My guest today is Shelley Blanton-Stroud, author of the Jane Benjamin novels. If you write or plan to write or think you’ll someday write a historical novel, Shelly’s advice in this guest post just might be what you need. Once you’ve read the post, scroll on down to find out how to win your own totally free copy of Tom Boy.

The trouble with a historical girl sleuth
I don’t think writing is easy. At least not for me. I have a tendency to internally debate every choice—First person or second person? Past or present tense? Reliable or unreliable narrator? Debating these choices explains why it took me ten years to launch my first novel in the Jane Benjamin trilogy, Copy Boy.
But placing my female sleuth in the 1930s-40s complicates things even further for a couple of reasons.
First, though I love a historical setting, I want the themes and issues to directly relate to readers today. So I want my protagonist to seem both authentically from the 30s/40s cotton fields and newsrooms and yet somehow current.
On the surface, that meant trying to strip out what felt like too-precious language. I didn’t want the reader to have to slog through dialect that was too thick with old-timey sounding idioms. I wanted some of that there, strategically placed, but I wanted the books also to sound like they were being right now.
I took inspiration for this from alt-country music. Because Jane’s family immigrates from Texas to California looking for work in the great depression, I listened to a lot of roots musicians, including Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch. Though they convey the historical roots of their stories, they are current women. That’s what I wanted.
But another problem wasn’t just related to dialect.
My protagonist Jane is developing through crises. Some of those crises would be equally difficult to face no matter what era the story took place in. But others would have been more difficult then, than now.
Jane is a girl doing a man’s work at the newspaper. She really struggles to gain traction in that role because she’s female. Today’s reader might tend to roll their eyes at the trouble because it’s not as hard now as it was in 1937 or 1939 or 1942.
So that raises the question of how high I need to raise the stakes, how bad the trouble has to be, in order for the reader to register it.
For instance, Jane cross-dresses both because it makes her more confident of her own agency and because she is considering the gender limitations of her culture. Her cross-dressing might not be really that interesting or difficult in the life of a character set in contemporary times. (Though recent items in the news tell me it still is very difficult.) But it would be extremely significant in Jane’s life at that time.
So I constantly have to ask myself how high I must raise the ante to make sure the reader understands what’s at stake for a girl sleuth set in an earlier time, who is relevant to readers right now.

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It’s 1939. Jane Benjamon’s got five days at sea to solve the murder of a Wimbledon champion’s coach and submit a gossip column that tells the truth. If not the facts.
On the brink of World War II, Jane wants to have it all. By day she hustles as a scruffy, tomboy cub reporter. By night she secretly struggles to raise her toddler sister, Elsie, and protect her from their mother.
But Jane’s got a plan: she’ll become the San Francisco Prospect’s first gossip columnist and make enough money to care for Elsie.
Jane finagles her way to the women’s championship at Wimbledon, starring her hometown’s tennis phenom and cover girl Tommie O’Rourke. Jane plans to write her first column there. But then she witnesses Edith “Coach” Carlson, Tommie’s closest companion, drop dead in the stands of apparent heart attack, and her plan is blown.
Sailing home on the RMS Queen Mary, Jane veers between competing instincts: Should she write a social bombshell column, personally damaging her new friend Tommie’s persona and career? Or should she work to uncover the truth of Coach’s death and its connection to a larger conspiracy involving US participation in the coming war?
Putting away her menswear and donning first-class ballgowns, Jane discovers what upper-class status hides, protects, and destroys. Ultimately—like nations around the globe in 1939—she must choose what she’ll give up in order to do what’s right.
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Meet the Narrator

April Doty is a classically trained actress with a BFA from Syracuse University. She is a voice actor and the narrator of 26 books. Born in Virginia, educated in New York, seasoned in London and settled in Spain, April Doty brings the sound of a rich and varied life experience to her narration. The character of Jane came to life in her home studio on the Costa del Sol.
connect with the narrator: website ~ twitter ~ linkedIn ~ soundcloud
Meet the Author

Shelley grew up in California’s Central Valley, the daughter of Dust Bowl immigrants who made good on their ambition to get out of the field. She recently retired from teaching writing at Sacramento State University and still consults with writers in the energy industry. She co-directs Stories on Stage Sacramento, where actors perform the stories of established and emerging authors, and serves on the advisory board of 916 Ink, an arts-based creative writing nonprofit for children, as well as on the board of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at Claremont McKenna College. Copy Boy is her first Jane Benjamin Novel. Tomboy is her second. The third, Working Girl, will come out in November 2023. Her writing has been a finalist in the Sarton Book Awards, IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards, Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Award, the American Fiction Awards, and the National Indie Excellence Awards. She and her husband live in Sacramento with many photos of their out-of-town sons and their wonderful partners.
Connect with the author: website ~ twitter ~ facebook ~ instagram ~ bookbub ~ goodreads
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I look forward to reading this.