Tag: historical fiction

Does My Fiction Matter?

My writing has not been going well the last couple of days. I’ve felt a strange lassitude, as if none of it matters. As if my stories are irrelevant in a world where there’s so much dissension, such a lack of willingness to actually listen to each other’s concerns. Not each other’s words, but our deepest concerns: our fears, rational and irrational, our dreams, our hopes for our children and our world. I began to think, why am I even bothering to write? We’re so busy arguing with each other that no one seems interested in reading, in thinking, in doing much more than reacting to the latest news event.
 
But then I remembered: There have been news events to react to, people doing and saying atrocious things, since the beginning of time (or at least since the beginning of gossip, which I suspect began as soon as we humans had language). My goal for my stories has always been to try to help us see each other more clearly, to understand ourselves and one another and our deepest concerns. Because I believe that we’re all more alike, deep down, than we are different.
 
My fiction is set in the past for two reasons:
1. I am convinced that we humans haven’t really changed all that much over the millennia. People are people, no matter where you go.
2. Sometimes it helps to step into another era to see the fundamentals more clearly, to free up our imaginations past the latest news event to the point where we can see another perspective.
I hope my stories nudge my readers just a little toward looking again at what we think we know, examining our own motivations before we jump to conclusions about those of others.
 
My work is not overtly political. Sometimes I feel guilty about that, as if I’m avoiding a duty. But in another sense, it is deeply political. It is based on the idea that everyone has a story to tell, some knowledge that the rest of us can relate to on a deep level, that we’re all more alike in our pain and fear than we are different. My political stance is that we’d do well to take more time to listen to each other and less time talking.
 
And so I will go on writing what seems like simple entertainment, in the hope that someone, somewhere, will pause long enough to read something I’ve written and really hear what I’m trying to say.

ELEGANCE IN ETOWN

The men in Seligman’s Mercantile watched silently as the young woman in the trailing pale blue silk skirts swept out of the store.

“She’s a lardy dardy little thing, isn’t she now?” Charles Idle, the expatriate Englishman, asked. He shook his head and stretched his feet closer to the wood stove. “That dress and hat.”

Joseph Kinsinger spat a stream of tobacco toward the empty lard can by the stove. “Those silks ain’t gonna last long in this mud. And the wind’l take that hat.”

His brother Peter grinned. “You’re just worried Desi’s gonna see her and want a getup just like it,” he said.

“I wonder where’s she’s staying,” Idle said thoughtfully. “Hey Jim, where’d she say to deliver that sterling brush and comb set?”

The clerk hesitated, then shrugged. It would be all over town soon enough anyway. “The Moreno Hotel,” he said.

There was a short silence, then Idle said, “Well, I guess I’d better go see how my mine’s doing this morning,” and rose from his chair.

“I’ll bet,” Peter said sardonically, but Idle only smiled and went out.

from Moreno Valley Sketches, II

OLD BILL – 6 of 6

He had found it.

Old Bill stood on the rocky mountain ridge, hat in hand, and peered into the long green valley below. This was the larger section Three Hands had spoken of, sure as shootin’. Meandering streams glinted in the autumn light and the clouds overhead betokened more rain.

Old Bill laughed aloud, replaced his hat, and scrambled down from the rocks. His credit-bought beaver traps rattled slightly as the new mule carefully followed him down the mountainside. There’d be beaver here, he could feel it in his bones. If not in the valley itself, then surely in the streams flowing out of it through the mountains to the east.

“C’mon mule,” he said. “We’re gonna ’cuperate my losses and make us our fortune. All we gotta do is stay outta the way of  the Injuns and the Mexicans chasin’ ’em.” He chuckled. “Not to mention catamount an’ bear.”

from Moreno Valley Sketches

OLD BILL – 5 of 6

“Señor, you are still unwell.” The young man assisted the older one back to the fireside chair.

“Don’t know what I woulda done if you hadna found me.”

The younger man shrugged. “Any good Christian would have done the same.”

“Ain’t many good Christians in this world, then. You feedin’ me an’all.”

A young woman materialized behind them and spoke to the young man in Spanish. He smiled. “She says you do not eat enough to maintain a grasshopper.”

“Soon’s I get my strength back, I’ll be outta your hair.”

“Where will you go, if I may ask?”

“Back t’the valley.”

“The valley you spoke of?”

“Aye. It’s a beaut’ and worth the trouble, I’m thinkin’. There’s beaver somewheres there or I’m a bobcat.”

The younger man stared at him quizzically.

“You’re thinkin’ I’m still outa my head.”

“Oh no, señor.”

Old Bill laughed. “Oh yes, señor!” he chuckled.

from Moreno Valley Sketches

OLD BILL – 4 of 6

Well, he’d got hisself away from the Ute war party, but with only his rifle, one beaver trap, and the clothes on his back. As he headed west into the foothills, Old Bill considered his situation. He was moving into the snow, not away from it, and the cold was devilish fierce. The wind howled into his face, bringing dampness with it. No one but a fool would head into this storm, toward the peaks, ’stead of down. He hoped the Utes would think so, anyways.

He gripped his rifle, resettled the trap looped over his shoulder, and lowered his head, battered hat tilted against the wind. And he’d thought he’d been cold before he entered that valley. He began to climb steadily, careful to conserve his energy, his long legs eating the mountainside.

When he finally stopped to rest, he could see nothing below but blowing whiteness.

from Moreno Valley Sketches

 

OLD BILL – 3 of 6

At dusk, Old Bill wrapped himself in a buffalo robe and lay quiet against the skin wall of the Ute lodge. This weren’t no hunting party, if he savvied correct. They were layin’ in wait for somethin’ and it weren’t other Injuns, to his thinking. He wasn’t exactly a captive, but Three Hands had made it clear he should stay in camp.

He’d been wandering these parts long enough to have picked up a smattering of Ute lingo. What he’d overheard made him think there were Mexican soldiers headed thisaway. From Taos, mebbe, though it was a darn fool time of year to be comin’ from that direction.

He studied his situation. He didn’t blame the Utes for their plans. It was their country, after all. Theirs and the Taos Injuns. But he didn’t want to be caught in the middle of it neither. He eased out of the robe.

from Moreno Valley Sketches

OLD BILL – 2 of 6

He entered the Ute camp warily, one hand on the mules’ lead rope, his rifle in the other. A man rose and came forward. Old Bill snorted a laugh. “Three Hands!” he said. “I done found you!”

The man studied him. “You searched for me?”

“Well, not ’xactly. But I sure am glad t’ find you.”

Three Hands nodded. “You are cold.”

“Warmer now than I was,” Old Bill said. “This is quite a little valley you have here.”

“Not so little.” Three Hands gestured to the south. “More below.”

“Sure am glad I stumbled in,” Old Bill said. “I was nigh to freezin’ comin’ over Bobcat Pass.”

The other man looked at the mules. “You trap?”

“I was, but the beavers are iced in nasty hard this winter. Can’t get at ’em.”

“The signs say the cold will continue.”

“That how come you’re here?”

Three Hands smiled noncommitally.

from Moreno Valley Sketches

IT’S HERE!!!!!!

I’m pleased to announce that my new novel The Pain and The Sorrow is already in print! This is the story of New Mexico Territory’s serial killer Charles Kennedy and his teenage wife, the girl who endured years of his abuse before finally reporting his nefarious activities to the authorities. Pain and Sorrow cover.framedOrder it from your favorite bookseller or online! Here are two online sources: Amazon, Barnes and Noble.

HOLLOW

Lucien Maxwell, single largest landowner in New Mexico Territory, stepped from the Middaugh Mercantile porch into early June sunlight and gazed unseeing across the green valley. On the flanks of Baldy Mountain, construction workers scurried like ants around a long wooden aquaduct-like structure. When finished, the flume it held would carry water from the Red River’s source to Baldy Mountain’s base. Then high pressure hoses would spray the sides of the gulches that drained the mountain, flushing out gravel and the gold the miners hoped it contained.

They were calling the flume the Big Ditch. It was a first for New Mexico Territory. Maxwell was a major investor, likely to make a substantial return both from water sales and from men wanting to buy mining rights. Yet all he could see was the letter in his hand.

Kit Carson was dead. Kit, the companion of so many of Lucien’s wilderness adventures, always so full of energy, so confident in his quiet-spoken way, with his sixth sense for trouble and how to meet it. Yes, Kit had been ill, but it was still incomprehensible that he could be gone. Lucien Maxwell gazed at the men scrambling across the hillside opposite and could feel no joy in their activity and its outcomes. It all seemed rather hollow, somehow.

 

Copyright © 2016 Loretta Miles Tollefson

On the Lake

They motored the boat slowly away from the dock. The sun overhead was bright but the breeze on their faces was cool. Cynthia tied her sunhat ribbons more securely. At the wheel, Harold turned and grinned at her. He’d suggested something with a narrower brim. She scowled and looked away.

Harold headed the boat toward the deep area near the dam. Cynthia hadn’t really wanted to come fishing, but she hadn’t wanted to stay in the Lodge by herself, either. She leaned back and closed her eyes.

The boat slowed, then stopped. She could hear Harold arranging his fishing gear. The sun felt good on her legs. An eagle cried overhead. Pine scented the air. She took a long breath and pulled the brim of her hat down, covering her face.

When she woke up, Harold was counting his fish. Cynthia smiled at him. “This is nice,” she said lazily.

from Moreno Valley Sketches II