Dorice Nelson

When I taught school, I had library duty one Friday. Several books involving the history of Albany, NY were on display. On one of the tables, there were documents discussing an 1826 murder in the city. Although I had lived in Albany most of my life, I had never heard about the murder. Being nosy, I was extremely interested in what must have been a scandal way before my time. A book written by a local college professor was included with the documents. I asked to borrow the materials to read over the weekend and read them I did.

The first work I read brought out the tenor of the historical period and was aimed at high school instruction. The murderess, an orphan from a well-to-do family, had eloped at fifteen ( a not unusual much boredom and a return to that same foster home, she had an affair with an itinerant handyman. Her life was in shambles, caring for a young son while her husband worked away from home on the Erie Canal. She behaved inappropriately. Women in those days had no rights, but this gal was a bit feisty and tried her wings. At the end of the affair, her husband was murdered. She and the handyman were both accused but were tried separately. In his confession, he blamed much of it on her, despite the fact that he had murdered before. At her trial, the judges, thinking her a poor misled woman, sent her away in disgrace, but not before they forced her to watch her former lover hang.

The next book by the professor was quite different, a decidedly biased account of the place of women in those days. I was stunned to read an academic work where the author placed the entire blame on the evil woman, who was still so young. Not once did the professor take into consideration the confines of society, the state of her living experiences, or the fact that she was terribly young and immature. I’m not saying the woman was not at fault in the murder—just that she was a victim of circumstance. That’s when I decided to write a rebuttal in the form of a novel, a novel now residing in one of my file cabinets just waiting for me to write it. That story has many implications, and I can’t wait to write it my way.

This story is interesting to me because of the historic attitudes of the day. The woman never spoke up in court to defend herself and the judges, thinking her a simpleton, let her get off with nothing more than their censure. The professor’s book led everyone to believe that she was an evil seductress who willfully intrigued the handyman and made him murder her husband. I wanted to write the story from a woman’s point of view, to show how women were treated during that time period. Men ruled the world then (and still do in many ways). It was hard for a woman to do more than maintain herself.

That single book influenced my decision to write and defined my interest in history. I began to read history books about the period, the Dutch and the English who inhabited Albany then, and enjoyed them. As I researched, I gained a definite interest in history as a subject. I love to read. I love to research. AND, I love to write.

Do you ever wish you led the life of one of your characters?

Not the life of one of my heroines. Life was tough in 852, 1650 and 1863.

From the beginning, both Irish and Scottish women had more liberties in their countries than American women of those times. The Celtic countries had to rely on their women to be strong. The women were superstitious, believed in whatever religion their mothers taught them, and knew their place in the hierarchy of the clan. The stubborn women were of the land, had few luxuries and weren’t concerned with more than the welfare of their families. They worked in the fields alongside their men. Life was hard. They did not take abuse lightly and always had kin to help fix those problems.

Irishmen and Scotsmen always revered their mothers—even to this day. Celtic men had a different feeling about their women. The female life span was short. Many died during childbirth; and there were no birth control pills. Many had their children at home even in 1863. Some women had fifteen or more children, and often, the children didn’t live long. With so many children, wives and mothers were important to the status of the clan.

The people of those days had the same illnesses as we do but didn’t call them by the same names. They used herbs and other natural treatments. Cures were rare. Witchdoctors, elders, or healers ruled the field of medicine. If someone were truly ill, the family and clan would try to help and if that didn’t work, they called the priest. I don’t think I would have enjoyed those times—nor to see the suffering that existed then.

Not much changed in the lives of women until the 1900s. In the earliest days, the women had a say in the government of each clan. By the 1650s, they had lost some of their freedoms as governments became more civilized. By the 1860s, women kept their mouths shut, with the exception of a few prohibitionists. In every generation, there have been women who stood up for what they believed was right. Generally, men despised them.

Can you tell us about how you conduct research, and some of the obstacles?

For the Cherry Hill Murder, I read all of the testimony from the trials, plus voluminous history books of the period. I used the city library, the internet and bought many more books than I could afford. Most of them, I still have and still use. I read and reread them, until I could imagine what the living circumstances might have been in those days. The Internet is truly a wondrous thing. I scour the sites of areas and people I want to write about.

The obstacles to research occur in the way women were treated in the earlier centuries. The role of women in 852, 1650, 1826 and 1863 was very constricted. They had few liberties or movement away from their families. They often were virtual prisoners within their own homes and had little to say in the running of the home or the upbringing of their children. Abused by their husbands, they had few avenues for help. Not even relatives would interfere in the lives of married women.

Many an obstacle to research is the lack of the written word—by women. Many did not know how to read or write and, if they did, they were not allowed to write what they truly felt. I think much of our history was seen through the eyes of men. Men wrote the Bible and most of the history of the world until the present day. Let’s face it, it’s only in the last fifty or sixty years that women have begun to get an education and to become respected persons in any given field.

What are your current projects?

I now have three books being reissued through the Cambridge Book Division of Write Words, Incorporated. Clan Gunn: Gerek, of the Scottish Heritage Series, is out now. Clan Gunn: Baen, the second in the Scottish Series, will make a hero of one of the villains from the first book. I’m hoping to have him ‘unvillainized’ by the same folks he conspired with previously. I get to redeem a villain, which will be fun.

Lost Son of Ireland was a stand-alone book, but I do write about Irish characters all the time. They inhabit my Saratoga Series, about the Irish O’Malleys. Saratoga Summer: 1863 is a story about the oldest of the five O’Malley sons, Connor. After losing in a family lottery, Connor arrives in America, with his youngest brother, only to face a bride he doesn’t know and the Civil War Draft riots. I’m presently working on the sequel, Saratoga Spring: 1864, which will be about the youngest brother who accompanied Connor to America.

I also have a suspense novel in revision. The gal in this novel is contemporary. She’s a horsewoman, loves animals and is beset with problems: money troubles, a long-lost lover, finding two unknown sisters, and fleeing from her mother’s killer. It needs a total revision.

What are your books about?

Primarily, my books are historical Celtic adventures, with action, romance and sometimes, a bit of mystery. I hope readers worry about what will happen to my Celtic characters and how they view their times. In addition, there’s always a bit of realistic history in the novels. Writing is a craft. It takes a long time to learn. I am not one of those easy writers who have words fall off the tips of my fingers. I need to work hard to pull a story out of the past and reconstruct it for today’s readers.

History plays a large part in my books. I may even use a historic character or two—only as references in the book, instead of using them as central characters. I’ve read diaries from the various time periods and generally incorporate whatever I learn into the novels. As for specific things I’ve learned—I couldn’t possibly recount all of them. I learned about James Graham, who was hanged during the Bishops’ War in Scotland, the once renown Killearnan Castle, and the feud between the Keiths and the Gunns. In Lost Son of Ireland, the Danes had control of Dublin but the Norse wanted it. There was a real fort on the tip of the Dingle Peninsula, where much of the action takes place, and it is true the Norse did try to oust the Danes and capture all of Ireland for themselves. In Saratoga Summer: 1863, there were riots in New York City over the Draft for the Civil War. The rioting people burned down an orphanage and destroyed the city. The madness of the riots is in the novel and my characters are dragged through it.

Who is your favorite author and what really strikes you about their work?

That is so hard to say. I don’t really have a favorite author, but I read all the time. I tend to try new authors along the way, but I also like to read the commercially popular stuff listed in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. I’m strictly a commercial writer and don’t have a literary bone in my body. I read James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Perri O’Shaughnessy and a host of others. Reading is entertainment, often far better than TV, and should be easy and enjoyable, with good characters and a good story.

Where do you hope to take your writing in the future?

Although the reviews on my novels are excellent, I hope to take my writing to a higher degree of competency. I hope to make my characters so interesting the reader doesn’t want to put the book down. I like to entertain and be entertained and find the writing part of putting together a novel more rewarding than marketing of one is. I try to get my book out there in front of the public, but until an author gets national recognition, marketing takes a lot of time away from writing. I wish I could give away my novels. I love it when people enjoy reading them.

Find out more about Dorice Nelson at http://www.DoriceNelson.com. Find my books at http://www.ebooksonthe.net/catalog/index.html or www.booksurge.com.