Charlene Raddon

Charlene Raddon & Friction Matches

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We’re pleased to have Charlene Raddon join us today with some fascinating historical tidbits. Take it away, Charlene!

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Friction matches allowed people to light fires quickly and efficiently, changing domestic arrangements and reducing the hours spent trying to light fires using more primitive means. But they also created horrific suffering for match-makers: White phosphorus was one of the substances used in some of the first friction matches. Prolonged exposure to it gave many workers the dread “phossy jaw.”

Antique Russian Matchbox and Matches

A British pharmacist named John Walker invented the match by accident in 1826. He was working on an experimental paste to be used in guns. He had a breakthrough when he scraped the wooden instrument he was using to mix the substances in his paste, and it caught fire.

Walker then produced “a flammable paste made with antimony sulfide, potassium chlorate and gum arabic, into which he dipped cardboard strips coated with sulfur.” He started selling his “friction lights” to locals in April 1827, and they quickly took off.

Walker never patented his invention, in part because “the burning sulfur coating would sometimes drop from the stick, with a risk of damage to flooring or the user’s clothing.” His invention was quickly copied by Samuel Jones of London, who started selling “Lucifers” in 1829. Advances in matches continued over the 1830s and into the 1840s.

Early Matches

Match-making became a common trade across England in “hundreds of factories spread across the country. For 12 to 16 hours a day, workers dipped treated wood into a phosphorus concoction, then dried and cut the sticks into matches.

As was typical in the the factories of the nineteenth century, matchmakers were predominantly women and children, half of them kids who hadn’t reached their teens. Working long hours indoors in a cramped, dark factory put these children at risk of contracting tuberculosis and getting rickets, as well as phossy jaw, a gruesome and debilitating condition caused by inhaling white phosphorus fumes during those long hours. Around 11% of those exposed to phosphorus fumes developed ‘phossy jaw’ about five years after initial exposure.

Early French Silver Vesta Case Match Box Striker with Integrated Firesteel Flint

The condition causes the bone in the jaw to die and teeth to decay, resulting in extreme suffering and sometimes the loss of the jaw. Although phossy jaw was far from the only side-effect of prolonged white phosphorus exposure, it became a visible symbol of the suffering caused by industrial chemicals in match plants. By 1892, newspapers were investigating the plight of match workers.

Stirling match box

One Salvation Army match factory worker, Mrs. Fleet, contracted the disease after working five years at the company. After complaining of tooth and jaw ache, she was sent home, had four teeth extracted, lost part of her jaw bone, and suffered excruciating pain. The smell of the dying bone, which eventually literally came out through her cheek, was so bad that her family couldn’t abide it. She lost her job, and no other match company would hire her. Phossy jaw was often compared to leprosy because of the physical disfigurement and the condition’s social stigma.

Eventually, match makers stopped using white phosphorus in matches, and in 1910, it was outlawed in the United States.

Giveaway!

Charlene is giving away two copies of The Outlaw and the Bounty Hunter, Book 2 in her Outlaw Brides series drawn from those who leave comments.

Do you use matches around your home or when camping?

If not, what newer invention do you use to light fireplaces, stoves, or grills?

The History of Typewriters by Charlene Raddon

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Hi everyone, Charlene Raddon here and I’m thrilled to be back. The first documented version of a typewriter was in 1575 when an Italian printmaker named Francesco Rampazetto created the scrittura tattile, which was a machine made to impress letters into the paper. But this wasn’t the first attempt. In 1801 and 1808, Pellegrino Turri invented a typewriter for his blind friend, Countess Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzano, to give her the ability to write. Of more use was a patent for a machine called a typographer in 1829 by an American, William Austin Burt, considered one of the first typewriters to have existed. A little later, in 1864, an Austrian carpenter named Peter Mitterhofer developed several typewriter prototypes.

One early model that did not use the QWERTY system did not even type with typebars. The Hammond, introduced in 1884, came on the scene with its own keyboard, with two rows and a curved “Ideal” keyboard. The Hammond printed from a type shuttle—a C-shaped piece of vulcanized rubber, which can easily be exchanged if a different typeface is wanted. There is no cylindrical platen as on typebar typewriters; the paper is hit against the shuttle by a hammer.

The first commercially produced typewriter, the Hanson Writing Ball, was invented in Denmark in 1865 by Rev. Rasmus Malling-Hansen. By 1878, he made the refinements to create the machine by which it is primarily known. It was a combination of unusual design and ergonomic innovations: 52 keys on a large brass hemisphere, resembling an oversized pincushion. It was successful in Europe and a staple in European offices into the early 1900s. The Hammond gained a solid base of loyal customers. These well-engineered machines lasted, with a name change to Varityper and electrification, right up to the beginning of the word-processor era.

 

The best breakthrough came in 1868 when four Americans, Christopher Latham Sholes, Frank Haven Hall, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule, patented the first truly commercially successful typewriter produced by E. Remington and Sons. The Sholes and Glidden comes closest to what we know today. It had a QWERTY keyboard, the first of its kind, which was adopted as the standard.

Other machines typing from a single type element rather than typebars included the Crandall (1881) … and a more practical version called the Blickensderfer.

The effort to create a visible rather than “blind” machine led to ingenious ways of getting the typebars to the platen. Examples of early visible writers include the Williams and the Oliver. The Daugherty Visible of 1891 was the first front-stroke typewriter to go into production: the typebars rest below the platen and hit the front of it. With the Underwood of 1895, this typewriter style began to gain ascendancy. The millions produced the most popular model of early Underwoods, the #5. By the 1920s, virtually all typewriters were “look-alikes”: frontstroke, QWERTY, typebar machines printing through a ribbon, using one shift key and four banks of keys. (Some diehards lingered on. The giant Burroughs Moon-Hopkins typewriter and accounting machine was a blind writer that was manufactured, amazingly enough, until the late 1940s.)

In 1897, the “Underwood 1 Typewriter” was developed, the first with a typing area visible to the typist. It was created by American Franz X. Wagner in 1892, but in 1895, it was taken over by John T. Underwood, who gave it his name. The Underwood 1 typewriter set the standard going forward. In the 1900s, typewriter designs became standard, mainly having the same setup with only minor variations depending on the exact use of the machine.

In 1914, James Fields Smathers invented the first practical use, a power-operated typewriter, and in 1925, Remington produced its first electric typewriter based on Smathers’s design and used a Northeast motor to power the typing function. Then, in 1935, IBM came out with their electric typewriter.

I don’t remember the make of the first typewriter I used as a stenographer and secretary in the 1950s-’60s, but I remember when the “ball” typehead came out, and I received my first one. It seemed like quite an invention at the time. I also remember the small portable typewriter I used in 1980 to start my writing career. I wonder what became of it—thrown out, I suppose, or given away. And, of course, I remember my first computer—so many glitches and problems. But that was long ago.

In the 19th century, the standard price for a typewriter was $100—several times the value of an excellent personal computer today when we adjust for inflation. There were many efforts to produce cheaper typewriters. Most of these were index machines where the typist first points at a letter on some sort of index, then performs another motion to print the letter. Obviously, these were not heavy-duty office machines; they were meant for people of limited means who needed to do some occasional typing. An example is the “American” index typewriter, which sold for $5. Index typewriters survived into the 20th century as children’s toys; one commonly found example is the “Dial” typewriter made by Marx Toys in the 1920s and 30s.

It was on a portable electric typewriter that I wrote my first book. It’s been too long to recall if I purchased a better one before I got my first computer. I think I must have been in the late 80s or early 90s. I didn’t know many people who had one yet at the time. I’ve been through more than I can remember since then, and so far, I’ve typed twenty-five published books, two unpublished books, and a few partially completed books.

My most recently finished book is #2 in my Outlaw Brides Series, The Outlaw and the Bounty Hunter. This was a fun one to write. The hero was raised in a circus, and when the circus closed, the workers became his hands on his new ranch. They worked for room and board and $5 a month, and were glad to have a bed to lay their heads on. The circus element added entertaining scenes to the story and made the characters more unique as well. One famous character is Rupert the Lion. He falls in love with the heroine and plays a key part in the finale. I hope to see this book released by the time this blog appears, but editing, proofreading, and publishing it may take longer.

Did you ever use a typewriter in your earlier days? If so, tell me how old you were. I’m giving away one copy of The Outlaw and the Sheriff to one commenter, and to another, I’ll offer a copy of The Outlaw and the Bounty Hunter.

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About Charlene:

Charlene Raddon fell in love with the wild west as a child, listening to western music with her dad and sitting in his lap while he read Zane Gray books. She never intended to become a writer. Charlene was an artist. She majored in fine art in college. In 1971, she moved to Utah, excited for the opportunity to paint landscapes. Then her sister introduced her to romance novels. She never picked up a paintbrush again. One morning she awoke to a vivid dream she knew must go into a book, so she took out a typewriter and began writing. She’s been writing ever since. Instead of painting pictures with a brush, Charlene uses words.

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Charlene Raddon Tells About Life in a Dugout

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Unbelievable as it might seem, some pioneer settlers liked living in dugouts. Letters and diaries of pioneers recorded that these dwellings were surprisingly comfortable; cool in summer, snug and easily heated in winter. Thick walls and sod roofs supplied good insulation at a time when few people knew the value of insulated homes, and wooden houses lacked in this feature.

Most dugouts consisted of a single room (average 12’ x 12’) dug into the lee side of a low hill. Walls were created by cutting and stacking sod blocks to a height of seven or eight feet. For a roof, cottonwood poles were placed side by side and spread with a thick layer of coarse prairie grass for insulation and to cut down on the dirt that sifted through. Over the grass a double layer of sod building blocks was carefully fitted. The first good rain prompted the sod to grow, and a tall growth of waving prairie grass soon covered the roof, almost concealing it.

Old house in the ground

 

Of course, all this waving grass attracted livestock, which could be a real problem. More than one story is told of cows and horses putting a hoof through the roof where a weak spot existed. This happens in my newest e-book, To Have And To Hold, in which the heroine, Tempest Whitney, lives in a dugout. A rainstorm softens the dirt packed over the roof, allowing a cow or mule to damage it further, and right at a key point in the story, the roof caves in.

Rough wooden planks were laid to provide flooring in some dugouts. Dirt floors were sprinkled with water daily and swept with crude grass brooms until the surface was as hard and smooth as finished concrete. To help keep dirt out, walls and ceilings were lined with newspapers and pinned in place with small, sharpened sticks. Ambitious families located outcroppings of limestone rock which they burned and mixed with sand to provide a plaster coating for the walls—a vast improvement over untreated walls that could not keep out all the dirt, or insects.

Dugouts housed families well into the twentieth century. My paternal grandparents moved from Kansas to the Oklahoma panhandle in 1916 and lived in a dugout until a house could be built. My mother’s folks did the same thing a bit later. Mother was the eldest of twelve. Her father was a great farm worker much in demand by other farmers. Unluckily, Grandfather didn’t want to work for someone else; he wanted to farm his own land. But without someone to tell him what to do, he failed dismally. The family lived frequently with other family members or inhabited abandoned homes, including several dugouts.

Robicheaux Trading Post, Chadron, NE

Mother told me numerous tales of life in such dwellings and didn’t seem terribly enamored of them. I used a few of her stories in To Have And To Hold, due to be released on January 24th. One tale has to do with 7” long centipedes that found their way down onto the newspaper tacked onto the ceiling. The sound of their feet scratching on the paper drove Grandfather crazy. Mother’s complaint, besides the dirt, was snakes. She hated being asked to fetch wood because too often a resident rattler would be hiding inside the wood box. Of course, snakes liked nice warm beds too, and the pallets laid on the floor where the children slept were very convenient. Frankly, I’m glad it was my mother and not me who had these experiences.

Have any of your grandparents or great-grandparents lived in a dugout?

Be sure to leave a comment for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card and a free copy of To Have And To Hold.

Charlene first serious writing attempt came in 1980 when she awoke one morning from an unusually vivid and compelling dream. Deciding that dream needed to be made into a book, she dug out an old portable typewriter and went to work. That book never sold, but her second one, Tender Touch, became a Golden Heart finalist and earned her an agent. Soon after, she signed a three book contract with Kensington Books. Five of Charlene’s western historical romances were published between 1994 and 1999: Taming Jenna, Tender Touch (1994 Golden Heart Finalist under the title Brianna), Forever Mine (1996 Romantic Times Magazine Reviewer’s Choice Award Nominee and Affaire de Coeur Reader/Writer Poll finalist), To Have and To Hold Affaire de Coeur Reader/Writer Poll finalist); and writing as Rachel Summers, The Scent of Roses. Forever Mine and Tender Touch are available as e-books and after January 24, To Have and To Hold will be as well. When not writing, Charlene loves to travel, crochet, needlepoint, research genealogy, scrapbook, and dye Ukrainian eggs.

Find Charlene at:

http://www.charleneraddon.com

http://www.charleneraddon.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/CharleneRaddon?ref=hl

Charlene’s e-books on Amazon.com

Pullman Cars with Guest Charlene Raddon (and a give away)

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Whenever I write a blog to introduce a new book, I like to talk about some of the things I learned through my research for that story. Carrianne’s research centered mostly on the Union Pacific Railway and, in particular, the Pullman cars that Carrianne and her husband enjoyed in my story for their trip from Denver to San Francisco, where they fought to bring down the worst criminal on the Barbary Coast at the time.

The Barbary Coast also required fascinating research, but that deserves its own blog.

I think all of us would have enjoyed a train ride in an elegant, plush Pullman car. I was shocked to learn just how fabulous they were.

According to legend, a highly uncomfortable overnight train ride from Buffalo to Westfield, New York, prompted George Pullman to find a better way to provide comfortable, clean, efficient passenger service.

 

Traveling over early, hastily constructed rail beds, trains inevitably swayed, rattled, and clacked. Most passenger cars ran on two four-wheel trucks. Pullman used eight-wheel trucks supplied with an improved suspension for a smoother ride. He even added lighter wheels with pressed-paper cores to minimize jolts. He installed double-glazed windows and doors for quiet. The ventilators in a Pullman car brought in fresh air but filtered out dust and cinders.

 

The true glory of the Pullman car was in the decor. Victorian taste ran toward the baroque, and Pullman offered the utmost in ornamentation: carved walnut paneling, polished brass fittings, beveled French mirrors, Brussels carpets, brocade, tassels, and fringe. At night, porters made up the berths with pristine white sheets.

Thanks to the low $2 extra fee a passenger paid to ride in a Pullman car, such luxury was affordable even for the upper-middle class.

1872: Passengers bedding down onboard a luxurious Pullman sleeping car of the Pacific Railroad. (Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images)

 

Before George Pullman introduced his first diner, the Delmonico, trains stopped briefly at stations to allow passengers a hurried meal, and I mean hurried. Dining cars ended this inconvenience. There were also parlor cars, where a passenger could relax in an upholstered armchair, which swiveled to allow a view of the scenery. Wide windows and elegant furnishings added to the sense of privilege. An organ provided entertainment.

Illustration shows a crowded Pullman dining car on a train as waiters serve the passengers, late nineteenth century. (Photo by Interim Archives/Getty Images)

An important Pullman innovation was the vestibule train. Early cars had platforms front and back so that passengers had to step outside to move from one car to another. The vestibule was a spring-driven accordion covering that allowed cars to be joined seamlessly. It made moving from car to car more easily and helped to stabilize the train at high speeds.

The ultimate in Pullman extravagance was the private car, known in the business as a “private varnish.” These cars allowed the ultra-wealthy to travel comfortably without rubbing elbows with fellow passengers. A typical car might have an open fireplace and a marble bath. Italian artists supplied paintings of fuchsias and hummingbirds for the ceiling. Lamps and fitting were gold plated. The car contained several bedrooms, a central parlor/dining room, and a kitchen. Such cars sold for $50,000, equal to 1.3 million today.

 

I’d love to provide more details on how everything worked, but I believe I’d better quit before I wear out my welcome. I’ll provide photographs instead to show you what you missed by not having been born much, much sooner.

What would you pay today to enjoy such luxury as the Pullman cars offered?

Please comment to enter the give away. One winner will receive a copy of my current book, Carrianne’s Debacle, and a second winner will receive a book of their choice from my backlist.

Charlene Raddon is a multi-published, award-winning author of Victorian/Western romance. Originally published by Kensington Books in the 1990s, she now self-publishes. She also creates book covers, specializing in western historical designs.

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Charlene Raddon: Sheep and Cattle Wars

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The Fillies welcome the return of Charlene Raddon. Her series are much in demand for their unusual storylines. She’s giving away two copies of CONNOR so leave a comment to be entered. 

 

Cattle ranchers are notorious for hating sheep. The hero in my new book, Connor, Cupids & Cowboys Book 12, is no exception but doesn’t believe violence is the answer, and so, Connor sets about finding a solution.

There were many armed battles in western states, particularly Arizona, Wyoming, and Colorado, between cattlemen and sheepmen over grazing rights. Cattlemen saw the sheepherders as invaders who destroyed the public grazing lands, which they had to share on a first-come, first-served basis. Between 1870 and 1920, approximately 120 engagements occurred in eight different states or territories, resulting in the deaths of over 50 men and the slaughter of 50,000 to over 100,000 sheep.

 

One of the most famous cattlemen/sheepmen battles occurred in Pleasant Valley, Arizona, resulting in the near annihilation of the men of three families. In 1884, angry Arizona cattlemen rounded up wild horses, strapped cowbells to their necks, rawhide to their tails, and drove them into a series of sheep herds numbering more than 25,000, yelling and firing guns in the process. The sheep scattered in all directions, many killed or wounded. That same year, cowboys drove over 4,000 sheep into the Little Colorado River, many of which died in quicksand.

     

The sheep wars in Wyoming and Colorado were exceptionally violent and lasted well into the 1900s. Wyoming saw about twenty-four attacks and at least six deaths between 1879 and 1909. In Garfield County, Colorado, 3,800 sheep were driven over cliffs into Parachute Creek. About 1,500 more sheep were massacred there in the same year. In November 1899, forty masked men attacked a sheep camp located on the lower Snake River. Over 3,000 sheep were “clubbed and scattered,” the shepherds robbed, and their wagon burned.

In Wyoming, 1896, about 12,000 sheep were slaughtered in a single night by being driven off a cliff near North Rock Springs. In 1905, ten masked men attacked a sheep camp on Shell Creek in the Big Horn Basin. The cowboys clubbed about 4,000 sheep and burned the wagons with two live sheepdogs tied to the wheels. The owner of the flock lost about $40,000. Similar events took place up until about 1912.

Near Ten Sleep, Wyoming, three sheepherders were killed, along with many of their sheep and dogs. No one expected anything to come of it, but seven men were arrested, five of them sent to prison, and cattlemen became reluctant to attack sheepmen.

In Montana, where my story, Connor, Cupids & Cowboys Book 12, is set, similar proceedings took place, few as severe and deadly as those in other states.

According to Robert Elman, author of Badmen of the West, the sheep wars ended because of the decline of open rangeland and changes in ranching practices, which removed the causes for hostilities.

How did Connor resolve the cattle/sheep war in my story? Here’s an excerpt:

“Folks,” Connor began (addressing the members of the Cutthroat, Montana Stockgrowers Association), “this is Mr. Dean Rivers. He has a ranch near Hawksville where he raises cattle and sheep and kindly consented to tell us of his experiences. I hope you’ll do him the courtesy of listening as you would with any other speaker.”

Rivers cleared his throat. “As Connor said, I have a ranch about forty miles east of here. I know how you feel. That’s how I saw the matter at first. Never intended to raise sheep. It was my wife who went out and bought fifty of ’em and herded them home.” He chuckled. “We had quite a row about it, I can tell you. Before coming here tonight at Connor’s request, I sat down and calculated the monetary differences between raising sheep and cattle. The results surprised even me. I think they’ll come as a bit of a shock to you.”

Before continuing, he laid his hat on his chair and moved behind the podium. “Hope you don’t mind if I rest my weary bones on this here Bible stand.”

A few in the audience chuckled. The others sat stone-faced, determined not to listen.

“Now, these figures are only as accurate as my mathematics, which my old schoolteacher will tell you ain’t much.”

More laughter. Connor glanced around. The ranchers had settled down and appeared to like Dean Rivers. No doubt because of his friendly, down-home looks and manner of speaking.

“For the purposes of this here talk,” Rivers went on, “we’ll say an animal unit is a one-thousand-pound cow with a five-hundred-pound calf pulling on her teat. And we’ll say six sheep equal that cow. Now, my figures can differ somewhat with grass/forb ratios, terrain, and grazing management, but I’d call it whisker close. That cow and calf, or animal unit, should be worth about sixteen dollars. Am I right?”

Several men shouted, “Close.”

“All right. Now, those six sheep, or animal unit, should produce ten lambs worth three dollars and twenty cents apiece. That comes out to thirty-two dollars per animal unit compared to sixteen dollars for the cow and calf. See where I’m going here?”

Heads nodded.

“That’s a fairly noticeable difference,” Rivers said. “Should I lose a cow, I’m out sixteen dollars. If I lose a sheep, I’m out three-fifty. But we’re talking animal units, so losing those six sheep would cost me thirty-two dollars.

“There’re costs to raising these critters, of course.” Rivers continued. “Deworming, de-licing, de-ticking, salt, ear tags if you use ’em, hiring extra hands for roundup and branding. That’s just for cows. To herd a hundred cows, you need at least two hired hands on horseback. Three would be better. To bring in a hundred sheep, you send out a couple of sheepdogs. They don’t ask for wages, just a bone and a pat on the head. Try that with your hired hands.”

Some laughter broke out.

“We never make it through a season of handling cows without our share of physical injuries,” Rivers said. “Stomped-on toes, crushed ribs, broken arms. Had a hand once got his eye poked out by a steer’s horn. Ain’t had no injuries with sheep. Another thing; sheep’ll eat ‘most anything. Weeds, thistles, and plants poisonous to cows. Cows gotta have grass.”

“That’s the trouble,” someone yelled. “The damned sheep don’t leave nothing left for the cows to eat.”

Rivers held up a hand. “Not if you move them often enough. Just takes some monitoring. Plus, you can put your sheep higher up the mountain where not much grass grows, but there’s plenty of weeds. So far, I’ve had no problems with cows refusing to graze where sheep have been.”

“Aw, bull-cracky,” a man spat. “You genuinely expect us to believe that?”

Chatter broke out among the men, and several booed.

Rivers shrugged. “I’m only telling you my experiences, friend. You can believe what you want. When you get right down to the facts—and you can figger ’em yourself from what I’ve told you—three hundred cows will give you a profit of four thousand, eight hundred dollars at the end of the year.”

He waited a moment while murmurs of agreement and approval circulated through the audience.

“The same number of animal units in sheep,” he added with a pause, “will bring you nine-thousand, six hundred.”

A stunned silence followed.

Not all the ranchers were convinced, but enough to defuse the hostilities. The fact that Rosalina Camila Antonella DeLeon, the beautiful owner of the sheep in question, also spoke and won the ranchers’ respect helped. It also worked to move the romance between Connor and Rosalina along, and, after all, that’s what the book is truly about.

If you had been a sheepherder back then, would you have stayed and fought (possibly dying) or packed up and gone someplace else?

Leave a comment to get in the drawing for two copies of CONNOR!

About Charlene:

Charlene Raddon is an Amazon bestselling author with twenty-two western historical romance books to her credit. She never intended to become a writer, however. Charlene was an artist until she discovered romance novels and had a vivid dream that begged to be put into a book. So, she dragged out a typewriter and went to work. She’s been writing ever since. Her other interests are crocheting, genealogy, travel, Ukranian egg dying, and graphic design. Charlene has her own book cover website offering premade covers. She specializes in western historical covers.

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CREATING A MULTI-AUTHOR SERIES by Charlene Raddon

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When I got the idea for my Widows of Wildcat Ridge series, I had no idea what I was doing. The notion popped into my head; I became excited and jumped in with both feet. I think I left my head behind.

The first thing I did was contact a couple of writers I highly respected and ask them their opinions and if they’d be interested in joining me. They said yes. I wonder if they’re glad they did. At this point, we’re about to complete our second multi-author series.

That done, I did some research on locations. I wanted an isolated gold mining town in the mountains where I could destroy the mine and kill most of the miners. Had I seen Godless at the time? No, I didn’t know that TV series existed. Since I live in Utah, a state not often used in romance novels, that’s the location I chose. I avoided the Wasatch mountains where several mines had existed (think Park City and Alta; ski towns now). I decided to set the series In a mountain range a little farther south, the Manti-La Sals. I picked a spot for my mine to sit, with the town nearby. I wrote to several good authors to invite them to join in, and most accepted—a thrilling surprise.

I researched the flora and fauna of the area, which I already knew, but double-checked my facts. I shared this information with the authors, and, with their fertile minds, they quickly came up with ideas. And we were off and running.

Unfortunately, we soon ran into difficulties. What happened to destroy the mine and kill most of the miners? More research. The deeper I dug, the more problems I encountered. The main roadblock was the fact that there had never been a gold mine in those mountains. There were coal mines, and one had suffered a devastating explosion. Two hundred miners killed. Only a ghost town remains.

I decided to base the series there. It didn’t work. Too many differences between coal mining and gold mining. And other problems. So, I kicked the Manti-La Sals into the round bin and went back to work. I settled on the Unita mountain range, where a gold mine had existed in the 1800s. Not only that, but the Spaniards had established mines in the area in the 1600s. Mines no one’s ever found.

We opened our town, destroyed our mine, producing lots of widows to feature in our stories. Our next dilemma? Learning to share, communicate, and weave all our tales together. Now, that was phenomenally painstaking.

You see, we wanted a town and stories that blended, clashed, and intermingled.

We succeeded.

By “we” I mean myself and the other nine authors in the series: Pam Crooks, Caroline Clemmons, Zina Abbott, Christine Sterling, Kit Morgan, Linda Carroll-Bradd, Tracy Garrett, and Kristy McCaffrey. Some of us did more than one book, producing a total of sixteen.

We had maps of the area and town. We had lists of flora and fauna. Weather, travel routes and modes, what towns and cities existed at the time, what Native Americans lived in the territory? At first, we posted our research data on DropBox, but not everyone liked DropBox, so we switched to Google Docs. We formed a Facebook page for the series open to readers and another for the authors to communicate among ourselves. Believe me, tons of emails and posts went back and forth. So many that some of us thought we’d go crazy trying to keep up with everything. Three authors dropped out and were replaced. Our lives breathed, ate, slept, and dreamed of this series from the summer of 2019 to May 2020.  

To achieve our goal, we had to read each story published. We had to keep charts of characters, names, dates, characteristics, minor characters, plots, premises, and on and on. Trying to meld our stories together wasn’t easy. Inevitably, someone used a character from someone else’s story and accidentally gave them the wrong color hair or name. A nightmare in the making. The decisions to be made seemed endless. How often should we publish? What promotions should we do? Who should handle what? You might call the series a co-op.

Then there were the covers, all of which I created, according to the wishes and descriptions of the authors. We made memes for announcements and promos. We arranged launch parties. We worked, and we worked hard.

Despite all that (or because of it), the Widows of Wildcat Ridge (not the first name we came up with) proved a huge success.

I told my friends, if I ever mentioned starting a new series, to shoot me. Amazingly, they didn’t. Nor did I shoot myself. I endured and my fantastic authors along with me. I have come to love each of them.

As you know, in June 2020, we did start another series, just not an interconnected one. The idea for Bachelors & Babies bounced around in my head for a few years. I decided that when Widows of Wildcat Ridge ended, that’s what I would write. It would be a trilogy about three brothers who ran a Montana ranch together and a girl who arrives on their doorstep one night, pregnant and terrified. The more I thought about it, the more I realized what a good series it would make, and so, I jumped into the fire again, taking most of my fellow authors with me.

Those of you familiar with Bachelors & Babies will know how well that series has done. Will I ever do another one? Well, maybe. Keep watching and find out.

And if any of you get any notions about doing your own interconnected series, give me a ring. I might be able to save you a few headaches.

Today I’ll give away a free ebook of Priscilla, book 1 of Widows of Wildcat Ridge, and an audio copy of Barclay, Bachelors and Babies book 4. Be sure to leave a comment!
 

ABOUT CHARLENE:  Charlene Raddon fell in love with the wild west as a child, listening to western music with her dad and sitting in his lap while he read Zane Gray books. She never intended to become a writer. Charlene was an artist. She majored in fine art in college.

In 1971, she moved to Utah, excited for the opportunity to paint landscapes. Then her sister introduced her to romance novels. She never picked up a paintbrush again. One morning she awoke to a vivid dream she knew must go into a book, so she took out a typewriter and began writing. She’s been writing ever since.

Instead of painting pictures with a brush, Charlene uses words.

 

Char’s Links:

https://twitter.com/craddon http://www.facebook.com/charlene.b.raddon http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1232154.Charlene_Raddon

https://www.bookbub.com/profile/charlene-raddon

https://www.pinterest.com/charraddon5080/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlene-raddon-00854629/

https://www.instagram.com/charrad75/

 

Charlene Raddon: Were Those Really the Good Old Days?

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We’re so happy to have Miss Charlene Raddon back visiting with us. She’s brought an interesting subject to talk about in addition to a giveaway at the bottom. Take us away, Charlene.

Thank you for having me. I’m so happy to be back. My image of a typical 19th-century family sitting down to supper used to include a table laden with healthy, wholesome, homemade foods. To a shocking degree, the truth is the opposite. Contamination was rife, even among foods prepared at home, on the farm or ranch. Few people understood germs, bacteria and E. coli. Foreign substances and chemicals tainted foods. By the 1840s, home-baked bread had supposedly died out among the rural poor. I find this hard to believe. But it is true that people living in small urban tenements, typically unequipped with ovens, bought their bread when they could afford it.

In 1872, Dr. Hassall, the primary health reformer and a pioneer investigator into food adulteration, demonstrated that half of the bread he examined had considerable quantities of alum. Alum lowers the nutritional value of foods by inhibiting the digestion. The list of poisonous additives from that time reads like the stock list of a wicked chemist: strychnine, cocculus inculus (both hallucinogens), and copperas in rum and beer; sulphate of copper in pickles, bottled fruit, wine, and preserves; lead chromate in mustard and snuff; sulphate of iron in tea and beer; ferric ferrocynanide, lime sulphate, and turmeric in Chinese tea; copper carbonate, lead sulphate, bisulphate of mercury, and Venetian lead in sugar confectionery and chocolate; lead in wine and cider. All were extensively used and accumulative in effect, meaning that, over a long period, in chronic gastritis, and, indeed, often fatal food poisoning.

                               

Dairies watered down their milk then added chalk to put back the color. Butter, bread, and gin often had copper added to heighten the color. In London, where ice cream was called “hokey-pockey,” tested examples proved to contain cocci, bacilli, torulae, cotton fiber, lice, bed bugs, bug’s legs, fleas, straw, human hair, cat and dog hair. Such befouled ice cream caused diphtheria, scarlet fever, diarrhea, and enteric fever. Meat purchased from butchers often came from diseased animals.

A significant cause of infant mortality was the widespread practice of giving children narcotics, especially opium, to keep them quiet. Laudanum was cheap—about the price of a pint of beer—and its sale was unregulated until late in the century. The use of opium was widespread both in town and country. In Manchester, England, five out of six working-class families used the drug habitually. One druggist admitted to selling a half-gallon of a very popular cordial, which contained opium, treacle, water, and spices, as well as five to six gallons of a substance euphemistically called “quietness” every week. Another druggist admitted to selling four hundred gallons of laudanum annually. Anyone addicted to drugs like that, should immediately contact drug rehabs near gainesville and seek their help.  At mid-century at least ten proprietary brands, with Godfrey’s Cordial, Steedman’s Powder, and the grandly named Atkinson’s Royal Infants Preservative among the most popular, were available in pharmacies everywhere. Opium in pills and penny sticks was widely sold and opium-taking in some areas was described as a way of life. Doctors reported that infants were wasted from it—’shrunk up into little old men,’ ‘wizened like little monkeys’. The nashville addiction center can help the ones that are addicted to substance just to function everyday.

And what was the fate of those wizened little monkeys? Chances are the worst of them grew up in a “sanitorium” or an asylum for the mad. After all, we can’t have rich Aunt Matilda or the preacher’s wife seeing such a child. Or the child might be put in the attic to be raised by Grandma, who’s not quite right in the head.

Kept in a drugged state much of the time, infants generally refused to eat and therefore starved.  Rather than record a baby’s death as being from severe malnutrition, coroners often listed ‘debility from birth,’ or ‘lack of breast milk,’ as the cause. Addicts were diagnosed as having alcoholic inebriety, morphine inebriety, along with an endless list of man dypsomania, opiomania, morphinomania, chloralomania, etheromania, chlorodynomania, and even chloroformomania; and – isms such as cocainism and morphinism. It wasn’t until WWI that the term “addiction” came into favor.

In the beginning, opium was considered a medical miracle used as the essential ingredient in many remedies dispensed in Europe and America for the treatment of diarrhea, dysentery, asthma, rheumatism, diabetes, malaria, cholera, fevers, bronchitis, insomnia, and pains of any sort.

One must remember that at this time, the physician’s cabinet was almost bare of alternative drugs, and a doctor could hardly practice medicine without it. A great many respectable people imbibed narcotics and alcohol in the form of patent medicines and even soft drinks. Coca Cola got its name because it originally contained a minute amount of cocaine, thought to be a healthy stimulant. A shocking number of “teetotaling” women relied on daily doses of tonics that, unknown to them, contained as much alcohol as whiskey or gin. Of course, it was no secret that men imbibed alcohol at alarming rates, and alcoholism was rampant. The result was a happy but less than healthy population.

 

 

I used this in my mail-order bride story, Forever Mine. The hero’s shrew of a wife had diabetes and treated it by drinking a tonic that promised to cure everything. It didn’t. In my book, Taming Jenna, the heroine’s missing father fell victim to dipsomania and was saved by the hero’s determination and kindness. In Thalia, Book 7 of the Widows of Wildcat Ridge Series, my heroine is in love with the town’s newspaper owner. Unfortunately, he suffers from dipsomania. It doesn’t faze Thalia though. She loves him anyway.

Is it any wonder the nineteenth century became known as “the good old days”?

What are your thoughts on this? Would you have drank Coca Cola if you knew it had cocaine in it? I’m giving away a $5 Amazon gift card plus a copy of one of these books—Forever Mine, Taming Jenna, or Thalia—to one person who comments. The drawing will be Sunday.

 

Charlene Raddon is an Amazon bestselling author of sixteen historical romance novels set in the American West. Originally published in 1994 by Kensington Books, she is now an Indie author. Charlene also designs book covers, specializing in western historical. You can find her covers at https://silversagebookcovers.com

http://www.charleneraddon.com

http://www.facebook.com/charleneraddon

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/charlene-raddon

Creating a Multi-Author, Interrelated Series is Easy…Right?

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This weekend we have Bestselling Author Charlene Raddon visiting. She’s heavily involved in writing big series’ with many authors and has become quite a pro at it. She’s just finishing up The Widows of Wildcat Ridge. So what’s next? Maybe you can ask her. Please give her a big welcome.

How many of you have followed the series, The Widows of Wildcat Ridge? For those who haven’t, this series consisted of sixteen novellas about the widows left behind after an explosion decimated the Gold King Mine in Wildcat Ridge, Utah Territory, 1884. Virtually every miner died. A second explosion killed many townspeople who had rushed in to try to save them. When it was over, the town of about five hundred residents had been reduced to almost 50 widows, their children and a few men.

If you think my series sounds similar to the film series, Godless, I’ll take that as a compliment because Godless was an excellent production. Had I seen it before coming up with my idea, the Widows of Wildcat Ridge would likely never have existed. No matter. The series did exist and has been extremely successful.

But now it has come to an end. The sixteenth, and final, book of the series came out on May 15.

Ophelia, book 16, was my fourth book in the series. Each was fun to write with different characters and challenges. All the stories in the series were interrelated, meaning that each likely contained or at least mentioned some events and characters from previous releases. This made the work much more difficult, confusing and problematic. But also more fun.

Each widow suddenly found herself alone, some with dependent children, no mate, no funds or income, and little hope. What did they do? They gathered together, sharing supplies and joining forces to bringing their town back to life and produce incomes for themselves and their families. They held a horse auction to bring in people, particularly marriageable men. They turned a nearby hot spring into a 19th century version of a spa.

They didn’t sit home and bawl. They dug in their heels and did what they must to survive. True pioneers, every one of them, and each had to deal with the series villain, Mortimer Crane, who owned the town (or believed he did), plus other antagonists unique to each tale.

In my first book of the series, Priscilla, Book 1, the minister’s daughter, who lost her husband and father in the second explosion, takes the town leaders to see a hot springs she had recently found. She comes home to find an unconscious man bleeding all over her bed from a gunshot wound. Braxton Gamble had been tricked into taking part in a bank robbery. Because he’d escaped—with the stolen funds—the outlaws are after him.

My second book, Thalia, Book 7, centers around Thalia’s long-time crush on Dinky Moon, the town drunk. Sobering him up and keeping him that way presents quite a challenge, but she handles it, along with a stranger who comes there believing she has something belonging to him.

In Cadence, Book 13, the series villain, Mortimer Crane, proves himself as evil as everyone believed him to be. On finding a young woman in dire straits, with a little sister in tow, he hires Cadence as a maid and brings her to Wildcat Ridge. Once there, she discovers the establishment she’s to work at is a bordello and her new employer wants more from her than her talent with a dust cloth. To keep her there, he takes her little sister away and refuses to tell where.

Finally, we have Ophelia, Book 16, the last of the series.

Ophelia was Mortimer Crane’s wife. After twenty years of a so-so marriage, she learns just who she had married—a letch, a liar, and a cheat. She also learns something else that gives her the key to controlling him. So, she leaves the house in Salt Lake City Mortimer had installed her in to keep her out of his affairs, moves to Wildcat Ridge, and sets about starting a new life. On her first day in town, she comes face to face with a man from her past, one she had loved with all her heart. Together, she and Brody Duvall must find a way to defeat Mortimer. Can they do it?

Creating this series was a huge project that could never have taken place without the wonderful authors who joined me in this endeavor: Caroline Clemmons, Zina Abbott, Linda Carroll-Bradd, Pam Crooks, Kit Morgan, Christine Sterling, Tracey Garrett, and Kristy McCaffrey. I’ve made new friends, not only my fellow authors, but many fantastic readers who helped to make the series a success.

And I learned a ton! About working with other authors and managing a big multi-author series. A quarter of the way through, I told my non-involved friends to shoot me if I ever said I was doing another one. These days, I’m keeping one eye on my back trail.

If I had this project to do over again, I’d make sure it was all laid out, all the decisions made, before ever inviting authors to join in. We’d have online meetings to decide further details and have one uninvolved person read each book, create a book Bible for them, and keep track of who did what when to avoid conflicting information in the stories. When did that horse auction take place? What was the marshal’s name? Has anyone named the owner of the bakery? What businesses exist in this town? Are they open or closed? Details, details, details. So much to keep track of.

Ah, but it’s done now, and every story is a gem.

If any of you consider the idea of starting your own multi-author, interconnected series, contact me. I might be able to save you some time.

As for the future, keep your eyes and ears open because even though the Widows of Wildcat Ridge is finished, some of its authors are not.

Here’s every book in the series on Amazon!

#kindleunlimited

Are you a big fan of these continuing series involving multiple authors? I’d like to hear your answers. I’m giving away two $5 Amazon gift cards so leave a comment to enter.

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Charlene Raddon is an Amazon bestselling author with fourteen western historical romance novels to her credit. Her books have won contests and awards. She is also a book cover artist who specializes in historical covers and lives in Utah with her husband and the most neurotic cat ever.

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Charlene Raddon’s Winners!

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Big congratulations to . . .

Connie Saunders

and

Deanne Patterson

Connie won a copy of Charlene’s upcoming novel, Priscilla, and Deanne won her choice of one book from Charlene’s back list.

Woohoo!

You ladies are going to be spending some quality book time in the old west.

Welcome Guest – Charlene Raddon!!!

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Placer Mining

Gold is found in tough clay. To dissolve the clay the miner fills a pan made of sheet-iron or tinned iron, with a flat bottom about a foot in diameter, and sides six inches high, inclining outwards at an angle of thirty or forty degrees. At a river bank, he squats down, puts his pan under water, and shakes it horizontally. Once the mass is thoroughly soaked, he picks out the larger stones, mashes up the largest and toughest lumps of clay, and again shakes his pan. When all the dirt appears to be dissolved, allowing the heavier gold to move to the bottom, he tilts up the pan a little to let the thin mud and light sand run out, until he has washed out all except the metal, which remains in the pan.

The arrastra, a Mexican contrivance, rude, but effective, was used in the early days to pulverize the ore. Winnowing, or “drywashing” was also practiced by the Mexicans where the ore was found too far away from a sufficient supply of water to make any other practice possible. The wind bears away the dust and light particles of earth, and leaves the gold dust, which is heavier.

The rocker resembles a child’s cradle. On the upper end is a riddle, made with a bottom of sheet-iron punched with holes. This is filled with pay dirt and rocked with one hand, while, with a dipper, the miner pours water into the riddle with the other. Being agitated, the liquid dissolves the clay and carries it down with the gold into the floor of the rocker, where the metal is caught by traverse riffles, or cleats. The mud, water, and sand run off at the lower end of the rocker, which is left open. The riddle can be removed, allowing the miner to throw out the larger stones mixed with the clay.

The chief want of the placer miner was an abundant, convenient supply of water not always readily available. One resolution was an artificial channel about two miles long. After eight years, six thousand miles of mining canals supplied water to all the principal placer districts of Nevada and furnished the means for obtaining the greater portion of the gold yield.

Where the surface of the ground furnished the proper grade, a ditch was dug. Where it did not, flumes were built of wood, sustained in the air by framework that rose sometimes to a height of three hundred feet in crossing deep ravines, and extending for miles at an elevation of 100-200 feet. Aqueducts of wood, and pipes of iron, were suspended upon cables of wire, or sustained on bridges of wood; and inverted siphons carried water up the sides of one hill by the heavier pressure from the higher side of another.

In Nevada, a total length of 6,000 miles of canals and flumes were created. The largest mine, the Eureka, had 205 miles of ditches, constructed at a cost of $900,000. As placers were gradually exhausted, the demand for water and the profits of ditch companies decreased. Flumes, blown down by severe storms, carried away by floods, or destroyed by the decay of the wood, were not repaired.

The sluice was a broad trough from 100-1000 feet long, with transverse cleats at the lower end to catch the gold. With a descent of one foot in twenty, the water rushes through it like a torrent, bearing down large stones, and tearing the lumps of clay to pieces. The miners had little to do save throw in the dirt and take out the gold.

In Hydraulic mining a stream of water is directed under heavy pressure against a bank or hillside, tearing the earth down and carrying it into the sluice to be washed. The force of a stream of water rushing through a two-inch pipe, under a pressure of two hundred feet perpendicular caused hills to crumble as if piles of cloud blown away by a breath of wind. When dried by months of constant heat and drought, the clay becomes so hard, not even the hydraulic stream, with all its

momentum, could steadily dissolve it. Often the miner would cut a tunnel into the heart of his claim, and blast the clay loose with powder, so that it yielded more readily to the action of water.

The erection of a long sluice, the cutting of drains (often necessary to carry off the tailings), and the purchase of water from the ditch company, required capital; and the manner of clearing up rendered it impossible for workers to steal much of the gold. Thus, the custom of hiring miners for wages became common in placer diggings.

Even today, men continue to search for gold and some manage to find enough to keep them going. Others give up and return home. I found gold once, at Knotts Berry Farm in California. I was eight years old. I wish I still had that miniscule vial of gold flakes, but it was lost long ago.

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Priscilla is Book 1 in The Widows of Wildcat Ridge Series. It is on preorder now and will be released on 9/15. There will be 17 books (or more) released the first and fifteenth of each month. Book 2, Blessing, by Caroline Clemmons is also up for preorder. There are ten authors: Charlene Raddon, Caroline Clemmons, Zina Abbot, Tracy Garrett, Christine Sterling, Linda Carroll-Bradd, Pam Crooks, Kit Morgan, Margaret Tanner, and Kristy McCaffrey. The series is about a Utah gold mining town in which the mine has been destroyed, killing off most of the men and leaving the women and children destitute and at the mercy of a greedy mine owner who also owns the town. To save their town they must remarry. Forty-six strong, determined women set out to save their town and find love at the same time.

After losing her father and husband in a mine disaster, Priscilla Heartsel faces poverty and eviction from her home by a heartless mine owner. Tricked into a bank robbery gone wrong, Braxton Gamble finds himself shot and unconscious in Priscilla’s bed. Can they survive long enough to find a love more precious than gold?

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Charlene will be giving away two e-books.
One will a be copy of her brand new release – Priscilla (delivered 9/15).
Another will be the winner’s choice of any of her backlist titles.
You can find all of her books listed on her website here.
Leave a comment for a chance to win!