Plus ça change – December 12, 2025
Is this thing on?
I started working on Laveaux in June of 2024. I expected to write one novel. It turned into two. Marie is a fascinating character, and getting to know her in my imagination led to riches I did not expect. Laveaux: Dancer is done. Eighteen months later, I’m starting work on Laveaux: Mother.
“Mother” in this context has two meanings.
Marie is a mom. So “mother” is completely prosaic, a woman who has a bunch of kids. She had two with Santiago Paris in the first novel. In the second, she has seven with Christophe Glapion. Only two make it out of childhood. She is also known for taking in waifs and strays of all ages. That’s who she is, and that leads us to the second meaning.
In legend Marie Laveaux is the Voudou Queen of New Orleans. My research and sensibilities changed that to the “Mother” of the Voudou. It seems to me (old white man author) that that concept is much more in keeping with the spirit of the ancient African religions that are the root of the Voudou tree. She is Mami Wata – mother water – and the spiritual leader of her community. That is her legend, and capturing how that happens will be the challenge in this novel.
I’m a plotter. I already had, in part, the second half of this story plotted. Dividing the story in two changes that. More importantly, getting to know Marie changes that. When I did the plot as a single entity, I was not happy with the back half, and in fact abandoned going into the detail I typically want. I wanted to get started. I suspect that even back then part of me unconsciously knew this was going to be a much larger story.
Now I have a not-quite-clean slate on which to work. I already have my historical timeline. I want to create a chapter outline, where the life she lives is (of course) consistent with the life she lives in Laveaux: Dancer. I have channels, different aspects of her life to focus on.
She is common law wife to Christophe, the man of her dreams. He’s a good husband, she’s in love. They have kids. Most of them die. He’s a white man pretending to be a free man of color so he can live with her.
She cares for her people, the poor, the free people of color, the slaves, the immigrants. She does all the things that turn her into legend. And she’s not TRYING to become a legend, she’s just being herself. She’s a healer. There is a massive yellow fever epidemic, years of cholera.
She must be a Voudou magician, with skills (real or imagined) admired by her own, feared by the white power structure.
She and Christophe own slaves. How do we work that into the story?
There’s all kinds of local color. Abraham Lincoln passes through town, twice; hot air balloons, steam engines and railroads, photography, the occasional hurricane. AMAZING shit is happening.
I don’t know how I’m going to get all this into a linear narrative. Which is why I plot. So I’m doing something different with my timeline. I’m breaking it into threads. For each year, from 1826 when we begin, to 1859 when we end, for each of the main timelines, what’s happening: Family, good times and hard; Slavery and Oppression; Voudou; Healing and Caring; Local Color; a couple of others. Against this matrix, knowing my main characters, especially the antagonist Smith, knowing the real events in all those timelines, how do I craft a tale that takes you down all these threads and braid the story into a narrative?
Dunno. We’ll find out.
