Hello and welcome to Eden Hollow! I’m Wild Geranium (or Geri for short) and this is my attempt at a writerblr/researchblr. I’m currently clawing my way out of a multi-year writing slump, and I hope this blog will help with that.
About Me:
online, I go by Geri or Nic (she/her)
I’m a senior in university, studying American and European History with a minor in Theology and Religious Studies
I’ve been writing for well over 10 years, but found myself in a slump a few years back
writing- and reading-wise, I love historical fiction and gothic horror, character-driven stories, family dramas, religion- and folklore-centric stories, and pretty much anything with a classic man-vs-nature external conflict.
along with writing and research, I might also post about my hobbies and loves, including lace knitting and crochet, native wildlife, piano and mountain dulcimer, and local history and genealogy.
link to tags (coming soon!)
My Current WIP: The Echoes of Eden Hollow:
“A land of deepest shade/ unpierc’d by human thought/ the dreary regions of the dead/ where all things are forgot!”
– Charles Wesley, 1763
Basics: part murder and medical mystery, part historical-gothic fiction, part family drama, The Echoes of Eden Hollow is currently in the planning and drafting stage. For now, it is a trilogy set in third person limited (though I am experimenting with first-person for 1921).
The Echoes of Eden Hollow is a multi-generational story that chronicles the creation, pinnacle, collapse, and aftermath of a fictionalized, unsanctioned branch of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows: the Sovereign Spiritualist Odd Fellows of Iowa Lodge, the oldest Lodge west of the Alleghanies. Though indistinguishable from other Lodges at its inception, a collection of close-knit families usurped the Lodge’s purpose and influence following the discovery of one woman’s medium-like abilities. Each part has its own main character, distinct cast, and different plots, but all are interconnected in various ways.
INTROS:
-- PART ONE: 1921
-- PART TWO: 1908
-- PART THREE: 1883: coming soon!
CW: Part murder-mystery, part gothic horror, part family drama, tEoEH is intended for adults and deals with death, suicide, grief, gore, generational, medical, and religious trauma, ableism, sexism, xenophobia, and racism.
Thank you so much for the tag, @orphanheirs! Hopefully, I can get back into answering STSs and other tag games soon! This spring was dreadfully busy. I unexpectedly became important at work. Yikes.
The panster and procrastinator in me pitch a full-body rebellion every time I try to set a half-decent plot to paper. My outline shutters around in fits and starts for a few weeks, dragging its bloated husk through notecards, loose-leaf paper, and keyboard strokes. I very rarely get past the first act of 1921 before the conspirators corner the outline in a dimly lit back alley and end its pitiful struggle. It's not a pretty process.
This spring, however, I stumbled upon what might be the source of this creative block! I was asking my plot to advance itself faster than it should in Act One, leaving the characters either inexplicably hyper-motivated or aimless for the start of Act Two. I changed Samuel's initial motivation, which introduces him at a different time in the investigation and gives the first act room to breathe.
For my outline, I've adapted Brandon Sanderson's outline process. I write down the major plot beats on notecards and include the purpose of the scene. How does this scene impact the narrative? What characters or ideas are introduced? What does it reveal about these characters? Then, I try my best to actually flesh out the scene. This is where I veer away from Sanderson's methods. I like detailed scene outlines, full of whatever notes I need for symbolism, red herrings, foreshadowing, and other such things.
Perhaps this is where I go awry with too much 'pre-writing.' But I've just finished Act One with more breathing room, so we'll see how Act Two goes!
I'm tagging @armentas, @sodaliteskull, and @ryns-ramblings! And anyone else who wants to join in!
Shoutout to characters who run from their fate I looooove characters who see what's ahead of them and go "yeah actually, no thanks" and run as fast as they can in the opposite direction. It will catch up to them eventually because fate doesn't need to stop to rest, but they'd rather slam doors behind them and knock things off tables in an attempt to trip it than go without a fight.
got signed out of my undergrad email, stopped getting notifications, and didn’t realize until now.
My advisor has been emailing me for WEEKS, asking if I could take part in an Archivist’s Conference next year. The application she has to submit is due TOMORROW.
got signed out of my undergrad email, stopped getting notifications, and didn’t realize until now.
My advisor has been emailing me for WEEKS, asking if I could take part in an Archivist’s Conference next year. The application she has to submit is due TOMORROW.
I know i recommend this book a lot, but to the amount of usamerican Christian’s— especially Catholics— who have spoken these past few weeks about the current usamerican administration and are flabbergasted at how the Christianity they know is so different in practice from he Christianity that currently dominates usamerican politics and is actively used by the ruling class, I cannot recommend Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes enough.
It breaks down how the theology and practice of Christianity in the United States in the past 100 years has radically changed, and how Christianity has been repurposed over and over in progressively more radically conservative ways to ensure the protection of the power of the white, patriarchal, nationalist ruling class.
It is heavily researched and each sentence will piss you off, and even if you are not evangelical, I think it is vital information to learn to better understand where we are, how we got here, how our faith is being used to abuse, and how we can move forward. It is practically, imo, required reading for usamerican Christians, regardless of denomination, but especially so given our current administration. Go check if your local library has it— and for the love of all that is holy, if there is any book that you will choose NOT to buy from amazon, let it be this one.
There are too many relevant quotes from Jesus and John Wayne than I could possibly put here, but this one sums up the book rather well. Unfortunately, my e-reader does not come with page numbers.
In 2015 John McDougall, an army chaplain, West Point graduate, and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, published Jesus Was an Airborne Ranger: Find Your Purpose Following the Warrior Christ. Stu Weber, a fellow Ranger who first met McDougall at West Point, contributed the book’s foreword. Setting aside the pretty-boy Sunday-school Jesus no real man could relate to, McDougall made clear that his savior was no Mister Rogers. He was a warrior who knew how to channel aggression when he needed to
This Jesus was over half a century in the making. Inspired by images of heroic white manhood, evangelicals had fashioned a savior who would lead them into the battles of their own choosing. The new, rugged Christ transformed Christian manhood, and Christianity itself.
