Why I Love Slang by Gabriele Wills

Slang and colloquialisms help to define an era. What’s “cool” today was “far out” in the 1950s, “the bee’s knees” in the 1920s, and “swell” in the 1900s. “Cool” actually originated in about 1933, but seems so modern that I wonder if readers would consider it an anachronism if it were used in a novel set during that time.

Of course, a lot of slang is in common usage for more than a decade or two.  Although we might think these more contemporary than pre-WW1, expressions such as “not on your life”, “frigging”, “necking”, and “boyfriend” were already in use at that time, but “teenager” has only been around since the ‘30s.

You could have “given someone a piece of your mind” back in 1861, or “pi-jawed” them after 1891. It’s the delightful and mostly obsolete expressions like the latter that add a sense of historical place to novels. Something good is surely more fun when it’s “crackerjack”. A “top-hole” “chap” is the best kind of friend, and can also be called a “stout fellow”, or a “jolly”, “howling”, or “cracking” “good egg”.

A “flapper” who is too much of a “vamp” will have other girls “casting kittens” if she’s “canoodling” with all the “deevie”  “fly boys” or the “natty” “high-steppers”.

“Booze” has been around since about 1325, but “giggle-water” became popular in the ‘20s, and you’d be “squiffy”, “pie-eyed”, or “spifflicated” if you overindulged, as well as being just “high”, “tight”, or “plastered”.

If you “talk wet” someone may respond with “Applesauce!” or “Flapdoodle!” and might think that you’re either “tapped”, “dippy”, or “off your onion”. “You could have knocked me down with a feather” in 1741, but “Boy!” “I’ll be jiggered” if I’d rather not have a character in 1914 say “Zowie!” instead.

Words are such fun, aren’t they? I use several sources in my research, but the Oxford Dictionary of Slang is “the cat’s pajamas”!
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The author of five highly acclaimed historical novels, Gabriele loves to recreate an era in which she can immerse herself (and readers), by weaving compelling stories around meticulously researched facts. Her characters are best friends, whom others are now calling “cherished friends”.

With degrees in the social sciences and education, Gabriele has had a varied career as an educator, literacy coordinator, and website designer, and has been an active community volunteer, particularly in heritage preservation. But writing fiction has always been her passion. Her first short story appeared in the Canadian Authors Association Winners’ Circle 5 Anthology. In 2001, she produced an award-nominated feature on CBC Radio’s “Outfront”.

Born in Germany, Gabriele emigrated to Canada as a young child. She grew up in Lindsay, Ontario, enjoyed several years in Ottawa, and currently resides in Guelph with her husband. She is the proud mother of an accomplished daughter, with whom she is collaborating on an historical YA novel. Visit her at Mindshadows.com for more information.

Gabriele Wills appears as part of a Premier Virtual Author Book Tour.

The Summer Before the Storm by Gabriele Wills

Muskoka is the summer playground for the very wealthy families that want to escape the stifling heat of summer in Toronto, Ontario Canada. The year is 1914 and one such family living there in the summer is the Wyndwoods. This large family lives an easy and fun filled summer with servants to meet their every need. The matriarch of the family is Augusta Wyndwood who took over the running of the family and business when her husband died. Al she has to do is threaten disinheritance and the family members jump to attention and do as she bids.

There are too numerous characters to mention here however I will mention the main characters of this story. Victoria is the headstrong granddaughter of Augusta. She would like to have more of the freedoms that men have but Augusta would like to marry her off to a wealthy cousin, Justin who is in love with Victoria. Victoria however is in love with her other wealthy cousin, Chas.

Then there is Jack, Augusta's grandson. He shows up, when the story opens, as a waiter at the resort restaurant that the family goes to every Monday for dinner. The next day he shows up at the Wyndwood estate and is introduced by Augusta. Jacks father was disinherited by Augusta for marrying beneath himself. His family was very poor and he died fairly young, leaving his family to survive on their own. Jack hopes to ingratiate himself into the family.

The family live there usual glutinous summer on the lake, boating, swimming, playing tennis, and the other things in their idyllic lifestyle. However, things start to turn dark when WWI is threatened and many of Victoria's cousins go off to war, to eventually become part of "the lost generation."

This story travels from Muskoka, Ontario Canada to Britain, and the skies of war torn France. It includes the horrific bombing and sinking of the famous Lusitania ship of the shores of Britain. There is a little of something for everyone including, wealthy living, romance, mystery, adventure, and war.

It is evident the Gabriele Wills did her research of the period. She has beautiful writing and very interesting characters that leap out from the pages. There are a couple more minor story lines that I didn't really care for. For instance Helena, who marries Victoria's father James later in the story. She is a stereotypical conniving stepmother. This took away from the story for me. That said, I really did enjoy this book over. This book is the first of a trilogy and I hope to read the other two books.

4/5

Gabriele Wills was our guest back in April and she did a guest post on Why I Love Times of Monumental Change.

Why I Love Times of Monumental Change by Gabriele Wills

Imagine yourself as an Edwardian debutante with servants to tend to your needs and chaperones to ensure that ardent swains don’t try to steal a kiss. Or as a young gentleman with the leisure and means to race the new-fangled motorboats or be daring enough to fly a flimsy aeroplane. After all, this was the heyday of that famous tune, “Come Josephine in My Flying Machine”.

Now imagine yourself suddenly thrust into the horrific arena of war.

This is what happened to countless men and women during the Great War as they became part of the “lost generation”. What fertile soil for an author, not only in being able to illustrate the contrast between the “Age of Elegance” and the war years, but also in taking characters through the physical and emotional turmoil of one of the most cataclysmic times in modern history.

Young men went eagerly and patriotically off to what they thought would be a short-lived adventure. Millions now lie in silent cemeteries where row upon row of headstones are a moving reminder of sacrificed youth.

Women did “their bit” by stepping in to take over traditional men’s jobs, and also by working as Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurses and ambulance drivers. The nurses were hastily trained, but learned quickly on the job. While VADs spent much of their time changing linens, sterilizing equipment, and serving meals, they were just as readily asked to hold down the exposed intestines of a mortally wounded soldier, as was Canadian Doreen Gery on her first day in a British military hospital. Her protest to the Nursing Sister that she would rather die than do that, earned the retort, “Well, die then! You’re no good to me if you can’t do the work!” Like other VADs, Doreen stoically got on with the job. Giving up was considered the equivalent of cowardice in a soldier.

These newfound responsibilities and freedoms for women had a profound effect on them and on society. In her classic autobiography, Testament of Youth, VAD Vera Brittain wrote, “Short of actually going to bed with [the men], there was hardly an intimate service that I did not perform for one or another in the course of four years.” She stated that this gave her an "early release from the sex-inhibitions... [of] the Victorian tradition which up to 1914 dictated that a young woman should know nothing of men but their faces and their clothes until marriage."

Like Vera, VADs were generally from genteel and sheltered backgrounds. Some were aristocrats, like Lady Diana Manners - the "Princess Di" of her day - reputedly the most beautiful woman in England and expected to marry the Prince of Wales. Her mother was very much against Diana becoming a VAD, as Diana states in her memoir, The Rainbow Comes and Goes. "She explained in words suitable to my innocent ears that wounded soldiers, so long starved of women, inflamed with wine and battle, ravish and leave half-dead the young nurses who wish only to tend them," The Duchess gave in, but "knew, as I did, that my emancipation was at hand," Diana says, and goes on to admit, "I seemed to have done nothing practical in all my twenty years." Nursing plunged her and other young women into life-altering experiences.

I’m enthralled by the memoirs, letters, and journals written by people who lived during a time when life was intense, and death, unpredictable and unprecedented, when even those who survived the war were forever changed. So I draw heavily on these fascinating primary sources for incidents, attitudes, morality, and other details in order to bring that era to life in my novels.

Beginning in 1914 in the renowned lake district of Muskoka - the playground of the affluent and powerful for well over a century - The Summer Before The Storm takes readers on an unforgettable journey from romantic moonlight cruises to the horrific sinking of the Lusitania, regattas on the water to combat in the skies over France, extravagant mansions to deadly trenches. Its sequel, Elusive Dawn, continues to follow the lives, loves, and fortunes of the privileged Wyndham family and their friends through the tumultuous war years.

For Book 3 in this “Muskoka Novels” series, I am now discovering the radical “Roaring 20s”… and all that jazz. For more information, visit theMuskokaNovels.com.

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Born in Germany, Gabriele emigrated to Canada as a young child.  She is currently working on her fifth novel, which is Book 3 in "The Muskoka Novels" series.