Liz Tyner
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Fathers With Wings

6/18/2021

 
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From Christmas time until Memorial Day, I tried to visit the nearby eagle area once a week, not expecting that the end results would give me appreciation for how some fathers in nature take care of their young..

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With the male eagle, I didn’t realize, at first, how closely he was watching over the nest. When it came time for the young ones to fly, he encouraged them by flying to the next tree, and then he returned, landing in limbs on the other side of the tree from the nest.

The young one hopped along the branches to be closer to his father, but as time passed, he began to take flight.

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Seeing the parenting was unexpected, but rewarding.
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Often the father would be nearby when I visited—and for all I knew, he could have been there every time. When he was motionless, it could be hard to notice him.

He usually didn't appear to hunt for food for the babies, yet I was told he would. 

But in the end, perhaps the most rewarding part for me was to see how  devoted he appeared to be to the eaglets.

A father's compassion for his children was a secondary theme in the first book I had published, Safe in the Earl's Arms. I didn't notice it until completing the last pages...

The heroine, Melina was mostly abandoned by her father, and Warrington is trying to find parents for a little girl who is his ward. Warrington feels he's found the perfect home in a devoted couple, but Melina also has a family unit planned for the little one. In the end, Melina enlists her collected family to show Warrington she would be a good mother, and he would be the best father.

Writing the resolution was uplifting for me. I wrote the romance planning for the underlying theme to be about the search for the statue of the Venus de Milo's arms, but for me, it turned out to be about parental love.

Seeing good parenting in nature made all the trips to watch the eagle nest even more worthwhile.

The male eagle's actions to his offspring were positive, and hopefully, next year, I'll be able to see the supportive parents return to the nest and have more young to raise. 

Ship shape and Ready to Walk the Plank

11/3/2014

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"Never again."

When I was in the middle of trying to research my novel, I just wanted to get off the ship. I read about how weevils tasted--I can't remember if the little ones or the big ones are the most bitter. I discovered that some captains knew the extent of punishment, as in number of lashes, that a man could handle and still survive. The book had a bit of a chart.

The romance of the sea sank a quick death while I was researching.

In Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Dana tells of a man who fell overboard, but could not swim. If a ship is under sail, moving quickly, it can take a bit before the crew can react  enough to attempt a rescue. The man drowned, and his belongings were auctioned to provide money to give to his family.

So when a ship returned to port, I realized families couldn't readily assume their loved one would be on board
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And the ship probably smelled better than the crew.

By the end of the research I did have more of a fascination with sailing, and a vast respect for the hardiness of anyone who could survive a voyage in earlier times.  

I think I might enjoy writing another book set on a sailing vessel, but never would I want to experience what the sailors dealt with on a daily basis. Or even once.

Photos taken in Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA.
Replica of Christopher Columbus ship which floated up the Arkansas River.

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Stubby

9/26/2014

 
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Stubby is the high-spirited cabin boy in the first two books of my trilogy. He was pivotal in both stories. In the first book, he was vital to the plot. But in A Captain and a Rogue, he was more important to me. I deleted most of his scenes after I finished the manuscript but I saved them in a file.

In that deleted file, I tell of his life on shore and how he'd once discovered that women would notice him if he stood, bedraggled, in front of a confectionary shop. He would end up with more food than he could eat. The shop owner wouldn't scare the boy away because the lad was good for business.

I also had to delete how the captain was a bit envious of the heroine's attention to the cabin boy. Stubby asked the heroine to marry him, but she refused. And because he was not a faint-hearted lad, he then asked the other sister if she might marry him. Since he thought she was a mermaid, Stubby planned to build her a house by the sea. He said he would bring her minnows on a regular basis. But she refused him too.

At almost the last minute of the edits, I left the cabin boy character in England while the ship he'd worked on sailed away. I did that so I could possibly work him into another story, and he could be reunited with the mother who'd had to give him away so he could have a better life.

His character helped me enjoy writing A Captain and a Rogue.




Safe in My Arms...My book

6/28/2014

 
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                                     This time I read the instructions.
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                                           Christmas in July
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