A few days ago I finished the first draft of my Alaska Expedition book. It’s just short of 3,000 words, but I expect with editing it will reach up to about 5,000-7,000. I have the basic plot down, but I would like the story to have a strong sense of place and time. 1920 Nome, Alaska was on the cusp of change, with the old and new, traditional and modern, native Inuit and western lifestyle, all contending with each other in a rugged setting.
Since I am from near Dayton, Ohio, I’ve had to research Nome, and Alaska in general, extensively. The research is not what it is currently like to live in Alaska, but what it was like in 1900-1920. What technology was available at that time? What animal populations migrated through the Seward Peninsula near Nome then? How was the town organized? What were the schools like? How did the Inuit and white settlers interact? These are some of the questions I’ve struggled to find answers to without having ever set foot there. I’m still reading up on most of those, and will likely continue to until the book is published.
An interesting side note, 1920s Nome did not have caribou, moose, or muskox for hunting. There were reindeer herds kept by the Lomen family and some native groups, but those were essentially imported. Moose were not seen in the area until the 1930s. And while the Seward Peninsula is the correct range for muskox, there were none left by the 1920s. They have since been re-introduced.
Something I had to get right from the beginning through was the relationship between the seasons, human activity, and the airplane expedition. The concept of the book is that it follows an 11 year old girl from the day she learns airplanes are coming until their arrival. The reader learns about the expedition as she does, through telegraph messages, the rare newspaper clipping that reaches Nome, from a former WWI pilot who lives in Nome, and so on. Her excitement as the expedition gets closer to Nome is infectious. But even while she is excited, life goes on, on there are duties the season dictates she must help her family perform to survive the next winter.
At first I just had notes in my spiral notebook about nature, and referenced the Stan Cohen book for expedition dates, but I wasted too much flipping through pages and re-researching information. (I can hear you now: “A notebook? How old school.” Well, yes, but there’s nothing quite like putting ink to a crisp new page. Makes you feel like the possibilities are endless, and so accomplished when that page is filled.) So, I made this chart in Google Docs that shows seasonal events, what humans might have been doing, and where the expedition was at a given time. I’ll be adding to it as I find more information.
My next task as I go through and make edits for the second draft is to fill in more details about life in Nome. For example, if my main character needs to help preserve blueberries while staying safe from bears, or gather eggs from wild bird nests, I’ll need to describe how it was done in such a way that the reader can vividly picture the experience; an experience that most will never have in real life.
Northern Skies Publishing 