McGinness is the author of The Female of the Species, which I liked. A lot.
Author Gail Gauthier's Reflections On Books, Writing, Humor, And Other Sometimes Random Things
Saturday, September 06, 2025
The Weekend Writer: Some Query Letter Critiques
Friday, September 05, 2025
Friday Done List September 5
- Worked on a flash fiction piece I started quite some time ago and began revising last week.
- Watched Creative Academy's interview with Mary Robinette Kowal about writing short stories, as part of my short story study. This was so good.
- Submitted a short story to a lit journal.
- Rewrote some blog material into a piece to submit to a Medium publication.
- Submitted to Medium publication.
Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work
- Weekend Writer post. Promoted on Facebook and BlueSky
- National Book Festival post. Promoted on Facebook, BlueSky, and Goodreads.
- Watched Authors' Guild Foundation's How and Where to Find Your Readers with Andrea Guevera, who really did offer a different spin on branding/marketing, which is why I'm trying to get active on my Goodreads blog again.
- Continued reading for Heritage Month Project.
Monday, September 01, 2025
National Book Festival Is This Saturday, September 6
Oh, look! The videos from last year! If I had all the time in the world, I'd watch the one on the history of community cookbooks. Yes, seriously, I would.
Here is the list of authors' presenting. Children's writers are well represented. My favorite historian will be there. It appears that all authors have a resent book that is being featured, in case you see some favorite writers there and want to see what they're up to.
Sunday, August 31, 2025
The Weekend Writer: Getting Ready for OUR School Year
How I love a virtual writers' workshop.
I've gone on here before about the benefits of virtual workshops: Less expense, less of a time commitment, less travel--none at all, in fact. So let's just take a look at what's being offered this year.
Your Choices Are:
Off Campus Writers' Workshop. The Off Campus Writers Workshop out of the Chicago area is my favorite workshop site. The organization is eighty years old and may be the oldest of its type in the U.S. They offer something every Thursday morning from September into May. That's Central Time, by the way. Is Thursday morning inconvenient for you? OCWW records all workshops and sends registrants a copy that they can access at their leisure for a week. This is your cheapest option, at least, the cheapest I've found. Workshops are $25 each for nonmembers, $10 for members. Membership is only $40 a year, with the year ending in the summer. Membership pays for itself in workshop discounts. I know. I'm a member. Workshop leaders are writers, most with some kind of teaching experience, many with academic teaching experience. I've seen some pretty big name people there. Want to stick to generative workshops, nothing lecture-like? They've got some. This year's workshop schedule.
Thurber House. I've also attended a couple of workshops through the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio. These workshops are a little more expensive than OCWW's, and the prices vary. They are still a buy, especially when you consider many writers' workshops are through conferences, so you have to pay for a day or more of attendance, even if there's only one workshop you're interested in. This fall's workshop schedule. These are evening workshops at Eastern time
Pioneer Vally Writers' Workshop. The Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop in Northampton, Massachusetts is totally new to me. I only just heard about it. (I already can't remember how, but I think BlueSky had something to do with it.) Their pricing is also higher than OCWW's, though, once again, a good buy. And get this...they offer gift cards. This fall's workshop schedule. Most of these are Saturday workshops at 1:00 PM, but check carefully. I hope to make it to Anna North's Friday evening essay workshop in December. I read her novel, Outlawed, this summer, and liked it a great deal. Again, Eastern Time.
Are There More Virtual Writers' Workshops Out There?
I'm guessing the answer to that question is "Yes." Which is too bad for me, because I have a ridiculously long list of workshops I want to attend this year just from these three organizations.
Friday, August 29, 2025
The Return of the Friday Done List...Which I Hadn't Noticed Was Gone
Done Lists Serve Four Purposes
- Psychological: Yeah, you feel good about having done something, and there's nothing wrong with feeling good.
- Motivational: Realizing you've done something and are capable of doing something provides motivation to do more.
- Planning: Keeping track of what you've done/completed helps you determine what you still have to do.
- Focus: If, like me, you tie your done list to your goals and objectives, a done list helps you make sure you're spending time on tasks that mean something to you and that you believe, or believed when you made your goals and objectives, anyway, will move you forward professionally. Also, if you are like me, as you get closer to the point when you're going to make a done list, you'll hustle a little bit to at least work on an objective, if not knock it off. Stay on task.
Losing My Done List
Friday Done List for the Week August 24 Through 29
Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor
- Began revising a humor piece to turn into a short story.
- Made one submission.
- Received one rejection.
- Went through Off Campus Writing Workshop's list of workshops for next year and selected the ones I want to take.
- Went through Thurber House Writing Workshop's list of workshops for next year and selected one I want to take.
- Did the weekly short story study that I began doing at the end of February, though it doesn't appear to have been an objective for this goal. I missed doing this for two months this summer.
- Created another reading system for market research, which replaces another system I had as an objective and failed with.
- No annotated reading posts, which I eliminated earlier this year, because of the work involved with the Heritage Month Project. That's over. Don't miss those.
- Worked on enlarging followers on BlueSky.
- Did two skeets (don't you love that?) at BlueSky of old blog posts related to my literary tourism.
- Did a skeet at BlueSky of a blog post on the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, since that just finished.
- Did a skeet at BlueSky linking to an article I wrote years ago at The Millions on the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.
- Did a couple of skeets of Medium humor pieces I've written in the past.
- Shared two Facebook posts on local writer events.
- Have been reading for the next Heritage Month post coming up in a few weeks.
- Received a rejection from one of the two agents I submitted to last week.
- Stumbled upon a few more agents I'll submit to next week.
So, What Does This Tell You, Gail?
- I am doing something.
- However, I'm not generating much new work. Which I knew. But seeing it in a done list is helpful. I don't want to see so little new writing in future done lists.
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Another Professional Project Is a DANDY Idea
During Lent this year, I took on a daily short story reading project that I thought would teach me something about writing short stories. It did not. Soon after starting it, I gave up any hope that it would help me in checking markets. My efforts were totally unfocused and random, and I was just trying to get the job done.
Which I did, but for what?
So, of course, I got really excited yesterday when I came up with a similar plan for researching short-form writing markets.
The Kind-of-Daily Market Research Project
- No reading for the sake of reading.
- No reading to meet a daily goal.
- Just familiarize myself with some new publications and be grateful for whatever I get done.
Today's Research Project: Five Points
- "Help Eleanor Come Home": The Queer Horror of Hill House by Eve Clark. If I had all the time in the world, I'd read The Haunting of Hill House again. (I have a copy, so I could!) That would be for the third time, since I read it once as a teenager and once after the Netflix series.
- Pride and Prejudice & The Awakening: What is food if not domestication or temptation? by Karen Sims. This is fantastic! I didn't care for The Awakening when I read it sometime after college. Again, if I had all the time in the world, I'd read it again. (I have a copy, so I could!) Food and eating appear in a lot of my own writing. I'm going to be paying a lot more attention when I read it in other writers' work now. "Domestication or temptation."
Friday, August 22, 2025
I Just Did Some Book Submissions. Thank God That's Over.
Earlier this year, I saw an article on boutique literary agencies and decided I'd read it. And I finally did. I collected a few names to research there. And I had a few names I collected elsewhere.
I spent a lot of my writing time the last couple of weeks researching, as I said above. Researching literary agents is a lot like stalking them. You hunt them up on-line. You read interviews they've given. You look for their Manuscript Wish Lists. You see if they're on BlueSky or Twitter, whichever one you favor. Maybe you see if they're on Facebook, though that may be where they post their more personal stuff, and that really is like stalking them. You sign up for Publisher's Marketplace for a month (it's going up to $30 a month September 1, by the way) so you can see if they've sold the type of book you're planning to submit to them.
If you're smart, I've learned because I wasn't, you'll go to their agency website first, because that's where they'll announce that they're closed to submissions. Believe me, you don't want to have invested a lot of time and effort in stalking an agent only to find out s/he is closed to submissions.
I started out with a group of ten names this go round. By the time I eliminated the people who were not accepting submissions, who represented only children's authors or nonfiction, who were interested in romance or science fiction, who had never sold a mystery, who hadn't sold anything in several years, I was down to two people.
So this go-round of submissions went out to just two people.
I did do some revising of my submission letter, though, with a new hook/pitch line. That can only be good in the future, right?
Why Are My Submission Numbers So Low? Spoiler: I Don't Know
Next Week
Friday, August 08, 2025
Man, I Feel Like A Writer
![]() |
Roland Denes on Unsplash |
On Monday, my most recent humor piece, Sure, You're Going to LOVE Being a Grandmother: But let me give you some advice was published at Frazzled, possibly my favorite publication at Medium.
I also received my hard copy of the Stonecoast Review in which my short story What We Do appears, as well as a copy of The Authors Guild Bulletin. No, I don't have any writing in that, but it is hold-in-your-hand evidence that I'm a member and arriving the same day as Stonecoast Review, as it did, makes me feel very writery.On top of all that, I got two rejections within a couple of hours on Sunday, just the day before. Rejections are a good thing. Not great, of course, but good, because they indicate you're working. You're in the game.
While none of what I experienced Monday involves the contracts and book reviews and appearances of days-of-old, they are work activity. They are the work activity of a short-form writer.
Thursday, August 07, 2025
I Went For A Book Walk Last Weekend Part 2
Truthfully, it's been a couple of weekends now.
The Struggle To Sell
Events like the book walk organized by Nutmeg Lit Fest last month are all about bringing readers and books together. Which sounds very nice. What they're really about is money, which doesn't sound as nice. We are talking about marketing books. Whether you are a self-published or traditionally published author, marketing is difficult. In large part this is due to the 2 million books that are published each year, which I mentioned last time. There are nowhere near enough readers to read all those books. In fact, as I also mentioned, eighty percent of those books will sell fewer than 100 copies.Given those facts, being able to sell more than 100 copies of a book becomes a major achievement. But what about some other figures?
A Traditionally Published Author
![]() |
Hal Johnson sketching in my book |
I met Hal Johnson, the author of Impossible Histories, published by a Macmillan imprint, at the book walk. He was one of two traditionally published authors I talked to, though there may have been more there. In our conversation, Johnson said that he took part in events like this one because traditional publishers don't do much marketing anymore. This is something I hear a lot to the point that I'd almost call it common knowledge now. But I don't really know what it means, because it's been so long since I've had a book published, myself.
Back in my day, boys and girls, marketing from traditional publishers involved:
- Sending arcs of your books to professional review sites
- Including your books in their seasonal catalogs
- Maybe taking your book to teacher and library conferences
- If your book received a certain number of starred reviews, you'd get an advertisement in a professional publication of some sort
- The Hero of Ticonderoga was included in a one of those box displays in bookstores, but I can't remember why.
- all editing,
- layout and design,
- interior artwork, if there is any,
- cover illustrations,
- design of the covers,
- and all the marketing listed above.
The Self-Published Authors
![]() |
Mike Jakubowski |
the first authors I spoke to. I was drawn to his covers and learned that he had a friend who did the illustrations and another friend who did the design work for them. We agreed this was very significant, because the cost of self-publishing can get up there.
Gail Is Impressed
I'm talking serious posters, for instance, such as the one that Greg Gilmartin had made of his book covers. In fact, glossy book cover posters are a very common thing. I still have a poster a book fair made of one of my covers, but it was some kind of digital printout glued to a poster board. In two decades things have improved. I saw table coverings like the one Hal Johnson had made printed with his book covers.
As does Kelly Jarvis.
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
The Heritage Month Project: "Blind Man's Bluff" by James Tate Hill
While Disability Pride Month (July) is recognized by a number of groups, it doesn't appear to have ever been observed by the U.S. government as a heritage month. Nonetheless, July was kind of free as heritage month reading goes, and what you might call disability literature isn't something I think I've ever sought out, so I decided to go for it.
You can find lists of books featuring disability. I was attracted to Mystery – The Disability Book Archive, but then was thrown because it included a book about vampires, who I don't think of as disabled. (This led me to much speculating about what, exactly, disability is, which I will spare you. You're welcome.) I wish now that I'd spent more time going through The Disability Book Archive's other genre offerings. I did look at Book Riot's 20 Must-Read Fiction and Nonfiction Books About the Disability Experience, though. It had a lot of memoir, and I was hoping for fiction at that point.
Yes, I am so freaking picky.
One way or another, it's the end of July, and I've only read one disability-related book, the memoir Blind Man's Bluff by James Tate Hill. I ran into Hill on BlueSky, where he comes across as being very congenial. (The first thing I look for in a writer, I guess.) His memoir describes his efforts to hide his blindness, something he had a shot at doing, because he became legally blind in his mid-teens, being left with some modest vision. (I think the cover of his book is an attempt at replicating what he can see.) The book is also described as humorous, which is always a draw for me.
So here was an intriguing situation, with humor. I was in.
First, Hill does have a dry, self-deprecating sense of humor that I definitely appreciate.
Second, what most intrigued me about this book was not the disability/blindness. What intrigued me was the way it was about transitioning from high school to college and from college to the work world and from single life to married life. Yes, Hill had to do all these things I recognize while working out how he would get his college reading done, how he would mentally map out how he'd get to classes, how he would find the men's room in restaurants and bars, and how he would, as a college instructor, deal with the issue of students raising their hands to speak, since he couldn't see them. Also, he risked his life every time he crossed a road. But there was still much that he was living through that many seeing people live through, also.
I don't want to downplay the significance of the blindness Hill deals with. But what struck me about this book was not how different he is, but how much he is the same. He just can't see.
The "Bluff" Aspect of This Book
The young Hill didn't like to address his vision with new people. He didn't like to talk about what he couldn't do. When he did feel he had to deal with it, with new people he expected to have to interact with in the future, for instance, he would say something about having blindspots that made it too hard to do something. "Too hard. Never impossible. Not once had I ever said I can't drive; it was always I don't drive, which wasn't a lie. I didn't drive. If that particular verb left room for one to infer choice, so be it."
That idea of choice seems significant to me. When he lost his sight at sixteen due to Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy, Hill didn't just lose his vision. He lost the choice to do so many things, choices that sighted people have. And that may be a big factor in why he tried to keep his blindness to himself as much as he could. He didn't want to make his lack of choice obvious to the world.
At one point, though, he says, "I had accomplished less than many blind people who acknowledged their disability."
He was still young, though. He had time.
The Writer Aspect of This Book
I'm not sure if I've read other writer memoirs. I can recall reading my-mother-was-horrible memoirs and my-oddball-dad memoirs and collections of essays about aging women or young humor writers. I can't believe I've never read a writer memoir, but I have to say that Hill as a young writer seemed familiar to me not because I'd read about writers, but because I am one.
He writes about how he became a reader after he lost his sight, through audio books. He writes about editing his work. He quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald. He gets an agent!
This, to me, illustrated that a disability isn't everything a person is. This person was a writer like me. In fact, one who right now is doing more than I am professionally.
I am still here, though. I have time, too.
The Memoirist Now
I don't want to say. I don't want to take another writer's story. Read his book. Oh, wait! I will share that there was a section of this book, which was probably the most painful, and that was only marginally involved with his blindness. Unless, of course, I've got that wrong and it was intricately involved with his blindness. Anyway, that was a part that really kept drawing me in in a when-is-what-I-am-damn-sure-is-going-to-happen going to happen? way.
A Couple of Other Options
While going over disability reading lists, I did find a couple of novels I'd read. And written about here!
Tru Biz by Sarah Novic, an adult book that deals with a deaf school that both my sister (for what that's worth) and I liked. It also won the Alex Award.The War That Saved My Life , a middle grade book by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, turned up somewhere on a disability reading list. This is a book I liked, and I liked the sequel even more. These are books that fall into the World War II British child evacuation genre. I'm assuming there's a genre, because there are so many of them. Not complaining about that. I have enjoyed a lot of those books. In this one, main character Ada has a clubfoot that was ignored by her abusive mother.
If you followed my link to my post on the subject, you saw that I didn't even mention Ada's disability. I had trouble recalling it until I read a review of the book at a site that focuses on disability. What was my thinking about that? Can't even begin to guess.I do think that the reading I've done this month, limited as it was, will change my perception of how disability is portrayed in the future.
I don't have any Heritage Month reading planned for August. I hope I can use that time to read ahead for September.
Friday, July 25, 2025
I Went For A Book Walk Last Weekend Part 1
Nutmeg Lit Fest is an organization that promotes its Connecticut writer members. Because many of those members are self-published, they may not get many opportunities for their books to be featured in bookstores. (Two million books are supposed to be published annually. Bookstores can't absorb all of them.) Self-published writers, then, have to rely on handselling. The Nutmeg Lit Fest Facebook group provides support for these writers, publicizing their events.
Additionally, Nutmeg Lit Fest's partners, among them Heidi Rocha (sorry I don't have the names of the others), organize events like Old Wethersfield Book Walk for its authors to meet the public and sell books in unique venues such as shopping areas with foot traffic or at town events. The writers bring some shoppers to the area, the area already has shoppers, and a sort of symbiotic/mutualism relationship is created. (No, I don't know much about biology. Let's think metaphorically here, okay?)
![]() |
Heidi Rocha |
Something Different
![]() |
One of at least 4 Book Walk stops |
What Nutmeg Lit Fest does that is different is bring books to people instead of hoping people will come to the books. Last weekend that set-up worked very well.
Handselling Is A Lot Of Work
![]() |
Gerald E. Augustine |
I've met Gerald E. Augustine, author of Vietnam Beyond and the subject of Passion in Life, twice now. Same with Heidi Roche. There were at least two other authors at Saturday's event that I've met.
![]() |
Wesleyan University Press |
![]() |
Jennifer Regan-Lefebre |
Another university press, University of California Press, published Jennifer Regan-Lefebre's book, Imperial Wine, which interested me because while I only drink cheap wine (but not that cheap) I am a sucker for history books, which is what Imperial Wine is. I had not met Jennifer before, but she is a historian, and I am a history reader. She's also a professor at Trinity College in Hartford, which, wouldn't you know it, I did not attend. But years ago, I'm talking maybe decades, I somehow managed to wrangle my way into a free essay symposium there. (I did something similar at UConn. I used to be shameless. Now I'm too lazy to do things like that.) Anyway, I feel connection, people. It takes very little for me to feel that.
Thursday, July 03, 2025
What Passes for Professional Self-improvement Here
My Personal Short Story Study
Over the last few months, I've been "studying" short story writing by going over notes from workshops I've taken. I'm done with that. Now I've started going through material I've collected and saved on the subject, including an article listing the best short stories to teach yourself how to write.
So far, these seem like the best short stories to encourage you to give up writing altogether. Or maybe even reading.
Then today I read Pinterest Is My Best-Kept Author Marketing Secret by Melissa Bourbon at Jane Friedman. Bourbon says that followers don't matter at Pinterest, because it's a search engine. You can use it to direct people to your writing.
Well, I'm on Pinterest, and though I don't have much to sell, I thought maybe I could use it to encourage people to read my humor, essays, and short stories. Maybe I could use Pinterest to get my name out for that kind of writing now that I'm not writing children's books.
Well, I took a look at my Pinterest boards, which I haven't touched in 3 years. As you can see from the menu to the left, I don't even link to it here. I think I forgot about it. I sure hope followers truly don't matter there, because I only have 14. And the page seems kind of a mess of both my writing, my design work for characters in books that never found publishers, and things I'm just interested in. (Learning French!)
I did a little searching to see what other writers are doing on Pinterest, and it seems the same. Though they seem to have more boards. And are there all that many writers there? Really?
So maybe I'll do a little work on Pinterest, but it will be low priority.
Lower than the short story study.
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
The Heritage Month Project: "A Distinct Alien Race" and Eugenics
I have no recollection of ever hearing about the eugenics movement in school, though I was a history minor in college. In the early twentieth century eugenics, the belief that humanity could be improved through selective breeding, became popular enough in the United States that in 1927 the Supreme Court in Buck v Bell found that "The Virginia statute providing for the sexual sterilization of inmates of institutions supported by the State who shall be found to be afflicted with an hereditary form of insanity or imbecility, is within the power of the State under the Fourteenth Amendment."
Eugenics was a national and international movement, culminating in the Holocaust.
It wasn't until around 25 years ago while I was taking my one graduate course, which was on essay writing (I aced it, since I know you're all wondering), that I stumbled upon eugenics. I was working on an essay for that class that would one day become Dinner at Shirley Farr's House. At that point, the essay was about a local rube (me) who managed to get into a wealthy person's house by way of the restaurant someone had opened in it after her death, enjoyed the place, and then it became even more of a wealthy person's place, ruining her bliss. I decided I should see if I could find anything about Shirl on-line. The woman definitely used her wealth to help her community. She also used it to support something called The Eugenics Survey of Vermont. and did so for ten years. The survey involved research on families as part of the Vermont Eugenics Project, and it would eventually lead to Vermont's own sterilization law in 1931. (It was one of 30 states to have one.) The goal was to reduce the "population of Vermont's "social problem group."
And What Does This Have to do With Franco-Americans, Gail?
Well, it has plenty to do with them, as Vermette says in his chapter on eugenics in A Distinct Alien Race. He refers to a writer named Madison Grant who believed that the U.S. needed to "prevent an infusion of so-called inferior breeding stock to maintain its racial purity." There's lots of quotes concerned about who was--and was not--fit to reproduce.
Various groups tended to turn up as targets for eugenicists and French Canadians were among them. (You see them mentioned in writing about Vermont's eugenics survey.) Grant said of them "The Quebec Frenchmen will succeed in seriously impeding the progress of Canada and will succeed even better in keeping themselves a poor and ignorant community of little more importance to the world at large than are the Negroes in the South." (Hitting two groups at once!) Vermette says that Grant classified Canadiens as "the lowest form of whiteness in his racial scheme."
During this period, the issue of whether or not French Canadians are mixed race came up again. Vermette says that genealogists today are divided on how much early French and Native American marriage actually occurred, but it was a common believe in the U.S. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and that was a reason for considering Franco-Americans nonwhite and thus inferior. (Another case of hitting two groups at once.)
Vermette gives the Vermont Eugenics Project its own section in his eugenics chapter. He quotes a letter to Dr. Henry F. Perkins, the head of the Vermont project, from Charles Benedict Davenport the creator of the Eugenics Record Office. "Did you know, that in the study of defects found in drafted men, Vermont stood at or near the top of the list...? This result I ascribe to the French Canadian constituents of the population which, I had other reasons for believing, to contain an undue proportion of defectives."
One of the interesting aspects, yes, there is more than one, of the eugenics movement is that terms like "defective" do not appear to have ever been defined. Another interesting aspect? It was a Progressive reform.
Vermont's Eugenics Project particularly targeted the poor, the disabled, French Canadians, and Native Americans. Two hundred and fifty-three sterilizations were performed there between 1931 and 1957. You can also find a breakdown of sterilizations due to eugenics by state.
Eugenics Today? Positive vs Negative Eugenics
To Recap
Friday, June 20, 2025
The Heritage Month Project: "A Distinct Alien Race" and the Ku Klux Klan
I grew up in central Vermont and graduated from the state's university. While there, I had a suitemate (later one of my bridesmaids) who grew up in the northern part of the state. One day she casually mentioned that her grandfather had been active in the Ku Klux Klan in Vermont. (No recollection how the conversation came about.)
I was ignorant back then and not shy about showing it. Everybody knew that the Klan was anti-Black, right? And back then Vermont was not known for its extensive Black population. So, I laughed and said, "Who were they against?"
"French Canadians."
Ayeah, I stopped laughing.
And that, mesdames et monsieurs, is why Klan activity in relation to Franco-Americans is something I was aware of a little earlier in life than I was, say, Little Canadas.
David Vermette has a fascinating chapter on the the KKK and its activities in relation to Franco-Americans in A Distinct Alien Race.
The Klan in the Early Twentieth Century
As Vermette tells it, in the early twentieth century, the Klan became very business-like. The Ku Klux Klan Corporation was formed in 1915. In 1920, its Imperial Wizard (a former minister) hired a public relations firm. There were members who functioned as traveling salesmen, going into new towns to drum up new members. They ran ads in newspapers and offered special promotions. Protestant ministers, for instance, could join for free. New members paid a membership fee, and bits and pieces of that fee were doled out to various people in the Klan hierarchy. Members bought their hoods and robes from the Klan, and that fee was spread out amongst higher ups, too. It sounds very much like a pyramid scheme.
As with all kinds of businesses, the Klan wanted to grow, and it did. It had quite an impressive membership by the 1920s and was pulling in real bucks. To continue growing, it had to branch out to other parts of the country, such as New England. I was right. Back in my day, there was not a large Black population in New England, and the same was true in the '20s. (Before my day!) But as Vermette says in his book, "Since, in most cases, New Englanders had little occasion to interact with non-whites, distinctions of language and faith served as the practical basis for othering minorities."
In other words, New England had a lot of French-speaking Catholics. According to Vermette, in the early part of the twentieth century it also had a lot of Klan members.
The Klan and Franco-Americans
The Klan response to Franco-Americans was "logical" to the extent that Franco-Americans were both Catholic and foreign. Foreign-ish, even if they were born in the United States, because they maintained their language. The fear that Franco-Americans were too close to their homeland and would thus be able to join with French Canadians in some kind of French Catholic takeover was renewed during this period. To deal with that the Klan encouraged the passage of laws that would enforce English-only instruction in schools, and they were successful with that in some New England states. Dealing with Catholicism was harder. In the South, the Klan worked through the Democratic Party, but in the north Democrats tended to be working class and...Catholic.
And recall that French Canadians and Franco-Americans were sometimes considered mixed race because of the possibility of intermarriage between early French settlers and native people. In addition to being Catholic and French speaking, for the Klan Franco-Americans were not truly white the way European immigrants were.
Vermette's chapter on the Klan in New England is fantastic in terms of both explaining the Klan's response to Franco-Americans there (conflicts between pro- and anti-Klan groups, bombings, and the burning of a Franco-American parish school, for instance) and in terms of Klan history, itself. It left me wondering why, given the times we live in, we're not hearing about a resurgence of Klan activity.
Perhaps, given the times we live in, those who might otherwise be interested don't feel there's a need for it.
Next time: Franco-Americans and the eugenics movement.
Thursday, June 19, 2025
A Lit Journal Acceptance and a Story Behind the Story
- Lack of practice. The eight children's books published prior to 2008 took a lot of time. I've also written a number of unpublished novels since then. Unpublished, but still time consuming.
- Lack of training. I'm trying to address that now with workshops and self-study.
- Lack of focus. By which I mean I'm also interested in writing humor and essays. And within essays I'm interested in writing about eating and maybe nature and travel. (I have a submission in somewhere that I'm claiming fits their nature theme.) I recognize that I'm spreading myself pretty thin in terms of developing a level of knowledge of all those forms.
Back to "What We Do"
Why I Think This Story Was Finally Published
- Stonecoast Review made a call for stories dealing with the theme of "power." I find writing on someone else's themes difficult and rarely do it. However, in this case, I felt I already had a story dealing with power. I pitched What We Do as a story about people who are traditionally viewed as powerless but are not.
- Traditionally, short stories are supposed to show change in some way. By the time I submitted this story to Stonecoast, I had revised once again and given it a main character who has little respect for the women around her in the opening, recognizes what they are doing, and changes her attitude, which is made clear when she entrusts something valuable to one of them.
- It also had a new title--What We Do instead of On the Beach, which is what I'd been using for the most recent drafts and submissions. Titles in flash are particularly important. They need to be doing some of the lifting and What We Do does, if for no other reason than that it shows action, which On the Beach does not. On the Beach also puts too much focus on the setting, instead of the women.