Hello, and welcome to my blog. Today, I will talk about genealogy as a source of ideas. The reason it’s been a while since I added a new post to this blog is that I am writing my third novel, in which my family genealogy as a source of ideas plays a big part. My two previous novels, “The Overlife, A Tale of Schizophrenia” and “Three Kidnapped, Three Siblings, Three Furies,” were closely based on my life experiences. I live with schizophrenia and am a survivor of family abuse, particularly sibling abuse. My third novel, “Stay Outside! An Australian Foster Story circa 1900,” is based on the family oral history passed down by my mother and aunts about my maternal grandfather, Frank Cohen, who died a few months after I was born. Frank was abandoned by both his birth parents and, as a result, placed in foster care around 1903, when he was 8 or 9 years old. His siblings were also placed in foster care at the same time. Frank’s sister was 6, and his brother was 3.

During his lifetime, my grandfather tracked down his siblings, but he and other family members who tried never learned what happened to Frank’s parents. Their parents’ abandonment severely traumatized Frank and his two siblings. To solve the riddle, some of my family members began exploring genealogy websites, particularly ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, and geni.com. I have begun using them myself to gather as much factual background as possible for my current third novel. It would be a spoiler to reveal what happened to Frank’s parents, which is available on the genealogy sites, so I want to talk more generally about what these sites have contributed to my ongoing novel. 

Because my grandfather’s parents immigrated to Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, in the late 1980s or early 1890s, via Eastern Europe and England, I am researching foster care during that period and closer to 1903, which pertains to my relatives. In addition, I am researching the Victorian gold rush (roughly 1851 to the late 1860s) and the Victorian depression of the 1890s. Although the gold rush preceded Frank’s parents’ decision to immigrate to Victoria, it had created a prosperous period in Ballarat, where they first settled. The depression affected Frank’s family as well as the family into which Frank would eventually marry.

The genealogy websites have enabled me to piece together a background cobweb for Frank’s family and for his wife, Elizabeth. I don’t have enough specific facts to write a good memoir, but I have enough to write a novel closely based on fact, just like my first two novels mentioned already. I am deriving a lot of pleasure from discovering, via genealogy sites, the outlines of stories about Frank, his wife, Elizabeth, and their ancestors. To protect privacy, I am changing the names of the people in my novel and some of the dates. The further I delve into my heritage, the more ideas for stories about my ancestors accumulate, weaving a cobweb of reality. It’s an exciting and fruitful experience in fiction writing. It’s a pity my grandfather did not have access to such information before he died in 1957. His bitterness at being “abandoned” by his birth parents would have eased with just a few more facts. There is a strong sense of community on the genealogy sites. My maternal grandfather’s father came from a large family, and so did my maternal grandmother. Many of their descendants use these sites, so I benefit from what my relatives have already discovered and feel like a welcome member of a large extended family.

My grandfather Frank was fostered at age 8 by a kind foster mother but an abusive foster father, which added to his trauma at being abandoned by his birth parents.
While you are waiting for this novel to be published, please check out my two fiction novels, “The Overlife: A Tale of Schizophrenia” and “Three Kidnapped, Three Siblings, Three Furies. I live with schizophrenia, and I am a survivor of sibling abuse, the theme of the second novel. Here are my Amazon Affiliate Links to the two novels. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. For “The Overlife,” click on https://amzn.to/3Q3ReDZ, and for “Three Kidnapped,” click on https://amzn.to/48EdLNS. More information is available on my website: https://dianadirkbywrites.com/.

Thank you for joining me in this blog post. Come back soon!