Doing Research: the Tampa Bay Hotel

When Gwen Mayo and I work on the latest Three Snowbirds novel, we try to visit the sites that the ladies visit. Our next book, Ybor City Blues, is set in Tampa and Ybor City (Ybor City is part of Tampa now, but was a separate town in the 1920s).  

During their time in Tampa, Professor Pettijohn, Cornelia, and Teddy will be staying in the Tampa Bay Hotel, opened by rail baron Henry B. Plant in 1891. 

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This hotel was one of eight built by Henry Plant along his rail lines to promote tourism. It had over five hundred rooms and was the place to be during the Gilded Age. Guests could enjoy the golf course, casino, stables, indoor heated swimming pool, and even a race track situated on the grounds. It even had its own flag!

Naturally, we paid special attention to the details of the guest and dining rooms, since our characters will be seeing a lot of them. 

A comfy place to sleep.

Table setting from the original dining room.
The hotel had its own silverware and dishes.

For entertainment on Sunday, Col. Harold B. Bachman's "Million-Dollar Band" provided music for the guests in the bandshell at Plant Park. They performed at the Park during the 1925-1927 winter seasons, often attracting crowds in the thousands. We plan to have some fun in this setting.

Why yes, that IS a cutout of Bachman!

I'm afraid that by the time of our book, the hotel was in its last decade of service. The family sold the hotel to the city of Tampa in 1905, a few years after Henry Plant died, and the city closed the hotel in 1930. The Tampa Bay Junior College moved into the space, but part of the hotel reopened as a museum in 1933, which is still open for touring. The rest of the hotel houses offices for the University of Tampa.

You can learn more about the Tampa Bay Hotel from Gwen Mayo's post, The Magic Kingdom of Henry Plant.

Gwen Mayo: Confessions of a History Junkie

One of the definitions of a “junkie” is a person who gets an unusual amount of pleasure from or has an unusual amount of interest in something. For me, that something is history. Thanks to the Internet, I can indulge my passion any time I please. I have a list of sites longer than my arm, but as wonderful as the web can be, nothing replaces an up close look into the past. 

My spouse and I have spent many happy days looking for towns that no longer exist. Some of those towns wind up in stories or blog posts. My historical wandering brought the White House cookbook from the Lincoln administration into my possession. A trip to the Walter Reed Medical Center Museum let me get a good look at the Civil War Union Army Field Surgery Kit. That piece of history turned up in one of my Nessa Donnelly mysteries. I also spent a lovely summer researching the history of Kentucky bourbon.

I know history isn’t considered a sexy topic, but it can be. Lexington, Kentucky has a historic home that was once owned by Mary Todd Lincoln’s family. The same house was later Jenny Hill’s Bawdyhouse. Belle Brezing, Lexington’s most famous madam, lived there for a couple of years before buying her own house. 

Still, when I talk about my favorite pastime I get a lot of eye-rolls. Kids who hated memorizing dates for a history test often grow up to be adults who think history is boring. Why wouldn’t they? Their only exposure to history has been a bunch of dull facts delivered by a teacher with no real interest in the subject.

History, real history, isn’t the dry facts of an event; it is a group of individual stories that narrow an event to only one outcome. History is made up of hundreds of ‘what if’ stories. For instance, would the outcome of WWII have been different if Hitler had not taken a sleeping pill before the Allies landed on Normandy’s beaches? The question opens a whole range of alternate histories. Our reality is that Hitler slept until noon, and Field Marshall Rundstedt did not get the support he requested. The history of the world may have turned on a sleeping pill.

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Gwen Mayo is passionate about blending the colorful history of her native Kentucky with her love for mystery fiction. She currently lives and writes in Safety Harbor, Florida, but grew up in a large Irish family in the hills of Eastern Kentucky.

Gwen is a graduate of the University of Kentucky, an active member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and a member of the Derby Rotten Scoundrels Chapter of Sisters in Crime, the Florida Gulf Coast SinC and the online SinC GUPPIES Chapter. Her stories have appeared in anthologies, in webzines, and in micro-fiction collections.

Most interesting fact: Gwen was a brakeman and railroad engineer from 1983 - 1987.

History and Horror, Oh My! - Henry Snider

Henry Snider is a founding member of Fiction Foundry and the award-winning Colorado Springs Fiction Writer’s Group. During the last two decades he’s dedicated his time to helping others tighten their writing through critique groups, classes, lectures, prison prose programs, and high school fiction contests. Thirteen years to the month from founding the group, he retired from the CSFWG presidency in January, 2009. After a much needed vacation, he returned to the literary world.

When did you know you wanted to become a writer?
I blame my parents for this one. In 1975 my parents took me to see Jaws...at the tender age of five. What I remember, more than staring at the screen, was the number of people who were terrified. The responses the audience gave started me looking for thrills, first in comics, then in novels. By middle school I was working on writing about what scared me, then a few years later I began sharing the works with others.

How do you pick the genre/setting/era you (usually) write in?
I tend to focus first on the story I want to tell, then work on figuring out what would be the best location and time to place them in. This is the answer most "want" to hear. The truth is I don't pick anything. I could be perusing antiques with the missus and see an old inkwell and suddenly I'm pounding the keys about an introvert actually penning someone's life.

How did you come up with the idea for your "Someone to Watch Over Me"?
I was actually researching the first flapper, Olive Thomas, for another project. The story just seemed to grow from there. The burial mound in the story is an actual mound there, as is the island and general setting descriptions and locations.

Did you encounter any obstacles in researching the setting?
Not as many as I expected. History's been a passion of pretty much everyone in my family.

Do you have a favorite historical period you enjoy reading or writing about?
No, not really. I come from a history-heavy household. Both my parents strived to enrich my youth with adventures of eras-gone-by.

Who is your favorite author, and what really strikes you about their work?
Oh, this isn't a fair question. To me it's like asking which breath of air did you prefer. How about I answer "What authors' works do you read more than once?" That answer would be - in no particular order - Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, William W. Johnstone (his pulp horror, not the westerns), Joe Lansdale, H.P. Lovecraft, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, Amanda Quick...wait...did I just include a romance author? A strong author brings me back, but it really depends on the story the wordspinners are weaving.

What are you working on now?
Earlier this year Evil Jester Press released Carnival of the Damned, which I edited. At the moment I'm finishing off the final edits for my novel, Drive-In Feature, which is due out in February, 2015 from Great Old Ones Publishing. After that I'll be completing a novel entitled Rising Water. A baker's dozen-or-so stories are currently out and under consideration.


Okay, so you're an author. What do you enjoy reading?
Everything I can get my hands on. Articles, non-fiction, stories, novels, poetry...you name it. My reading list covers everything from horror (obviously) and romance to biographies and history in general.

Thanks for talking with us!
Learn more about Henry Snider at http://fictionfoundry.org/wp/members/henry-snider/

History and Horror, Oh My! is now available in ebook formats on Smashwords and in print and Kindle formats on Amazon.

Review: I Am Murdered by Bruce Chadwick

I Am Murdered is Bruce Chadwick's account of the poisoning of George Wythe, close friend of Thomas Jefferson and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His great-nephew George Sweeney was the prime suspect, and the subsequent trial is now referred to, at least by the publishers, as America's first 'Trial of the Century'.

Chadwick begins with a recounting of Wythe's poisoning, showing us the normal pattern of Wythe's morning and when and how things went drastically wrong. We learn of the shockwave his death sent through the Richmond of the early nineteenth century, and his close-knit group of friends, also known as 'America's Founding Fathers'. 

We learn who George Wythe is and why he is an important part of America's history, Virginia's in particular. He was America's first law professor, a member of the Continental Congress, the judge for the high Chancery Court of Virginia, and a co-reviser of Virginia's laws. This last will become pertinent later. Wythe was titled 'the American Aristides' and seemed to be universally loved - with one clear exception.

George Sweeney, a teenager, has been living the high life in a Richmond far less stodgy than the one that exists today. Sweeney is up to his eyeballs in gambling debts. As a result, the youth is always broke and begging money from the great-uncle he was named for. When Uncle George refuses, Sweeney forges checks in his name. There's a more permanent solution, of course, and young George doesn't have to be an Agatha Christie reader to come up with it: Uncle George is childless. Half of Uncle George's estate goes to Sweeney when he dies, and the other half goes to a mulatto protege that Uncle George has been teaching.

On May 25th, 1806, Sweeney visits the kitchen in Wythe's elegant home. The cook is convinced that Sweeney dumped something from a paper packet into the coffee. I would have dumped the contents personally; instead, everyone in the house, including the cook, drink the adulterated beverage and fall ill. The mulatto protege dies, opening up that half of the estate for Sweeney, but there's a problem: Wythe has a damned good idea that he's been poisoned, and who did it. He declares "I am murdered" (hence the title of the book), and insists that he be autopsied when he dies. He also lives long enough to change his will, disinheriting George entirely. Impressive for an eighty-year-old man, but this will also be pertinent later. 

Chadwick makes a strong case for Sweeney's guilt. Unfortunately, justice could not be served for a number of reasons, which Chadwick explains in detail in the rest of the book. It is rich in irony.

First: Wythe lived too long after ingesting the poison. The three prominent physicians, including Wythe's personal physician, were not absolutely certain that poison was the cause. They also refused to believe that someone could live two weeks after ingesting a fatal dose of arsenic, despite anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Cholera could have been the cause, or Wythe could have died from an excess of bile in his system. This wavering on the cause of death bolstered the defense. Chadwick makes sure that we know what a piss-poor job these men did with determining Wythe's cause of death, but to citizens of the nineteenth century, they were experts who knew what they were doing.

Second: as a lawgiver, Wythe was too much Solon with serious punishments and too much Draco where blacks and slaves were concerned. The revised laws forbade blacks from giving evidence against whites. This meant that his cook, the only living witness, could not testify against Sweeney. Another person, a man who found some concealed arsenic Sweeney had tried to ditch following his arrest, was barred from testimony for the same reason. This was especially ironic because Wythe was a staunch abolitionist who had accepted the harsher laws regarding slaves to get the whole body of law accepted.

Third: the economy of the nineteenth century had gotten ahead of the law where banking was concerned. Forging checks today is a criminal offense today. When the revised law of Virginia was completed in 1779, however, it did not include forgery against a public institution like a bank. The first bank in Virginia wasn't chartered until 1792. The prosecution couldn't even charge him with stealing from his uncle.

As a result, Sweeney was freed and swiftly left town.

There is a large amount of history and detail in this book, perhaps more than some readers will want to take on. It is a nonfiction work regarding a real crime, but it is in no way a lurid 'true crime' book. If you like in-depth history, though, or are an author, it's good reading. For the historical mystery writer, the book is a gold mine, covering several aspects of both Virginian and medical history. The notes and bibliography section provide plenty of avenues to locate more specific knowledge of events, education, and law. If you're setting a novel, especially a mystery, in the period following the Revolutionary War, this book could be a great help.