CHICKEN SOUP FOR THIS WRITER’S SOUL

 

From Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

 

I am hard at work on my novel,

THE BRONTË SISTERS AND YOUNG BOY GREEN,

An Alternate History.

It is saving me from going crazy over the current affairs of my country.

Below is an excerpt (a first draft, and subject to change):

 

~Scene Setup~

 

Christmas Day, 1846…Young Boy Green, who works as a helper to the Brontë family, finds Charlotte Brontë sitting at the writing desk in the parlor of the Parsonage where she lives with her father, two sisters, and brother. She is writing the passage in her novel, Jane Eyre, in which Jane and Rochester first meet, and is impatient to get to their first romantic encounter. Young Boy Green interrupts Charlotte to inform her that Magda, their pregnant family dog, is having a difficult time giving birth out in the barn. Charlotte drags herself away from her manuscript and prepares to set out to the barn to assist Magda. Her own galoshes are still sopping wet from an earlier trip out to the woodshed, therefore, Charlotte dons her sister, Emily’s over-shoes.

 

~Excerpt~

 

“Although two years younger than Charlotte, Emily was a hand’s length taller and markedly sturdier—hers were longboats next to Charlotte’s child-size over-shoes. Charlotte wrapped her gloomy brown cloak around her shoulders, a garment so over-sized that it concealed her like a shroud, and then she adjusted the velvet bonnet on her head, the same dismal hue as the cloak and her hair. Her father had surprised her with the outerwear on Christmas Eve—had it been just the evening before? “The Bard’s ‘…inaudible and noiseless foot of time,’” she muttered to herself as she slipped her feet into Emily’s galoshes. Rising to her full four feet nine inches, she glanced in the mirror on the wall above the console table that held place in the formal entry hall of the Parsonage. “Father’s sense of proportion grows more absurd with time. He would keep me hidden from all comers in any way available to him. Just look at me! I am grotesque! Might I not at least find my way to be a foil to my own literary character? Must I revive Jane Eyre’s ghastly reflection in her mirror in every waking hour of my own?”

Forcing her eyes away from the mirror, she inserted her left hand into her white fur muff. She loved the feel of it, its luxury, the way it drew to itself the light that filtered through the glass panes in the entry door. The muff was a relic of her mother, one of the few mementos left to Charlotte by her deceased parent. On fear of soiling it, Charlotte thought better of taking it to the barn and returned it to its customary spot on the console table. Wiggling her hands into a well-worn pair of mittens, she approached the glass-paned door and looked out across the broad lawn. It was carpeted in a deep plush of pristine snow. Countless overlapping boot-prints at the doorstep, the remains of the family’s frozen-morning dash to Father’s Christmas service at the church, were petroglyphs of an ancient order of the family-Brontë: the controlling, regulating power of the church in which pauses or spaces for romance, even daydreams of romance, was mercilessly ill-fitted…”©

Books by Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase at Amazon.com.

#CharlotteBrontë, #EmilyBrontë, #AnneBrontë, #BranwellBrontë, #PatrickBrontë, #VictorianEngland, #JaneEyre, #WutheringHeights, #TheTenantofWildfellHall

OH JOY, CHRISTMAS MORNING!

 

From Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

 

In keeping with best Covid-19 practices in the United States, I was alone on Christmas morning; masked-up and socially distanced, my children arrived later in the day for our hurried gift exchange. As it turned out, though, I was not entirely alone before then—Muse stopped by and presented me with a most amazing gift. She slipped into my brain an idea for a new novel. With this one, I fear I will attempt the impossible, but there I have to go because a writer must follow Muse’ lead. It will require loads and loads of research and reading, and for that reason, I cannot possibly anticipate a publication date for another year or more. Between then and now, I have other finished manuscripts in the hopper that are chomping at the bit to see the light of day, one of them to be published next month. In the meantime, Muse tells me that the title of my new story on which I am currently hard at work is THE BRONTË SISTERS AND YOUNG BOY GREEN, An Alternative History. Below is a little teaser for you:

                                                                                   

 

~Introduction~

 

I was confined to London during my one trip to England two decades ago, a trip I was forced to cut short because of a flare-up of a chronic illness, as well as to attend a funeral back home of a beloved family member. Side trips to Cornwall and northern parts of England were unfulfilled as a consequence. I was left having learned nothing of value in the later tracing of my ancestry. Of particular interest in my origin story is Thornton, West Yorkshire, England, best known as the home of the Brontë sisters. As it happens, it was also the place from which 17 year old, Stephen Green, my paternal grandfather five times removed sailed to the United States in either 1776 or 1777. Whether or not he was a citizen of Thornton is a mystery to us. Thornton might very well have been merely his point of embarkation.

As far as my family and I know, the whole of Stephen’s American history unfolded in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and for that reason it is safe to suppose that his ship landed at one of the Chesapeake Bay ports, and in the thick of America’s struggle for independence. That he was caught up in the turmoil is probable.

            You might have taken note of the variance in the spelling of our surname. For a reason unknown to anyone else, my grandfather and one of his brothers conspired to add the extra e at the end of the name. My siblings and I have ruminated on the motivation for the change, and none of them are laudable. Was it done to outsmart debt- or tax-collectors, or to align somehow with their religious beliefs? As of this date, the justification for the third e remains in the realm of speculation.  

While it is likely that Stephen’s American story was one of danger, intrigue, struggle, and triumphs, all of them advantageous elements around which to build a story, I find it much more intriguing to imagine his early life in England. I credit my interest to my love of all things British. I am an incurable Anglophile. There is no doubt that the British in my DNA fuels the engine that is the essential “I.” If the BBC ever stopped transmitting to the United States, I would have little use of a television set, and the shelves of my home library would be practically bare.

In reality, the lifetimes of Stephen and the Brontë sisters did not coincide. Stephen predated them by more than a half century. However, for the purposes of THE BRONTË SISTERS AND YOUNG BOY GREEN, I portray them as compatriots. My story will no doubt be judged as a sacrilege to Brontë sisters purists. I hope so very much that it passes a test of acceptability to those readers at least in some way good enough to make up for my blasphemy. And by the way, Happy New Year.©

–Linda Lee Greene, Columbus, Ohio, USA, Christmas Day, 2020

 

Books by Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase at Amazon.com.

 

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