Rebecca Rosenberg – Golden Women

Rebecca Rosenberg’s fascination with women who challenge convention has led her to write historical novels celebrating glorious women of past days – Charmian London, the unsung collaborator of writer Jack London’s work, and Baby Doe Tabor, once the richest woman in America. Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Rebecca talks about losing everything in last year’s California’s fires, how writing helped her pull through, and her latest project, the story of the five remarkable widows who created Champagne. That’s right . . Bubbles, the drink. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Recovering from the disastrous California fires How ‘writing preserves her equilibrium The remarkable women she writes about Fun places to visit from her books The secret of her success What she’d do differently second time around Where to find Rebecca Rosenberg: Website: http://rebeccarosenberg.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebeccarosenbergnovels/ Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7652050.Rebecca_Rosenberg Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/rebecca-rosenberg What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny: But now, here’s Rebecca. .  Hello there Rebecca and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us. Rebecca: [00:01:48] Hi Jenny. I’m so excited to be here. I can’t believe you’re all the way in Auckland and I’m in California. That’s amazing. Rebecca Rosenberg – Historical author Jenny: [00:01:56] I know, and not just in California but on a lavender farm in California. That conjures up all sorts of wonderful images for me. And I’m just wondering what stage are you at with the farm at the moment? Are the bushes in bloom at the moment? Rebecca: [00:02:10] Ok so this is a crazy story, but our house and the entire farm burnt down in those big California fires. Jenny: [00:02:21] Oh gosh Wow…. No . . .. Rebecca: [00:02:24] So that was pretty devastating. We have five acres of lavender and we have a beautiful big lavender painted barn – or we used to have. But every single thing burnt to the ground. Everything. Our house was actually made out of brick and tile and stone, but even it is down to the ground. Rising from the ashes . . . Rebecca and husband Gary in their lavender fields – before the fire…. But the good news is that we are replanting this month. So I am so excited and I am going to share pictures of that because it’s just thrilling to be planting the lavender again. Jenny: [00:03:03] My goodness I didn’t pick up on that on your blog! I’ve can’t have been looking closely enough! That’s a big thing to go through isn’t it? Rebecca: [00:03:12] It has been a crazy year I’ve looked in five rental houses. It’s been a lot but we’re at this point where the house will be finished in September and our lavender field is going to take a whole new shape. I’m so excited. Instead of regular rows, we’re doing concentric circles. Can you believe that? So it’s gonna be fun to try something new. Jenny: [00:03:41] You probably haven’t had much time to devote to your books, but turning to the writing, was there once upon a time moment when you decided that you wanted to write fiction? And if so was there a catalyst for it. Rebecca: [00:03:55] The catalyst was that my girlfriend and I decided, let’s see, that was about 12 years ago. We decided that we would write novels together. And actually, this book that’s coming out this month, Gold Digger, The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor. was the book that I started writing 12 years ago. It was a fun thing that we did. We would meet every week and read our scenes and we just started that way. And then I got hooked on it and started taking all sorts of writing classes and going away for weekend workshops. Falling in love with writing The Secret Life of Mrs London I just really loved writing. It came at a really good time in my life and so I just continued and I wrote Gold Digger for many years. And then I decided that I needed more professional help and I went to Stanford University for a two-year program and that’s actually where I wrote The Secret Life of Mrs. London.  And that one got picked up first by a publisher. So that’s kind of how it went. Jenny: [00:05:07] Fantastic. So you have got two books with two very interesting women. Jack London’s wife Charmian and that’s based on quite a lot of real history about the triangle between Jack London his wife and the magician Harry Houdini. Tell us a bit about that? Rebecca: [00:05:25] Yes so, I started writing that book because our lavender farm is right across from the London ranch – Jack London’s beautiful Beauty Ranch. He called it The Beauty Ranch and it’s a thousand acre ranch. It’s quite something. For 30 years really, I have been hiking all over that ranch and seeing all the mysteries that lie there. Their big beautiful home, like a 12,000 square foot home, was burnt to the ground before they even moved in. So it has a lot of character and I just became really enamored with Charmian Kittredge London who in the 1900’s believed in free love and she was a worker. She worked all her life; she had her own money. She was a writer and she really. I discovered, was how Jack – well you know he wrote 50 books in 15 years. And you know that that’s pretty much impossible. I can’t even understand how he did it. And they were all quite involved and very interesting. Well he did it. The woman behind the superstar I discovered he managed it because Charmian London would listen to his stories. So he would just dictate his stories, telling her story. And she would type them up for him and then she would spend the rest of the day editing them and working on them. So I feel like she was the unsung hero of Jack London’s work. I just really wanted to tell that story. Jenny: [00:07:08] Sure. I read somewhere that at the stage where your book is opening they went back to that ranch. He was fairly broken in health and frayed in spirit. And they had that disastrous fire there. They had just about completed a new home which I think was pushing him into quite a bit of financial stress. And it burned down, so the house that is there now, is that a different house? Jack London Historic Park Rebecca: [00:07:35] So there, I’ve told you, it’s a thousand acres so they have a small cottage that they lived in. And that is still there. It’s a cute little Victorian farm cottage and you can still see where they slept on their sleeping porches outside. They had two separate sleeping porches and they had small offices inside and it was quite small but cozy and it had a beautiful garden outside. And they have the big shire horse barns made out of stone, but they were building about a mile away. The glories of Jack London Park Charmian and Jack London in Hawaii [00:08:14] You can hike there still and see the whole ruins. They were building this 12,000 square foot amazing stone and log home. And yes, they had been building it for two or three years. I am trying to remember I guess it was three years and they were just about to move in and it went up in flames.  At the time they did not know how it burned down. It was at night and there were several theories that are in the book and that’s part of the mystery of the book. Houdini of course, can’t let it go. So he has to figure out how the house burned. It’s kind of fun. Jenny: [00:09:01] Yes it sounds like a lot of fun. That property is now part of a national park is it, so anybody can go and visit, is that right? Rebecca: Anyone to go visit but it’s actually it’s own privately owned park. When California lost all of its money for parks the locals decided that they would buy that park and they run it themselves. It’s so beautiful and I really recommend that anyone go there. You see all sorts of exciting things. Jack London was wild about this ranch. He loved it so much and he built a Pig Palace that’s still there. It comes this beautiful turret in the center and all the little pig hovels are around and you can just imagine how inventive and kind of crazy he was. An amazing obsession [00:09:59]  In fact I really think he was bipolar because he would be really manic in these very exciting things that he did on the ranch. He bought 300,000 eucalyptus trees from Australia and planted them all over California, and all over his ranch as well. He just got very manic about doing certain things and Charmian supported him. And as you alluded to, that was part of the reason that he had to keep writing so much, because he was obsessed with this Beauty Ranch. Jenny: We should mention while we’re on this book that it’s just recently been named as a gold finalist in a big indie publishing competition hasn’t it? Rebecca: [00:10:52] Yeah. I’m so excited. I’m going to New York on May 28th and collecting the gold IPPI award (Independent Book Publisher Awards) it’s called, and that is the world’s largest book competition. So I’m just amazed and excited to do that. It’s so much fun. Jenny: [00:11:12] You have every right to be proud of that. That’s fantastic. And the one that you’ve got coming out in just a few weeks is Baby Doe’s story. That’s another scandalous rags to riches type of story. And I think that’s one you’ve grown up with. As you say it was the first thing you were attracted to writing about. Tell us about Baby Doe.. The remarkable Baby Doe story Baby Doe Tabor Rebecca: [00:11:34] O.K, I grew up in Colorado and we would go camping in the mountains and we would go in the ghost towns and we would pan for gold in the rivers. And I found out about this Baby Doe Tabor who was 20 years old when she came West. [00:11:54] And this is strange but she came West because everything that her family had burned in a fire. So now isn’t that strange? So weird, that her all of Baby Doe’s things burnt in a fire and all of Jack London’s things. And then my house burning in a fire. I think I have to get off this kick, somehow. [00:12:19] But Baby Doe –  she married someone just to bring her parents money. She would send money back from the gold mine. And this young man that she married, another 20 year old, turned out to be not cut out for this mining, which is really difficult. You find all that out in the book. What it’s really like to work in a mine and how mining changed from this beautiful thing of panning for gold in the river to hard rock mining when you’re three stories underground and you can’t breathe. It’s dusty and it’s dark and you’re dynamiting for this gold. It turns into quite a tough thing. And so he was not up to that. And Baby Doe took over the mine and he actually abandoned her when she was pregnant and all this is true. So I like to write stories about women that really struggled and showed their character through the whole thing. The lonely richest woman The Matchless Mine hut where Baby Doe froze to death And so Baby Doe did run this mine alone and then she moved to Leadville, Colorado which was about a day away and she met this old prospector. He was 50 years old and here she was 25 by this time. And the cool thing about him is he had been trying his whole life. This is Horace Tabor. He’d been prospecting his whole life and never struck it rich until he is 50 years old. And they struck the biggest silver mine in the history of America. And he became the mayor and the governor and then a US senator. Of course he was married and he and Baby Doe had an affair. And she’s very religious which you’ll see in the book. And that was really tough for her. [00:14:14] But somehow they just really loved each other. So they actually got married in the White House in Washington D.C. So at our other capital with the president in attendance. [00:14:30] But their life was difficult. While they were the richest couple in the entire country, they were scandalized and ostracized by society and by politicians. And so he lived a very sad and a lonely life as a very rich woman until 1893 when we had the Silver Crash and they actually de-monetized silver. I know you have different money there, but we have silver dollars here in America. There were actually made from silver. You can buy a silver dollar for one hundred dollars today, so silver has really gone up, but it in those days they de-monetized it. The Tabors lost everything and so it’s the story of really rags to riches to rags and what happens to these two amazing Americans. Challenging the conventions Jenny: [00:15:45] There are similarities between Charmian and Baby Doe and in the way that they both challenged the conventions of the day, aren’t there? Rebecca: [00:15:53] There are, but I think that what I’m getting from some of the people who have read both books is that Charmian London had a much tougher man to deal with in Jack London. Jack London was one of these superstars. Like a genius and a superstar and she really had to cater to him. Horace Tabor, I guess he is a different man too. He’s a gambler and he gambles everything on silver and he loses. So it is interesting how these two different women deal with these men and with themselves and how they come out in a heroic way. [00:16:43] But I think the two books are really different how they end. Jenny: [00:16:46] Yes. Yes. And you do have a sequel for Baby Doe coming soon? Rebecca: [00:16:53] Yes I do. And it is called Silver Dollar. [00:16:57] And this is crazy but they named her Baby Doe Tabor. That’s very different name. It comes from the miners nicknaming her after a baby deer. They thought she had the biggest eyes and if you see pictures of her on Google you’ll see that she has these enormous eyes and so they named her Baby Doe. And then the Tabors named their daughters the strangest, longest names. One is named Silver Dollar. She is actually named Rosemary Echo Silver Dollar. [00:17:34] So the next book which I’ve already written is about Baby Doe and Silver Dollar and how they go up to the Matchless Mine and they live there trying to get their fortune back, and what happens with that. Leadville treasures on view Jenny: [00:17:50] There are relics of Baby Doe Tabor in history. I was reading online about her wedding dress which has been this on show in Colorado somewhere. Tell us about that for readers who might be interested. Rebecca: [00:18:12] Yeah. You can see it if you Google Baby Doe Tabor ‘s wedding dress. It does exist and I’ve seen it at the Colorado history museum and it is exquisitely made at the time, which was 1883. [00:18:30] At the time she got married it cost $17,000 dollars then in 1883. So I really can’t even I should figure out how much that is today. [00:18:42] But it would be huge, it would be more like $70,000 dollars today. So it was just beautiful. And she has a number of outfits that you can see online. The famous Baby Doe Tabor wedding dress I will be speaking at the history museum which I’m really excited about at the end of August and they’re going to bring out all the relics they have of the Tabors so that people who come to my presentation can see them firsthand. And one thing I want to add to this is one of my favorite relics of hers is the seen on the cover of Baby Doe book because that is an actual painting of her done the year that she died in 1935. I just love that painting and the story behind that is that this painter used to paint all the back drops and the dioramas in the museums and when she died he painted this in tribute of one of the beautiful woman in America at the time. Time travel back to 1880s Jenny: [00:19:58] That’s a gorgeous story. Yes. And it would be wonderful to see those the objects.  That will be a lovely occasion for you in August. Burro races in Leadville – a living history Rebecca: [00:20:07] Oh I am looking forward to it. And I’m also speaking at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville and I’m thrilled about that as well. Jenny: So how many people has Leadville got today? It’s still mostly it’s just a small town is it? Rebecca: [00:20:25] So when Horace Tabor was first in Leadville and there was no gold found or anything, there were only 200 people there. It was just a mining camp and then in five years because of the Gold Rush it got to 40,000 people – from 200 to 40,000 people. I can’t imagine what that would be like to live in that kind of environment where it grows from 200 to 40,000. And now today it is probably two thousand. What I love about Leadville, is that any one can ever go there. It looks pretty much exactly like it did in 1880. Yes I love it. Yeah. It still has the mine – the Matchless Mine –  it has all the old houses that you can tour through. where Horace Tabor lived. It has the Tabor Opera House. It has the Silver Dollar Saloon which is fantastic with all the heads of animals and things. It’s just really a wild mining town. The widows of Champagne Jenny: [00:21:42] So it’s a great place to visit it. You seem to have this gift for finding remarkable stories because I gather that you’re now working on another amazing story about the champagne widows of California. Tell us a little about that one. Rebecca: [00:22:02] Well actually it is the champagne widows of Champagne France. Jenny: [00:22:07] Oh that’s Champagne France. Oh sorry. Yeah. Yes. Madam Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin and vintage champagne. Rebecca: [00:22:10] And I love champagne and I went to Champagne, France, many times . . . and I discovered that there were five main widows back in the 1800s – from 1800 to 1950. There are five main women who really made champagne the worldwide phenomenon that it is today. [00:22:37] So that is going to be a series of five books and I’m working right now on my third draft of the first one which is Veuve Clicquot. Have you ever had Veuve Clicquot champagne? Jenny: [00:22:51] I think so. I certainly have heard of it. Rebecca: [00:22:54] So it’s the one with the orange label. “Veuve” actually means widow. So the interesting thing about why these women were able to do something in the 1800’s when no women worked at all is because they were widows. The legal glitch that freed women There was a glitch in the law. If you were married then everything that you did and everything that you owned belonged to your husband. And if you weren’t married it all belonged to your father and they were in charge of you. Like you’re not a person, like you’re an animal or an object. So the only women who could really do anything were widows. And it’s so wild that there were these five different widows throughout 150 years that really made Champaign amazing. Jenny: [00:23:53] Yeah that sounds like a great story. I’m excited about that. And now, to turn into a wider career. Tell us something about your life before you became a writer. Rebecca: [00:24:06] Well I was in the lavender business and that was actually the first book that I wrote was Lavender Fields of America because we were the largest grower and manufacturer of lavender products in America. Lavender Fields of America It’s still online because we sold the company, so you can look it up. It’s called Sonoma Lavender. And so we grew the lavender and we made about 300 different products out of lavender from Bath and Body to sachets to pillows to the little stuffed animals to the heated spa products like the neck collars that to heat up in the microwave and wrap around for a great aroma therapy and heat therapy and we loved that business. [00:24:56] We did that for 20 years and then we just sold it right before the fire. So it was a big crazy year. We sold our business one month like September. The fire was October. And so it’s been a wild ride. How writing helped recovery Jenny:  It certainly has just. Reverting back for a moment to your mention of the friend that you started writing with. Did she continue with her writing? Rebecca: [00:25:25] No and I loved her story. Someday I’ll convince her to keep going. She wrote the book and it’s a great book but she too she also had her house burned and everything, so she did not continue with that. Yeah I’ll tell you asked about it that! Jenny: [00:25:45] It would be amazing if you both end up being published. Do you have a particular writing routine that you follow? I imagine that at the moment with your life a bit disrupted it might be hard to maintain a routine. Rebecca: [00:26:00] No. That’s what keeps me sane. Really. I write in the morning right away when I get up and that is early like – 5:00am. I like to light a candle and start writing because it’s quiet and there aren’t distractions. You can get right into the next scene. I write by scene so I’ll just imagine what it’s happening in that scene. In the book that I’m writing now which is the champagne widows. Madame Clicquot Ponsardin (Veuve Clicquot) actually knew Napoleon. This is during Napoleon times. And so it’s really fantastic to have Napoleon as the “little devil,” that’s what she called him and this is all true. So you really just have that time early in the morning to get into that character and I like to write a scene a day which is something that Jack London always did.  A scene is about a thousand words and he always had a thousand words a day that he would try to write. The secret to writing success Jenny: [00:27:07] Fantastic. Tell me is there one thing you’ve done in your life and career more than any other that you’ve credit with your success. Rebecca: [00:27:12] I think that I am not afraid to try. You know I just try to write. A lot of people talk themselves out of writing their story because they think it will be too hard. But if you just write it all down and not be too critical in the first draft then you can go back in the second draft and get better and better and better. [00:27:40] I would say that I end up with honestly 50 drafts of each book. The first one you just get the story down quickly. So I think that my ability not to be overly critical in the beginning.  I let myself go back and back and just get better and better and tell the story the way I want to. Jenny: [00:28:07] Yeah that is a good way, to turn off your internal editor with the first draft isn’t it? Rebecca: [00:28:15] Yes. I have a lot of author friends and they get, you know everyone is critical of their own work, or they want to get it so perfect and they wordsmith it to death like the first draft. That means you’re never going to get that book done. The best way is to say what is the story I’m trying to tell and get it down and then work on the structure of it. And then you go in and start working on the characters and the setting and everything else that you want to create in that book What Rebecca likes to read Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance Jenny: [00:28:48] Yeah that’s right. We are starting to come to the end of our time together, so turning to Rebecca as reader. This podcast is called The Joys of Binge Reading and it’s predicated around the idea that people do like to binge read these days in much the same way that they binge watch Netflix. Are you a binge reader and what do you like to read?. Rebecca: [00:29:11] Oh my Kindle has so many titles on it that I can barely look at them. So I think I’m a binge selector too!  Whenever I’m on social media and someone tells me about a book, I will immediately download it. And then I got the Kindle Unlimited.  So I just download everything that I want to. So that I don’t forget about it, you know. So I’ve got a lot of books. What do I like to read? [00:29:44] Because I’m writing historical fiction, I’m really focused on that. I like to read the Lisa See books. Of course like everybody, once you get some favorite authors you’d like to read everything by them. I also like to see if authors change over time. It seems like some of the historical fiction authors are getting – like the really best sellers – are getting very detailed and rich in their writing as opposed to just kind of surface historical fiction. [00:30:20] So I like that where it’s got a really beautiful story to it. Three ‘must read’ books Jenny: [00:30:24] Any of those whose names come to mind? Rebecca: [00:30:27] Let’s see the one I just read Where The Crawdads Sing  (Delia Owens). [00:30:36] That’s a great book. And I read a few of that kind of subject and that’s about very poor children and parents and how they how they grow up and how they can survive that because there are a lot of issues with growing up poor and disenfranchised. So I’ve read Where The Crawdads Sing, which is really a best seller and I read Educated  (Tara Westover) which is a memoir on the same kind of subject. [00:31:06] Oh and also Hillbilly Elegy. (J.D.Vance)  Have you heard of it? Jenny: [00:31:18] I haven’t heard of Hillbilly Elegy. It’s new to me. Rebecca: [00:31:25] They’re all on the same subject. I do a lot of volunteer work at our Valley of the Moon Children’s Center. Some of these children have grown up with parents who are either uneducated or maybe they get into drugs and the poor kids are there trying to learn how to deal with their lives. So I guess I get into a streak like that reading. Did you ever read The Glass Castle? That’s another really interesting one of the same ilk. From L to R: Sadie Sink as “Young Lori,” Charlie Shotwell “Young Brian,” Ella Anderson “Young Jeannette,” Woody Harrelson “Rex Walls.” Naomi Watts “Rose Mary Walls” and Eden Grace Redfield as “Youngest Maureen” in THE GLASS CASTLE. Photo by Jake Giles Netter. Starting over again Jenny: [00:32:05] We’ll put links to those in the show notes for people who might like to follow up on them. So that’s marvelous, thank you. Looking back over your writing career at this stage if you were starting over again would you make any changes or are you pretty much happy that it’s gone the way thing have gone? Rebecca: [00:32:26] Well I think I wish I would have started earlier, because I really enjoy it. [00:32:34] But you know I’ve had the lavender career was 20 years and before that I was in marketing. So I have a long and fun life. So now this is very exciting to be able to create these stories for people to read and I really do love the way that the social networking of readers and authors is developing – just like your program here. [00:33:01] That’s so exciting. And it never existed before and I have a Facebook page that we run which is American historical novels and there’s just so much interchanging. I had a hundred different people talking about Gold Digger last week which was really fascinating. It’s fun to have those relationships with the readers. What’s next for Rebecca’s writing Jenny: [00:33:26] Fantastic. We’ll put that Facebook group on the show notes as well. So what have you got planned for the rest of this year in terms of your writing. I suppose it sounds like it might be your Veuve Clicquot book that’s going to be taking most of your time, but tell us about this year? Rebecca: [00:33:43] So I’m in my third draft of Veuve Clicquot and then I’m going to go over the Silver Dollar and do another draft of that and I’m hoping to release that one next year. We’ll see how I get on with the Champagne Widows. It’s really a lot to incorporate, the French Revolution and Napoleon along with wine making and what it’s like to live as a widow during that time. So that may take me another year yet. Jenny: [00:34:19] And do you have to do some of your research in French? Is your French up to that? Rebecca: No, I do not know French. But I’ve visited there – how many times? Maybe four times. And of course I would always want to go back but when I go there – and I did this with Gold Digger as well – I hire a historian to take me everywhere and to tell me everything so that I can really see it and feel it firsthand and get to ask my own questions. I find that the history books don’t give you all the little things that you might want to know as a novelist. I actually had the Veuve Clicquot historian for half a day when I was there last, and they gave me their personal number and their history books and everything so I’ve got a lot to work. Jenny: [00:35:24] That sounds wonderful! Rebecca: Are you a writer? Jenny: Yes I write historical mysteries set in 1860s California. Where readers can find Rebecca Rebecca: [00:35:32] So yeah oh wow we’re quite happy to have you on American historical novels. Jenny: [00:35:39] Oh thank you. That’s kind. Do you enjoy interacting with your readers? Rebecca: [00:35:49] Well I have my website which is www.RebeccaRosenberg.com And I have a great mailing list going on I do a newsletter say once a month, about interesting things that we’re finding out with the different books that I’m writing. And then I have a Facebook page which is Rebecca Rosenberg novels. That’s the Facebook. And I also like to connect on Bookbub and Goodreads. And then also this American Historical Novels. I’m the moderator of that Facebook page and I have another Facebook page I know you’ll understand. It’s called Breathless Bubbles and Books. That’s where the champagne connection is. Breathlessbubblesand books on Facebook. Jenny: [00:36:59] That sounds wonderful. And also we’ll put the links to your former lavender business, What a wonderful conglomeration of topics. Rebecca: Great. I love it. Jenny: [00:37:13] Thanks Rebecca. Look we have now run out of time together but it’s been marvelous talking to you, it really has. I think people who are planning their next holiday would have some great ideas to follow up on, from hearing you talk. Rebecca: [00:37:27] Thank you. Jenny it’s been really fun. Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]