Wordcraft -- New genre for ‘ferocious’ women

What does a writer with three award winning historical novels do for her next project? If she’s Dallas writer Kathleen Kent the answer is: something completely different. She spoke this weekend to the Southwest Chapter of Mystery Writers of America to say she’s one of us, a crime writer.

Not that she doesn’t still love the historical fiction of her first two novels, The Heretic’s Daughter and The Traitor’s Wife. Telling a fictionalized version of several times great-grandmother, Martha Carrier, one of the women hanged as witches during the seventeenth century Salem witch trials, The Heretic’s Daughter became a New York Times bestseller. The Traitor’s Wife (first published in the U.S. as The Wolves of Andover) told the story of Martha Carrier’s husband, Thomas, rumored by family legend to be one of the executioners of King Charles I.

For her third book, Kent fast forwarded a couple of centuries, basing her most recent novel, The Outcasts, in post-Civil War Texas. “My dad used to say, out of earshot of my mother, of course, that all the witches were on my mother’s side of the family, but all the horse thieves were on his side,” Kent told her MWA audience.

Then, last fall, she got an assignment from a local editor she never expected. Would she like to write a crime story for an anthology set in the Dallas area? Why not? The result was her short story, “Coincidences Can Kill You,” starring Dallasite by way of Brooklyn detective Elizabeth Ryczek, aka, Detective Betty. Betty made her debut in the Akashic Books anthology Dallas Noir last October, alongside stories from such other Dallas writers as Matt Bondurant, Ben Fountain, David Haynes and Suzanne Frank.

“What do a Civil War general, an antique sword, and an AK-47 have in common?” Betty asks. “Nothing. Unless they all converge during one of my cases.”

At first glance, Betty couldn’t seem further removed from either the accused witch of The Heretic’s Daughter, or the unrepentant epileptic prostitute of The Outcasts. But Kent brought up another nugget of family history that links all the women. “When I asked if Martha Carrier was really a witch,” she was told, “‘there are no such things as witches, just ferocious women.’”

Then came another call. “My publisher, Little Brown, who published all three novels, said, we love Detective Betty. How about writing a full length novel about her?”

Following Betty’s appearance, Kent had returned to work on a sequel for The Outcasts. But given the research she’d already done on previous centuries’ crimes and legal processes, Kent felt able to tackle a case of merely modern detection.

Her biggest challenge had been finding the authentic tonality for each period. “I had to get my tonality, voice and pacing different. What remained the same in writing about all her ferocious women, Kent said, is the method of character development.

“To get me thinking out of the box right away, I set up a character with challenges, who are contrary to expectations, who have difficulties. It makes (the writer) draw on resources you didn‘t know you had. (And) the characters are developed not by what you say about them, but by what other characters say about them.”

Detective Betty’s novel is still untitled. For more about her progress, stay tuned to Kent’s website, www.kathleenkent.com/. Or hear her this Thursday, October 8, when she’ll discuss The Outcasts for Read Across McKinney. For tickets and additional information, see www.readacrossmckinney.org/.

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Last fall, Kent inaugurated Dallas Heritage Village/Dallas Historical Society’s Farina Lecture Series. The speaker for this year’s lecture is Victoria Wilcox, author of Southern Son: The Saga of Doc Holliday (Book Two). Doors open at the DHV, 1515 Harwood, at 6 p.m. October 21. Register for the free event through the events calendar at www.dallasheritagevillage.org/.

Wordcraft -- Kent stays true to historical fiction

It’s always a pleasure to listen to Kathleen Kent, author of The Traitor’s Wife, the prequel to her bestselling novel The Heretic’s Daughter. She stopped by a Real Bookstore in Fairview last week to discuss her latest book -- and what she’s working on next.

I first heard her speak at the Dallas Writers Garret in early 2009, soon after the release of The Heretic’s Daughter. The hardback first edition with her autograph must have been printed before the novel hit the New York Times bestseller list, because there’s no cover blurb announcing its status.

Although The Traitor’s Wife was Ms. Kent’s first choice of a title for the prequel, it was initially published last fall as The Wolves of Andover. The title change occurred, she told her audience, because the publisher believed there were too many books already out with the word “wife” in their titles. The United Kingdom edition, however, retained the original title and its sales encouraged a recent trade paperback version in the U.S. with the restored title.

The Heretic’s Daughter tells the story of Martha Carrier, one of nineteen women and men hanged during the seventeenth century witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. The tale of the hysteria that swept the colony had been told several times, but never from the standpoint of a family member of the accused, until Ms. Kent wrote her historical fiction based on reminiscences of her mother’s family -- a descendant of Martha Carrier.

If Martha’s story sounds stranger than fiction, that of her husband, Thomas Carrier, told in The Traitor’s Wife, is even more fantastic. Family tradition insists that he was one of the executioners of Charles I who escaped from the Tower of London to the American colonies to elude assassins sent by the dead king’s son, Charles II and marry Martha Allen, later to be accused of witchcraft.

Although Ms. Kent at first believed her family’s stories about Thomas Carrier -- that besides being a regicide, he was seven feet tall and lived to be 109 -- were exaggerated, research turned up justification for the claims. The story in The Traitor’s Wife, she said laughingly, “is based on fact and the rest is the product of my fevered imagination.”

She was amazed to find at a reunion of the Carrier family after publication of The Heretic’s Daughter, that “so many of them had heard the same stories about Thomas.”

The man also known as Thomas Morgan the Welshman entered the new world “with two known regicides -- two of the judges of Charles I. He was gossiped about. There were rumors that followed him all over New England.” Carrier’s height was also attested to by contemporary news accounts of his death that stated two coffins had to be fitted together to contain his body.

Are there more books about the Carrier family in the offing? Maybe, Ms. Kent said. Although she is currently writing a book dealing with the post-Civil War Reconstruction era in Texas, she is interested in the story of one of Martha Carrier’s nieces who was kidnapped by Indians during the colonial period. For more about Ms. Kent and her books, see www.kathleenkent.com/

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If you want to recite your own family’s stories with the art they deserve, check out the Youth Storytelling Festival this Saturday, November 5. Members of the Dallas Storytellers Guild last weekend assured the audience that the festival, with workshops and performances, isn’t just for kids. Registration starts at 9:30 a.m. at the Zula B. Wylie Public Library, 225 Cedar St., Cedar Hill, Texas. See
www.cedarhilllibrary.org or call 972-291-7323 ext. 1312.

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More interested in writing than speaking? Writer’s Digest editor Chuck Sambuchino teaches a one-day writing seminar, also November 5, at the Trinity Writers’ Workshop in Hurst, Texas. See www.trinitywritersworkshop.com for details.