1438: Proving Her Claim: Resilient Women Homesteaders & Historical Fiction with Award-Winning Author CK Van Dam

Robert Plank 0:00 She sold her advertising agency to write stories about the fierce overlook women who built America. It's CK Van Dam, and her debut novel is called proving her claim, and it's won two spur awards, and it draws you into a Oh, there's the book right there. It draws you into a frontier romance as bold and expansive as the Dakota planes themselves. So if you're the kind of person that is looking for an exciting, interesting, action, packed historical fiction book that features your non typical western heroine, Anna Olson, then you're going to want to know about the on the Dakota frontier series, and especially proving her claim on the Dakota frontier. So Miss CK Van Dam, glad to see you. Glad to be speaking

Robert Plank 0:49 with you.

Van Dam 0:50 Good afternoon. Nice to see you, Robert.

Robert Plank 0:53 So tell me about this amazing book series you've written. What's it all about?

Van Dam 0:58 Well, I didn't start out to be an author. I, like you said, I was in advertising. I sold my advertising agency several years ago. Retired. Before I started the agency, I had written a book and I didn't publish it because I got, you know, too busy with life and business and running a business. So when I retired three or four years ago, I thought, Well, I wonder. Let me look at that book again. Let's see. What if I can make something out of that. So I pulled out the manuscript, and I started polishing it and writing it, writing more of it, and and then I had to learn how to be a self published author. And so I did lots of training and went to webinars and workshops and things like that, and learned how to be a self published author. Published the book in 2022 and much to my surprise, it did win two spur awards from Western Writers of America. It won best debut novel and it won Best Western romance from Western writers. And I didn't realize at the time, but that was a pretty big deal. Western Writers of America is like the the Academy Awards of Western books and so that was pretty cool.

Robert Plank 2:27 Yeah, you've got, they call them accolades, don't they? So you, you say, do you say, Well, I'm, like many people will have an idea, but you took it a step further. You say, I provide order manuscript. You took it a step further. You say, Hey, I revised it, I polished it. You took it a set further. You said, what drawing, you know, what are all the nooks and crannies? What are the rules to even getting a book out there? You took it a step further. You said, Now that it's out there, what do I do to market it, get the word out and to win these sorts of awards? So I know nothing about Western literature. I know nothing, very little about the Old West, aside from, like, you know what's in movies like Clint Eastwood and stuff like that. But I'm sure that there are people out there who just love the Western books, the Western romances. So for someone who is that type of reader, what is the plot of this book and how does it stand

Robert Plank 3:18 out?

Van Dam 3:19 Well, so this book started proving her claims. Started with a statistic, and I came upon this statistic, oh gosh, 2025, years ago, 25 years ago, that 12% of homesteaders were women, 42% of women homesteaders prove their claims. Now, in order to prove a claim, according to the Homestead Act of 1862 you had to be 21 years old. You had to live on the claim for five years. You could not have taken up arms against the United States. Remember, this was during the Civil War, so they didn't want Confederates out there getting all this free land, and you had to be head of household. Now, head of household for a man meant that you had to be a man. For a woman, it meant that you had to be either single or widowed or divorced. So you had to be a single woman in order to be head of household according to this, this land law, and so to think that 42% of women who staked a claim proved their claim, that was pretty awesome, especially when you consider that for men, 37% of them prove their claims, and they could be married or not.

Robert Plank 4:42 Ooh.

Robert Plank 4:43 So it's like the the women were at a disadvantage, but still had greater numbers

Van Dam 4:47 they did. And, um, I've thought this through and and wondered when I saw that stat. I thought, Ah, there's a story there. And so obviously, I've written four stories to, um. Um, about women homesteaders, but what someone once said to me was, well, these women didn't have a plan B, when, when men went to the when they were staking a claim out in the wild and wooly frontier, as it was called, if it didn't work out for them, if they got bored with it, whatever they could go to the month, they could go to the gold fields. They could do something else, join a cattle drive, whatever, for women this, they didn't have a plan B, because they came west, because during the Civil War, 600,000 men on both sides died, and many men came back from war with disabilities or mental problems, and so that marriage pool got slimmer and slimmer after the Civil War. So there were a lot of spinsters, and their choices were either to stay and take care of mom and dad into their golden years, or to get their own land out west, and that's what they did.

Robert Plank 6:05 It seems

Robert Plank 6:07 it's a cool period, isn't it? Like you mentioned, there's 1883 and what was that hell on wheels, where it's like right after civil war and like building the transcontinental railroad. But I only know the little bit from when it's buried in my mind from like, 2030, years ago in school and so, like, this is just so cool, right? It's like, I'm sure, like, in going from this idea to developing the plot line, you came across just so many cool, just un maybe not unknown, but like, not talked about a lot of just facets of history,

Van Dam 6:40 true.

Van Dam 6:41 I did a lot of research because as a I had a journalism degree, but I also had a history degree, and so I did a lot of research before I started putting words on paper, and I read lots of non fiction books about from historians land in her own name, was one that interviewed dozens and dozens of women homesteaders. These were in North Dakota, but it there were letters home, there were verbal interviews with these women. And so I was able to get kind of a picture of what their lives were like on the frontier. And that helped a lot. But I also read lots of Well, when I read, when I wrote this book, I had to, because my character, Anna Olson, was a nice was a nice Norwegian girl from Wisconsin. I always like to say that she grew up on a dairy farm. She came to Dakota territory right after the Civil War, when her fiance did not return from the war, so she was going to be a spinster, and she decided she was going to come west and start a dairy farm in Dakota Territory. And part of that was that she was going to make cheese just like her aunt Christina did. So I had to learn how to make cheese. Now, can't make cheese, but I know that the the recipes and the processes that go into it, so I had to learn, I had to research that and learn how to make cheese so that I could write about making cheese,

Robert Plank 8:23 right? That's cool. So it's like, we just see the tip of the iceberg, but you've done all this other work just to get the background figured out

Van Dam 8:30 right.

Van Dam 8:30 Exactly, exactly.

Robert Plank 8:32 Well,

Robert Plank 8:33 when you go from like, there's like, the idea and the historical facts and and the the people, and then you have to jump into figuring out the plot right, something that's exciting. It's like, not too long, not too short. And is that the sort of thing, like, did that take shape on its own? Or was Did that take, like, some deliberate work to go from the facts to the fiction?

Van Dam 8:56 Um, well, I kind of knew what I wanted her to her character arc. I kind of wanted to know what was going to happen to her when Anna came to Dakota territory, she thought she was coming to this empty wilderness and surprise, surprise, there were people living here already, so she had Lakota neighbors, and she had to learn how to get along with them, and so that was part of a part of that plot line that I had to develop. So when I was learning how to be an author, if that's a thing, I read a lot about whether you do outlines or if you write by the seat of your pants. And so they're called plotters or Pantsers, and I'm kind of in the middle there. I start out with a chapter by chapter and a couple of plot points. Copy points. They're not, I mean, not even a full sentence, say, and then the and then the so and so got bit by skunk, okay? And that's not what happens in this book, but that was, you know, you put those copy points in there, those plot points, and then you kind of work through that so that you know kind of what you're going to talk about or write about in that chapter. And if you don't get it done in that chapter, they kind of push to chapter nine or maybe chapter 10. But so that is so that that's how I did it. It was I knew who my characters are going to be. I did use some online resources to develop those characters with what do they look like? How do they think? What do they react to things? Why do they do? What they do? How do they interact with other people? And so that helped me know how Anna was going to react to things and why she would do things so so I had those kinds of resources that helped me write the book, and then I also had a great editor that that went through and after I got it into fairly good shape, and she helped me with she the first time she read, she came back to me after she'd gone through the book, she said, Well, you need about 7000 more words, or maybe it was even more than that. I think it was more than that. You need more than I needed to hit about 70,000 words, and I was at about 60,000 she said, this genre needs to be in this word count and so and so. I had to do that. And then sent it back to her and said, Okay, what about now?

Robert Plank 11:42 Yeah, is it good enough now? Does it pass muster now? And I find that part of it fascinating, right? Like, there's the there's like, one side of the coin is, there's the happy go lucky, the creativity. You say, hey, there's different paths to success. There's plotters and panthers. But then there's also the, like, putting yourself through a hell, basically, right? The same way that those, those frontiers, people on the planes, had to rough it. You yourself as an author, have to say, Well, I am enjoying myself, but I also have to make it commercially viable. And do you, I mean, how much of your thought process goes into that? Because I can imagine that there's the need like, especially in today's age of like AI and script doctors and, like, the hero's journey. There's like, okay, there's you want to make something that sells, but then you worry that you're like, becoming soulless, right? You're worried that you're in the in the spirit of the Commercial Appeal, you're like, losing some of the magic. So does this ever concern you? Of saying, like, I want to be successful, I want to sell books, but I also want to do something new.

Van Dam 12:46 Um, I write because it's fun, okay, I don't write to um, this is not like I have to make money at this. I already made my money. I mean, I had a business, I sold it. I do this. And I had, I had a business partner, and he said, Just enjoy the the journey here. Just do what you want, write about what you want. I don't have a publisher for these books. I'm independent, you know, I'm self published, so I don't have a deadline to make, so I don't have to beat myself up if I don't get X number of chapters or words done in a certain timeline. So I I write about things that interest me and and I get feedback from my readers that they love them and they so I've just published, I published my fourth book in May, and I hear back from my readers. This is my favorite book, yet I love Lizzie

Robert Plank 13:47 cool, and we want that. And it sounds like the way you speak about your characters. It feels as almost like they they come alive. But so I wonder

Van Dam 13:54 they're in my head, Robert,

Robert Plank 13:56 and they're always thinking, right? They're always acting. But when you're when your editor says this, this needs 7000 words. Do you ever feel tempted to say no, to say, Oh, I'm just doing this for fun. Like, why do you strive to achieve the greatness?

Van Dam 14:12 Because I am. I have hired a professional to help me with it, and I I believe when you hire a professional, you need to listen to what they're telling you. That's why they are a professional. That's what I did for 40 years, was I guided my clients in marketing and advertising and PR and that was what I was good at, and that's what they paid me to be good at. So when I hire a professional to edit help edit my book, or proofread it, or all of those things, I take their advice,

Robert Plank 14:52 and that's good life advice, right? Take the professional advice if you're on trial for murder and your lawyer says, do a and you say, all. To be, maybe get

Van Dam 15:03 lawyer. No, I'm not

Robert Plank 15:06 actually, you mentioned about the like, your your PR background and has that come into play, because we mentioned earlier, I think, like before we started recording that, like a lot of authors, they click the Publish button, they say, Cool, that's it. I'm done. Those people that say, Oh, I love your characters. I'm just waiting for some of that to wash into me. Like, you have to go out and get it, don't you have to, like, do the the book signings, get the awards. So what is that like? Like, what do you think that you've done as far as the publicity that maybe not a lot of authors do?

Van Dam 15:37 Well, I guess I can't compare to what other authors have done, but I I have, I have a list of things. I have a list of things that I am working on every day for and this is the fun part for me, in addition to the writing, but I have strategies that I'm going to execute, like social media strategies or promos or going to book signings. I did a speaking engagement yesterday at a museum, and I sold a ton of books afterwards, and it's but it was fun for me to do it. I wouldn't do it if it weren't fun. But it's also a challenge for me to say, Ah, how many books have I sold today? And again, I'm not doing it for the money, but if there's a challenge, there is my are my advertising strategies and marketing strategies working? And so I that's, that's part of it. So I do a lot of social media advertising,

Robert Plank 16:45 okay?

Van Dam 16:46 And that's where my that's where my demo is,

Robert Plank 16:49 yeah, and that's logical, right? You say, where are my people? Where are they hanging out? I'll go there. And you have an interesting insight there that fun doesn't need to mean easy, right? There are people that scuba dive, rock climb, you know, wrestle for fun, like people do things that are are hard and are challenging and have the possibility for failure and have frustration, but are also funner for things that. You know that word hobby gets a bad word right, because hobby sounds like, Oh, I'm just kind of dabbling, but some people just go really crazy all in with their hobby, and it seems like that's what you've done here, right? You say, I'm having fun. I'm making this book, but I'm also looking for it to be good, and I'm also looking to advertise and get some people enjoying it, loving it. And you mentioned that you're on your fourth book. So how is this series evolving? Like, are there more planned? Or, like, what's this kind of collection turning into?

Van Dam 17:44 Well, let me show

Van Dam 17:45 em to you.

Robert Plank 17:46 Okay,

Van Dam 17:47 alright, so proving her claim was the first book. And I, like I said, I wrote that one a long time ago, published it about three years ago, and somebody said to me, you know, you need to get that read through. And I had no idea what he was talking about. He was a published author, a friend, and so he said, you know, you need to write three or four books. And I thought, You are insane. I am not doing that. Then I had an idea for another book about a woman from the south side of Chicago who started a sheep ranch in Dakota Territory. And so I thought, okay, I can write about her. And I wrote that book, and that slowed and tree claim. And then after that, I'm reading a book by the almond sisters, who were actual homesteaders in South Dakota. And they staked claims in, kind of by the Missouri River. And so I had read that book. It was a nonfiction book, and I thought, Oh, look at Sisters, and I'm a sister. And I thought, I can write about sisters, you know, you write what you know, right? So I wrote a book about two sisters who came up from Missouri territory, or Missouri, the state of Missouri, during the Civil War. And as I got about three quarters of the way through medicine Creek claim, I realized I had only told one story, one sister story. And I thought, Oh, crap, now I have to go back and rewrite that. And I thought, no, no, I'm not going to, I'm going to write about Lizzie in my next book. So that one came together really fast, because I had, I already had the characters. I knew Lizzie, and I love her to death, and I would, and she is such a gritty, gutsy woman that I just love telling her story. So that was how I did the four on the Dakota frontier stories. Then when I was at a, have another one at a, I was, I was doing a book club several years ago. And one of the women said, I love your proving that. We were talking about proving her claim, and she said, I love this book, but my granddaughter can't read it. And they said, no, she cannot read this book. So I wrote a book for younger readers. I wrote a book about the Year in the Life of a Lakota girl who was a character in proving her claim, and this is called when the chokecherries bloom. And so I had to do a lot of research. I actually had a a specialist who understood Lakota culture go through it before I published, because I didn't want to do anything that was incorrect in this book, so I had a reader do that as well. So, so I've written five books, and now I'm on my fifth, my sixth book, and I'm writing a non fiction book about women homesteaders,

Robert Plank 20:53 huh? So it's like one thing has led to the next, and what are the kids? Call them Topas, right? Where you have, like, the little kernel of an idea, and it grows into a character, and then that might just be someone that fills up book number three or book number four, right? They go off and have their own unique adventures, and there's so many cool things that you're doing, and it's just so much is possible now that we don't have to necessarily go through publishers, right? You can say, Hey, I've already made my money. I've had my career. Now it's time to do what I was really meant for him, time for my legacy, and to put out these books and to have readers enjoy it, and then to say, hey, well, you know, there's the younger reader, there's the non fiction reader, and it leads from thing to thing. And there's so many final kind of topics we could get into in our conversation, but we're limited on time, so because you and I have only just met, I'm sure there's a question that I could and should ask you, but I don't know it, because I don't know you that well. So in this conversation we're having, what's the ideal question that I should be asking you? I just don't know to ask you.

Van Dam 22:01 Gosh,

Robert Plank 22:14 you can pass if you want to.

Van Dam 22:16 Yeah, I don't, I guess I don't know. You know, I answer a lot of questions when I do speaking engagements, and I guess you know you well, you you asked me, What's my next book?

Robert Plank 22:31 Yeah,

Van Dam 22:31 there will be a fifth one in the series. I think that this is going to be a she'll be in South Dakota in the code of territory, but I think I'm going to locate it in the Black Hills, because I want to do something with mines and tree claims and, yeah, and so, and I'm not very far on that. I've got characters in mind, and I I need to do some more research out in the Black Hills. Nice, but that's, that's kind that's kind of my when I finished the the non fiction book, I'm going to go back into the fiction world, because I've got these people that are in my head, and they need to come out.

Robert Plank 23:15 Oh yes, they're subconsciously growing. You have to do something with them. Well, in all these books that you create, would you say, is there an underlying theme in all of them?

Van Dam 23:23 Oh, absolutely, I think that the theme is that there, there's a couple women I think, are very resilient and persistent, and they they make a plan, and they work the plan. And the second part of that is that they support each other, and I think that is one of the reasons that when I was doing this research, I would read these letters and I would read journals about how these girl homesteaders, is what they were called, would get together for a night of playing cards or playing music together, or just having coffee together, but they also helped each other, and I think that they built support networks, and I think that that was a key to their success,

Robert Plank 24:13 and it's something that we can learn from right? We have that escapism from the modern day life, which is sometimes scary, right? Sometimes you're like, I can't get away from the technology, the electricity, the cell phones, the internet, the scariness. I want to escape into some other era where people still existed and had all these conflicts and lessons, and we can still learn from things, from perhaps maybe a harsher time, but also a simpler time. And so this is a book series that we want to check out. That first book is called proving her claim on the Dakota frontier, yes,

Van Dam 24:50 and it's an audio now, and that is really key to this. So it's on Audible, it's in chirp, it's in Barnes and Noble Nook. It's in libro FX. Them. It's in, if it's in a it's in all the big audio book platforms. So if you like audio books, proving her claim is already out

Robert Plank 25:12 there. Very nice. Narrated by Miss Catherine de veris on Audible form, but written by Miss CK Van Dam in print form. And here's the plot. The Civil War created countless spinsters and widows, and Anna Olson was one of them, and with no prospects for marriage and family, Anna pins her future on the frontier and heads west to stake a claim on the wide open prairies. Sounds exciting. Sounds thrilling. Check this out if you're the kind of person that likes the western frontier stories, because it's such a an amazing, cool time right post Civil War, there's Indians, there's Lakota there's other homesteaders, there's conflict, there's rattlesnakes, there's skunks biting you, There's there's danger at every corner, and it's a quite a fun read. So check out proving her claim on the Dakota frontier on Amazon, and to get to the hub, because we mentioned a lot of different books. For example, there's proving her claim, there's loan tree claim, there's medicine Creek claim, and so many more. That's C, K, V, A, N, D, A, m.com, CK van dam.com, check out her. Brooke, and before I let you go, Miss CK Van Dam, it's time for the scary part of the show. I know I stumped you before. Now here's my attempt again. This is the part of the show where I ask about a fun quote or lesson that has served you in life or in business. So what comes to mind as far as a fun quote or lesson,

Van Dam 26:50 I think that a lot of people like to quote what their mothers say. I will tell you that my father was instrumental in giving me the the

Van Dam 27:06 work ethic that I have and the confidence that I had to go out and do what I wanted to do. He was a small business owner, and I think that watching him build a business gave me the confidence to do that too.

Robert Plank 27:22 So our kids are always listening. So it's it's up to us to set a good example, because we can say all these things, but hey, if we're being dishonest or we don't have that work ethic, they'll pick up on that. So we need to have the work ethic for the next generation. And if there are those roles in ourselves, yes, believe in yourself. You can do it. Have the work ethic for whatever your passion is. If you've had that half written novel in the dresser drawer busted out, do what CK Van Dam has done and get that book published. And in the meantime, check out her amazing books. You'll be entertained. You'll be inspired. There's proving her claim, Lone Tree claim, and so much more. CK van dam.com, is the hub to find those books and miss. CK Van Dam, thanks for being here and helping us out, teaching us and telling us about your amazing book series. I'm glad that you were here.

Van Dam 28:12 Thank you very much. Nice to talk with you, Robert. You.