{"id":9468,"date":"2024-05-03T22:11:08","date_gmt":"2024-05-04T05:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grousablebooks.com\/?p=2191"},"modified":"2025-08-18T13:12:26","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T20:12:26","slug":"historical-fiction-research-report-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2024\/05\/historical-fiction-research-report-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Historical fiction research report 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently received an email from Bouchercon 2025<\/a>, the big mystery convention being held in November 2025 in New Orleans. They are putting together an anthology. I entered last year’s anthology for San Diego, and wrote a special story for it: Murder Steampunk Style<\/a>. It didn’t get accepted.<\/p>\n

So I’m trying again, but I live in San Diego, not New Orleans. The instructions say the story should have something to do with the Big Easy. I’ve been there three times, I know some history, I’ve done some reading (history, of course, but also fiction such as Tennessee Williams<\/a>, Anne Rice, Ellen Byron<\/a>, Alexandra Ripley). One of my strongest memories from visiting was seeing the Domino Sugar factory on the banks of the Mississippi River. I do like me some technology. I look on Google Maps and it’s Domino Sugar Chalmette. I found their website, but it occurred to me that if I write about a body buried in Domino Sugar, people working there might be offended, or the company might.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I love writing historical novels, so what if I made it historical? Yes, people in the South know their family history, but perhaps it would be distant enough that it would be ok. I look at the brief history timeline<\/a> on the Domino website, and it looks like the earliest possible would be 1909. On May 17, the refinery commenced operation. So give it a chance to get rolling – I’ll do 1910.<\/p>\n

First picture searching “New Orleans 1910” cinches it for me, an uploaded photograph “by” Mark Savad on a fine art commercial site. Did he colorize it? Create it with AI? I don’t know, but later I find the black and white version.<\/p>\n

\"1910<\/p>\n

But the source doesn’t matter because it’s evocative and this is the inspiration stage. I kept looking for images from New Orleans in 1910 and decided to start a Pinterest board<\/a> to stow them. Then I added the Pinterest extension to my Chrome browser, so I can add pictures as I come upon them. I add the one of the Domino plant.<\/p>\n

Somehow I stumble on Louis Armstrong (serendipity!), who I know is from New Orleans, and I wonder how old he would be in 1910 so I check the Wikipedia page and he would be 9 years old. This would be that early part of his life when he worked for and had dinner with a Jewish family. I remember that was why he wore a Star of David in later life.<\/p>\n

Much later in his life, Armstrong wrote about his very young life in “Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La, the Year of 1907”, and it’s been studied<\/a>. I searched but couldn’t find the entire document transcribed online (looks like his house museum archive may have the original<\/a>). The Wikipedia article found their info from his booklet in a collection book, which I find online used for $10 so I ordered it.<\/p>\n

I will now continue gathering more pics and info about the city in 1910, and thinking about Louis Armstrong as the possible character.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently received an email from Bouchercon 2025, the big mystery convention being held in November 2025 in New Orleans. They are putting together an anthology. I entered last year’s anthology for San Diego, and wrote a special story for it: Murder Steampunk Style. It didn’t get accepted. So I’m trying again, but I live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[73],"tags":[139,118,140,87,141,103],"class_list":["post-9468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-author-life","tag-bouchercon","tag-domino-sugar","tag-history","tag-new-orleans","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10069,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9468\/revisions\/10069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}