Prologue

D’Hannis, Alsace

1729

Death to Jews, she read. Death to all Huguenots!

Eight-year-old Rachel Levin felt her ire bubbling up from deep inside. Merely glancing at the sign nailed to the side of a building up ahead disturbed her. Actually reading the words printed on it in black letters made her want to shout in protest. But Papa would be angry if she did.

The wind suddenly picked up, causing her long blue dress to gather in a tangle of wool material around her ankles. Briefly, she lifted her skirt and let it drop. Most of the wrinkles disappeared.

She shifted the gray sack filled with the items she’d bought at the store from her right arm to her left. The odor of fresh bread and cheeses mingled with the delicate scent of grapes coming from the wine fields on the hills nearby.

She continued down the street as if nothing unusual had happened. Contrary to her internal thoughts, her controlled response to distress was something she’d learned almost before she could walk. It had been handed down from father to child for generations.

Her Jewish ancestors had left country after country, searching for a place to live where they would be safe. They had been taunted and persecuted. She battled her secret fear of the unknown almost daily, but like those who had gone before her, she had no intentions of letting others know the way she really felt or giving up.

Jew. Death. Was there somewhere in the world where Rachel and her parents could live in peace? If such a place existed and she ever found it, she would stay there forever.

Rachel turned the corner and saw a boy about her age. He’d taunted her several times, and now he stood in her path just ahead. She sucked in her breath.

“All beasts are the same,” her father had said. “Whether animal or the human kind, never run from a beast. Never show fear or look them in the eyes. Stand your ground, always, and continue on.”

Hands on his hips, the boy wore a tan cap, dark trousers and a dark shirt. Rachel could turn around and avoid a confrontation.

I will not walk away.

Beyond the boy, she could see the little white house she shared with her parents with its green shutters and window boxes crammed with flowers under every window. If she could grow wings and fly there, she would.

“Your kind are not wanted here,” the boy shouted in French.

Her heart pounded. Learning new languages had always been easy for Rachel. Besides her native tongue, German, she’d learned a little French from her father, enough to play with her friend, Marie. And enough to understand the boy’s words as well as his harsh tone of voice. But she couldn’t make a proper reply in French if she’d wanted to.

Something hard lodged in her throat. Rachel swallowed. If only she could know what would happen when she reached the boy. But Papa and Mama would expect her to continue on. She looked slightly above his head and kept moving forward.

Her breath caught. She’d almost reached him—so close she saw that dark brown strands of hair had slipped out from under his cap. His eyes reminded her of black cinders found among the ashes that remained after a wood-burning fire in the hearth had died. If she didn’t turn now, she would run right into him.

She took in a deep breath of air. One more step and they would bump heads.

He stepped to one side at the last instant. Then he spat on her cheek as she walked by. “Take a bath in that, you dirty little Jewess. It is more than your kind deserves.”

The disgusting liquid rolled down her cheek—all the way to her heart. She felt the wet remains when it landed on the shoulder of her new blue dress.

Her jaw firmed again, and a wave of revulsion swept over her. She wanted to turn around and spit back, yet she kept walking down the path as if nothing important had occurred. Rachel reached the stone steps leading to the front porch in the same even gait she had started out with when she left the store.

As soon as she went inside the house, she put down the sack and turned to the bowl and pitcher by the front door. She felt like crying as she washed her face, but no tears came. Her well of sorrows dried up long ago. Only bad dreams remained.

“Come up stairs, Rachel,” Mama said in German, “I want to talk to you.”

“I am coming, Mama.”

She washed her face again. She must never tell Mama what happened on the path today. It would make her cry, and her mother had cried too much of late.

Papa made his living making and selling barrels—as well as being a scholar, a teacher, and a historian. Besides French, he’d taught her a little English and Hebrew. In return, he expected her to be strong, work hard, and help Mama in any way she could.

Rachel took the cloth from the hook by the door and patted her face dry. Still, she felt dirty, as if a layer of filth stuck to her skin. She put the cloth back on the hook and turned toward the stairs.

If only she could change out of the contaminated blue dress before going in to speak to Mama. No time for that now.

How many times had she heard Mama compliment her in front of Papa?

“Rachel is a sweet and gentle child, Amos,” Mama would say, “and she cheers me up when I am low. Sometimes, she makes me laugh out loud.”

And Papa would say to Mama, “I am proud of our daughter, too. Rachel is a good and brave girl and always does what is expected of her.”

But she was neither sweet and gentle nor good and brave. She was Rachel, a girl trying to find a safe place where she could just be.

For now, she wouldn’t think about the boy or what he said or did to her. She must be strong—for Papa.

Mama was ill. She must think only of Mama when she went up to see her, and she must smile. That way, Mama would never guess what happened on the road today.

Chapter One

Benoit, France

Eleven years later

“You do as you wish, Louis,” Pierre Dupre said to his brother. “But after the long walk from Paris, I want to stop and rest before going home. Mama and Henri will want to hear all about our journey, and I would like to get some sleep before I start telling our little brother tales of our adventures.”

“Could it be that my big brother is tired?” Louis asked with a twinkle in his eye.

“Yes.” Pierre yawned. “I admit it.” He stretched his tired muscles and yawned again.

Louis threw back his head and laughed. “Sleep if you want. I intend to pay Rachel’s parents a visit before going home. I plan to ask their permission to marry her.”

“Is it not a bit late to be making such a request? We sail in two weeks and you said you would marry Rachel aboard ship, yet you barely know her parents. They might resent the fact that you failed to step forward with your proposal sooner.”

“I will ask their forgiveness for the delay, of course. And I will also encourage them to sail to England with us. I fear Rachel will refuse to go at the last minute if we leave her mother and father behind.”

“Rachel is strong-willed and unpredictable,” Pierre said. “And she is always jumping to conclusions. However, she is also a good and faithful daughter. Were I wearing your shoes, Louis, I would have fears as well.”

They stood in front of the small stone cottage where Rachel and her parents lived. They hadn’t slept much since heading home. On the previous night, they seldom stopped to rest.

Pierre doubted that Rachel’s parents would welcome his brother into their home after they discovered why he came, and he had no desire to hear her mother and father scold Louis for his tardiness.

Pierre noticed a large tree surrounded by bushes a short distance away. “I will wait for you under that tree. It will be cool and shady there.”

“As you wish.” Louis smiled. “And sleep well, brother. I will not be long.”

Pierre watched Louis walk up to the front door of the cottage and knock. He found a grassy spot under the tree. With his brown jacket as a pillow, he stretched out and went to sleep.

Pierre awoke to the rumble of horses’ hooves and men shouting. He crawled on his belly to a bushy area near the edge of the tall grass.

A young captain in the king’s army kicked down the door of Rachel’s house. Soldiers swarmed inside.

He’d defended his younger brother for as long as he could remember and often fought his battles for him. But he saw at least thirty armed men and he with no weapons. Pierre wanted to hang his head in shame because he couldn’t do anything to help.

“Please, we are innocent!” he heard Louis shout out from inside the house.

Shattered, Pierre covered his mouth with his hands to keep from calling out in anger and despair.

“No!” he heard Rachel’s mother say. “Have mercy! Please!”

Tears filled the corners of his eyes as Pierre heard more shouting, screams, and then silence.

“No. No!”

“Take the trunk outside!” the captain shouted to his men.

As they dragged a trunk out the front door of the house, the captain stood on the lawn outside. Sunlight glinted on the metal buckle of his jacket. The shiny object mesmerized a shocked Pierre as the other soldiers brought out furniture, clothes, and other items.

A thin soldier came out wearing a blue dress that must have belonged to Rachel’s mother. He paraded around in it, swinging his hips and making distasteful gestures. Laughter echoed all around the soldier in the dress.

Pierre fought nausea.

The captain opened the trunk, spilling its contents on the ground. Letters and papers blew here and there. The captain picked up a candlestick. The metal caught the afternoon sun, sparkling brighter than the buckle. From a distance, Pierre couldn’t tell for sure but thought it might have been made of gold.

The expensive-looking object would hold half a dozen candles or more. He’d never seen a design quite like it.

The captain waved the candlestick in the air for all to see. “This is a Menorah and can only belong to a Jew. It proves the people who lived in that house were Jews!”

The rest of the men gathered around the captain, looking at the candlestick. When they tried to touch it, the captain jerked it out of their reach.

“Two Huguenots from this village conspired against the government of France. We only found one. We must find the other man and the rest of the Jews and kill them.” The captain raised the Menorah in the air as though it were a kind of battle flag. “I shall not rest until the deed is done! Now, gather up all the papers and anything else you think I might want later.”

As the soldiers began doing as they were told, the captain leaned over and picked up something from the ground. Pierre thought it looked about the size and shape of a small wooden frame.

The captain pulled a white cloth from his pocket, wiped off the object, gazed at it for a long moment and tucked it inside his jacket. “Burn this house to the ground,” the captain demanded, “as a warning to all Jews and Huguenots!” 

Techniques of the Selling Writer is a book by Dwight V. Swain and published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Most of the lessons in this series came from information found in Techniques of the Selling Writer. The textbook was probably written for advanced writers. However, I think it would be helpful to anyone interested in learning to write fiction.  

The lessons I am teaching were designed for beginners who want to learn how to write popular fiction. By popular fiction, I mean stories that are plot driven like mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, romance novels, westerns, historical novels and some women’s fiction. However, these lessons won’t be of much help if you plan to write character driven novels where plot is less important.    

Each lesson will contain a homework assignment. In lesson one each student should bring a book of fiction to class that can be written in because we will be making notes in the margins. 

So, let’s begin.  

Molly Noble Bull

www.mollynoblebull.com     

                              Lesson One: Writing Via Dwight V. Swain  

Questions and Answers     

1.   What is a story?               

Dwight V. Swain says a story is never about anything.  Instead, it is someone’s reaction to what happened.  A story is how someone deals with  danger.                                         

2.   What is danger?                     

In fiction, Swain calls danger change.  When any given situation is altered, the results are a different situation.                      

Example: 

At the beginning of Gone With The Wind, Scarlet had Tara, her land.  She thought she also had Ashley.  But her situation changed, giving her the goal of trying to get back both Tara and Ashley.  Events changed her situation, causing her to develop new goals.     

3.   Why do readers read popular fiction?                     

Swain claims that readers read popular fiction because it creates a pleasurable state of tension and escape for them.     

4.   What is reader tension?        

He says that in popular fiction reader tension is the desire to know, immediately, what will happen next to the characters in the story.     

5.   What is a hook?          

Here is Swain’s definition. A hook is a writing device designed to catch, hold, sustain or pull the reader along from sentence one to the end of the story or book.               

6.   Why is a beginning hook important in fiction?              

Readers want to keep on reading books that begin with a reader hook because it keeps them interested.               

      1.      Example (Strong hook based on an event) 

            For several minutes he’d been watching her, standing there on the high bridge.  Suddenly, she just leaned forward and jumped off into the icy water.     

       2.  Example (Hook based on dialogue)                         

           “Why did you lie to me, Sally?” Tom demanded.                

        3.  Example (Weak hook based on setting)  

              To the east, the sun pushed its way from behind the rocky mountain, dusting the dawn with orange paint. A chilling wind, whistling down the valley below, didn’t seem to notice.                                                     

7.   What is a plot?         

A plot is the skeleton of a piece of fiction.  

8.  What is conflict?   

In fiction there are always two opposing sides.  The two sides war against each other. This results in conflict for the characters in that story.  In a short story, those two sides could be something as simple as Tommy’s wishes as opposed to his mother’s rules.  In a novel, conflict could be described as the good guys on one side and the bad guys on the other.   

 9.   How is conflict related to fiction goals?  

Each of those opposing sides just mentioned have conflicting goals.  For example, the Jones family own land, and their goal is to keep their land.  The Browns want the land belonging to the Jones family, and their goal is to take the land away from the Jones family.   

10.  What is meant by a story’s major conflict?   

In fiction, there are often many problems and conflicts, but there is only one major conflict.  The major conflict is the one, big problem the two sides are really fighting over. Land was the major conflict between the two families above.  

11.  How should the reader be informed of the fiction goals mentioned above?              

In fiction, the opposing goals of the two sides should be stated clearing in the manuscript by the main character either in the dialogue, thoughts or in the narrative.  

12.  What is the difference between a character’s stated goal and a character’s true goal?  

A stated goal is what a particular character says that he or she wants.  A true goal is what a particular character really wants.  The two goals may not always be the same.           

       Example:  Scarlet’s true goal in Gone With The Wind was to keep her plantation, Tara.  To Scarlet, Tara represented love and security.  However, at first she said she wanted Ashley.                                       

                                        EXTRA LESSON # 1                                

         HOW TO WRITE A CHAPTER BY CHAPTER OUTLINE     

I asked you to bring a novel to class that you can write notes in.  Please read the first part of that novel now or as homework.  The novel you brought is a tool we will use to teach you how to write a chapter by chapter book outline.  There are other uses of the novel as well, but we won’t discuss that now.     

What I would like for you to do after you have read the first chapter is to write a paragraph telling what happened in chapter one of the novel you brought.  Your next assignment will be to read chapter two of your novel and write another paragraph, telling what happened in chapter two.  When you have written a paragraph for every chapter in the novel, you will begin to know what must go into a chapter by chapter outline of a novel.  And you will learn other things about fiction writing as well.   Be sure to include the setting and the names of the main characters in the paragraph you write for chapter one.  Chapters two and on should be shorter and less detailed. 

Below is an example of a paragraph I wrote for chapter one of a book I started reading by Christian author Irene Brand.  Please use the format I used in writing yours.   

                                            A Groom To Come Home To 

                                                      by Irene Brand     

Chapter One:    

Beth Warner and Clark Randolph grew up in the hills of Kentucky, and the Warner and Randolph families have been fussing and fighting back and forth for generations.  The parents of Beth and Clark would have forbidden them from dating back in high school if they had known about their secret romance.  Now Beth, a nurse, has returned to the hills after many years, and she still cares for Clark.  However, she has no idea how he feels about her.  What will she do if she runs into him?   

Chapter Two:   

*##  

My long historical Christian novel, The Winter Pearl, came out in mass market paperback on February 1st and is available now in stores like Wal Mart, Barnes and Noble and Borders.  Around the first of March, The Winter Pearl will be taken from the shelves to make room for newer novels, but it can still be ordered from bookstores, at Amazon, Barnes and Noble online and at my website.  www.mollynoblebull.com   

I write under my own name, Molly Noble Bull. 

Blessings, 

Molly     

Beauty for Ashes is the story of Elizabeth Frazier, a young girl who flees her stately home in New York City to prevent an arranged marriage to an evil brute of a man. Though Elizabeth had prayed that God would provide her with a means of escape, she never realized He actually answered prayers — until the Lord had a hand in helping her take the place of another young woman.

The girl had promised to marry Justin Randolph,  a handsome but broken young man that she had never met. Unknown to Justin, when the girl missed their scheduled first meeting, Elizabeth stepped in and took her place and on the very day she ran away from home.  

The marriage of convenience between Elizabeth and Justin seemed doomed from day one.  How could two attractive and deeply wounded people who had lost the ability to trust and to love hope to make such a union work? 

Pride prevented Elizabeth and Justin from seeing God’s plan for their lives – until beauty replaced ashes. And fear was drowned in love. 

Buy and read this one, folks. It’s a keeper. 

Molly Noble Bull  www.mollynoblebull.com  

The Winter Pearl, my long historical novel from Steeple Hill, is coming out in mass market paperback on February 1, 2007.  If you see copies of The Winter Pearl at your local Wal Mart, Barnes and Noble, Borders or wherever, please let me know.

Blessings,

Molly

www.mollynoblebull.com    

 Wa

I don’t have anything written there yet, but I will as soon as I learn more about the art of blogging.

My website is www.mollynoblebull.com Please visit my website, scroll down and click Molly’s Books. When you do, you will see the cover of my upcoming Tsaba House long historical novel, Sanctuary, about the Huguenots. I’ll give you a hint. My cover is beautiful.

If you click Molly’s Family, you can see what I look like. If you click Molly, you can read my testimony, and click Molly’s Notes to learn even more. Until next time.

Thanks for visiting!

Blessings,

Molly Noble Bull