Heroes and Heroines Who Don't Drink Alcohol

by Elva Cobb Martin

Why would I want the heroes and heroines in my inspirational novels to be non-drinkers or convert to non-drinkers?

A key verse of scripture that has led me to this conviction is Proverbs 20:1

"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise."

This verse strongly warns about inherent dangers associated with drinking alcohol.

The key phrase is "whosoever is deceived (by fermented wine, beer, liquor) is not wise." I do want main characters who are wise or who become wiser, as they grow. On the other hand, my villains might partake and be shown suffering many of the consequences. I believe I owe this contrast to my readers.

Here and elsewhere in this book of wisdom, Proverbs warns about a variety of personal and social evil consequences associated with drinking alcoholic beverages. The following notes are listed in my Life in the Spirit Study Bible published by Zondervan.

• As a "mocker" it leads to a decreased capacity for self-control, a weakening of inhibitions and a disdaining of prudent behavior and righteous values.
• As "raging" it contributes to disturbances, conflicts and violence in families and society.  
• It is also associated with inefficiency, poverty, and injustice. Rulers are advised not to drink alcohol since it can affect their decisions.

In our contemporary world in such nations as the United States, the drinking of alcohol is a factor in more than 50% of all fatal car crashes, 75% of all crimes committed, and more than 30% of all murders. It is also implicated as a factor in sexual immorality, pregnancy outside of marriage and high divorce rates. As Christian writers we can show some of these very conflicts.

Abstinence helps guarantee avoidance of the pitfalls associated with drinking so why not inspire readers and the next generation to choose the better way?

Here is a scene from my contemporary wip Summer of Deception showing one way I dealt with alcohol involving my hero and heroine. The novel is set on a Charleston Tea Plantation.

The h/h, Luke and Rachel, are at a party on a yacht in the Charleston Harbor owned by friends Archer and his sister Morgan. Luke is with Morgan, Rachel is with Archer.


       Archer balled his fist and pressed Luke on the shoulder. “Boy, am I thirsty after that carriage ride through history. What are you drinking, old man?”

     “A Devil’s Triangle,” Luke answered, swirling his glass and staring straight at Archer. “Minus the devil.”

     Rachel glanced at Luke, but he had turned back to Morgan. They were the most striking couple in the room. Something about Morgan  leaning close to him annoyed Rachel.

     “Luke’s still walking his teetotaler plank, I see.” Archer’s voice brought Rachel back to face him. “I’m going to have a Wild Affair, what would you like, most beautiful lady in the room?”

      Rachel had never heard of the drinks mentioned but assumed they included alcohol. “Coke—or ginger ale, please.”   

      “Oh, no, another teetotaler in the house?” Morgan  bemoaned with a mock grimace.

        Luke regarded Rachel. He motioned toward the black bartender. “This guy’s been trained on Barbados, and he’s famous for his fruit and berry concoctions. You don’t want to settle for a soda, not here,  Rachel. At least try my drink—you can get it minus the alcohol.”

        So that’s what Luke had meant.

       “Okay, I’ll take a Devil’s Triangle—minus the devil.” The bartender handed Rachel a tall glass. She took a sip and delighted in the rich strawberry-lemon fruit drink with a touch of mint.

How do you treat alcohol in your novels? Leave a comment and please share this blog if you have time. Thanks for stopping by.

Elva Cobb Martin

Detailed Character Sketch for Travay Allston

by Elva Cobb Martin @elvacobbmartin

If you read my previous blog, you will know that last week I sent in my requested full manuscript, In a Pirate's Debt, to a publishing house. Today I want to begin sharing how I prepared to write this inspirational historical novel. It finished out at 74,000 words.

In preparation to plot In a Pirate's Debt, I wrote out a detailed character sketch of my heroine and hero. Here is the sketch I completed for my heroine, Travay Allston, age 17.

First, I found a photo I liked. It's a lot easier to fill in characteristics while looking at a photo. I found this on the internet, I think for hair color ads, and I don't actually know the model's name.

Travay Allston, heroine, In a Pirate's Debt

Character Sketch

Physical and Emotional Attributes: 

Golden auburn hair, blue eyes, full lips, flawless ivory complexion, feminine, a smile that lights up a room.
Medium height - five foot seven inches, slender but well endowed (Olivia de Havilland, Maureen O'Hara)
Age: 17
Educated, able horsewoman, can do needlework, knows how to run a large house.
Fiery, proud, independent spirit, quick temper, quick to judge and jump to conclusions but also has determination, courage, and tenacity.

History

Born In Charles Town on a rice plantation to wealthy parents, Travay takes riches and position for granted and is proud. Governesses and her mother taught her how to be an accomplished, aristocratic young woman. A boy from the Poole's neighboring plantation, Lucas Barrett, the son of indentured parents, was her frequent childhood play mate whom she often got into trouble. He later ran away to sea. When she was 10 her planter father was killed by pirates coming back from a trip to England. When Travay was 12 her mother remarried a deceitful charmer and gambler, Karston Reed. He lost the Charles Town rice plantation in a game and moved Travea and her mother to their sugar plantation in Jamaica. He is cruel, heartless and greedy and Travay's mother dies an early death when Travay is 17. Her stepfather loses the sugar plantation and Travay's hand in marriage to Sir Roger Poole. The story opens with the scene of Travay running away to escape this terrible fate. 

Spiritual:
As a result of the bad things that have happened in her life, Travay has lost most of her mother's Anglican faith. She thinks she can go it alone without God (but God is waiting for her to turn to Him). 

Negative Traits: 
Travay is quick to judge and jump to conclusions. She extends little mercy to anyone, especially a confessed pirate who tries to make excuses for his pirating by calling himself a privateer. Through the course of the story, she discovers her own need of mercy and how to extend it lovingly to others.

Values: 
Travay values a good name, wealth, heritage,compassion and determination.

Goal: to escape a forced marriage and win the love of a good man, find security and regain her lost estates.

Epiphany (a sudden intuitive leap of understanding). 
Travay will come to see her pride and spoiled attitude as wrong and become humbled by her love for Lucas, whom she rediscovers as the pirate Captain Lucas Bloodstone Barrett. During the crisis of his arrest and sentencing to hang, Travay comes to a vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ. She determines to save Lucas from the hangman's noose, no matter what it costs her, and repay a debt she owes him for his earlier rescues.

Do you have other ideas to add to a character sketch? Next time we will look at my hero's character sketch, Captain Lucas Bloodstone Barrett.

Thanks for stopping by! Do leave a comment and share the blog, if you enjoyed it, on Twitter and FB.

Elva Cobb Martin

Downton Abbey - Hoorah for Marriage But Oh Me for Ardor

I've watched and have taped all the PBS Downton Abbey series and I  love them. For the most part.

What a great quote on marriage came from Season Four's January 19 program. Lord Grantham is trying to console his valet whose wife has pulled away from him (the valet) due to a rape she's kept secret. The valet is hurting. He has no idea what has happened. Here is Lord Grantham's wonderful counsel.

"There's no such thing as a marriage between two intelligent people that does not at sometime have to negotiate thin ice. You must wait until things clear and they will. The damage cannot be irrepable when two people love each other as much as you two do." 

 HOORAH! So true, so true, if my 40-plus years of marriage experience counts for anything.

But...I have to admit as a southern USA born and raised romance writer, I've found a lack of ardor in the English gentlemen heroes! After all, I have to compare them to our American romantic heroes like Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, or Tyrone Power, to mention a few. Now I've aged myself!

For example, get this scene also in the January 19, 2014, Season Four movie. 

 Mary, emerging from her year-long widowhood, has attracted a new handsome, rich beau who has fallen head over his polished heels for her. She seemed to be responding to him on a couple of outings. Now they are out on a walk alone on the grounds of Downton Abbey.  He asks her to marry him, even if he has to wait a year or two for her to be ready. They are standing about a foot or two apart and looking into each other's faces. He tells her poetically that she totally fills his mind. 

Mary replies, "But that's just it, Matthew still fills my mind and I don't want to lose him."

The next thing just blew my warm, southern romantic mind. This lily-livered English gentlemen, STILL a foot or two away, then ASKS her if he can kiss her, in order to have at least one great memory to carry with him.

Can you, my American friends, in your wildest imagination, ever dream of Clark Cable asking Scarlet, "May I kiss you, my dear? I want at least one good memory to take with me."



 Rhett Butler to Scarlett O'Hara: "What you need is kissing and plenty of it by someone who knows how."

Can you imagine pirates Errol Flynn or Tyrone Power asking ANY heroine they are in love with this kind of question when what the antsy heroine needs is to be clasped in the hero's arms and given an unforgetable kiss that will make her knees buckle and blot all thoughts of any other man clear out of her mind? Don't you just long for Mary to receive such a kiss? As wonderful as Matthew was, it is TIME to move on. He's been deceased over a year.

Now, that I've expressed my romance-writer, woman-married-to a warm-Southern-hero mind, what is your opinion? Would you like to join with me in sending the writer of the series, Julian Fellowes, a message?

Something like: "Hey, why don't you bring a warm-blooded, AMERICAN Navy Seal or cowboy or law officer or any type of Carolinian CHRISTIAN hero into the story to really sweep Mary off her stilted boots?"

And it wouldn't hurt if he looks a little like Peter Facinelli... 

 

And it would be WONDERFUL if he has the Christian integrity, strength and fervor of Tim Tebow.

What do you think? I would love to know your thoughts. Do you think this "American hero" also needs to be wealthy?  Leave a comment and even a photo of someone you recommend for this part!

Thanks for stopping by!

Elva Cobb Martin 

Elva Cobb Martin is a freelance writer, Bible teacher and grandmother. She is president of the American Christian Fiction Writers new South Carolina Chapter. She has been published in Decision, Charisma, and Home Life and is currently working on an inspirational romance novel. Elva lives in Anderson, South Carolina, with her husband and high school sweetheart, Dwayne. You can connect with her through her web site at www.elvamartin.com , on Face Book and Twitter @Elvacobbmartin. Or leave a comment below on this blog!  

Review of ML Tyndales Elusive Hope

MaryLu has done it again with Book 2, in her Escape to Paradise series, Elusive Hope.

Magnolia, uprooted from her pleasurable southern Plantation life by her stern father, battles homesickness, low self-esteem and an addiction to rum. She cannot think of love or of a God who seems to have abandoned her.

 Hayden lives, breathes and dreams nothing but revenge against his swindler father who abandoned him and his mother when Hayden was a child. He also knows he has become very much like the man he hates. Love and faith have no place in his goals.

But romance does bloom between these two in the midst of a steamy tropical forest full of snakes, spiders and demonic apparitions after Magnolia attaches herself to Hayden thinking he’ll help her escape to Rio de Janeiro and to passage on a ship back home. The haughty southern girl and proud, savvy swindler meet their matches in each other. Both of their dreams, his to get revenge on his father, hers to get back home, keep tantalizing but eluding them with every new plan they concoct.

No one but MaryLu Tyndale could write such romantic scenes in a sweltering, dangerous, bug-infested jungle in Brazil and then draw all the story threads together, including spiritual renewal and deliverance, into a surprising and satisfying ending.

In her next book coming out this Spring, MaryLu is back on the high seas with a great romance and adventure. I look forward to reading The Ransom.

Have you read an exciting Christian romance lately? Tell me about it. Thanks for stopping by and do leave a comment.

Elva Cobb Martin

Elva, president of the new ACFW-SC Chapter, has founded and led* writers’ groups since 2007. She is a former school teacher and semi-retired minister with hard earned degrees from Anderson University and Erskine College. Decision, Charisma, and Home Life have surprisingly published her articles. She is currently sweating over her second inspirational novel. Happy to be a mother and finally promoted to grandmother, Elva lives with her husband Dwayne and a mini-dachshund writing helper (Lucy) in Anderson, South Carolina. Connect with her on her web site www.elvamartin.com, on Twitter @Elvacobbmartin and on Face book.    

*some would question the accuracy of this word