The Author Travels: The Origins of a Tale

As I write this, I’m sitting in a lounge at the airport, waiting for my flight. My husband has a conference on the other side of the country, one which happens every year. Last year it was in Montreal. I am probably the only person alive who hates Montreal, but there you have it, and I happily waved him goodbye then and told him to have fun.

This year, it’s different. The conference is in Edmonton, a city in the prairies that most people have only heard of because they have a decent hockey team. For me, though, it’s different. I grew up there. My childhood memories are rooted there; my high school friends are there. And I haven’t been back in twenty years.

So, when my husband mentioned the location of this year’s conference, I announced I was coming along. So far, I have plans to meet up with my bestie from high school, my old high school French teacher (who, I desperately hope, will not quiz me on the imperfect subjunctive), a friend from youth orchestra, and someone from one of my internet wanderings with whom I’ve chatted for 20-plus years, but have never met in person.

If my husband is busy all the time with his conference, I’m sure I’ll hardly notice!

Then, once we are that far west, we decided to keep going. But where? Banff? (Far too expensive.) Vancouver? (Been there several times over the last few years.) The interior of the British Columbia Rockies? (Need to hire a car.) Victoria, BC was not even on my radar until Suzan Lauder, whom most of you know as a first-rate Austenesque author, mentioned that there is a JASNA event the weekend we’re out that way, and that she is involved. Well… there was no contest. Plans were made in an instant, and instead of the Rockies or Vancouver again, we soon found ourselves in possession of two air tickets and a hotel room in this lovely city in Canada’s far west.

It’s no secret that I love travelling. Each new trip brings back memories of other past trips, and I have a project on the back burner that had its genesis in a holiday.

That particular voyage took us not to western Canada or Europe, but to Bermuda, and even better, it was a cruise. There is a particular delight in traveling by sea, approaching islands the way some of the earliest voyagers did, seeing the land form out of the mist at the horizon, navigating the channels and outcroppings, as the ports grew larger and more real to our eager eyes.

The approach to the Royal Naval Dockyard at the tip of the archipelago was torturous in its intricacy, as the ship sought to avoid the treacherous reefs that have laid waste to so many ships. Standing on deck, fascinated as we wove east and west, left and right, until at last, we arrived at the cruise ship terminal.

That, of course, got me wondering about such trips in the past. Without modern technology, radar and sonar, and precise satellite navigation, it must have taken incredible skill to guide a sailing ship through the maze. What must it have been like for someone from Jane Austen’s day to stand on deck, watching and wondering if they would arrive safe—and dry—or if the ship would meet the fate of more than three hundred others which lie on the ocean floor surrounding this mid-Atlantic paradise?

Furthermore, who, amongst Austen’s brilliant cast of characters, might have made this journey? Most of our favourite author’s heroes and heroines are well established in their cosy English homes. Emma Woodhouse has almost never left Highbury; Lizzy Bennet considers a journey of fifty miles to be a great distance, and the Dashwood sisters feel that Devonshire is at the ends of the earth.

But not all are such homebodies. Colonel Brandon has been to India; Admiral and Mrs Croft have been to all manner of places, and Mrs Croft has crossed the Atlantic four times. “But I never went beyond the Streights,” she explains, “and never was in the West Indies. We do not call Bermuda or Bahama, you know, the West Indies.”

Does this mean she has been to Bermuda? I hope she loved it.

Another of Austen’s characters who might have travelled extensively is Colonel Fitzwilliam from Pride and Prejudice. We aren’t told anything specific about his career in the army, other than that he has achieved the rank of colonel, whether by merit or purchase. Poor Colonel F is little more than a plot device in Austen’s classic, inadvertently poisoning Lizzy’s ear before Darcy’s unexpected confession of love, but he is an intriguing and (mostly) attractive character, all the same.

He looks on Elizabeth with admiration and treats her how Darcy should. He is his cousin’s foil: suave, friendly, easy in company, good natured. But who is he? The dearth of real information about him makes him such a wonderful character in fan fiction.

And he, of course, is the person I imagined standing on the deck of that creaking wooden ship, having sailed from Portsmouth (or, perhaps, Halifax), to find this sprinkling of jewel-like islands in the middle of the Atlantic.

What was he doing there? Was he sent as part of his military duties? Or did another reason pull him so far from home? What happened while he was there? Who did he meet? What befell him?

The seed had been planted, and a story began to take shape.

I have no definite dates in mind for the release of this new novel, all about Colonel F, but it’s gone through the first round of edits and my cover artist has been doing some great work on the cover. I hope to have more information soon… hopefully The Soldier’s Tale will come out by the end of the year.

Do you travel with stories or characters in mind? Do you enjoy visiting places you’ve read about, or do ideas about characters come to you while travelling? I’d love to hear your tales.