As we quickly approach the release date of our new book, Stories of Faith and Courage from the Home Front, my co-author Karen Whiting and I have launched a Web site so you can get a sneak peek at what’s inside! We’ve named it www.homefrontcourage.comand I encourage you to check it out and look around. The design still needs tweaking, but the content is ready for you!

You will find some information about the book and the authors of course, but also:

• Excerpts from the book
• Resources including downloadable discussion questions for couples to use, a home school study guide, and our bibliography.
• Blog which includes more stories from the home front (spanning all the wars), resources, and behind-the-scenes looks at the making of this giant book. There is also a link to subscribe to the blog posts at the top of the page, and I hope you’ll take advantage of that.

This book is written for anyone who is interested in what the home front’s contributions to our country were during times of war. I imagine many civilians will want to read it–but as military wives, I’m convinced that you, especially, will be blessed to read story after inspiring story of women who have travelled this road before you. This book is one of the greatest gifts we can offer to you who so richly deserve it.

Before I could write Wedded to War, I not only had to learn Civil War history, but what everyday life was like for women in the Victorian age. What did they eat? What did they do for fun? What did they wear?

This last question was one of the most fascinating to find answers for. I am indebted to costume historian Tom Tierney for creating his Civil War Fashions Coloring Book and American Family of the Civil War Era paper dolls, both of which offer extremely detailed illustrations and captions of the fashions my characters in Wedded to War would have worn.

Three elements of Civil War fashion are especially interesting to me, however, and I hope they will interest you as well: corsets, hoop skirts, and mourning dress.

The Corset

Virtually every woman wore a corset of some type under their clothing, from working class women to domestic servants to genteel ladies of society. The ideal was a waist of 15 inches, but corsets did come in different sizes so we know that not everyone squeezed themselves to match this standard. Corsets were stiffened with whalebone, steel, or even oak splits for women in the South during the war.

Most corsets closed in the front with metal brads and eyelets, and more rarely they laced up the back with hooks and eyes. Women whose corsets laced up the back would have needed help dressing.

During the Victorian Age, including the Civil War, a tightly laced corset was widely associated with a woman’s virtue. In fact, many terms we use today to describe someone’s morality come from this association:

“The allusion to loosening one’s stays [corsets] as a prelude to sexual activity permeated everyday life, so that women who were called “loose” were not being described physically so much as morally. Other terms that were used to describe behavior were very closely linked to costume and appearance. “Terms such as “upright,” “restrained,” or “upstanding” certainly describe a corseted woman’s physical appearance as well as her reputation just as “unbridled,” “unrestrained,” and “loose” were epithets linked to appearance. . . .The woman’s body was to be constrained within appropriate undergarments that were to be taken off only in privacy or within the confines of the marriage bedroom. Sarah Hale, editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, as well as author of several books covering etiquette, considered a woman’s clothing to be an effective indication of her morality, and the corset was a requisite part of that appearance.”¹

The Hoop Skirt

The women’s fashion feature most associated with the Civil War era is the hoop skirt, named for the structural support of wire hoops or whalebones called “crinolines,” worn under the skirt to hold its shape. In a typical dress, the width of the skirt at its widest point (which was close to the floor) was about 50 to 70 percent of the woman’s height.² In formal gowns, such as those worn by First Lady Mary Lincoln, the skirt was up to eighteen feet in circumference, using twenty-five yards of fabric.³

Many women saw the crinoline as an improvement over the weight and cumbersomeness of wearing multiple petticoats—and there was less laundry, but hoop skirts posed other challenges. Sometimes the skirts tilted up on one side, exposing views of legs and undergarments, and they could catch on fire if women stood too close to fireplaces. The wide girth kept men at a distance and filled rooms and stage coaches quickly. New York omnibuses charged higher fares for women with hoops.⁴

Critics of the hoop skirt were many. A popular song of the times jibed:

Now crinoline is all the rage with ladies of whatever age, A petticoat made like a cage—oh, what a ridiculous fashion! ‘Tis formed of hoops and bars of steel, or tubes of air which lighter feel, And worn by girls to be genteel, or if they’ve figures to conceal. It makes the dresses stretch far out a dozen yards or so about, And please both the thin and stout—oh, what a ridiculous fashion!⁵

Civil War nurses did not wear hoops under their dresses due to safety, convenience, and hospital or Sanitary Commission regulations. The hoop skirts were of great use, however, for those wishing to conceal valuable property. Refugees carried bags of silverware or money, runaway slaves carried an extra change of clothes, and daring women smuggled army supplies such as boots through enemy lines—all by attaching them to their crinolines. By 1865, the rage for crinoline began to recede.

Mourning Dress

Death touched the hundreds of thousands of families during the Civil War, and the women put on mourning attire according to their stage of grief.

The period of mourning varied according to the relationship with the deceased. A widow was expected to wear deep mourning for at least one year. This included bombazine (dull, lusterless black) fabric, widow’s cap, black cuffs and collars, and black crepe. Black petticoats, stockings and parasols were also required.

During the second stage of mourning (from twelve months to eighteen months after the death), the widow could trade silk or wool for the bombazine and add jet black jewelry and ribbons to her attire.

The third stage of mourning commenced at eighteen months after the death, and allowed the half-mourning colors of grey, purple, mauve, lavender, or black and grey in her dress.

A daughter’s rules for a parent’s death were less stringent. She needed to only were black for six months, then two months of half-mourning colors.

Corsets, hoops, and mourning dress were integral to women during the Civil War, and can be found in the characters of Wedded to War.

What other elements of historical fashion fascinate you?

Sources

1. Stamper, Anita A. and Jill Condra. Clothing through American history: the Civil War through the Gilded Age, 1861-1899. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2010. Page 109.

2. Leisch, Juanita. Who Wore What? Women’s Wear 1861-1865. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1995. Page 70.

3. Rutberg, B. Mary Lincoln’s Dressmaker. New York: Walker and Company, 1995. Pg 40.

4. Ibid.

5. Hoffman, Frank, and William Bailey. Fashion and Merchandising Fads. New York: Routledge, 1994. Page 115.

*I originally wrote this post for River North Fiction.

I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember. But up until recently, it’s been solely nonfiction. So when I first got the bug to try writing a novel, the first thing I did was write to my fiction-writing friends and call my agent.

“Am I crazy?” I asked. “Can I possibly make the switch from nonfiction to fiction? Because if you tell me it will never work, I’ll put the idea out of my head right now and just stick with what I know.”

I meant it.

But they all said the same thing. “If you want to write fiction, write fiction. If you can write, you can write fiction. You already know how to tell a story. Everything you need to know about telling a fictional story can be learned.”

They meant it too.

And so it began. I polled my favorite authors about their favorite books on the craft, consulted Writer’s Digest for their top picks, and spent a small fortune learning how to spin a tale. I’m still learning, but at least now I have one novel under my belt—or almost. (Wedded to War comes out in July.)

So I’d like to share with you the best books I’ve found on writing fiction. (I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones in my stack so far.) In no particular order, they are:

• Getting into Character by Brandlilyn Collins
• The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler
• Story Structure Architect by Victoria Lynn Schmidt
• 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias
• 90 Days to Your Novel by Sarah Domet
• From First Draft to Finished Novel by Karen S. Wiesner
• Make a Scene by Jordan E. Rosenfeld
• Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass
• How to Write and Sell a Christian Novel by Gilbert Morris
• The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass
• Self-editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King

Have you found other great books on writing fiction? If so, I’d love to hear about them.

*I wrote this post originally for River North Fiction.

When people ask me where I get ideas for my novels, I tell them it’s pretty easy—history is already full of fascinating characters and dramatic events. With a little imagination, new story lines come to life.

Today I’d like to share with you five real people who inspired my upcoming Civil War novel, Wedded to War. I want you to fall in love with my fictional characters, but I also hope you will grow to respect the real people in the novel, as well. I am convinced that each of them felt ordinary, like you and me, but they did extraordinary things and should be remembered for them.

1) Dorothea Dix. Social reformer Dorothea Dix went straight to Washington within a week of war breaking out and didn’t leave until she had a meeting with President Lincoln himself. Her goal: for the government to allow women to be nurses. It was a shocking suggestion, for nurses in hospitals up until that time had all been male. Proper Victorian women could not be expected to touch a strange man’s body, even if he was sick or wounded—or so society believed.

Yet the numbers alone were enough to convince Lincoln he needed help. At the start of the war, the U.S. Army Medical Department had a total of 28 surgeons, and no general hospital. Lincoln gave permission, and made Dix the Superintendent of Female Nurses. She had the authority to provide nurses to the army, and she wanted to be taken seriously. So her requirements for women nurses were stringent: they must be married, at least 30 years of age, of good health and character. They must not wear hoops under their skirts, ruffles, bows or jewelry. She was even known for turning away women because they were not homely enough. (Pretty women were accused of bringing out the men’s “natural desires.”) Even so, Dix was bombarded with applicants.

Readers of Wedded to War will meet Dorothea Dix, or “Dragon Dix” as she was commonly called, in the novel.

2) Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. An English immigrant, Dr. Blackwell was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, and ran an infirmary for women and children near the slums of New York City. When the Civil War broke out, she realized the Union army needed a system for distributing supplies and organized four thousand women into the Women’s Central Association of Relief (WCAR). The WCAR grew into chapters around the county, and this body systematically collected and distributed life-saving supplies such as bandages, blankets, food, clothing and medical supplies.

Blackwell also partnered with several prominent male physicians in New York City to offer a one-month training course for 100 women who wanted to be nurses for the army. This was the first formal training for women nurses in the country. Once they completed their training, they were sent to Dix for placement at a hospital.

By July 1861, the WCAR prompted the government to form a national version—the United States Sanitary Commission. And it all started because Dr. Blackwell decided to mobilize the women of the country to help the Union.

Dr. Blackwell plays a major role in Wedded to War. 

3) Georgeanna Woolsey. At 28 years old, Georgeanna should not have been allowed to serve the army as a nurse, but she got through the application process anyway. Against her mother’s and sisters’ wishes, she was one of the 100 women trained in New York City to be a nurse. Not content to sit in a parlor and knit or scrape lint, she was eager to go where the fighting was, to get her hands dirty in a way she had never been allowed to before as a wealthy, privileged woman.

Georgeanna wrote many letters and accounts of her experiences, including this: “Some of the bravest women I have ever known were among this first company of army nurses. . . . Some of them were women of the truest refinement and culture; and day after day they quietly and patiently worked, doing, by order of the surgeon, things which not one of those gentlemen would have dared to ask of a woman whose male relative stood able and ready to defend her and report him. I have seen small white hands scrubbing floors, washing windows, and performing all menial offices. I have known women, delicately cared for at home, half fed in hospitals, hard worked day and night, and given, when sleep must be had, a wretched closet just large enough for a camp bed to stand in. I have known surgeons who purposely and ingeniously arranged these inconveniences with the avowed intention of driving away all women from their hospitals.

“These annoyances could not have been endured by the nurses but for the knowledge that they were pioneers, who were, if possible, to gain standing ground for others. . . “*

Georgeanna Woolsey is the inspiration for my main character in Wedded to War, Charlotte Waverly. Georgeanna’s sister Eliza inspired the fictional sister Alice, as well.

4) Louisa May Alcott. Before she wrote Little Women, Louisa May Alcott was a nurse at the Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown for six weeks before she contracted typhoid fever and had to return to her home in Concord. Her book Hospital Sketches is full of vivid descriptions of hospital life, from her own duties to the personalities and sufferings of her patients.

Louisa arrived in Washington too late for her to fit the timeline of Wedded to War, but her account of the horrific hotel-turned-hospital—which matched the Sanitary Commission report—helped me color my own descriptions of the Union Hotel Hospital. My main character Charlotte finds herself there in the summer of 1861 and quickly learns what it really means to be a nurse in the Civil War.

5) Frederick Law Olmsted. Most people know him as the landscape architect of New York City’s Central Park, which opened just a few years before the war began, or as the founder of modern landscape architecture. But he also played a critical role as the executive secretary of the U.S. Sanitary Commission from 1861 until he burned out from the job in 1863. He was a master administrator, and did untold good for the Union army by inspecting hospital camps and suggesting life-saving improvements in their hygiene, sanitation, cooking, and general care.

Olmsted also helped form the fleet of hospital transport ships that removed sick and wounded Union soldiers from the swamps of Virginia during General George B. McClellan’s ill-fated Peninsula Campaign during the summer of 1862. (For more on the hospital transport’s service, read The Other Side of War by Katharine Prescott Wormeley and Hospital Transports, published by the Sanitary Commission in 1863 and available to read in full for free at http://books.google.com.)

Frederick Law Olmsted is a character in Wedded to War, interacting with Charlotte Waverly both in Washington and on the hospital transports.

*Bacon, Georgeanna Woolsey and Eliza Woolsey Howland, My Heart Toward Home: Letters of a Family During the Civil War. Roseville, Minnesota: Edinborough Press, 2001 (81).

*I originally wrote this post for River North Fiction.

My hat is off to the wonderful team at Moody Publishers for all their hard work on the cover my upcoming novel, Wedded to War.

For a sneak peek into the process, take a look at these five cover options they first sent me: wedded to war2 (2) cover comps

I posted these at faithdeployed.com and got LOTS of great feedback. We picked a favorite, made several suggestions for improvement, (i.e. her hair needs to be up, she needs an apron, take off the ring, change the number of stars in the U.S. flag, etc) and below we have the finished product. I couldn’t be more excited to have reached this stage! I hope you like it too!

I realize this blog has been pretty quiet lately–and for good reason. I’ve been writing my first novel, and my goodness, is it all-consuming. But recently, Brittany Biggs, editorial assistant and author relations extraordinaire at Moody Publishers was in town, and she wrote a blog post about our visit. It originally appeared at River North Fiction, but I’d like to share it with you here too:

Hello Fiction Friends,

I had the pleasure of meeting one of our great authors this weekend. When I first started working here at Moody Publishers, I was corresponding with Jocelyn Green and noticed on her email signature that she lives on the same street that I did when I attended the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. It was a fun little coincidence to me. Well, my husband and I took a little trip back to that area this past weekend for a get together with some of his college buddies and their wives and I was able to pop in on Jocelyn and finally meet her face to face. This was my first sit down with an author and it was really neat to hear about her process and see firsthand the different ways in which she organizes herself and her thoughts. Here are 5 fun little facts that I learned about Jocelyn and her writing process:

1) The 4 Civil War fiction novels that Jocelyn is writing for us are her first fiction novels. She has done so much research. In order to keep her ideas organized, she tapes colored index cards to the wall with one line running east to west with actual historical events and then cards running north and south that are fiction lines she is adding in.

2) She also keeps bulletin boards that are packed with pictures of real people from the specific time and place she is writing about, samples of clothes, and pictures of the actual places.

3) She has her own writing room where she keeps all of her materials and said her necessary items include a cup of coffee, her coffee cup warmer, a candle, and writing pants.

4) Jocelyn is a wife and mother of 2 children on top of being a busy author. She keeps her house rolling smoothly by preparing dinners in bulk and freezing them so that her family can still sit down together for dinner at night even though she is working hard at writing.

5) My favorite thing that Jocelyn told me is that at one point in time it was relaxing to have her cat pounce around while she was writing but now she has to keep an eye on the cat because not too long ago he caught his tail on fire while playing too close to Jocelyn’s candle. That would be a little stressful I would say! He looks so sweet and innocent here!

It was so great meeting Jocelyn and getting a chance to learn firsthand what a writer does in preparation for a novel. Thanks again for your time and hospitality! Go Panthers!

~Brittany

Of course, while I was in Atlanta, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to look into the local history since my third novel in the Civil War series is set in this fascinating city. I paid a visit to the Atlanta History Center and enjoyed the Civil War exhibits as well as a tour of a plantation-plain house built in the 1840s which survived the near-total destruction of Atlanta in 1864. It was a whirlwind trip, but very fruitful!

If you haven’t already noticed the buzz on Facebook and Twitter, I am thrilled to announce that the highly-anticipated sequel to Faith Deployed: Daily Encouragement for Military Wives is here! Faith Deployed . . . Again has even more devotions in it, written by even more contributors from every branch of service. There is something in this book for everyone–even Blue Star Moms! I recognize that many military wives become Blue Star Moms when their sons or daughters enlist in the military, which ushers in a new range of challenges. So Faith Deployed . . . Again offers a bonus section of devotions written by and for mothers of service members. I’m sure it will encourage even those Blue Star Moms who are not also military wives.

Get to know all the contributors here. Pictured below: Jocelyn Green and Kathy Guzzo hold their first copies of the book. (Kathy, a contributor to the book, was in Jocelyn’s hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa, for a writer’s conference last week when the books arrived.)

Now here’s a sneak peak at what’s inside. More than 100 devotions are categorized by the following sections:

• Basic Training: Guiding Principles for Military Living
• Intimate Allies: Protecting Your Military Marriage
• Tour of Duty: Overcoming Deployments and Other Separations
• Soul Armor: Guarding Against Spiritual Attacks
• Stationed in Christ: Dwelling in the Lord, Near and Far
• In God’s Service: Living for the Lord
• Home Front Hope: Moving Forward in God’s Strength
• For Blue Star Moms: Trusting God with Your Service Member

There are so many topics in this new book that we didn’t cover in the first one. We go into marriage and deployments in more depth, we talk about infertility and miscarriage, reintegration, in-law dynamics, financial strain, insomnia and nightmares, care giving for a wounded warrior, finding healthy ways to cope, and much more.

Find out more about the book here.

I can say this because I didn’t write this book by myself: If you are a military wife, or a government contractor’s wife, or a Blue Star Mom,you need to have Faith Deployed . . . Again on your nightstand. You will underline it, dogear it, highlight it. You will find that you are not alone in whatever you are dealing with. And most imporantly, you will discover that the Bible has something to say to you about exactly what you are experiecing right now. God has something to say to you. He cares about your life more than you can even imagine.

I admit I have been a little quiet on the blog lately–now I can finally tell you why.

I have just signed a four-book deal with Moody Publishers for a historical fiction series set in the Civil War! Each of these four books are inspired by women who actually lived, who I discovered while doing research for Stories of Faith and Courage from the Home Front. The first book, Narrow Passages, focuses on the work of female nurses (during a time when that was revolutionary) aboard the hospital transport ships in Virginia during the summer of 1862. I’ll share more with you later– but it’s due to release next spring, to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the events which occur in the book. It will be a novel, not a biography, but will have plenty of interesting (and accurate) historical details.

So if you don’t hear from me on the blog for a while, know that it’s not because I’m not writing. I’m just writing something else!

Last night I experienced a first. A day of very unsuccessful potty-training with my two-year-old son was made a whole lot sweeter when I brought the mail in and found not one but TWO book contracts for new books! Moody Publishers will be releasing Faith Deployed . . . Again in August 2011, and AMG Publishers will be releasing Battlefields & Blessings: Stories of Faith and Courage from the Home Front some time after that (not sure when yet).

Faith Deployed . . . Again is a sequel to my first book Faith Deployed: Daily Encouragement for Military Wives, and I am again relying on the talents of more than a dozen other contributing writers from every branch of service. The Battlefields & Blessings book will be the sixthe book in that series, and will be co-authored with Karen Whiting. (I co-authored the Iraq/Afghanistan volume as well, which released in November 2009.)