no rejection, no response at all, and just be left hoping day after day after day that this could be the morning when your pages are finally read. And that the agent will call to say she or he didn’t even bother signing you before getting you a major book deal and selling the film rights to boot.

But every yin has its yang, and one day that tragic scowl just might flip.

I wrote eight novels, signed with three agents, and stayed on more or less continuous submission for eleven years before the magic happened, and so I know just why people keep at this for so long.

When the publishing game is going well, there is no greater high. Publishing is like gambling, writing is, too, and we risk it all every time we sit down at our machines, or take out a pad and a pen, or slide a slice of paper into a typewriter (which I hear is gaining in popularity again).

Of course, typewriters are gaining in popularity again! At least a rejection won’t ever come in on one.

But this could be the day that your agent calls on the honest-to-goodness telephone, instead of emailing, to say that an editor wants to buy your book.

And when you get that call, you’re not going to remember the fifty or eighty or hundred form rejections, all the months (years) spent on submission, getting close but smoking no cigars, or anything else from the tails side of this particular coin. You’re rolling heads now, baby, and there is no better business than this.

Which is only reasonable, you chortle.

After all, the pages you just submitted were the very best ones ever penned in the entire history of the world.

Until you look at them again the next day.

How about you, dear reader? Is this the year you're going to write that novel? Or are you just looking forward to reading some great new ones? Let us know!

 

Jenny Milchman is a suspense novelist from New Jersey whose short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Adirondack Mysteries II, and in an e-published volume called Lunch Reads. Jenny is the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, and the chair of International Thriller Writers’ Debut Authors Program. Her first novel, Coverof Snow, will be published by Ballantine in January.