Silver Gums; The Mathison Family Tree
My friend and critique partner, Carolyn, is mad keen on Genealogy. So much so she runs her own business tracking down people’s family trees and family members. She’s VERY good at what she does.
Cal drew me a family tree for the Greenfield family in Blue Skies, so I didn’t get confused about dates, ages and years when events happened – not a good look, the author being confused!
So when it came time to start writing Silver Gums, because I’m delving back in time and the story is spread out over three generations, I needed a family tree.
I thought I’d done a pretty good job and sorting this one out all by myself – I have ages of each person as of 2012, when The World Wars and Depressions were and the ages of the characters then… I sent it to Cal, to check everything.
She came back with some suggestions and the person I thought was the Great-Aunt, was indeed the Great-Aunt, but she isn’t old enough to have achieved what I needed her to achieve. *Sigh*
Well, best I get back to it…
Do you know your family history? Does your family have any skeletons? I’d love to hear about them!
I know one side of the family better than the other. The SA farming side 🙂 From Bute! As for my stories. I do EXACTLY as you are doing (and wish I had a geneology expert on hand) Book three is so convoluted, with links between three diff families with a hidden past that I have lines criss-crossing all over the place. I can now only decipher it after couple of reds. Everything makes perfect sense then LOL
EVERYTHING makes perfect sense after a couple of Reds Jenn!