A spectacular sky led to a warm, mainly overcast day. Frogs are singing in the pond, and John just pulled a tick off Jenny.
It was a nice day to drive to Hot Springs to meet with a group discussing Crows. The group was notable for having as many men as women. And there were great, serious questions that showed these folks really thought about what they read. We talked about the horrors of war, the role of women at the time, the current division in the country and if it was like that before the Civil War. They were interested in my research, and I explained that much of what I used was from primary sources--government records and newspapers from the time. I warned them that none of that was guaranteed to be accurate, and we all agreed that the same could be said for news sources today.
One question I'd never had before: We were talking about my use of dialect, and I was asked if I perhaps wrote a scene in standard English and went back and put it into dialect. The answer there is no. Writing the local dialect is like breathing. I just remember who's speaking and say things the way I think they would.
One woman commented on how much she'd learned--how I'd managed to pack the story full of interesting information--like the Red Strings and the bandage-rolling societies. Another woman confessed she had no idea how milking a cow worked and how did I know. Research, I told them. About 15 or 20 years of hands-on research. I just didn't know at the time that it would end up in a book.Perhaps my favorite comment was the woman who said she read the books that the group discussed because they were assigned, and she sometimes had to struggle through them. But she really enjoyed reading Crows--not a struggle.Next month they're reading The Plague by Camus.
