Laurie Alice Eakes

CA: You began writing at the age of ten, taught high school English, and your short stories and poetry have appeared in various publications. As a technical writer you received a contract for, Virginia Wine, a Tasteful Guide, a non-fiction work on the history and current state of the Virginia wine industry. You are also an editor for Spin, a new magazine for romance authors. Why have you turned to e-publishing to produce your novels?

LE: I first heard about e-publishing in 1998 and thought it a wonderful idea as I saw the world turning to the Web. I was beginning grad school in history at Virginia Tech and found myself spending more time on the computer and the Web than in the library. Universities are beginning online classes, so why not online books? It's a good response to people reading less because they're on the computer. For example, my beautician, who has probably not read a novel since high school being more sports-minded than academic-minded (and that's not to say she isn't bright because she is and is a brilliant and talented beautician as you'd know if you'd seen my hair before she got a hold of it) got a computer for Christmas and is reading stuff on the Web all the time now. She said TV bores her now. That's an entirely different market of people looking at the written word on computers, who weren't doing it before the Web became so accessible.

Then, of course, I saw an entirely new world of book reading opening up for anyone with a reading disability whether it be someone who merely needs large print to someone with dyslexia or someone who is totally blind. With the advent of screen enlarging programs and screen readers, which I will discuss more in a minute, what's on the Web is readable; therefore, a book already in computer format is more accessible than a book in tiny print. As I'll probably mention screen readers a few more times, let me clarify that a screen reader is not a voice recognition or dictation program like Dragon Naturally Speaking. I use Jaws for Windows, but several other programs are out there that literally read what comes up on the screen unless it's a graphic or image. Microsoft gets a lot of bad press, but I applaud them for cooperating so nicely with the producers of these screen reader programmers because the Microsoft programmers have to imbed special "hooks" in the windows programming so that programs like Jaws can grab the icons and say what they are. And that's about as computer technical as I get.

So, to answer your question about why my novel ended up in electronic format? Well, I had this interest in electronic publishing and knew that, as much as I and everyone who had read it--including non-romance readers--loved the story, it wouldn't fly in the traditional market. I deal with the fears and other people's reactions to a person with a disability in the eighteenth century in a manner that was accurate then and, unfortunately, not that abnormal in the twentieth/twenty-first centuries. It made traditional editors uneasy, but they liked it enough to give me personal letters of rejection to tell me it was a good story. One even said it was "perfect, but . . ." So I shelved it and my creative writing and went to grad school. About six months later, a friend sent me an e-mail saying a new electronic publisher, Awe-Struck, was looking for manuscripts featuring characters with disabilities for their Ennoble line. My friend knew I had that story, so she recommended I submit. I figured I had little to lose but time since I could submit via e-mail, so I sent Kathryn Struck a query letter. Within twenty-four hours, she asked to see the whole manuscript. Nine days later, she offered me a contract for The Widow's Secret.

So the short answer is, I turned to e-publishng because I wrote a story I knew was good but also knew didn't have a place in the traditional marketplace. I tend to write cross-genre fiction, so may send other novels to e-publishers too.

CA: What type of e-book reader do you use?

LE: At present, none of the e-book readers like Rocket or the Palm Pilot have good speech capacity, so, when I download an e-book, I either Braille it out, which I can do directly from my computer, or I have my screen reader read it. I have an excellent voice synthesizer, so it's not monotone. DEC Talk has voice inflexion and one can change the voice.

CA: Is there any special equipment or services that help you interpret the Web?

LE: I guess I've kind of answered this already. I use Jaws for Windows 3.5 (Henter-Joyce Inc.) and DEC Talk Express made by Digital Equipment Corporation. Many other programs are out there for both speech and for screen enlarging.

CA: Is there anything you'd like to suggest to Webmasters that might benefit others with reading disabilities?

LE: I understand why Webmasters enjoy using images, Javascript, and other animated texts; however, they play havoc with speech. Jaws says something is a graphic and ignores it for writing, but Java can lock him up enough to make me have to reboot my computer. So it's nice when people have notification that their site contains Javascript or, like Amazon.com has a text only option. I also prefer sites that have links to links instead of putting everything on one page because I can't take the mouse and go zoom down the page; I have to tab one link at a time, which gets really old, so old sometimes I go somewhere else.

CA: You will be teaching courses online, one on writing about characters with disabilities and the other on midwives in Early Modern Europe and North America. When and where will these classes be offered?

LE: The first one will be offered to members of the RWA mystery and suspense chapter list Clues-n-News, so is a closed group. The one on midwives, begun as an online teaching project I did for the Virginia Tech history department History of Medicine class, is being taught through the Regency Academe, which is open to anyone interested. The moderator for that is Kristen Skold, but I believe people can find information on the Beau Monde Web site.

CA: You will be a panelist at the Beau Monde conference to be held in Washington DC in July 2000. Can anyone interested in writing about the Regency era attend?

LE: Yes, they may. I am the conference chairperson and will also be working with Kristen Skold on a workshop on historic food and wine and, I hope, glasses and dishes etc. It is open to anyone interested. They may e-mail me for more details, though those should be up on the Beau Monde Web site soon if not already.

CA: What other authors have influenced your writing?

LE: Ahem, this may give away my age. I grew up reading Mary Stewart, Barbara Michaels, Jane Aiken Hodge, Georgette Heyer, of course. I didn't realize how much these ladies influenced me until I realized I wrote suspense with much romance rather than romance with suspense. I just happened to prefer a historic setting, though I love contemporary suspense with romance. Nowadays, the writers I go to first are Jo Beverley, Susan Wiggs, Laura Kinsale, and, though she's not widely known, Patricia Veryan. In the contemporary field, I love Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Nora Roberts' mainstream books. I'm sure I could name others, but these are the ladies who come to mind first. I don't read much fiction written by men, but I've read the Kenneth Roberts books again and again.

CA: Most of us are animal lovers here at the Retreat, (in fact, my two dogs have their own Web page on my site). Tell us about your golden retriever, Brick, who is shown beside you in your photo. What role did he play in your life? Do you ever include animals or pets in your fiction?

LE: Brick was my fifth guide dog (most people call them Seeing Eye dogs, but that is only one school out of several in the U.S., Canada, the U.K, Germany, Spain . . . ). I could go on forever about Brick. It was love at first hug with the two of us. He waltzed up to me, sat down, and gave me both paws in my hands. I later learned this meant total devotion and acceptance, something he only did for people after knowing them a while, though he shook paws with everyone. He shook so many paws at RWA national last year he got a shoulder strain, silly dog. Brick and I used to hike the Appalachian Trail together, then went to grad school together. I never could have maneuvered around a campus the size and difficulty of that at Virginia Tech without him. Tech is in the mountains, so has many steps and hills. Plus, they don't believe in stop signs or even traffic lights in Blacksburg, so Brick got me safely across many streets too. He got to the point where I could say, "Let's go to the library," and he'd go right there. He was smart, devoted, and gentle, which is important in a dog his size. Brick probably would have been my best dog except he developed an ear infection no antibiotics would cure. He needed surgery that would leave him totally deaf. I could tell he was already losing the hearing in his ear because he had begun to shy at anything coming up on his left, which wasn't normal. So I took him back to his puppy raisers. He had the surgery and is doing wonderfully. He's quite happy in retirement as his younger sister lives there too. She didn't make it through the program as only thirty per cent of the dogs who start out get all the way through. I'll get another dog, but I've developed a serious canine allergy to dogs I'm not used to, so can't go to the training center and live with 24 dogs in the same building. So I have to wait until one can be brought to me, which will be several months down the line. It's pretty rough doing without as I got a dog as soon as I realized I was losing my sight and never learned to use a cane. Now I can't learn because it would necessitate being away for about six weeks, and I can't miss that much of my life.

As to putting animals in my books? It's a little more difficult in a historical as animals played different roles historically than they do nowadays. I have lots of horses, of course, but for some reason, cats and dogs, for all that I adore mine, don't seem to enter into the story. I do have a dog play a minor role in a Regency suspense I've written and in my first foray into a contemporary romance with minimal suspense, I have a dog and a cat.

CA: What novels are you working on now that The Widow's Secret has been e-published?

LE: I have completed two Regency romantic suspense novels now awaiting their fate, and thought I'd completed a contemporary romance until my agent got a hold of it and recommended changes that are right on but take some replotting. I'm also dabbling in a traditional Regency.

CA: Any tips for writers who aspire to write historical novels, but have no degrees in history?

LE: I don't have a degree in history yet. Due to a neck injury, I'm on leave of absence from grad school, and my under grad degree is in English and French. So I think anyone wanting to write historical novels can go about it the same way I did: immerse herself in the time period. One or two books about the California Gold Rush does not mean one is ready to write about it. One needs to know what the different types of people wore, what they ate, how they talked, what the terrain looked like then, what was going on in the world. One doesn't necessarily include all this in the story, but a slip up can yank a reader from the story faster than a telephone call. Readers catch errors like you wouldn't believe--or maybe you would. I'm on Jo Beverley's discussion mailing list and am constantly amazed at what other readers--and these are readers, not writers always--catch-things I missed. Not in her books, I must add, but other authors'. I realized I'm not the only person who wants to trash a story, when the author has them drinking port with salmon or putting the Boston Teaparty after Lexington and Concord. One way to know if books about a subject are quality is to:

A: Check the credentials of the writer.

B: Read reviews in historical journals. Just because something is in print doesn't mean it's right. History is not a science. Much of it is theory. Too much of it is theory. A good timeline book like Timetables of History is a nice foundation, then go from there.

C: Use resources like librarians, especially the reference and archive librarians.

Interlibrary loan is a marvel. Librarians love to talk to interested persons and are trained to show people how to do Web searches too, especially at universities. Many university libraries will loan books to non-university people for limited times. Also, university libraries have things like online journals where articles can be accessed at the library, then printed out for minimal cost. Journal articles are great because they're not as long as books. They also have bibliographies that lead one to good book references.

CA: Any tips for other writers who have reading disabilities?

LE: Get a good scanner program. I use Kurzweil, which I think, after much experience, is the best. Too little is recorded and even when it is, one doesn't get name spelling and things like that, so having a copy on one's computer is wonderful. This is, by the way, perfectly legal as long as one doesn't try to sell it or make multiple copies for others. Also, learn to use the Web. One night, while writing something, I needed to know the terms of the Treaty of Ghent. I knew I had the treaty in a book, but I didn't have a reader for another 18 hours and wanted to know right then. Nor did I wish to take the time it would have taken to scan the contents, find the page, scan it in. . . . Well, I went to the Web and typed in "Treaty of Ghent." I found a marvelous resource of treaties in text. All there from the seventeenth century to the present for American history. All the signatures all the terms . . . I was so excited!

CA: I read on your site you were eagerly awaiting a trip to Portugal. How was it?

LE: About two years ago, my boyfriend, who is a chiropractor, is also blind and a guide dog user, and tends to be a bit of a workaholic, decided to force himself to take vacations, so he bought a time share, the kind one can trade. Because we like wine, we decided to start visiting the wine producing countries. In January of '99, we went to Spain, to the Costa del Sol. I took Brick because he had just gotten a new dog and didn't feel him experienced enough for that much adventure. Spain doesn't have laws to protect guide dog rights, but Spain has a training school and also many blind persons from Spain come to the U.S. to obtain guide dogs. So we had no trouble, and Brick, as always, charmed everyone. That was a resort and we went on three tours too, so didn't have to be too adventurous on our own.

Portugal was a different story all around. They don't have laws to protect guide dog rights because they don't have guide dogs. They don't have a problem taking them into the country, though. As we did for Spain, we got a form filled out at the vet's saying the dog was healthy etc., then had it stamped at the Embassy. The time-share suite was in a hotel, not a resort, so we asked if it was okay and they had no problem. But public transportation does. So do restaurants. The Portuguese love dogs, but didn't want them in taxis, trains, buses etc, or in restaurants.

The restaurants weren't a problem because so many have tables outside. The weather was perfect, so we preferred eating outside anyway. We were in Cascais, a lovely seaside town, so walked everywhere. By the end of the week, I think everyone in Cascais knew us. So did the Portuguese dogs. They run wild, though they're not wild. They have owners who obviously care for and love them. They're wonderfully friendly like the people, and all wanted to make friends with Angus, who is an 85-pound German Shepherd. We hired a private guide to take us to some sites, and he didn't mind the dog. We even got permission to take him on our tour of Lisbon. The more the people saw us with the dog and realized what he did, the more they accepted him. By the end of the week, restaurant owners in Cascais didn't mind him inside.

Now, Portuguese for dog is cao, pronounced rather like cow. Angus being named Angus, we had fun making cow jokes.

But what was truly amusing was our first foray into a Portuguese grocery store. It's called the Jumbo Market and is rather like a small Wal-Mart. They gave us permission to bring in the dog, then gave us someone to help us who, when asked if she spoke English said, "Maybe." Well, maybe we spoke a little Portuguese too. My boyfriend knows Spanish and I know French, and he'd gotten some Portuguese tapes from the language, so off we went to find things for breakfast, snacks, and, of course, wine. We wanted jam. Duane got mixed up and used the word for ice cream. Got that straight and then had to figure out flavors. I tried tinto or red. Then I started on the French fruit words. We hit on framboisa, which is close enough to framboise, or raspberry. Whew. Then in what form? Compota sounded like compote to me, so I took it. It was wonderful. Portuguese food is wonderful. Anyway, we got home and did have everything we wanted.

Duane and I have always been adventurous. We don't let much stop us. The U.K. is a challenge because we can't take even guide dogs there, so will probably wait until friends go too. So we plan on France, then Italy next or maybe the other way around.

About the Author:

• Author's Web site
• Beau Monde Conference
• Awe Struck
• World Romance
  (producers of the soon to be released Spin Journal)

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