CW

One of the best parts of NaNoWriMo? The incredible community of writers. Today, we spotlight Lindsay Lackey, who tackled historical fiction for the very first time: 

I write from Colorado Springs, CO—the land of fast-food chains, road construction, and glorious, glorious mountains. It’s not ideal for foodies, maybe, but it’s a great place to live. I’ve seen a lot of growth in the city’s focus on celebrating the arts and on embracing our natural resources like mountains, trails, and open space. Plus, we have Pikes Peak Writers, which is an awesome group to be involved with!

Where would someone most likely find you writing from?

I write in all sorts of places. Lately I’ve been on a coffee shop fix, probably because it’s summer and the coffee shop near my house is part of an outdoor mall, which makes for fantastic people-watching…

I also love writing in the library. A brand new, state-of-the-art library opened in town this summer, and it has some fabulous nooks and crannies. Plus, you just can’t escape the sweeping view of the mountain range. One side of its huge upper level is almost all windows, and the view is one of the best in town. I go there when I need inspiration on setting, or just need to soak up some beauty for a while. It’s great.

What did you write for July’s Camp NaNoWriMo?

I broke away from my usual genre (YA fiction) to work on a story that has been rolling around in my head since I was in college. It’s inspired by my great-great grandmother, who lived a tragic and short life as a prostitute in Louisville, KY, at the turn of the century. I’ve always been fascinated by her. The only picture I’ve ever seen of her (probably the only one in existence) is of her with an arm slung affectionately over the shoulder of another woman. Both women have small, coy smiles on their faces.

Who is the other woman? What is their relationship? Why was this picture taken? I’ve never been able to get that image out of my head.

So I began researching brothels in the 1900s in the hope that my tiny seed of an idea may take root in some interesting historical twist. Boy, oh boy, did I strike gold! I discovered Karen Abbott’s compulsively-readable book, Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul, about Minna and Ada Everleigh, the brilliant sisters who built and ran the world’s most luxurious and opulent brothel, the Everleigh Club, in Chicago’s Levee District at the turn of the century.

These women came from almost nothing, and died as millionaire little old ladies. They were trying to redefine the prostitution industry, and happened to redefine business in general along the way. They were smart, sassy, savvy, and took very good care of their girls. I absolutely fell in love with them, and knew I wanted to use their example to empower my characters.

Now, I’m certainly not trying to glamorize the sex industry. But historically speaking, women had very few options back then, and prostitution really was rock bottom for a lot of them. Not so for the Everleigh sisters. I loved that Minna and Ada refused to be victims. They took the incredibly difficult circumstances of their lives and time, and transformed their situation and the lives of hundreds of young women. I simply had to see what would happen to the characters inspired by my great-great grandmother and her mystery companion by introducing them to the Everleigh sisters. 

What three things do you need to get into the writing zone?

First of all, I need my brain to be full of the words of others. Reading is what inspires me to write, and I have to read authors I admire to keep me going. For this particular book, I’ve been reading writers who are masters of gorgeous prose, like Sue Monk Kidd, and who present truly strong, complex, and fascinating female characters. (Madeleine L’Engle does this beautifully.)

Secondly, I need to be somewhere outside of my house. I’m just waaaay too tempted to watch Doctor Who instead of write when I’m at home.

Third, I need music with lyrics in a foreign language. I’m a singer, so if I know the words to a song, the song takes over in my brain and I can’t write. Because of this, I listen to a lot of relatively unknown artists (in America, at least) like Dulce Pontes. And opera. I seriously can’t get enough opera.

If you could share one writing tip, what would it be?

Do more research!

I have so, so many notes in my manuscript like, “Would they have had electricity? Did people scramble eggs back then? Were girls allowed to work at Churchill Downs? How much was a train ticket from Louisville to Chicago?”

I usually write contemporary or futuristic YA (who doesn’t?!), so I just wasn’t prepared for the type of information I found myself needing. I can make changes in the next draft, of course, but it would have been handy to know some general things first!

You can find Lindsay on Twitter, and online at www.LindsayLackey.com. 

Photo by Lindsay Lackey and Cedar House Photography.

Just eight percent of House Republicans are women and there are only four female Republican senators. And apparently, the GOP is starting to realize that this is not a great look for them in 2013. (Not that the Democrats have anywhere close to gender parity in Congress either.) As the National Journal reports, they’ve launched Project GROW (Growing Republican Opportunities for Women) to help the party with its messaging to female voters and recruit more women candidates to run for Congress.

Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway warns that Republican women candidates should avoid being too…womanly. Don’t make an issue of your gender and don’t talk about reproductive rights all the time. She explains:

“There are very few Democratic women who can begin or finish a sentence without mentioning a ‘woman’s right to choose. There is a tremendous opening for the ‘whole women,’ if you will, to step up and run for office as a Republican. … What do you do every week gals, do you fill up the gas tank or do you have an abortion?“

Touché. I do not get a weekly abortion. 

However, if I had not been able to get an abortion that one time, gas money would be pretty hard to come by because all my income would be going toward diapers and baby food and preschool. Which is really the irony here: The reason we talk about abortion rights so much is precisely because they are inseparable from economic well-being (as well as mental and physical health and, ya know, self-determination). A woman who struggles to afford gas probably doesn’t have many spare resources to raise an unplanned kid–and her access to an abortion if she needs one may be directly related to her ability to avoid sliding into poverty.

If you consider abortion within the entire context of people’s lives, it becomes impossible to see reproductive rights as something you can just peel off from the rest of the “whole woman.” No matter how convenient that might be for Republicans.

Image via.

All right, we went five rounds with Philosophy in our last post, now it's time to give Science! a chance to kick our ass.  (But just regular Science!, not the Sweet Science, because I think that'd probably give it an unfair advantage in the ring).  So who's on the card today?  An old ham 'n egger familiar to regular fans of World O' Crap's Underground Bloodsport Kumite and Souplantation -- James (The Ravagin' Rationalist) Lewis, who in his previous bouts (examples here and here), modestly allowed that he's "a scientist by trade, and carps as a hobby about the passing parade of human fraud and folly".  James is wearing blue and brown trunks with white trim, representing the muddy, but patriotic color scheme of American Thinker.

An Uncontrollable Ego 

IRS. FBI. NSA... Under Obama they consistently exceed their previously understood legal powers. Yes, there was technical consent by the secret FISA court for massive NSA spying. In times of national threat the FISA court is a pushover; just imagine if they said "No" and we had another 9/11/01.

So they drove a dagger into the U.S. Constitution rather than stand for principle, the way Chief Justice John Roberts helped damage the Constitution by voting for ObamaCare, and the Burger Court shafted the Constitution and ruined millions of young lives with unrestricted abortion.

The equal protection clause is gone. 

Every time the left imagines another victim group, that gaping wound in constitutional protections grows larger and larger

 -- first on behalf of American blacks, then for all "people of color," then women and gays, and now, illegal immigrants.

 Reverse racial discrimination has empowered an unelected political class growing fat and thuggish on a new spoils system. With ObamaCare, racial spoils may capsize our elected ship of state, leaving only an EU-type corruptocracy.

The Left has pushed against the Constitution beginning with the Wilson administration and World War I.

 What's different about Obama is his Leninist grandiosity, combined with amazing oppositional-defiant disorder.

 In street language that means his f-u attitude.

Obama takes pleasure in waving his finger in the air while violating our most precious values. Obama's narcissism and oppositional-defiance therefore control his official actions.

Today the Europeans are genuinely afraid of Obama. If you doubt that, look at these two news photos. The first shows Frau Merkel looking with fear and doubt in her eyes at Obama in Germany this week. 

Merkel started life as a communist in East Germany, but seems acutely aware of personality cults like Stalin's and Obama's. She fears what she knows.

The second photo shows Britain's David Cameron doing that little head bow that politicians do around Obama. Both photos show fear of Obama's arbitrary temper and rage, which is by now understood by governments around the world.

Yes, you can see the Prime Minister has gone rigid with terror, and appears to be releasing a cascade of urine down his leg in the hopes that if he can only hold this pose, Obama might mistake him for the Manneken Pis fountain and just take a snapshot.

The Muslim world has come to the same conclusion. The farcical Arab Spring started after Obama told Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak to leave office, arbitrarily, in the single most blatant act of public imperialism in American history.

Based on his own messianic authority, Obama has brought nothing but war and suffering to the Middle East.