Month: July 2024

Triggers – to Warn or not to Warn – Views Welcome

~ Paula Harmon ~ 5 Comments

Trigger warnings in books, films and TV are contentious.

I’m often irritated when I’m watching TV after 9.30pm and a sombre announcement warns me about what might offend or upset me in the programme I’m about to watch. I’ve usually enough knowledge of what I’m about to see to anticipate it, and if I didn’t want to watch, I wouldn’t. (And often don’t even if the drama is going to be excellent.) Other times, if I wasn’t aware there might be a particular scene, I’m glad of the warning beforehand so I can make a choice about whether I watch.

I admit I don’t think I’ve ever seen a trigger warning a book. However, I have a question for you.

But here’s a quick trigger warning about this blog post if you want one before you read down and find out what I’m asking: it refers to human trafficking, slavery and obliquely to prostitution.

The image below may look fun, but it very much isn’t. It’s from a larger image that was printed in the Illustrated Police News on Saturday 17 June 1899 with the description: ‘Alleged Immoral Traffic in Chinese Girls – they are packed in crates and treated as freight on the railways’. The article (on page 3) says ‘An investigation has been ordered into the recent revelations regarding the sale and shipment of Chinese girls, a practice which, it is alleged, has been customary for months. The climax was reached a week ago, when two girls, aged fifteen and sixteen years respectively, were bought at Vancouver. It is asserted they were placed in a crate and shipped as freight over the railway, the train hands giving them food and water. The car containing them was placed on a side track one night, and the girls, being each clad only in a wrapper, caught cold. The man who purchased one of them demanded damages from the railway company for the injury thus done to his property. The girls, it is alleged, were sold for immoral purposes.’

This small picture is in the corner of a larger one depicting what looks like a rough (presumably Canadian) bar with two (possibly supposed to be Chinese) girls in low cut mid-calf dresses, sitting on the laps of two bearded men, watched by a crowd of other men.

If you saw the larger image without context, you might be reminded of an archetypal scene from a Western where everyone – including the girls – is having great fun in a saloon, in contrast perhaps to the stuffy citizens of a frontier town.

However, when you include the other image and what it’s describing (and a cockroach of a man who’d purchased two girls and had the face to publicly sue the railway company for their damage because he might not be able to profit from what damage he did to them afterwards) you might wonder how many if any of the girls in that bar/saloon (or any equivalent) chose to be there and were happy with what they had to do. Some did/do choose that job not simply out of desperation, but because they want to and they keep their own earnings. But many, many didn’t and still don’t.

There’s a prevailing view that refined Victorian and Edwardian women would faint if any reference to sex came into their hearing. Maybe it was true for some, but evidence suggests that there were plenty for whom it wasn’t.

In the UK at least, women fighting for suffrage in the 1800s did not simply want the vote. They also wanted better treatment for women and girls – not just in terms of educational opportunities but also their personal, moral and mental safety. And they weren’t afraid to tackle the subject head on.

Josephine Butler for example, had long campaigned for the raising of the age of consent to be raised from thirteen to sixteen. Why this was such a battle is mind boggling, but eventually, working with journalist W.T. Stead and Bramwell Booth of the Salvation Army, she was involved in the infamous Eliza Armstrong case. They proved to a horrified Victorian general public how easy it was to buy a child for immoral purposes, conspiring to purchase a thirteen-year-old girl for £5 (six months salary for a maid) from her mother who provided proof of her purity plus some chloroform to drug her, knowing that she would be destined for a brothel on mainland Europe. Instead, Eliza was rescued and subsequently had a safe and good life. W.T. Stead was, believe it or not, subsequently prosecuted for abducting a child from her parents, despite what they’d been happy to do to their own daughter. But ultimately, the case raised awareness of what was happening, and the age of consent in England and Wales being raised to sixteen in 1885.

By the 1910s when ‘The Suffragette’ was also campaigning about what they called ‘the traffic in humans’, the international White Slave Traffic Act (also called the Mann Act) had some into force, as had the International Agreement for the suppression of the White Slave Traffic (also known as the White Slave convention). Legislation was also introduced in the UK to allow for any procurer to be publically flogged if convicted, though whether any were I’m not sure. There were certainly plenty of procurers, some more sophisticated than others, from strangers posting apparently innocent advertisements for legitimate jobs, through mothers of young girls making money out of their innocence, to coercive husbands/boyfriends who just had one little job for them to do ‘if you really love me’.

‘The Suffragette’ and other papers however, were willing to point out that although the term ‘White Slave’ had been coined in the mid 1800s to refer to trafficked people of European descent where the perpetrators weren’t of European descent, by the early 20th Century there was a recognition that the race of the victim was irrelevant to perpetrators who were more likely than not to be white, and simply wanted to make money.

It was also recognised that victims weren’t only forced into ‘immorality’ but into illegally run factories, mines, farms etc etc; often abducted and/or imprisoned, sometimes a long way from home. The good old days huh?

So what about my question? The fifth Margaret Demeray book ‘A Justified Death‘ is coming out in the Autumn.

It’s November 1913 and while Margaret’s personal life involves being under pressure to work more days at the hospital and wrangling her unpredictable elderly father, the political world around her is still edging towards war. Britain and Germany are having a ‘my torpedo/canal/warship/zeppelin is bigger than yours’ contest under the guise of friendly demos. The ‘Irish Question’ is bigger news for once than suffragette militancy, with the leader of the Conservative Party, Andrew Bonar Law, hinting at major trouble from Unionists if the Home Rule Bill goes through.

But as I said in How What When – it’s not just politics which affect my characters. In ‘A Justified Death’, a young girl runs out into a foggy street and is knocked down more or less in front of Margaret. Before long, Margaret suspects that the girl was not only running from traffickers but is afraid her friend will get caught up in the same ruse. As Margaret and Fox try to find the girl’s friend and close down the operation, they start to wonder if everything is as depressingly simple as it looks or is something else going on too.

So here’s my question, assuming you’ve got this far. If you were considering buying this book, would you want a trigger warning?

Within the book there is reference to trafficking, but there is NO description of what physically happens to anyone trafficked, it is only hinted at and suggested. I don’t want the book to be gratuitous, or (heaven forbid in context) titillate, but I’m quite happy if it makes the reader angry on behalf of the characters.

The book is not just about trafficking of course, as I say, Margaret’s got a whole lot of other things going on as usual, and it’s not all dark and dreary either. The twins are getting more mischievous, her nephew may be suffering from first love, and Margaret’s father has found another bookshop to get lost in.

But I’m conscious that from a book description which refers to procures and trafficking, potential readers may be worried they’ll get more than they bargained for.

Some authors deal with this by including a statement to say: ‘Trigger Warning; please be aware that this book includes…’ Others have a link to a place on their website which readers can access if they’re at all concerned. Others put nothing and assume that the potential reader should guess what the book is likely to include by the description.

If you’re in favour of trigger warnings, what sort of things do you want warnings about? And how do you think I should approach it in this instance?

If you’re against, why?

I’d love to know.

(NB: Sadly human trafficking is still alive and well and often invisible – cheap clothes, cheap food, cheap goods, cheap services – they’re often cheap for one reason only. Please find some websites about modern slavery/human trafficking – how to recognise it, how to help, how to find help below.)

Words copyright 2024 by Paula Harmon. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission. Image courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive and taken from page six of Illustrated Police News – Saturday 17 June 1899.

The Human Trafficking Foundation Support Services

Hope For Justice – Bringing Freedom from Modern Slavery

The United Nations: What we do to stop Human Trafficking

How, What, When – Techniques

~ Paula Harmon ~ Leave a comment

I’m often asked four things:

1.     How long does it take to write a book?

2.     How do Liz and I co-write without killing each other?

3.     Re historical mysteries, does research come before plot or vice versa?

4.     When do I find time to write?

The simple answers are:

1.     The first draft of a 50,000 word book written with Liz is usually completed within a month. The first draft of a 90,000 book I write alone takes at least three months.

2.     We co-write without killing each other partly because we live too far apart to pop round and have a scrap.

3.     Historical accuracy is essential but ultimately it’s the character’s personal battles (and perhaps interaction with real events) which drives the plot.

4.     Theoretically between 9am and 2pm on days when I’m not doing the day job.

In more detail:

Liz and I are developing an online session on co-writing for the near future, so please keep an eye on the Hints, Tips and Masterclasses tab on this website to see when this will be available. But what I can share here is that one of the reasons why it’s quicker for me and Liz to write quickly is that we plot the books in minute detail in advance – a process more natural to Liz than I – and diarise a specific window of time to write in.

My own books are typically longer and I don’t plot in as much detail. I am not a pantster (someone who just starts with an idea and no idea of where they’re going till they get there). I know the character’s challenges, the main plot points, the middle and the end. I usually plot tightly up to the mid-point after which it’s a lot more vague. I aim to write at least one chapter a day, five days a week if I can. This theoretically takes seven weeks, but sometimes longer. While detailed plotting for co-writing makes my teeth itch, not being 100% sure what’s happening between chapter twenty and thirty-seven of my own books keeps me awake at night – I’m not joking. I almost always end up with a first draft that’s 40,000 words longer than it should be, so I have to revise the whole shebang, often moving or ditching whole segments. Sometimes those ditched segments (often ones I most enjoyed writing) get reused. Occasionally they are gone for good. Eventually it’s ready for the editor after which I will have more revisions. End to end, the whole thing (with various breaks) can take the best part of nine months.

Do I think one technique is better than another? No. What works well for me and Liz together, doesn’t work for me alone. I’ve tried it but still go off at a tangent. Maybe one day. I actually enjoy the revision more than the first draft. It’s where I start to ‘find’ the story.

As regards historical research: the historical context may be a backdrop or a major factor depending on the book. So for example, The Case of the Black Tulips is set in a world in which Katherine has a job meaning she travels alone, and Connie is sent out without an escort, meaning they meet each other and start investigating against a general backdrop of late Victorian fog, hansom cabs, music halls etc etc. The Treacherous Dead and Dying to be Heard on the other hand, are set against real events that occurred in 1912 and 1913 (and also 1900). It’s Margaret’s reaction to them which drives the plot.

Caster & Fleet are in 1890s London when opportunities for young women were expanding and when improvements in communications, transport and education were changing the world rapidly. We made use of that, but we didn’t tie anything to any specific historical event therefore what they’re dealing with is more important than who’s Prime Minister etc.

Likewise the Murder Britannica series is set in the late second century Britannia. There are a lot of political shenanigans going on and the emperor is, frankly, insane, but Rome is a long way off. Lucretia and Tryssa feel broadly safe straddling Roman and Celtic life, going with the flow to keep on the right side of the invaders but otherwise more interested in what’s happening right in front of them as it’s more ‘real’ to them than a distant emperor who thinks he’s Hercules.

The Margaret books are slightly different, because the backdrop is an essential part of the plot. Six books will cover the period June 1910 to August 1914. Threading through are: the build up to World War One; anarchist and revolutionaries; people arrested for spying in Britain and Germany; the fight for Irish independence; conflict in the Balkans; industrial unrest; the drive of the labour movement calling for safer working practices; increasingly militant suffragette activity.

I research real newspapers of the day to see what Margaret might be faced with every morning in terms of current affairs. The likelihood is that she’d read about suffragette activity and ‘the Irish question’ on the front page, but have to turn into the depths of the paper for anything on spying and war-mongering manoeuvres in mainland Europe. Was this deliberate on the part of the media – keeping people worried about the things the status quo wanted them to worry about and oblivious to other things that might ultimately be more problematic? Mmm.

But like most of us, Margaret is no different to Katherine aand Connie or Lucretia and Tryssa, and current affairs are not at the top of her things to worry about.  More often than not, she’s concerned about being a good wife/mother/sister/daughter/friend/pathologist (not necessarily in that order), wondering about bills and deciding what’s for dinner.

Which reminds me: should I wake my husband up from his Sunday afternoon sleep since it’s his turn to cook, or turn the oven on myself? Is the washing dry? Who’s visiting this week and what shall we eat?

Which leads me to the real answer to question four: how do I have time to write? Sometimes I have no idea!

Words (c) 2024 copyright Paula Harmon. Not to be reproduced or used without the author’s express permission. Image credit: Illustration 164663778 © Rassco | Dreamstime.com

Mirror Selves

~ Paula Harmon ~ Leave a comment

In the last few months, life has been busy, hence getting out of the habit of blogging.

I’ve been working on A Justified Death (Margaret Demeray 5), and with Liz on Death in a Dinner Jacket (Booker and Fitch book 6). Both are now available for pre-order. That’s on top of a day job which is pretty trying (apply your knowledge of British understatement here); adult child wrangling; elderly parent/in-law wrangling; sad news from friends; talks; current global affairs.

Perhaps because I’m smouldering a bit at the edges, my eyes were recently drawn to a list of suggestions to counteract burnout. One took me right back to being six years old and Trixie and Trina:

Escape through the mirror and swap places with your mirror self.

Perhaps a year or so before I was six, my father read me an unabridged version of Alice Through The Looking-Glass and I loved it. To a girl who hated trousers and climbed trees in skirts; who got into trouble for backchat; who talked to animals, Alice was a kindred spirit, a role model and an inspiration.

Do we need trousers to have adventures? No! We can do it in frilly dresses.

Here’s a talking rabbit asking us to follow him. Let’s go!

Here’s a looking-glass we can step through. Let’s do it!

If I could have followed Alice through that mirror, I would have.

Perhaps that’s why I met/invented Trixie and Trina.

I’d recently moved school and my friend-making skills were terrible, so to begin with I was lonely and the target of older boys who’d threaten me, chase me and call me names. I reported it, but the teachers gave the standard response of the time: ‘Just keep away from them’.

I tried. I found a place to hide away: a corner by a glass door which was slightly shadowed, so I could see my reflection. In the absence of any other friend, I named my mirror self Trixie and my physical self Trina (or maybe the other way round). I decided we were twins who’d been forcibly separated and were stuck on either side of the reflection, desperate to rejoin each other.

We’d chat about bullies and loneliness and how we could be reunited. At least I think we did. I can’t really remember more than the names and sitting there talking to my reflection.

Eventually the bullies found me – clearly proving them right about how weird I was – and yanked me up by my anorak hood, nearly strangling me. I like to think a teacher spotted it and they were punished but can’t recall that either. I just knew it wasn’t safe to hide out of sight any more.

I started to make friends… and then after a couple of years moved schools again, which is another story. For a while, illogically, I felt guilty that I’d never gone back to visit Trixie/Trina before I left, that I never said goodbye. I half wondered if she remained trapped. Or if I had. After all, who’s to say which of us was stuck behind a reflection?

At nine years old, in a different place entirely, I forgot her and became fascinated by looking for ways into other worlds through the countryside near my new home. This was probably partly inspired Alan Garner’s books, but I like to think was partly instinctive as my ancestry comes chiefly from (in alphabetical not percentage order) Eire, England, Scotland and Wales.

It isn’t a good idea to cross into the realms of the Sidhe/Elves/Seelie/Tylwyth Teg nor to let them cross into ours. That’s why there are festivals and traditions around solstices and equinoxes, and an eerie edge to dawn and dusk when the wall between worlds is thin and the danger to humans is highest. But I didn’t realise that then.

Well before I heard of quantum physics, I sensed another world was just out of reach and all I had to do was find a way in. Was this because there really are other universes running alongside ours and I somehow knew it instinctively, or because I wanted to escape my reality? I don’t know, but I looked in the woods and the river for another couple of years without thinking of looking in mirrors instead.

By thirteen, the main ‘other’ world I yearned for was adulthood where I’d be in control, and mirrors were only for despairing over what I looked like in. While waiting for magical adulthood, I created alternative universes in my head and wrote about them: time-slips, fairy courts, aliens, ghosts. Of course, adult life didn’t turn out quite as controllable as I’d expected and I wish I still had the face and figure I used to about, but what teenager realises they’ll ever feel like that?

Then last week, when I was looking for something cheerful to counteract global politics, and read about avoiding burn-out by swapping places with one’s mirror self, I suddenly remembered Trixie/Trina and wondered what would happen if I sought her out to exchange realities.

When the bullies hauled her away from her side of the glass what happened next? I wondered. Is her world better or worse? Has she changed or stayed the same?

I remembered her as a small thin six year old with blonde hair, scabby knees and an anxious, serious, worried expression.

Now presumably, she’d be middle-aged, plump, greying with a pragmatic smile and sense of her own ridiculousness.

But what if she was no longer be my exact reflection but a different person after all these years of separation?

What if she were no longer there at all?

I looked at the news again, then the list of suggestions, then back at the news. We live in a world where everything – not just me – seems to be burning out.

If I could climb onto a mantelpiece and enter a mirror and risk what was on the other side of the reflection, I thought, would I?

Would you?

(Actually, if you do it, can you pull me up? I’m not sure my knees could manage climbing onto a mantlepiece any more.)

Words copyright (c) 2024 Paula Harmon. All rights reserved. Not to be copied or used without express permission.

Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Through_the_looking_glass_and_what_Alice_found_there_(1897)_(14779323804).jpg