Timberline's true name

For those of you coming to this blog because of the Book Bub promotion, I wanted to repost something about the woman depicted on the cover of Woman of Ill Fame.

Timberline's True Name

--This is a reposting; I know there is renewed interest in Woman of Ill Fame and so I'm going to put this blog post up again.


This blog is currently about witchcraft persecutions, ancient and modern, but now and then I will dip into material regarding my first novel Woman of Ill Fame. The novel is about a Gold Rush prostitute in a dangerous, brand-new San Francisco.

A few days ago, someone was in my archives and saw my post about the real-life prostitute whose image is featured on the cover. All I knew was that her name was Timberline, she was a Dodge City prostitute, and her image is in the collections of the Kansas State Historical Society.

Well, the anonymous commenter wrote that her name was Rose Vastine.

That for one thing totally threw me. Although I fashioned my character based on this photograph and named her Nora, for some reason I had “felt” that this real woman’s name was Kate.

Secondly, the commenter wrote that she earned the name Timberline for being 6’2” in height. Another big surprise. In my mind, the nickname had dirty connotations!

Armed with her real name, I consulted Professor Google.

The first link I accessed made me gasp out loud in the café I was working in, and literally grab my forehead. According to Linda Wommack’s Ladies of the Tenderloin, “Timberline climbed up into the hills above Creede and shot herself not once, but six times.”

When you have spent so much time staring at someone’s photograph and constructing an entire novel around them, you develop a strange and intense connection to them. It was almost as upsetting as hearing this news about someone I knew…but not only was Timberline a stranger to me, but she died 150 years ago. Whatever sorrows she endured, they are dust now.

I had dedicated the novel to two wonderful women the world lost at an early age, and on the second line dedicated it to “Timberline and the other girls of the line: I hope the world was kind to you.”

And here was evidence that the world had not been kind to her.

The link went on to say that Timberline did not die from that suicide attempt, but strangely enough, another link had her recovering from an “intended overdose.” Is it apocryphal that she tried to kill herself with such vastly different methods and survived both times? Whatever the truth is, she must have been an unhappy young woman.

Several sources have her living in Creede, Colorado, a silver mining camp 420 miles from the Dodge City that her photograph is labeled with. Sure enough, the website for Creede, Colorado mentions Timberline on its “About Creede” page. Bat Masterson too (whose biography the commenter mentions) lived in both cities, so maybe she hitched a ride with him.

If anyone has any more information on her, I’d most definitely love to know it.

. . . . .

Delighted to announce...Anne Perry!

Anne Perry is an internationally-known and bestselling
writer (since 1970! Thirty years of book publishing. We all could want a career like that). She’s also Guest of Honor at the Historical Novels Society conference coming up next month in St. Petersburg, Florida. Perry’s website says, “None of her books has ever been out of print, and they have received critical acclaim and huge popular success: over 26 million books are in print world-wide.”


She has been writing the well-known Victorian crime/mystery series about detective Thomas Pitt and his aristocratic wife Charlotte since 1979, and in 1990 started a new series set about 35 years earlier, with private detective William Monk and sidekick nurse Hester Latterly. She’s still publishing more new creations focused on WWI as well as her most recent novel, a stand-alone, titled The Sheen on the Silk,

set in the exotic and dangerous world of the Byzantine Empire. She lives in Scotland.

As part of building up buzz for the conference, each day in May a different panelist will be featured on a different blog, a wonderful engineering feat organized by author Vanitha Sankaran. I’ll be featuring four authors on each of the upcoming Fridays in May, and I’m delighted that today’s author is such a behemoth of mystery writing. Vanitha wrote the questions, solicited the answers, and gave each of us bloggers free range to cull what to use, and how to illustrate it. Since Perry has literally dozens of books out—I counted 78 but may be incorrect—I have decided to festoon this post with as many book jackets as I can manage.

Now without further ado, here’s a brief Q&A;

How do you find the people and topics of your books?
In present-day news.*

Do you follow a specific writing and/or research process?
Yes, when I've got the topic, I think of the main character (i.e. Pitt or Monk) and what story will carry that theme. Then, I research what is necessary to make sure that story would work. Then I outline the story chapter by chapter then do the final research for the details.

For you, what is the line between fiction and fact?
Fact is what did happen, fiction is what could happen.

Do you have an anecdote about a reading or fan interaction you'd like to share?
Not a specific anecdote, but the thing that's most important to me is when someone says reading something I have written has helped them through a hard, tough patch.

Is there an era/area that is your favorite to write about? How about to read?
One I'd love to write about is the French revolution.

What are your favorite reads? Favorite movies? Dominating influences?
Favourite reads are present-day American mysteries, just for pleasure. Movies: A Good Woman (Oscar Wilde) with Helen Hunt. Intouchables (a superb French film). I think poetry and GK Chesterton in particular.

Is there a writer, living or deceased, you would like to meet?
GK Chesterton! I think sometimes it is better not to meet your idols for fear of they don't like you.

What book was the most fun for you to write? The Sheen on the Silk, because I loved letting rip with Zoe.

A few comments from me:
1. She’s an outliner! I guess for mystery writers it’s absolutely necessary, but I’m still excited to read this since I’m such an outlining advocate.
2. I noticed that without a hitch she changed the Americanized “favorite” to “favourite!” Good thing the questions didn’t involve any lorries, lifts, chips or flats.
3. How awesome would a French Revolution novel from her be?!

 * I found her answer that she found her book topics in present-day news fascinating, because Perry’s life itself has been splashed across headlines. Born as Juliet Hulme, she and her best friend murdered the friend’s mother when they were teens, in 1954. Kate Winslet plays Hulme in the film Heavenly Creatures. After serving a prison sentence, Hulme changed her name and began writing fiction. Her appearance at the conference falls on the anniversary of the crime, June 22, 59 years later.

Perry will be speaking at the dinner on June 21 as guest of honor, and then at 9:30 a.m. on the 22nd she’ll be a panelist speaking about “Writing the historical fiction mystery” along with my bestie Susan Spann, Annamaria Alfieri (who I’ll be hosting here on the blog May 31), Frederick Ramsay and Judith Rock. I can’t wait for this session!

Many thanks to Anne Perry for participating in the Historical Novels Society blogathon!

. . . . .

Having crushes on Victorians

Have you ever had a crush on someone of the past? A daguerreotype that you couldn’t stop staring at?

A number of years ago there was an exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California called Silver and Gold: Cased Images of the California Gold Rush.

As I wandered around the exhibit, I found myself suddenly arrested by a group shot of men. There were maybe five men in the image, and one of them: well, he stared right out at me and I felt a jolt of recognition.

I don’t think I believe in reincarnation and yet I’m obsessed by the idea. I love the concept that you might encounter the same souls again and again in different incarnations. And if there is any truth to the idea, then for sure I was looking at someone I once knew.

The image isn’t online, but I just now realized there was an exhibition book that went along with the exhibit. I know what to put on my birthday wish list! I’d love to see him again…again.

* * * * *

I was reminded of this exhibit recently for a few reasons. One is that I wrote a gothic novel in which someone looks at a black and white photograph with a loupe and has a moment somewhat reminiscent of my experience.

The other--and the reason that I actually googled around and located the website for the 1998 exhibit at the Oakland Museum--is that I found this guy pictured above. And he gave me a similar sort of jolt--not necessarily the “I know you” jolt, but the “I would like to know you” jolt.

This is Charles Keeler circa 1895, an early Berkeley poet and a founding member of the Berkeley Hillside Club. I’ll blog more on this historic club later.

This photograph seems so contemporary to me, almost like it was staged to look Victorian. Charles isn’t necessarily my type, but something about his probing gaze is saying, “Let me set down my cheroot so I may better address my attentions to you.” I picture him saying all sorts of banal things but with an undercurrent of “I’m a gonna take your clothes off, layer by lacy layer, stripping off that shirtwaist and throwing your whalebone corset across the room.”

Charles: I’ve checked with my husband and timetravel hooking up isn’t really cheating. I’ll meet you in 1896, okay? New Year’s Day? Right by the oak tree in the Oakland City Hall plaza?

. . . . .