 This is the question that first sparked the journey that I took to Complete the novel. What is this question? Why why was a young unknown Scottish writer in poor health? Hiking this remote road above Carmel Valley, California in 1879 and this was a hike that almost killed Robert Louis Stevenson the author of Kidnapped Treasure Island Jekyll and Hyde and many others This is a modern picture of that road Robinson Canyon Road above mid-valley It's full of like live oak chaperrill and in 1879 it looked pretty much the same I believe from old photos What was Stevenson 26 years old doing there? 5,000 miles from his Edinburgh home his parents were quite wealthy Well, this person had something to do with why he was there and she graces the cover of the book Her name was Fanny Osborne. She was San Franciscan at the time they met She's about 35 in this picture and she was studying art in France When just happened to be canoeing by was Robert Louis Stevenson who is about 11 years younger than her She was very unhappily married to an upstanding San Francisco citizen named Sam Osborne and Sam was a very handsome guy, but somewhat of a philanderer Don't have time to go into that at any rate. She got her children. She was a tough lady She got her children on a steamer in a roundabout way got herself to France in the mid 1870s to study art with the early Impressionists Stevenson described her look that she was about five feet tall When she looked at you he said it was like someone's citing down a pistol She was a tough tough woman and this was Stevenson and That's an actual sketch that Fanny made of him This one thing I like and I wanted to use this especially in talking about writing historical fiction I love images Fanny did that sketch shortly after she met Stevenson and I think it's a very affectionate sketch Here's the real guy You know and it's I mean it's it's close that's a photo but He was again young and so I turned this into the first scene of my book The two of them had met fallen in love. She was still married Had a husband in San Francisco all kinds of complications why this shouldn't work Okay, but nonetheless She decided to go back after falling in love with Stevenson to her family and try to make a go of it Partly for economic pressures and because of the kids, okay So I imagined that she did this sketch on the day that she was going to tell him She had to go home and this one minute reading here goes like this They walked out into the forest in the fountain blow and she sat down her easel She formed a rectangle with her fingers and considered Lewis through this frame Trying not to be distracted by the meadow behind them His face was oblong like a long stone hanging from an earring slight trifling almost but with unusual length from the eyebrows down to The chin long thin nose and beneath it the right grin that would be charming except the teeth were stained And a little bit crooked she would draw him with a lips closed a gentle mouth The boys really except for the thin mustache above it the nose a classic shape slender like the rest of him and the eyes Sensuous and unlike her husband's utterly without guile Are you certain that you are all right Fanny Lewis asked you look so sad She swallowed don't talk it distracts me She took up a pencil and quickly sketched his face and its features in rough proportion to what she observed Then she worked on the rest of him the big coat with its wide lapels that dwarfed his shoulders pleased her She added shading to suggest bulk until satisfied that her drawing captured the way He looked like a boy who had put on his father's coat The humor provided by the coat might counterbalance the haunting Strangeness of the thin face now to the hands he had propped one of them on a knee so that the fingers dangled downward Long lean and delicate. They were the fingers of a pianist or perhaps a monsieur Sinful fingers he smiled playfully. I saw that look Fanny Osborne What look just for an instant the grim look you've had all day gave way to a naughty grin Nonsense she dug in her purse for a cigarette paper and tobacco Lewis relaxed from his pose and they each rolled a cigarette Fanny realized that her hands were trembling So she held them to her sides while Lewis struck a match She wondered if the children were busy packing for the long trip home as she had asked Tell him now Lewis blew smoke to the wind and smiled. What are you thinking Fanny? She swallowed. I'm thinking we should finish the sketch So shortly after this sketch then in my fictionalized version of history She tells him and she takes the children gets on a boat and goes back to California Lewis spent a miserable year Living with the parents like a lot of 20-somethings do in Edinburgh And just scheming about how he was going to get to California and rekindle things with Fanny To do Write the book. I did some research a lot of research actually Luckily a lot of the sources are near us This was the Stevenson Museum in St. Helena where you know you can get vetted and as a scholar you can put on little white gloves and and Be allowed in to see Fanny scrapbook is there her photographs her letters You can look at her handwriting or the stationery she used I got a lot of insights into her character And also her kids and Lewis that way also Lewis published or Yale has published eight volumes of Lewis's Letters he was a beautiful letter writer and slap-dash handwriting. You can hardly understand his Hers is very neat. He also drew and doodled cartoons all over his letters, which I thought was really neat And that's my writing process Okay, so this journey took me to the Stevenson's home in Edinburgh 17 Harriet row. It's still a very Smart neighborhood. This was a view out of his parents bedroom So I have a scene that I wrote in his father's bedroom where very formally the father said What's the matter with you and he's confessed that he's fallen in love and he tells her it's with Mrs. Osborne and she lives in California and And so the father was adamantly opposed obviously, you know and But so Lewis had to sneak off when he made his escape and and spend a year in California And this is what he came to a downtown Monterey looked like this. It's quite a switch from Edinburgh In the 1870s it got a lot of great old photos at the California State Library in Sacramento and this is the Cottage that he Rented a room up around the upper right and this is about the way it looked like then now It's beautiful with boogan veal is and all kinds of things growing in the garden and the state parks runs the runs tours through there He camped out in Monterey, and I'll just complete the story right now because I'm gonna run out of time in a minute, but He stayed in that little unheeded room for about three months and He almost immediately went tapped on Fanny's door and proposed marriage and he looked like heck He had been on a steamer and then the transcontinental railroad and then a narrow gauge railroad and a wagon to get to her And he was very sick had sores on his face dirt on his clothes and will you marry me? And she said are you out of your mind? So She said actually she said something like Louis, you know you got to give me some time This is kind of a big one yeah, because he just showed up right and And so he said as long as it takes you and he stayed nearby He went to the Bohemia saloon in Monterey Which is a place where he told stories for a Nicholas story in order to support himself And then she moved back from Monterey where she had was with the kids again To San Francisco. This was the ferry building at around that time just a beehive I mean you couldn't drive over a bridge to get to San Francisco then So it was busier than it then it is now and those are omnibus's Horsepower to I don't believe their steam or cable powered, but That's what it would have looked like so several scenes are set there Bush Street where he spent the winter in a little tiny Apartment this is a you know the plaque on the current door, but the original house came down with the 06 earthquake That's 1906 Not to be a story wrecker, but the couple eventually about a year later honeymoon near an abandoned mine in Calistoga how romantic yeah in a miners cabin and that Little hole up there on the hill is the mineshaft where Lewis took it over and made it into his wine cellar and The two of them the cabin was right about there very remote and rugged But but they were happy then he took his blended family home to meet the parents And this is Braymar Scotland in the Highlands where my wife Esta and I Spend a week at the cottage Where to enter? entertain his stepson He started telling a continued story over tea and that story was about a Wooden-legged pirate long John Silver and and he just spooled this stuff out at night It came very easily to him He had been an essayist before then but to tell this 11-year-old boy a story was the easiest writing He did and that became of course treasure Island huge classic This was the home in which he worked This was a window to the room in which he sat it was off limits to where we were staying Downstairs because the owner lives in there, so he rented it out. He's an Aberdeen oil man now Treasure map This is actually my process. This is a Plotting board for my new novel about Jack London the top blue line is is Jack's Timeline and the bottom one coated in red is his second wife Charmaine So there's some really great parallels to this story, but in this case Jack was very unhappily married and had to find a way out of that Situation to marry the person he should have married in the first place whose name was Charmaine and So anyway, I worked on this in Vermont and Plotted it all out, and I'm slogging away, and I've gotten through a first draft. My time is up. This is an iconic picture of Jack in his favorite writing studio in Glen Allen Under the trees on a boulder and he is this is about the time he wrote Call of the Wild very hunky looking guy Fascinating person very different than Stevens and of course and this was Charmaine and Jack Now they were they're rich and famous living their dream and yachting around the world stopping in Waikiki And that's the way the way they looked in about 1907 And that's all my time. I've got some questions to pose, but oh my website if you want to see it That is a John Singer sergeant Mary knows something about him a portrait of Stevens and very famous portrait So thank you for listening and I'll turn it over to the next