Joanna Bourne

Walking Through Regency London

2012-02-01T01:27:00.002-05:00

I've been trying to imagine what the streets of Paris and London looked like and felt like underfoot in the Georgian and Regency eras.

The fashionable streets of Mayfair are fairly easy to picture. We have lovely paintings of these, for one thing.
The wide, clean, quiet streets with expensive houses. The squares, with maybe a garden in the middle. Yes. I can see these.

I have some feeling of what the rookeries might have looked like too. The grainy, mid-Victorian photos of the London slums give us an idea. Hogarth illustrates the underbelly of London on one side of the era. Gustaf Dore on the other.

There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself. H.P Lovecraft
But, what about the middling streets? Not the privileged haunts of the nobility. Not the stews. The everyday streets and passageways of London and Paris. My characters spend most of their time in this ordinary sort of place. What did it look like?

We have pictures.

And we can guess a lot about what the city looked and felt like from elements common to cities now.

For more, travel to Word Wenches here.

Me and My Wrists. A Writer's Life.

2012-01-19T15:07:00.003-05:00

My weak point

Carpal Tunnel is the occupation disease of authors, I guess.

I'm very foolish. I start typing and I get all involved in the story.

I'll be sitting typing any which way with my laptop in my . . . well, in my lap, and the wrists are all awkward and hanging at the wrong angle.

Not ergonomically correct

I don't notice, even when the muscles start to hurt. In fact, I'll get to the end of a scene and straighten up and every muscle in my body will suddenly let out a long-suppressed scream. Head to foot, I ache. I mean, like, my jaw will hurt. My auricular muscles will hurt -- those are the three muscle that allow you to wiggle your ears, (if you can wriggle your ears.) My fingers hurt.

You remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Harrison Ford points to a spot on his elbow and says, "This doesn't hurt. Here." I'm like that, except I don't have a spot on the elbow.

So anyhow, the other aches go away, but the wrists keep at this ouching thing and I feel very stupid. Is there a Carpal-Tunnel-Stupid Syndrome? That's what I have.

Me, in a couple few years

CTSS was interfering with my ability to get work done, so I went to a drugstore in California, being as I was in California at the time, and I bought a wrist brace. (They had a selection of twenty. Who knew?)

So now I put on a brace when I sit down to work for a long session. Everyone who sees this thinks I have injured myself in some accident, so I try to look like I ride horses or ski or engage in other enterprises more interesting than staring at a computer screen.
Somehow this role playing makes me feel less like the old body is just falling apart.

There is interesting and useful information about this over at Word Wenches. Here

The AAR Annual Romance Ballot

2012-01-17T11:16:00.002-05:00

It's that time of year again. Who are your favorite Romance writers? Who are your favorite heroes and heroines. What book touched your heart?

Don't keep it to yourself. Tell the world.

The AAR Poll is the oldest and most widely respected Romance genre reader soundingboard on the net. And you can vote.

http://tinyurl.com/aarpoll

Technical Topics -- Flying into the story. Or driving.

2012-01-15T10:29:00.003-05:00

I was commenting on a snippet of a first chapter that had been posted for comment. The hero was in a car, headed for a party:

So I said,
Ahem.

One of the standard openings for novice manuscripts, one that lands in the slushpiles of New York with great frequency, is the protagonist on a means of transportation.

What it is -- the writer has facets a, b, and c she wants to reveal about the protagonist's character. She has factoids d, e and f that are backstory she wants to fill in. So the writer puts her characters in a box and lets them talk about or think about items ' a' through 'f'.

Things could happen in the car, I guess

This seems a simple and straightforward way to tell the readers all this nifty stuff. It's a relatively easy scene to write because there isn't any distraction.

Problem is, nothing much happens while the writer is telling the reader 'a' through 'f'. Nothing can happen till everybody climbs out of the transportation.

Speaking generally, whether it's the opening scene of Chapter One or the closing of Chapter 22, a good way to approach it is to ask ourselves what story action is taking place.

A 'story action' is something that must happen for later events to work. It's something significant. If the hero and heroine don't go to the old Gold Mine, they won't discover the miner's body. If Marvin doesn't kidnap Cecelia, Horace can't ride to her rescue. That kinda thing.
Driving around in a car is very rarely story action.

We don't put all story action on stage. Some of it isn't suited to dramatic, real-time presentation. But story action is the backbone of the manuscript. Most of what we do put 'on-stage' should be story action.

What kind of story action might appear in Chapter One, Scene One?

Boy meets girl

We could walk in on a crime in progress, if the story is about solving that crime. We could set someone to making a decision that sends her in one direction on her journey instead of another.

We're Romance writers here, so let's say we make our first scene to contain the story action of 'boy meets girl'.

We can compare a mode-of-transportation beginning with the 'story action' beginning of the 'boy meets girl' type.

We can put the new schoolmarm in the stagecoach for four or five pages and have her look out at the cactus on the way to Dry Gulch, wondering what her life will be like in the West. And when we've done that for five or six pages, we can start the story action.

Or we can plunge in and write the story action and let that information and character development catch up as it will.

According to her schedule, in one hour, Miss Ermyntrude Wells was supposed to arrive at the Dry Gultch Hotel with three trunks of school equipment and one trunk of sober, sensible clothing.

That wasn't going to happen, was it?

She leaned out the coach window. "You can just put that gun down right this minute, young man."

Our protagonist is a cook hired to prepare a spectacular dinner party for a millionaire. We can put her in an airplane, circling in to land at an exotic island paradise. She thinks about why she's taken this job so far from New York and what she'll serve at the party and how things will be different in Santa Rosalita. She wonders why the millionaire requested her in particular.

versus

Or, y'know, peaches

"My peaches! You're bruising my peaches!"

Nobody stopped. Nobody paid any attention. The men kept heaving boxes around and ripping them open. Fruit bounced out of string bags and rolled across the tarmac. Drug-sniffing dogs picked their way through the carnage.

"Doesn't anybody here speak English? Damn it! If I wanted to get mugged I could have stayed in New York."

"I speak English." The chief of the uniformed thugs leaned against the hood of his patrol car, six feet of lean, dark, indifferent muscle, watching his men destroy good ingredients and watching her.

In the car, here's Mitzi and Donna are headed for the their job at the hospital. They talk about how the High School's bad boy, Tad Turner, has come back to town after 20 years. Mitzi remembers her own experiences with Tad, things she's never told anyone.

versus

The road was dark. Equally dark in both directions. And very quiet. The tire was very flat. "It's beginning to rain," Mitzi said.

"So it is," Donna agreed.

"You know how to change a tire?"

"Not the least particle of an idea. I don't even know where the damn spare thing is."

"Ah."

Neither of them got in the car. That would be giving up. They both looked at the tire. In the distance, a low drone told of an approaching sucker.

"Sounds like a sports car," Mitzi said.

You see all the things we don't know when the action of the story starts rolling? When we start with story action, we don't know why Ermyntrude has come west or that Mitzi's a nurse who had a fling with Tad 20 years ago. We don't know our New Yorker is a cook or anything about the millionaire.

The reader doesn't need to know all the background to get involved. She just needs something interesting going on.

Technical Topics -- Advice on POV, the Collected Set

2011-12-24T14:57:00.005-05:00

In the Comment Trail, Catherine says,

"Now, do you have a post on Point of View? That is something that really, really confuses me.

Obviously I'm okay writing in first person cos there is only one POV, but when I get to third person I get very confused about whose POV I'm looking from.

Can you help, dear Joanna?"

I have written a fair amount about POV. What I'll do is give you lotsa links to where I'm nattering on about it.
But I'll do it in random order. And probably repeat myself.
Just to make it challenging.

I hope this is of some use to you.

Here is me talking about POV and language. This is An Overview on Building POV

Then there are the exercises. I did an exercise on POV in the Books and Writers Forum in June 07.   This, Here, is the description of the exercise. My writing snippet that I contribute to the exercise for discussion is here. Other folks contributed their writing to the exercise here, here, here, here,   here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. We all talked back and forth about POV.

We did couple similar POV exercises that year. See here for links to all four of them. The message tells you how to track down the discussion and writing of those exercises.

Here's me talking about how we use character names when we're in various folk's POVs.   I make a couple other comments in that thread. Then there's more randomness Here, here, here, and here where I'm looking at a particular bit of someone else's writing and giving advice, trying to bring the snippet deeper into POV.

Leesee . . . more delights lie ahead.

Here's me analyzing a scene, which is not so much about POV. Here I talk about POV and pacing. Here is some of me talking about visualizing story from a POV starting point. Here's more on character development, which is, again, not so much on POV. Here Omniscient POV. Here defining how POV works. And here's some thoughts on the use of 'I' in 1st person POV.

Going over to Absolute Write . . . This is a set of random posts where I touch upon POV in some way. If you want to see the the other messages in the thread so you can figure out what is going on -- and, who knows, you might want to -- click on the upper right hand corner where it says, 'thread'. That will give you the entire thread where you can even read what other folks have to say.

multiple POVs

Ready? Steady. Go!

Here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and finally at long last here.

I get to contradict myself, by the way. I get to talk nonsense. I get to be just plain wrong, okay?

Oh. And Here's Doris Egan on POV which will doubtless be useful . And more from her, here.

Authorial Intent and Reviews.

2011-12-22T19:18:00.012-05:00

Jennie, at Dear Author writes:

***

"When I address authorial intent in reviews, it’s generally because I’m confused or bothered by something in a book. I don’t ever pretend to *know* an author’s intent, but sometimes I have ideas about what I *think* the author was going for. For instance, in the latest Joanna Bourne, I felt like the author made choices that deliberately made the heroine weaker than the hero (though no one seems to agree with me on that, which is fine). As is often the case, I chalked it up to romance genres conventions – the hero is favored a bit (by the author and presumably the reader) over the heroine, and the hero is expected to assert some mastery over the heroine. So I am assuming that the story is written a certain way to please the average reader.

"Is it wrong for me to assume I know the author’s intent? I don’t know, but I do know that I’m not just doing it to be an asshole – I’m addressing something that bothers me, and furthermore why it bothers me (my belief that romance still tends to be rather conventionally sexist in a lot of ways). I think I need to acknowledge my assumptions about the author’s intent to give context to why I feel what I feel."

***

I just about entirely don't respond to reviews or speak in the comment trail of discussions about my own books. It's not that I'm not grateful for the interest. But,

-- I don't want readers to think I'm looking over their shoulder when they discuss the books. That has to be quelling.

-- I think books have to stand up for themselves, without explanation or defense.

-- There's not much to say if somebody doesn't like the work. It's like lichee nuts. Lots of wonderful, intelligent, interesting folks are going to not like my books or lichee nuts and no amount of discussion is going to change this.

-- The most important reason I don't respond to comment or criticism is that I don't want to make a fool of myself, which is what folks mostly do when they try to defend something they've written.

But, breaking a long habit of keeping my mouth closed, I'm going to go ahead and respond here.

***

Dear Jennie,

I don't deliberately make the female protagonist of my stories less strong, competent or active than the male protagonist. If I felt the Historical Romance genre demanded that the heroine be weaker than the hero, I wouldn't write Historical Romance.

It's true my heroes tend to be more skilled in killing than my heroines. If there were only one sort of strength -- killing people -- then I'd have no argument. But I'm trying to write stories about the decisions characters make, rather than stories that are primarily about killing people. I'm writing about the strength that's shown by decision-making.

At the end of Black Hawk, Adrian has grown to be the kind of man who refrains from killing his enemy until he has solid, incontrovertible proof of guilt. Adrian's story, through several books, has been about acquiring ethics and self-control, not about learning to kill more skillfully.

And Justine's strength? In Black Hawk I use Justine's willingness to give up her sister, her decision to risk her life to rescue the Caches, and her determination to overcome degradation and rape to show her strength. She has spy skills -- they're probably better demonstrated in Forbidden Rose than in Black Hawk -- but I'm mainly interested in the hard choices she makes.

Is Adrian the 'better spy'? He brings formidable spy skills to the table. Consider his lockpicking. He stands behind Justine and mentally complains about how slow she is getting through a door.

But lookit at what's really happening in that scene. Justine enticed him to that door, (which is why he's snarking at her.) She holds all the knowledge in this situation. In a few minutes she's going to make him do exactly what she wants.

Who's the master spy? The boy who can pick locks? Or that clever, clever girl with her knowledge and determination and her sure understanding of what makes him tick?

I can't argue that you somehow should feel the balance of power and strength between hero and heroine is equal. Everybody who reads the book is going to have a different emotional response to what I consciously or unconsciously put in the story. I can only say it is not my intention to show the heroine as weaker than the hero.

Technical Topics -- Character Development Scenes

2011-12-21T13:37:00.002-05:00

Somebody says -- "I have a couple of scenes that are basically only used for character development, and I'm having a hard time writing them . . . I feel a little strange about writing it because hardly anything noteworthy actually happens."

That's the sort of scene you cough a little and say -- "That's a character development scene," when somebody asks why it's in the manuscript. It's the sort of scene that showcases and explains the character -- well, lots of scenes do that -- but when you think about it, nothing important to the plot took place. There's no necessary decision, no character change, no story action. The scene could be removed without affecting what happens later.

The problem with character development scenes (and flashback scenes, talking head scenes, and prologues of this type,) is that they're written to convey information, rather than getting on with telling the story.

Now, IMO, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a few no-progress scenes in the manuscript. We have all this cool information lying around, after all, so why not pass it along to the reader?

But if the writer's going to drop the reader into a static, informational scene, the writer has to know he's stopped telling the real story. When he's done with his flashback or his character development scene, he's going to pick up the plot again in the same place as before. No forward movement. The writer had better want to slack off on the pacing, because that's what he's just done.

Readers don't so much want the story to stop dead in the water, so the writer had better make this digression interesting.

Some writers always start out with a couple just informational scenes as warm-up writing. It's an exercise that helps them organize their thoughts. It's part of their process. They pull the scenes out later and expect to.
No harm, no foul

But I think sometimes no-progress scenes arise from a misunderstanding of the old saw, Show Don't Tell. Folks feel they have to lengthily 'act out' specific information instead of just having somebody remark -- 'George has always been shy as a wild rabbit,' or 'It's been ten years, and Elinor has never admitted her passion for canasta,' -- while getting on with more important business like sawing up their latest victim or rearranging the political face of Europe.

An Ode to Coffee Shops

2011-12-18T16:07:00.005-05:00

I do a lot of my writing in coffee shops.
And in libraries.

So I wanted to say, thank you,
to these various places.

And to coffee in general.

This here to the right is not my coffee shop. This is Les Deux Magots which is in Paris, and where Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus and Pablo Picasso hung out.

They probably drank coffee there. Though I may be fooling myself and they may have just drunk absinthe and brandy and got plastered.

My own coffee shop is in Virginia, but the principle is the same. Except for the possibility of getting plastered with attentive waiters and croissants and the literati of Paris as company.

Here's my coffee shop menu of coffees. You can see we are all extensive and international and sophisticated.

It's pretty good coffee though.

And the baristas have piercings, which makes it authentic.

This is the sofa where I hang out . . . see my computer, hanging out, and that there on the floor is the bag I carry the computer around in.

This is my coffee shop coffee, which I drink in the morning. It smiles at me.
My coffee likes me.

I need coffee,
btw.
Really.

But I also like tea.

Here is my coffee shop tea, which is what I get in the afternoon, so I will be able to sleep at night.

I will not say my conscience is entirely clear, but mostly it is having too much caffeine that keeps me up at night, rather than regrets for a misspent youth in the tenor of, 'and yet I could accuse me of such things,' though there is some of that too.

My tea comes in a very heavy iron pot with a very heavy iron cup. I think they are enameled and this is authentic Chinese tea drinking in which I indulge.

The electronics that surround me are much smarter than I am. Sometimes my food and drink is smarter as well.

This is the other place I write. The library.
I don't know why I go there to write since they don't buy my books.

I do not drink coffee, tea, strong liquor, or indeed anything at all at the library.
They do not allow WATER in the library. Maybe they think we will get into food fights or something.
The parking lot of the library is particularly lovely.

The interior of the library, however, is like every other library nowadays.

Why do all libraries look alike?

For instance. Here is a picture of the Bullock Fire Department in Bullock, North Carolina.

What we have here is some individuality.

If libraries would serve coffee, we would all be better off.

Putting Your Fiction Online

2011-12-13T18:03:00.006-05:00

Someone asked, more or less,

"I'm an unpublished writer -- should I post chapters of my Work in Progress on my website?"

To which I reply:

There is a definite downside to this. When you post a significant portion of a work of fiction online, you may imperil your First Publication Rights. (That's what you're generally selling when you sign a contract -- those First Publication Rights.) Putting your fiction online may also make your work less salable. Publishers may be reluctant to buy a novel that's available free on the net.

Why would you want to DO this?
Why would someone want to post fiction online, on his website?
Seems to me there are a couple three possible reasons:

-- Because he wants to fill up his blog with cool content, but doesn't want to write stuff specifically targeted to the blog and he has this piece of fiction handy.

Advice: If you want to keep a blog, write stuff intended for your blog. Don't be lazy.

Cool story example

-- Because he believes his fiction will draw traffic to his blog. He wants to build a following.

Advice: Do you read one chapter of a good book and then return it to the library?
Not so much.
Why would the readers of your blog feel good when you cut off your ongoing story, having just interested them?

Not the way to bring folks back to your blog.

'Teaser excerpts' of your cool story work when they point the reader to a buy button. If you can't include a link to the whole work, you've annoyed the folks you want to attract.

-- Because he wants praise/advice/discussion/feedback on his writing.

Typical Writer's Group

Advice: Join a writer's group. Join or form a critique circle. Print up copies for your friends.

Try Absolute Write.
Try Compuserve Books and Writers Forum.

-- Because an agent or editor might drop by and see the work and be bowled over by it and get in touch with him about publishing it. He heard this happened to somebody.

Advice: This is not so likely.

Consider the slushpile an agent or editor has in her office: Here, Here. Here. Here.

With this kind of mail arriving every day, do you think agents and publishers go out trolling the web for more submissions? The odds of finding an agent or editor are astronomically better if you finish the work, send out queries, and submit the manuscript.

-- Because he does not have a completed manuscript and he wants someone to appreciate his writing right NOW.

Advice: I understand this. Writing is a lonely business. We don't get much feedback when we're working.
But . . . posting a rough, flawed, unedited draft of your work is not respectful to the readers of your blog. If you intend to build a blog following, treat these people as you will someday treat your readers. Give them your best work.

-- Because he doesn't think the story will ever be published. He sees this as his only chance to share with a larger audience.

Advice: This is why folks post on fanfic sites -- this desire to share their work.
It's a generous impulse I hate to quell.

But do you intend to be a professional writer and get paid for it?
Then trust yourself. Trust your work.

Later on, when you're published, you may regret that some of your apprentice work is out there online, haunting you, with all the newby mistakes that you can never, now, correct.

Technical Topic -- Historical Romance versus Historical Fiction

2011-12-08T16:17:00.010-05:00

Someone asked elsewhere, "I write historical fiction. But I love a good love story. And so I set out to write a story where the love story played a prominent role . . . I've read about a "formula" that most romances adhere to; I know that I haven't stuck to it."

Is this book a Historical Romance?

Well . . . it might be. Then again, it might not. A 'love story' isn't enough to put you on the Romance shelves.

What it is --
There are many more titles on the shelf that call themselves 'Historical Romance' than there are titles in the 'Historical Fiction' section. Maybe it looks like it would be easier to go the Romance genre route.

But, not so much. The many Romances are not really germane to a book stuck in the no-man's land between Historical Fiction and Historical Romance. They're lighter reads. History is a backdrop in these books, not a main player. Getting a dense and accurate Historical Romance published is probably about as difficult as getting published in Historical Fiction.

What you cannot do is get a book published as Historical Romance if that is not what the book actually is. The agents and editors are really canny about this. They know.

To qualify as Romance -- (I'm talking via my direct link to Infallible Knowledge here) --

(a) At least half the manuscript should be the male and female protagonists in the same scene, face to face.

(b) Another quarter or so, if you can't put the two protagonists face to face, should be scenes directly related to the MMC (Male Main Character) or FMC (Female Main Character.)

(c) The POV should be either MMC or FMC, (unless it's Omniscient Narrator,) for more than 90% of the writing. You will see that this means almost every scene has one of the two protagonists in it.

(d) Here we come to the big one:

The central problem of the story -- the stuff that sends everybody into action -- is solved when the MMC and FMC finally get together at the end.

That is -- the central problem is not the Queen's Pearl being misplaced or Princess Elizabeth dodging the ax long enough to inherit. The central problem is that Thomas and Anne can't get married because their grandparents are feuding.
You know what problem is central to the story because most important actions the MMC and FMC undertake are motivated by that. We see them act in ways that will get them married rather than merely recover the Missing Pearls.

(e) In a Historical Romance, the FMC should have considerable 'agency'. She does stuff, and important later events happen in response to her action.

(f) The ending should be upbeat. There is a plausible HEA for the MMC and FMC. Everybody walks away smiling, except the villain.

(g) Nobody kills a puppy. This means the MMC's friend does not die lengthily on stage. Nobody the reader cares about dies.

(h) As a minor note, the word count is going to be under 120K. Better and more salable if it's under 100K.

(i) Roberta Gellis did this. Georgette Heyer got away with this once or twice. But a brand new Historical Romance author probably can't.

Do not write about history.

By this I mean, be as accurate as you want, but do not have the narrator or any character tell us 'Why Henry VIII had money in the treasury when he inherited' or 'Why the 1814 Battle of Paris was a good deal more important that the Battle of Waterloo'. No consecutive 300 words should convey historical information.

If the readers of dense, accurate, well-researched Historical Romances want to read Historical Fiction, they know the way to those shelves. When they pick up your Historical Romance they do not want to read Historical Fiction.

Technical Topic -- Just a minithought on Show and Tell

2011-12-04T14:50:00.003-05:00

Mostly, I hate to use the terms 'show' and 'tell' because I find them confusing.

I'd rather talk about basically the same concepts by calling them 'Here&Now' and 'Being Elsewhere'.

When the POV character is immersed in the sensory components of the scene or is involved in on-going action or is speaking dialog that deals with what's right there underfoot in the scene -- that's being in the Here&Now.

When the POV character is talking or thinking about stuff that's not going on at the moment in front of him, he's gone Elsewhere. The character does this when he's adding backstory or infodumping or describing what happened last week or to his cousin who lives in Altoona or thinking about what he might do in the future and stufflikethatthere.

John picks up the toast and bites into it, tasting jelly -- Here-and-Now
John burns his mouth on the hot coffee -- H&N
John remembers his mother made good coffee -- Elsewhere
John hits Maurice over the head with a hammer -- H&N
John sees Maurice fall down dead -- H&N
Three hours later John describes the murder to Mary -- E
John thinks about the morality of murder while driving home -- E
John is afraid he's going to get arrested and hides under the sink -- H&N
John buys bleach to clean up the murder scene - H&N
John and Thomas plan to bury the body --E
John and Thomas bury the body -- H&N

In general, I try to stay in the Here and Now of the scene, because that's where the story is happening.

It's all very Zen, y'know. If I stay with the POV character and he's immersed in what's going on around him, the reader gets to move through the scene and watch it unroll, event by event. Everything is solid, sensory, relevant to this fictive instant, logically successive in time, each emotion related to the next action, showing motivation that forms minute by minute. The reader is caught in a stream of events that pulls him along.

Whenever I take the reader Elsewhere, I relegate the experiences to second hand. I pull the reader out onto the bank to show him birches and willowtrees. They may be interesting, but they are static. He's plucked out of the story. No longer dragged along by it.

Somewhat, this is the difference between information and story action.
I get all philosophical here and ask myself about the nature of fiction.
The fictive experience does not lie in the knowledge of events. It's being part of the events.

That said -- there is a place for just plain laying down information. You have to do it.
But don't mistake conveying information with putting the character inside the ongoing story, which is your main objective.

A Black Hawk Excerpt

2011-11-05T12:07:00.007-04:00

At Romcon. An excerpt (where they're about to make love.)   Here.

At Jeannie Lin's blog. A fellow author's take on Black Hawk -- always interesting what other authors see -- Here.
You should click on 'books' up at the top and go see her covers. Some of the loveliest in the business.

At the Debutante Ball. An interview. That's here.

Visiting the excellent writers at Risky Regencies. Here.    There's an excerpt there and some discussion of cats, birds and dogs arising out of why the book is titled Black Hawk.

Where to Buy Black Hawk

Oh. I should mention that you can buy Black Hawk, (and it is on special sale in both sites,) at:

Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Some Interviews with Me and Some Comments on Black Hawk

At Booktopia. Nine interesting questions about the writing life. Here.

At History Hoydens. An interview where I talk about the problems of plotting Black Hawk. There is no corner of that blog that is not interesting. Here.

At Romance Dish -- you will find just the most flattering and wonderful review here . That is four wonder folks --Gannon Carr, Buffie Johnson, PJ Ausdenmore, and Andrea Williamson who support Romance genre in all its forms.

Melanie and I, at Bookworm 2 Bookworm, do an interview, talking about the age of the hero and heroine, talking about writing in general and plugging Black Hawk. That's here.   Bookworm has also posted such a lovely review of Black Hawk. Here.

Reader I created him has another interview with me. And it is so thoroughly another interesting place you should be visiting just on general principles anyhow.   That's here.

And I got an excerpt right here (or Rat Cheer as we say in the South):

His chin was shadowed with a need to shave. She had known a boy three years ago. She did not really know this young man.

I do not know how to ask. Everything I can say is ugly. I do not want this to be ugly.

She gave her attention to pouring hot water onto the tea leaves. Rain drummed on the roof. Since they were not talking, since they were not looking at each other, it seemed very loud. He said, “As soon as you drink that, you should leave. It’s getting worse out there.”

I must do this now, before I lose my courage. “I am hoping to spend the night.” She chose words carefully, to clarify matters beyond any possibility of misunderstanding. “It is my wish to spend the night with you, in your bed.”

Hawker was silent. He would be this self- possessed if tribesmen of the Afghan plains burst through the door and attacked him with scimitars. The refusal to be ruffled was one of his least endearing traits.

Time stretched, very empty of comment, while she swirled the teapot gently and he was inscrutable. Finally, he took the oil lamp from the end of the mantel and busied himself adjusting the wick, lighting it with a paper spill from the fire. “The hell you say.”

Buying Black Hawk Overseas

Black Hawk is available as an English language book in Germany at amazon.de, here.   They don’t seem to sell the kindle version in Germany. In the Netherlands, one can order the paperback here , in theory, but possibly not in practice.    The book is available on kindle at amazon.uk here but won't be out in paperback till January 19th. (Thank you, Ute, for the information.)

Book Depository has it here for free delivery worldwide.

Little blurb for Black Hawk

2011-11-04T12:42:00.001-04:00

Black Hawk

Joanna here, talking about my new book, Black Hawk.

This is Adrian's story. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm relieved the boy finally has his happy ending.
We've met Hawker as a secondary character in the other books. He's Hawker, or Adrian Hawker, or sometimes Sir Adrian Hawkhurst, depending who he's pretending to be and who he wants to impress. He is deadly and sarcastic and maybe a bit too fond of sticking knives into people. Naturally he has the making of a Romance hero.

Two of the most dangerous spies of the Napoleonic War — on opposite sides, natch — fall in love. Think Montague and Capulet. Think Yankees and Red Sox. Think Hannibal and Scipio Africanus. Think about the owl and the hawk, two birds that might share the sky for a while, but can't live together.

hawk is cc attrib velosteve

. . . The rest is here at Word Wenches.

Best Historical Romance -- Romantic Times Nominees

2011-11-03T19:04:00.001-04:00

Romantic Times reviews such wonderful books every year. Some books, they nominate for awards. See here.

I think of the RT nominees as the 2011 tack-down-and-buys. Every one is a book of merit. It's like a Who's Who of Excellent Romance Writers.

The reason you're seeing this list is the name at the bottom is I'm among the nominees for Best Historical Romance of the Year.
*cough*

RT NOMINEES FOR BEST HISTORICAL ROMANCE

NEVER A GENTLEMAN Eileen Dreyer, FOREVER, (April 2011)

TAKEN BY THE PRINCE, Christina Dodd, SIGNET SELECT, (April 2011)

AN AFFAIR WITHOUT END, Candace Camp, POCKET STAR, (April 2011)

NOWHERE NEAR RESPECTABLE, Mary Jo Putney, ZEBRA, (May 2011)

ELEVEN SCANDALS TO START TO WIN A DUKE'S HEART, Sarah MacLean, AVON, (May 2011)
WHEN PASSION RULES, Johanna Lindsey, GALLERY, (June 2011)

BY HIS MAJESTY'S GRACE, Jennifer Blake, MIRA, (August 2011)

UNCLAIMED, Courtney Milan, HQN, (October 2011) BOND OF PASSION, Bertrice Small, NAL, (October 2011)
LADY SOPHIE'S CHRISTMAS WISH , Grace Burrowes, SOURCEBOOKS, (October 2011)

THE NORSE KING'S DAUGHTER Sandra Hill, AVON, (October 2011)

THE BLACK HAWK Joanna Bourne, BERKLEY SENSATION, (November 2011)

ONLY ONE CAN WIN

Giving Away Black Hawk (and here's an excerpt)

2011-11-03T01:23:00.006-04:00

I've bumped this up to the top again.

Technical Topics -- Setting

2011-10-31T18:58:00.000-04:00

Whether our story takes place in the trackless jungle, on the third moon of Jupiter, or aboard a fishing boat off Haiti, it's always there. Setting. The, 'where the devil are we?'

Setting gives the characters something to stand on. It keeps everybody from floating around in a formless white void.

Good setting is the polar opposite of that void. It has physical dimensions the characters can waltz around in. It's full of color, smell, sound and texture. It has a certain underlying reality, which is why it helps to know something about the place you're describing.

Good setting changes while we're looking at it and it changes one scene to the next. We go inside, if we've just spent time outdoors. Quiet after frenetic. Safe after danger. Bright after dark. Crowded after solitude. Shiny and mechanical after pastel and pastoral.

Good setting is a stuffed-full-of-possibility place that's interesting even after your characters walk off the set. A pair of boots left by the door says somebody will go out to milk the cows in a bit. A cleaning rag, stuffed hastily in a pocket, tells us the woman who answers the door has been dusting. The bicycle leaning outside a shop says someone has stopped in to buy milk. Good scene ties us to the wider fictive world. It holds the loose ends of of unrelated stories. It has a before and after that continue when the scene is done.

All this drama, color, and contrast keeps the reader from nodding off in the middle of Chapter Six, which is one of those writerly goals we have.

For the rest of this posting, go to 'The Other Side of the Story,: Here.

Giving Away Black Hawk (What I'm doing here . . .)

2011-10-31T11:23:00.001-04:00

I'm bumping the post up to the top so everyone can see where there's a copy going up for grabs.

Welsh Law and 'The Comrades'

2011-10-22T15:49:00.003-04:00

We're here today with Lynne Sears Williams, well known to all of us over at the Books and Writers Forum.

JB: Hi Lynne. Glad you're able to be here today. Your book, The Comrades, is set in Wales in the Ninth Century. I understand you did a lot of research into Welsh law in that period, especially law relating to women Can you give us a quick overview of what was gong on in European law?

LSW: Many countries in the 9th Century had codified law to some extent. The Anglo-Saxons in England had a lock on the feudal system, and decided the inheritance of a deceased man went to the eldest son. No money or property passed into the hands of a daughter; illegitimate children were ignored.

Wales took a different view, which focused on people in terms of status. Essentially, it was a caste system with a Celtic flare.

JB: Give me some examples of how Welsh law dealt with the status of women. Marriage law, for instance.

LSW: Marriages were usually made for dynastic reasons, to form alliances and women never married a person of higher status. When codified in the 10th Century, "The Laws of Women" took up considerable space in the book.

The daughter of a king was worth 24 pieces of gold and brought a dowry that might include livestock, pots, pans, or jewelry.

JB: What about divorce?

LSW: Divorce was permitted, though the Church, fostered by Irish priests, deplored it.

One factor could initiate the process. If a groom discovered on the wedding night that his wife was not a maiden, he could leave, with a certain weapon fully erect. Once he located witnesses to show his 'disappointment' they all had to go check the bridal sheets. No blood, no bride, no marriage. Divorce was instantaneous.

There were many categories for divorce; if one person changed his or her mind the next day, if a partner turned out to be infertile or wait seven years and divide everything.

A song in our century once asked, "What's love got to do with it?" The answer in Wales: "Nothing!"

JB: Can you give us something of the flavor of the law in Wales in the Ninth Century? What are some specifics that would feel odd to us today?

LSW: Law prescribed everything possible. The seating arrangement in the Great Hall included specific people who would sit with the King, including the priest. He would sing the Pater Noster before meals. The falconer and the bard had places of honor.

The law stated that if the queen desired to hear more music, the bard would play quietly, just for her.

'Claim-time' occurred once a year when people who'd been arguing needed to settle the affair or have the king step in. The only capital offence was theft; in a land where controlled order was needed, to steal was anathema.

JB: So you could say law dealt mainly with property.

LSW: Every man, woman and child had a specific 'price' that would be considered by the King if a person was harmed. 'Honor price' entered the stage and could never be ignored.

Land law, surety, how to treat a person not born in Wales were logistically calculated as were dogs, tamed or wild. Then to the truly different: all of the king's possessions had a specific price, including his cat, who was worth a sheep and a lamb if killed or stolen.

Curiouser and curiouser, Alice might say.

Not in 9th Century Wales, my dear. Go on and chase your rabbit; we are busy looking for the King's Cat. It's missing.
Again.

JB: Heh heh. Tell me a little bit about your book.

LSW: In The Comrades, Evan, king of Powys, returns from a wedding to find a village ransacked, with women and children dead. Neighboring Gwynedd has broken the peace, crossing the mountain to pillage and murder. The dead babes tear his heart, and Evan vows to break the heart of Gwynedd.

Gwynedd's most guarded treasure is a pampered princess. In a bloody raid, Evan's comrades return to Powys with Gwynedd's heart.

Evan knows holding the princess will be dangerous and her safe-keeping may mean the difference between the lasting peace he desires and a bloody war. He's prepared for her to be kept safe but unprepared for the girl's intelligence, compassion and damnably kissable mouth.

"Evan took in the vision of a scarlet gown, which barely disguised the shapely form and a river of black curls that caressed to girl's waist. Oh, Lord. He wished he had ordered sackcloth."

Morleyna's secret gift of Sight reveals a cruel betrayal that sends Evan on a mystical journey where he discovers his only chance for redemption rests in the hands of his captive.

Her brothers will arrive to claim their sapphire-eyed sister. Will her kinsmen, bent on revenge, destroy Evan and his comrades? Or will destruction come from Morleyna who may be the reincarnation of someone whose beauty captivated a nation?

JB: Lynne's book is available from Amazon and as an e-book kindle, Nook, and iTunes. And here's the lovely book trailer.

Hands. Just because.

2011-10-22T14:26:00.004-04:00

I have a scene in the back of my mind that I really want to sit down and write. I will, as soon as I get some mental space.

I'm about to introduce the character of Pax -- Camille and Pax -- to each other. I want Camille to notice Pax's hands. So I'm thinking about hands in general. You are about to reap some of that.

Some gems and some heroines

2011-10-20T18:16:00.005-04:00

Jess, Maggie, Annique and Justine.
Four heroines.
Four gems.

Which gem goes with which heroine?

Can you match 'em up?

Find out over at The Romance Dish, and get a chance at a copy of The Black Hawk.

Diamond and pearl are Smithsonian. Ruby attrib JOBAfunky. Amber attrib ericskiff.

Giving Away Black Hawk. (Where I'm doing this . . .)

2011-10-18T16:56:00.003-04:00

I've bumped the giveaway post up a bit, just so it stays on top. I'll do this as long as I'm blogging around the town and giving away books.

Technical Topic -- You're Out of Order

2011-10-07T17:27:00.017-04:00

Someone asks, more or less,

"When it comes to publishing a series, can I start somewhere in the middle and fill in the blanks as I go?"

Well, of course you can.
People do weirder things than that every day of the week.

You can start anywhere in the timeline and slip the next book in before or after, as you please. This is what I do.
I'm headed into planning the sixth book, the PAX STORY, and it'll hit about midway through the series, timewise.

If I were giving advice, I'd say:

-- Every story should be standalone.

This doesn't just mean each story has a full story arc and that you've shovelled in the needed backstory.

It means your twelve-year-old minor character doesn't telegraph what he's going to be at twenty.

You suppress foreknowledge. Even though you know a character will die six years after the close of the book, you don't write her as 'doomed'. In this book, she's not.

And you try not to pull characters in from other books just to say hello. Continuing characters appear if they earn a place in the plot. If not, they wander off to live their lives outside the book.

Certainly, leave Easter Eggs for your insiders. That's part of the fun. But these references have to be invisible to the novice reader.

-- Be stingy with backstory

Well, one is always stingy with backstory.

But in a discontinuous series it's especially wise to avoid handing out all the particulars of, 'what has gone before'. You may want to write something cool ten years in the past. Something that hasn't occurred to you yet.

Give yourself room to maneuver. The more you've tacked down the past, the more you limit what you can do there.

-- Every book is trapped in its own moment of time.

We deal with this all the time when writing historicals.

We know the French Revolution turned out badly. Folks in 1789 didn't. They had high hopes. When we write what characters thought and did, we can't let our knowledge of future events creep in.

-- Imagine the entire lifetime of the characters.

When you write your fifty-year-old man, try to image him as a twenty-year-old and a twelve-year-old. You may someday need him in that capacity. You want to make him a useful character, doing interesting things at all ages of his life.

I find it easier to imagine forward than to imagine back, as it were. Easier to see the old man who grows from the young dude than pulling the young dude out of that old man.

-- Leave big empty patches in everybody's life.

When we write chronologically, we're free to build any future. ("Always in motion is the Future.") We are so powerful and unconstrained.

When we set a story in our fictional world's 'what has been', the action must be consistent with and lead to what comes later. Our feet are all tangled up.

Some of it we can avoid somewhat.
I mentioned above that we don't get specific with backstory. Being vague about our character's past is particularly important. We try not to just randomly predetermine our character's life left, right, and center.

So we might be specific about stuff that won't affect anybody's action but coy when we assign life events that do constrain. We'd say, 'he was promoted to lieutenant in 1809,' rather than 'he fought at the battle of Corunna'. That way we don't sit down to write a scene set in Paris in 1809 and suddenly notice, (by way of those charts we're keeping -- see below,) that somebody we need is off fighting in Spain.

And we leave some years in the chronology just as empty as we can. We don't say what anybody's doing. Those years are vacant lots where we can build something.

And, finally:

-- Keep records

From the first chapter you set down in electrons, make notes. Make charts, year by year and even month by month over the whole period covered by your books.

What's going on in the world? Where is everybody? What have they got themselves up to?

If you don't write this down, you are not only going to get stuff wrong and feel like an idiot, when somebody points it out to you,
you're going to get cross-eyed with looking things up when you have three or four books out.

The Dragon and the Pearl and an interview with Jeannie Lin

2011-09-20T22:51:00.005-04:00

Joanna here, with Jeannie Lin, author of Butterfly Swords, (Harlequin Historical, 0373296142, buy it here,) winner of RWA's 2009 Gold Heart Award. Lin was also a break-out favorite in my personal 'exciting heroines I wish I could write,' category.

Now she's back with her newest book, The Dragon and the Pearl, (Harlequin Historical, 0373296622, you can buy it here.)

I like me some strong heroine and I like me exotic locales and strong, protective heroes. That was Butterfly Swords. I'm expecting the same three-for-three in The Dragon and the Pearl.

On to the promised interview . . .

Me: What sort of books influenced you when you were a growing up?

Jeannie: I was highly influenced by adventure stories: King Arthur's tales, Greek myths, fantasy adventures (former D&D geek here), and martial arts movies. I always had a thing for larger than life heroes and heroines and ultra-dramatic scenarios (we might even say melodrama).

Me: I also love me some ultra dramatic. Nobody's going to be surprised to hear that. What draws you to this period in history? With me and the Napoleonic era, it's the clothes. *g* You?

Jeannie: Oh, I do have to admit the clothes were a part.

I used to watch these gorgeous Tang Dynasty costume dramas (think Curse of the Golden Flower with Chow Yun Fat for a more recent reference). They featured Empress Wu and her irrepressible daughter Princess Taiping. It was an elegant, glorious, treacherous and bloody time and these little clever women emerged as the biggest badasses of them all in a court full of powerful men. I loved it.

Me: What do you consider the Historical Romance canon?

Jeannie: Actually I feel super unqualified to answer this as I'm not well read in the canon and feel I must catch up! The historical romance police will take away my card when they learn I've only read Laura Kinsale's Flowers from the Storm and Judith Ivory's Beast this year. Woodiwiss' The Flame and the Flower is on my TBR. Similarly The Rake by Mary Jo Putney is also TBR'ed.

Every time I read one of these "canon" books I'm blown away and think people who look down on historical romance "back then" weren't reading the right books. Can I lump Gone with the Wind in there? (I have read that one!) My foundation was Johanna Lindsey, Amanda Quick, Julia Quinn and Lisa Kleypas.

I'd really love recommendations on this front.

Me: I like your choices of canon, and agree with them. My own favs, in fact. Let's talk about The Dragon and the Pearl. How is your new heroine, Ling Suyin, alike, and different from, Ai Li, the heroine of Butterfly Swords?

Jeannie: Both of the women are empowered, but I think of Ling Suyin as experienced in wielding her power whereas Ai Li was learning and earning her independence. Because of this, Ai Li was more willing to take risks and make mistakes whereas Suyin is more strategic and cautious.

Ai Li was so darn nice! I know everyone thought she was all kickass and such, but at her heart she was a really good girl and always trying to do the right thing. The swords fooled everyone--even as a swordswoman she practiced all the time. Ling Suyin is not as honorable. She's a survivor.

Me: Random questions here. What was the hardest scene to cut from Dragon?

Jeannie: This is a thought-provoking question. Almost two-thirds of the book remained completely intact through all edits whereas the ending was tweaked quite a bit. There was an assassination attempt on Suyin's life where she was saved by a secondary character, the cripple named Jun. In the end, it wasn't needed for the central story, but I so loved the nod to so many martial arts elements in the scene (remember Jeannie, you're writing a romance...not a kung-fu flick).

Me: I admire your strength. I hate to cut good scenes. I just hope you'll post it on your blog as an out take some day. More random question. Did your characters have any surprises for you while you were writing? Anything you didn't foresee?

Jeannie: Oh...how do I do this without spoilers?

I knew Li Tao and Suyin before the story started because they had been featured in the previous book. Ling Suyin remains as the only character that appears in all three of my first books as they were originally written (Book #1 precedes Butterfly Swords and its fate is still in the air).

What I didn't know is their past and I felt it was so important to who they were now. I see my scenes unfold like a movie and so though I sense the characters' secrets when I imagine the present scenes--because movies always do that, you know? Mysterious looks, close-ups, hidden innuendos--I had to learn who they were to know what it all meant.

This is my only book that uses flashbacks which I normally don't favor, but I couldn't see Li Tao sitting down and ever revealing his past to anyone in a conversation, not even to the woman he loves. The same thing for Suyin. It seems like the trend in romance today is that when you love someone, you reveal all your dirty laundry to them. I don't think that's true-to-life and it wasn't true to the culture of background of these characters.

There were also a few turns at the end with Suyin's character that I hadn't anticipated and that I had no personal experience with...darn spoilers.

Me: Flashbacks are the very devil, aren't they? *g* What are you working on right now?

Jeannie: Right now I'm going back to the series with a star-crossed love story about Shen Tai Yang (Ai Li's 3rd brother) and a daughter of the Gao family (Gao is the enemy warlord in The Dragon and the Pearl).

It's a Romeo and Juliet tale if Romeo and Juliet had to consider fighting to the death. I've finished several projects that are now in the Harlequin queue that didn't have swords and warlords and focused more on the high culture of the Tang Dynasty, so that's why I'm going back to the melodrama.

Me: Thank you so much for stopping by, Jeannie.

So. Here's a recommended read. And if you haven't latched onto Butterfly Swords, I recommend it as well.(See the wiki here for a discussion of butterfly swords, which is interesting in its own right.)

I love both of her covers too. Just saying.

Grappling with Hoops of Steel

2011-09-19T00:55:00.002-04:00

Which refers to Polonius' speech, in case you were wondering . . .

Joanna here, talkin g about the history of hoop chasing and the many misconceptions we nourish about this.

Right off, let me explain how chasing or bowling or driving or rolling or trundling a hoop came about.

Bright young lad's father

About seven minutes after the invention of the wheel, some bright young lad standing in the back of the cave noticed you could roll the thing and chase after it. It probably took a half hour's experimentation to discover you could roll it even better by knocking at it with a short stick. You could make it go fast or slow, turn, even spin backwards. A new human activity — part sport, part contest, part art, part meditation — was born.
It proved amazingly popular. There's something in the human race that wants to chase a rolling object. We're like golden labs.

I want to claim Classical sources for my subject. And, indeed, the Classical Greeks were great hoop trundlers.

The rest of the post is at Word Wenches Here.

I'll be giving away an early copy of Black Hawk. I'm hoping I get my copies before they start selling them in the store. But, in any case, It's free.

Technical Topic -- How do we find our setting?

2011-09-16T21:11:00.022-04:00

Someone asks, more or less --

I want to write a scene about the first kiss. I want the setting to be special but anything I'm coming up with is a bit cliched.

What do I do?

I am reminded of Harriet Vane and Lord Peter on the bridge in Oxford, and later, 'kissing madly in a punt'.
There are romantic settings that are just exactly . . . right.

But if you can't find just the right place,
and you're saying to yourself -- 'Wouldn't it be romantic if they kissed at the top of the Eiffel Tower?' --
and taking the characters to France,
you could approach 'first-kiss setting' the way you would any other setting.

This leads me to my newly composed, handy-dandy

Guidelines for Good Setting --

. . . which is just my own take on this so feel free to come up with something entirely additional and contradictory.

1) Good setting lets the characters perform useful plot action.

Sometimes, we got busy protagonists. They do not have leisure to wander off into a new setting just to lock lips.
When our hero and heroine do the Big Moment of mouth to mouth, they are simultaneously stealing a car or baking a poisoned cake or escaping from jail.

If the plot action is just speeding along and the next important plot point is they confront Uncle Ned about his gambling addiction -- then set that kiss when they're leaning against the slot machines on the grand arcade.

One way to find the setting is to keep the protagonists moving forward through the action.

Guideline: Where the action is, there shall your Setting be.

2) Good Setting is interesting.

Not the MacDonalds. The cowboy bar down the street.
Not the laundromat. The morgue.

Guideline: Good setting is interesting in-and-of itself.

3) Good setting is vividly and knowledgeably described.

Unless you know what heathery hills look, feel and smell like, you probably do not want to set scenes in the gloaming on heathery hills because you will be vague and, quite often, wrong.
Many a fictional lass has laid herself down in the gorse and heather. To which I say, 'Ouch.'

If you want to write about a bar fight, fer Pete's sake go sit in some bars.

If you want to write about anything, take the time to look at it. Really look.

4) Good setting reveals character.

Where possible, you put your people in scenery that matters to them or is somehow characteristic of them.

Not a stretch of anonymous beach. A beach where they are waiting for a drug shipment. The stretch of beach where she lost her virginity ten years ago. The rocky cove in front of his grandmother's house.

My books open with the protagonist imprisoned in a house she knew as a child; crouched in the burned-out shell of her family home; walking mean streets she used to run as a young girl; collapsing at the threshold of her lover's headquarters.

Not random scenery. Scenery that resonates with the POV character/protagonist. That means something to her.

Guideline: Build character with every part of the story.
This includes setting.

5) Good setting contrasts with the settings before and after it.

Go inside if they've just spent time outdoors. Go quiet if they've been somewhere frenetic. Safe after danger. Bright after dark. Crowded after solitude. Shiny and mechanical after pastel and pastoral.

Guideline: Contrast keeps the reader from falling asleep.

This is why we do not make a whole meal of yellow food.

6) Good setting builds mood.

You pick the setting to display the exact type of kiss you need.

The rocking, icy-cold deck of a motorboat as they flee the Drug Lords is going to deliver a different mood for kissing than the slithery peace of the reptile cages at the zoo.

Guideline: Mood is the grease that slides the action forward.
Apply liberally.

7. Good Setting tells story

All by themselves, the settings and the order in which they're placed, tell your story. Where your people are conveys meaning, symbols, impressions, emotion.

Cavern phot attrib espritdesel

The underground cavern of Forbidden Rose is not merely a convenient place to set the action. It calls up the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, (with a more fortunate ending.) It's a symbol of rebirth. The passage from the womb. When I put my folks in that setting, the caverns themselves do a lot of the talking.

When Jess walks away from her hotel and her office, into the maze of dirty streets near the docks . . . she's not just moving geographically. The setting tells the story of the longer journey she's making -- back to her past. The setting is a sign of her commitment to leave safety and undertake a dangerous enterprise.

Guideline: Use setting to show what's really going on.

Technical Topic: Creating Characters

2011-08-28T12:03:00.007-04:00

Elsewhere, someone writes, pretty much:

My characters never develop beyond something used to fill a gap in the story or follow the plot as directed by the writer.

What goes on through your head when you create a character?

There are dozens of good ways to develop characters. You get thirty writers talking and you're going to hear thirty methods, most of them contradictory, some of them involving lists and interviews and diagrams and scrapbooks. Some of them mentioning alcohol.

The best way to create characters is to try a bunch of these methods with an open mind and then go along doing what works for your particular and idiosyncratic creativity.

When I suggest this stuff below, you are advised to take it with a grain of salt because it may not work for you. But here something to try:

Sit down where it's quiet and you don't have anything you need to do for a while. Get comfortable. Close your eyes. Think of your character in one particular scene, in one specific time and place.

This is a visualization exercise. You're going to crawl inside that character. You are going to see the world from his POV.

Try real hard not to feel silly, ok?

We enter the character by imagining what comes to his senses.

He or she is sitting, as you are. What's underneath him -- the stairs, a log beside the campfire, a velvet sofa? Is there wind? What do you smell in the air? What do you hear?

We enter our character by imaging the interior of his mind and body. He is filled with emotion and needs. Is he warm, cold, tired, hungry, excited, angry, annoyed, afraid?
Our guy has just finished doing something. What? He carries the immediate memory of those recent actions and feelings.

And we enter the character by imagining his needs.

Your character, at every moment, is just chock full of some goal.
What does he want, right now?

A sandwich? Directions to the zoo? A chance to kiss Molly? The combination to the safe? Escape from the toothed boomerslings?
What emotion does he feel in regard to that goal?
What action does he plan to get him what he wants?

This is how we create our people. We don't look down from on high as if they were chess pieces we're going to move around at our convenience. We get down in the mud with them. We gain our insights from sensing what goes on inside the skin. We find out how the characters see each other at eye level.
Because that's where we are. At eye level.

I don't mean to say we shouldn't set down a list of parameters for the characters.

In Forbidden Rose, right from the start, I knew Justine had to be very young, no older than Adrian. She had to be intelligent and educated, of the nobility, a great and loyal French spy, more fond of guns than knives, and with a horrific past. I pictured someone of sorta midbrowny coloring, so she wouldn't match Adrian's darkness.

These are character parameters I needed for the long-term plot of Forbidden Rose and Black Hawk.

But see how none of this is important stuff about her. None of it helps me know who she is. Any kind of persona at all could fit inside those parameters.

I didn't know 'Justine' herself till one day I was writing along in the early imagining of the story and I closed my eyes and there she and I were, in her bedroom, with Severine and Adrian. It was one of the first scenes of the book I could visualize. That's when Justine began telling me about herself. And that's the first time I saw Severine and knew how I'd wrap up the story.

So this is what I'd advise.
Instead of laying down the law on what our folks have to do for plot reasons or what they have to be so they match some consistent and usable character we want them to be,
we let them tell us what they feel and think and need.

We learn this stuff because we are inside their skin.

Eventually, we can ask what they want, long term, and we can go back and look into their past to discover why they want it.

My Earthquake

2011-08-23T22:41:00.001-04:00

And the earthquake . . .

We are 30 miles from the epicenter, so we got the full surround-sound experience.

The house shook quite a bit. You could hear this thing. A deep rumbling noise. The feeling was rather like being on a train going over rough track and swaying some. Stuff jittered and moved.

I took a second or two trying to decide whether this was an earthquake, (get outside) or a nuclear strike on Washington,(duck and cover,) decided on earthquake and yelled for the kids (my own and five friends) to get out.

They were all -- 'Get in a doorway' -- which was good enough practice as that went, but this seemed to be a long rumbly one rather than a 'house coming down around us right now' one, so I got them outdoors.
I was so proud of them for being knowledgeable and wise.

It lasted a while. I think I could have recited the whole Gettysburg Address if I had kept up a fast clip.

This is my -- I had to think about this a while -- third good shaker of a quake and my fifth quake if you count a couple little bitty tremors. And it's in Virginia. I didn't feel any quakes when I lived in California.
Go figger.

I didn't even have stuff shake off the shelves. This is in part because I do not have shelves full of breakable stuff. I have books. The TV slid across the old wood chest I keep it on but did not fall over and break, which is a pity since it is the TV-that-will-not-die and dates from the Seventies and has tubes in it.

My friend who owns an antique shop just about ground zero says a lot of little brickabrack suicided.

The DH was outside working on the motorcycle. The shaking made it hard for him to keep his footing. He said the walls of the house moved and flexed in an interesting manner.

I have not been down to look at the foundation or checked the chimney. These will no doubt tell us if they are no longer tight in their own good time by (a) flooding or (b) setting the house on fire.

The epicenter is 8 miles from the North Anna nuclear power plant. I am assured there is no important structural damage.
This removes all nervousness. The government would not lie to me.

I did not feel a sense of foreboding and would have been of no use whatsoever to my primitive tribe in warning them of impending danger.
I did feel rather odd afterwards.
But then, one would. I wasn't scared, but my chest felt tight and my stomach was unsettled.
You cannot possibly be interested in the details. Really.

The animals did not act oddly beforehand.
They are obviously less sensitive than Chinese chickens.
I have long suspected this.

The cat was deeply distressed, however, when it struck and went streaking out of the house to jump around in the leaves out back, scared of the way the ground was acting.

The dog slept through it.

We've had a few little aftershocks.

Banner finis

2011-08-21T23:43:00.000-04:00

And I have a banner concept.

Not final. Not just the way it's going to look. But I expect it will bear some relationship to the final design.
The web designer is either pleased or tactful and we are talking technical details about drop down menus and search boxes. I like it that we've got to the point I have no idea what is going on and cannot add usefully to further websiting.

Could Romantic Scientist and Skittles get in touch with me. You guys won an ARC of Black Hawk. Hard decision, when everyone was so very helpful and intelligent. Yeah!

Technical Topics -- Building Minor Characters

2011-08-17T14:49:00.015-04:00

Someone asks,

I want to expand the role of a minor character. I want to make him a villain.
How do I make him more real?

Lots of ways to approach this.

First off, you get to use all the tricks you used in building your major characters
on the small fry.
Give him something to believe in; give him a problem to solve; give him an interesting and complicated past; give him something that makes him hurt; something that he delights in, give him something he wants very very much, give him some small oddities of appearance, action, movement or belief.

That's pretty basic character building.

Here's four more approaches that might be useful:

-- What does he sound like in dialog?
Consider cadence of speech. Word choice. Accent. Big words or small ones. Modern slang or precise, scholarly finicky. Long sentences or short. Concrete terms or figurative. Metaphoric language or literal.

But it's not just the words. It's the delivery. It's how he speaks. What are the customs of his dialog.
Does he rush to agree with what other folks say? Does he interrupt? Does he respond to what has been said or go off on a tangent? Does he wait before replying, or jump into speech immediatly. Does he stay silent and carefully watch others?

Compare the dialog and delivery of Uriah Heep with that of Bill Sykes. Look at the accompanying body language. (Go ahead. I'll wait . . . )

And moving right along.

-- What does your character do? Nothing defines a character like what he does.

A small behavior;
(he hides his meat under a pile of rice at the cafeteria line so he doesn't have to pay for it;)
reveals larger behaviors;
(he's an embezzler.)

The lovely young girl who casually stomps on a cricket, ('insects give me the creeps',) is not lovely inside.

What folks do stands up and shouts so loud about what they are, that we can't even hear them explain that they are not really like that but are something else altogether.

-- Minor characters, maybe especially villains, tend to have simple and consistent behavior.

But while the balance and pace of the story may demand this simplicity of character, it's worth remembering that no one is all of a piece. We may not show the many depths to this villain bloke, but those many layers exist. We know this, even if the reader doesn't.

-- And it's often useful to remember that every character is the hero of his own story. How would he see things?

For some interesting comments on hero-age and villain-age, see the Wenchposting here.

Banners Yet again.

2011-08-15T15:13:00.002-04:00

So. Still playing with the banner:

This one has a blue banner and the 'e' is not covered.
Then the same banner with the 'e' covered.

I am not at all sure about this shade of blue. No. Not sure.
And I have to work with the edge of that door. It needs to look like a door. Maybe I can add a dark strip down the side.

This one has a more active woman. I like the concept, but the picture of her takes more space, it being active and all.

In the first case, I've moved the lettering on top of her.
This might work with more powerful lettering, but seems illegible as is.

Here, I keep the picture, but make the name smaller so it all fits.
I do not know what to do with the right side of the picture.
The whole photoshop thingum is kinda beyond my grasp. Obviously more tinkering is required if I want to do this.

This one has a wedge-shaped upper line.
Somehow I think the concept of wedge-shaped upper line is cooler than the execution.

And here we see one with a thicker upper line altogether.

Banners again

2011-08-14T19:38:00.014-04:00

So.
I'm still looking at possible banners for the blog,
because I dither a bit on this,
and also I have to do the work when I have an odd minute free.

Somehow one is never expected to have even minutes free.

Could gamistress66 and Christine get in touch with me? I'll send you each an ARC of Black Hawk.
I had a very hard time -- an impossible time -- deciding who was most helpful. So I picked out the five great comments and did a blind drawing and you two won.

I have another copy of Black Hawk -- 'the ARC' to give away. It'll be for further comment or for what was already said or a combination of both.

What I'm thinking of right now is:

Or its kin an kith:

Then we got blue options:

And we got variations:

Technical Topic -- So how do your write relationship scenes, anyway?

2011-08-10T13:40:00.008-04:00

Someone asked, (more or less):

I don't write Romance, but I want to add a romantic scene. How do I do this?

A 'romance' scene falls into the category of intense, interpersonal scene.

There are many kinds of scenes. You got yer 'individual concentrates on something' scenes like 'Frodo climbs the cliff in Mordor'.
You got yer brisk, big-movement action scenes like 'George kicks the villain in the teeth' or 'Marvin drives a car really fast'.
You got your scenes of internals like 'Harold remembers his boyhood' or 'Martha plots a murder'.

A romantic scene is a two-person interaction scene. Similar interaction scenes are 'an argument', 'a confrontation', 'a persuasion', or a close, emotional dialog of any kind.
Even if your folks don't have a lot to say to each other, that's the kind of scene it is.

What are the characteristics of a close interpersonal scene?

1) Very tight focus on the other person. The corollary, that's the next point below, is a lack of focus on the surroundings.

Most visuals are going to be of the other person -- the non-POV character -- and they are going to be small details. This is where you talk about the shape of an ear lobe or the crooked eye tooth on the lower jaw. Not -- he's tall. Not -- he's wearing vintage cowboy boots.

When someone is in the most intimate zone of contact with the POV character, description includes smell, taste, touch, hearing small sounds. This is when he notices the smell in her armpits, the taste of her hair, the sound of her stomach rumbling, the fleshy mumble of his ear lobe.

You convince the reader that these two people are propinquitous by using details that are only apparent upon close contact.
We note the small changes in the eyes or mouth that signal feelings. The POV character is intensely aware of the other person's expression.

2) We tend to leave out most description of the surroundings.

So . . . not so much talking about the semiraker and dohinki on the engineering panel. Not so much commenting on the clouds floating over the fleecy red fields of the planet Florami. Not so much dwelling on the color of the damask curtains.

This is why it's nice to put the romantic encounter in scenery that has been used before and described before. The reader already knows what the galley looks like before you move your protagonists in there and set them to making love on the counter.

This 'I have no time to talk about the color of the couch' is true in 'fight scenes' and 'intense dialog' and 'escape scenes'. If you've nailed the description down earlier -- even just walking through the place -- you don't have to sketch it in now.

3) You do add description that enhances the purpose of the scene.

This is true in any scene, of course. In an intensely emotional scene, you have one or two emotional themes you're playing with. You highlight scenery description and stage business to follow the emotional theme.

If the scene is sensual, you might describe the furs and velvets on the bed. (And yes. There is no reason space travellers wouldn't have furs and velvets on the bed.) The smell of flowers in a vase. The gems on the perfume bottle on the dresser. The ozone and mineral smell of the warm bath that's been run in the room next door.

If an issue in the relationship is the strength, lethality and touchiness of the female, your stage business might be she's chopping carrots for dinner. The glint of the knife becomes part of the dialog, symbolic of her own dangerous edge.

4) Dialog, dialog, dialog.

A romance scene is about communication between the protagonists.

Build the dialog by giving them something to talk about.

Now it might be simply 'my room or yours', but if this is an important relationship, there's probably more to it than that.

What you do here is ask yourself -- 'In this scene, what changes in the relationship?'
That's what the dialog is about.

Techniques for building this 'what changes' dialog:

-- Have a character say something true. Truth is tremendously powerful in dialog. "I hated it when you went to bed with Jerome." "I'm planning to do this once, and then walk off and leave you." "You're not really pretty."

-- Make the character sound like himself. You always do, but if there are tricks that give your character his voice, this is the time to put them in place.

-- Take some of the words the character is thinking and put them into speech. When the words are said out loud, the other character can respond to them.
If a character says, 'the sheets are cold', you have dialog about this. If he thinks about the cold sheets . . . the perception stays small and lonely.

-- Let them talk about the problem that has kept them apart for the eighteen chapters before this.

-- Let them talk, (or think,) about what happens next. (No. Not just the horizontal rumba. What happens next week?)

5) Dialog is couched in relationship terms.

Dialog is always responsive, of course. That is, when something gets said the returning words are an answer.

In a relationship scene, the words do not merely respond to what is said. Each bit of dialog is also responding to where the relationship is right at that moment.

She: Where did I leave my car keys?
He: On the table.

versus

She: Where did I leave my car keys?
He: Here. No. Don't get up. I'll pass them to you.

That moment, the relationship is at a place he wants to give something to her.

He: A little onion. A few olives. That's done. Pass me the crisper.
She: Here. I'll take it out to the table.

versus

He: A little onion. A few olives. That's done. Pass me the crisper.
She: Here. That looks remarkably tasty. I'll take it out to the table.

Because she's thinking how tasty he looks.

I do not mean you fill the conversation with innuendo. You just take into account that people talk to each other differently when they are in a romantic situation.

6) Because a romantic relationship scene is about sexuality and sensuality, describe the internal physical response of the POV character.
Try not to be purple about this.

And the POV character sees signs of sexual response in the other person.

7) Direct address.
Mostly characters do not address one another by name. The usual advice is to pull these direct address names out -- and very good advice that is.
In a relationship scene, though, I think he can call her Sue-Ellen or Gigi once or twice.

8) Pacing is generally slow in relationship scenes. There's lots of talk. You get a pause now and then. Lots of internals.

You can slow pacing with a few complex and longish sentences interspersed into the page, or by adding stage business that the reader will see as taking a long time.
'He crossed the room and then paced back again.' is nine words.
'He hunted the shelf till he found the dictionary.' is also nine words -- but that action is going to slow the reader's perception of the pace of the scene.

When you get to scenes of actual sexual activity, the pace should pick up for at least part of the scene.
This sort of scene benefits from noticeable changes in pacing.

9) It is a Romance genre convention that POV can be switched once, or more than once, in sex scenes. This gives the reader two POV glances at the same material.
Not by any means necessary, but something to think about.

Technical Topic -- How much abuse

2011-08-09T08:43:00.015-04:00

Someone asked elsewhere . . .

How much physical abuse do we put the character through?

To which I respond . . .

A reader is probably less interested in the abuse per se --
than in what the abuse means to the character
and how the character reacts.

The interior of the scullery boy plotting revenge in a I'm going to pee in her soup before I bring it to her way while he nurses his aching head and scours the pots
is actually more interesting than the cook hitting him over the head with a spoon. Boink ouch boink ouch pain suffering.

The underlying problem with hapless suffering, in a story sense, comes when it happens to someone without freedom of choice.
Abuse or pain endured is, (like a typhoon or a swarm of army ants or crippling illness or crop failure or the Empire at war,) a story problem.
Story is character choices and character action.
Story is the character doing stuff.

Starving to death on the farm is story problem.
Jack climbing the bean stalk is story.

The wicked stepmother and step sisters is story problem.
Cinderella making her own dress to go to the ball is story.

Pollyanna losing her family is story problem.
Pollyanna choosing to look on the bright side is story.

It isn't about suffering. It's about agency.

If your protagonist is acting and choosing, then the sufferings spotlight the importance of his choices. It's story. Go ahead and abuse the poor protagonist. Frodo's sufferings on his trek through Mordor are story.

In Frodo's case, suffering raises the stakes. Privation and pain make the protagonist's courage or innocence or steadfastness shine. But we don't mistake the suffering for the story. We concentrate on what tells story.

The 'story' in Oliver Twist is not about Oliver starving to death in the workhouse. It's about Oliver standing up and saying, 'Please, Sir, may I have some more?"

This is why the protagonist's stay in the kitchen under the heavy hand of the spoon-wielding cook or the child growing up with a sexually abusive uncle will often be introductory to the story.

The reader is given enough background to emotionally understand why Cedric-the-cooksboy is desperate enough to run off in the middle of the night through war-torn Madreltonia or why Albert-the-schoolboy poisons his uncle's tea. Then Cedric and Albert get on with the business of doing something instead of being somebody's punching bag.

New Look for the Blog

2011-08-06T17:12:00.006-04:00

I changed the design of the blog
as you see.

Y'know how sometimes you go out and buy a new car because you are just in love with the idea of having a shiny new car with really sleek lines and good gas mileage and, like, tailfins?

This is not what I'm doing here.

Or sometimes you buy a new car because your neighbors keep walking by and saying, "When are you going to get rid of that scrap heap?"

Which is why I'm updating the website
at considerable effort and inconvenience and not a little personal expense.

But that is not why I changed the blog.

Sometimes you get rid of your car because vandals have come by and set it on fire and painted obscene mottoes all over the carcass and let the air out of your tires.

That's why I changed the look of the blog.

For reasons which will remain forever unclear, but are probably related to something abstruse and technical Google did with how it uploads stuff to Blogger,
lots of Blogger folks suddenly started getting black spaces and white triangles and exclamation points all over their blogs.

Doubtless dead-black-and-exclamation-marks have a design purpose.
Not for my blog
so much.

I put up with a long black column slashing down the left side of the blog for a couple days. I joined discussions and listened to the usual fixes that everybody promised would work, that did not work for me. I played with the code of the blog, which is always dire and trying and in this case also did not work.

I became distressed.

So I changed templates.
This is something I've been avoiding for years,
because something usually goes wrong when you mess with stuff.

That is why I have a new design.

Finished the Page Proofs.

2011-08-03T23:47:00.001-04:00

Finished the page proofs of Black Hawk.
I turned them in yesterday.

Yeah!!!

A book is not finished when you turn in the manuscript. The book is done when you turn in the corrections on the page proofs.
This is why I don't celebrate sending in the ms. But tonight, we went out to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant.

Now, I can let my fingers unclench on the manuscript. I can let it go.

And I can now direct some more energy to this website banner problem.

Page proofs are also called galleys. What you're doing when you go over the page proofs is you look at the actual pages the way they will appear in the book.

You have to find all the typos.

It is like finding Waldo. For 300 pages. Under a deadline.

You have one last chance to catch the place where your character walks across the room and opens the window and then three pages later somebody else opens the same window. You have to make sure it's clear who's speaking the next piece of dialog.

You look at it word by word by word.

When you finish this process there is not a great deal of your brain left.

Keeping It Clean -- Georgian and Regency Bathing Customs

2011-08-03T23:26:00.003-04:00

Talking about Georgian and Regency bathtubs, here, and the joys of getting clean.

There is a general view that historical people were rather dirty, there being a dearth of historical folks getting up at six and grabbing a bar of soap and popping in to warble un bel dì vedremo in the shower. I'm afraid we all feel rather smug about our acres of colored tile with the running hot and cold.

How clean were they? The townsfolks as they merrily hung aristos from the lamposts, Ninon de l'Enclos, Voltaire, (Did you know Ninon left money in her will for the 9-year-old Voltaire to buy books?) Napoleon, Jane Austen, the kitchenmaid grinding coffee in the morning? How clean were they?

For more, follow the post over to Word Wenches, here.

Website design

2011-07-24T17:33:00.011-04:00

I'm working on the banner for my updated website.

Not that I'm going to actually do the banner thing myself, you understand. This is just me trying to communicate a 'feeling' to the website designer.

Since there are all kinds of visually skilled folks out there . . . can you give me some opinions? What's the direction to go with this? What's the working idea?

Oh . . . these are photos I mostly don't have rights to, so I'm just using thumbnails and I'm going to pull the banner designs after a bit.

The person who gives me the most help with this, (it's one of those subjective thingums,) gets a Black Hawk ARC, as soon as I actually get some.

********************

Let me go add another one here:

*******
Going down to add a modification of the design above. This one is meant to sorta break outta the box. Don't know how technically feasible it is.

*****
Looking at making the concept punchier . . . I've added red to it.
It is not just straightforward and easy to add add red to a dress, so It's all a little clumsy.

I think this is a bit too much red. Maybe a gentler pink on the dress.
Or . . . there's blue. Let me try blue.

Blog Philosophy and that kinda thing

2011-07-14T21:52:00.014-04:00

I'm bringing this up from the comment trail, because it's a sizable piece of writing and, after all, why not?

This is about the use of a blog, for a writer:

I hate to say this, but I don't think you attract readers by posting a blog.

Once you HAVE readers you can remind them about your new books. You can make the reading more fun. You can lay down content that doesn't fit into the books but you're still in love with.

You can do the whole self-expression thing about how you feel, which is liberating and useful to other writers who are going through the same trials and a great relief to your family who don't have to listen to you whinge and I suspect everybody reading the blog skips this part anyhow.

But I don't see a blog as a way to garner new readers.
I may be alone in this.
And I am not what you might call a promotion maven.
So you should not necessarily listen to me.

All that said,
I love blogging.

What it is . . .
We depend upon the immense generosity of the internet. Our research on-line depends on information posted by thousands of people who work without any expectation of return.
When we blog, it's payback.

If you're going to blog anyway, my advice would be to pick a theme you're passionate about and make your blog a creature of your love.

It's nice if you're interested in some topic vaguely related to the kind of books you write. You could get synchronicity. It might be that folks who come to read your postings on pirates or the labor movement in 1930 will pick up your 1760 pirate book or your labor-leader love story.

If your bliss is knitting or raising koi, I think you gotta blog about that for its own sake.

Life is too short to spend your time promoting.
Write about something important.
If you make your blog an advertisement for your books, nobody's going to come anyway.

The Wine Glass Over the Water

2011-07-01T06:09:00.001-04:00

The Wine Glass over the Water

God bless the King
I mean our faith’s defender.
God bless — no harm in blessing — the Pretender.
But who Pretender is, and who is King —
God bless us all — That’s quite another thing.
John Byrom

Joanna, here, talking about an interesting sort of drinking glass our hero and heroine might have encountered in their travels through Georgian or Regency England.
The Jacobite Drinking Glass.
These are wine glasses that form a body of distinctive Eighteenth Century artwork.

We have these through a confluence of lucky chances.

First off, by 1700, English glassmaking was particularly advanced.
A century before, the champion glassmakers were Venetian. The best glass in England was made by imported Italian glass artists, working by Italian methods.

This changed when the English developed flint glass. 'Flint glass' contains a high proportion of lead oxide, an ingredient that makes for tough, workable, clear-as-water product. Excellent stuff, in short. And it was an English specialty.

Continues here, at Word Wenches

You know you're on deadline

2011-06-03T08:27:00.004-04:00

Wednesday afternoon, at three o'clock, I turned in the editorial revisions of Black Hawk. Now I await the copyedits. We are just moving along at a rapid clip. And Black Hawk is scheduled to hit the shelves on November 1.

You know you're on deadline when:

-- The refrigerator is full of boxes of Chinese carryout.

-- The milk is sour.

-- There are no clean clothes. There are no clean dishes.

-- You find yourself mentally moving the commas around when your daughter speaks.

-- There is no dog food. There has not been any dog food for some time. No one is saying what the dog's been eating.

-- Your three koi have mysteriously transformed into four goldfish.

-- Every surface of every room in the house is covered with stuff.

-- The rug is the color of cat hair. It didn't used to be.

-- A cold, stiff, mummified piece of pizza lurks in the toaster oven and nobody remembers putting it in there.

-- You have 1687 messages in your inbox.

-- There's a pile of newspapers at the bottom of the drive.

-- Outside, in the planter, the mint has died.

-- Your head is stuffed with something. Styrofoam?

-- You do not merely fall asleep sitting up. You fall asleep standing.

-- Someone asks, "Is this the book about Adrian Hawker?" and you can't remember.

-- You hurt. Everywhere. The words carpal tunnel syndrome are mentioned.

-- Your desk is two feet deep in advertising flyers and bills.

-- The nice people from the electric company are calling to discuss nonpayment of some of those bills.

-- When somebody speaks to you, there's a half second lag before you reply

-- Your feet stick to the kitchen floor.

-- You plan to hire somebody in a HazMat suit to clean the refrigerator.

-- The Dust Bunnies have declared your house to be a Dust Bunny Republic. They are printing up postage stamps.

The Oldest Memorials

2011-05-27T10:16:00.000-04:00

Talking about the battle memorials our Regency Folks would have known.

The oldest ones . . .

We don't know what sort of memorials were raised to fallen soldiers in Britain in the very earliest days. I like to think Silbury Hill might be one of them. Silbury Hill is a huge mound of earth -- chalk and clay -- built on the Salisbury plain near Stonehenge four thousand years ago. I've always wondered if it was homage and memory of some prehistoric leader.

Monuments we can date with some certainty go back to the 800s.
Here to the right is the back of a Pictish Stone at Aberlemno Churchyard in Angus, Scotland. We see men wearing helmets, carrying spears, shields and swords battle on foot and on horseback.

Another stone, on the left here, is the Suenos Stone, in Forres, Scotland. It was one of a pair of obelisks described on maps as late as 1789 as "two curiously carved pillars". This to the left is a drawing made in 1861 of the surviving stone. Below is a close view of the side. We see the sinuous vine patterns similar to those found in the Book of Kells.

Panels on the back, so much worn the detail is all but gone, show battle scenes of horsemen and foot soldiers and, possibly, men playing long straight musical pipes.
What battles do the stone tell of? Who fought? Viking, Pict, Gael, or Northumbrians? We can't be sure. But the Suenos Stone and the Aberlemno stones were carved with all the art of their time and raised in the honor of those long ago warriors.

Read the rest at Word Wenches here

Brenda Novak's auction

2011-05-24T18:57:00.003-04:00

Every year, Brenda Novak runs an auction to raise money for diabetes research.   It's a good cause. This year I contributed a gift basket.

Go to here. for the Brenda Novak Auction.

The Joanna Bourne basket (My Basket!! See. My basket!!!)
is item 2116660.

So many lovely things to bid on.

Jewels!!

See 2154315 2174878   2156649
2125526 2078380 2152053
2157817
That's a vintage silver necklace. 1920.
2095303 -- I like this because it is a set of three earrings. So few sets for those of us who have three ears.

Or consider the random joy of a crocheted tissue box 2152030.
A box of a bazzilion boxes 2157798
Funky keyboard stickers 2195979
Or an e-reader 2160553 and 216055

We got manuscript critiques. There are wonderful author crits out there -- Julia Quinn, Madeline Hunter .. just search 'critique'

But every one of these below is less than $100 (right now.)

Christine Wells, Anna Campbell, Courtney Milan, Candace Hern.

2069562, 2170745 , 2059148 , 2069564

What are you waiting for???

Technical Topic: Finding an Agent for Romance

2011-05-19T18:49:00.001-04:00

Someone writes:
"I've finished my Romance manuscript. Now I'm looking for an agent. How do I find one?

Congratulations on finishing the manuscript. You are now part of the 'finished your manuscript' fraternity. Only one person in a hundred who says, "I'm going to write a book" makes it this far. I am so glad you picked Romance. The world needs more great Romance stories.

As to finding an agent . . .

There are a couple of books that list agents. Writer's Market and Jeff Herman's Guide are the two standard. Most libraries carry them, but it's probably worthwhile owning one or the other.

I used my own copy of one of those books to make marginal notes of information I found in many sources. It was my 'central file", as it were.

I could cross through agents who flat-out didn't handle Romance. When I tracked down the agents of my favorite writers, I could add this information right in the Guide. When I googled agents and read interviews they'd given, I wrote my impression of their outlook and personality in the guide.

It kept everything nicely in one spot.

Another source of agent information is Agent Query here , which will give you a quick, partial list of Romance agents. Between the two books and the online source, you'll find more agent names than you can shake a stick at.

The trick is finding the right one for you. You and your agent are going to be together for many years. You don't just want 'an agent'. You want an agent who is both good and right for you.

Preditors and Editors here is a good spot to 'vet' your candidates, as is the Absolute Write Bewares and Background Checks Forum here. This will help you eliminate the outright frauds and the incompetents. Remember, being listed in the Guides or Agent Query and having a website is not a guarantee of quality or honesty.

Absolute Write also has sections for asking questions about agents and query letters and is just a generally excellent spot for a writer to hang out.

moving right along . . .
It's worth subscribing to Publishers Marketplace here for a few months. PM lists many of the sales agents make to publishing houses. It will tell you which agents have sold and the sort of books they're selling. It is by no means exhaustive -- many excellent agents don't supply information there -- but it's another source of information.

Another useful line of approach in your agent search is to look at folks who represent writers whose work has something of the flavor of your own. This is good to do with long established midlist writers, of course, but you might look especially at debut writers whose work you admire. They'll have agents who are taking on new clients.
To get the name of an author's agent, check the acks page of their books, or google "author name + agent + literary".

I'd suggest a Romance writer with a completed manuscript join Romance Writers of America for a year. Join your local chapter. Join some of the online, special-interest groups. You will meet other authors, which is reassuring in the sense that we are all in the same boat. You will meet published authors who can give you advice. And, with luck, you will make friends.

For information on query letters, see Miss Snark's Blog here and Evil Editor here.

Finally, if you plan to submit to some publishing houses -- Harlequin, for instance, and all of the e-pubs, you do not necessarily need an agent right now. You can submit directly to HQN, e-pubs, Avon and Tor.

I wish you the very best of luck.

The Dutch Cover

2011-05-18T06:35:00.003-04:00

Excellent Reader Danielle, tells me the Dutch version of Forbidden Rose is out. That's a bright and pretty cover, isn't it?

Find it all in Dutch, here. I think it can't be delivered yet, but that may lie in the future. I am so delighted to be in Dutch, not least because Holland is such a wonderful place.

Babelfish is surprising little help in translating the blurb at the site. I do not think I have ever been so confused.

The title means, 'Treason Me Not' which I rather like.

ETA: Wonderful Dutch reader, Saskia, writes to tell me the title should be translated 'Don't Betray Me'. Isn't that cool?

Historical Trivia

2011-05-16T11:39:00.000-04:00

Just as butchers doubtless have interesting bits left over from cutting up the good meat and bakers have the odd candied fruit or eggwhites they can't use in the day's batch of pastries, Historical Romance writers pick up lovely bits of trivia they can never use in the books.

Today at Word Wenches --

The Bizarre Byways of Research

A goodly while ago, Pat Punt asked the Wenches to

. . . share some of the strangest trivia they have come across in their research. Having done my share of surfing the 'net, I have encountered many a fact stranger than fiction. Their experience must be even more bizarre.

Bizarre does seem an appropriate description for what we come across.

From Pat Rice:

The only trivia I remember is from my childhood. I play a mean game of 60's Trivial Pursuit.

But I just recently wrote about the poisonous green paint that might have killed Napoleon (Kill Your Hero with Regency Wallpaper) and given a whole lot of other people pneumonia, asthma, and the winter blues.

But the one bit of history that sticks clearly in my mind—probably because it affected the area where I lived for twenty years—is the Mississippi flowing backward during the 1811 New Madrid earthquake. Can you imagine how powerful an earthquake would have to be to send the mighty Mississippi backward? And weirder yet, Shawnee tribe leader Tecumseh and his brother predicted the earthquake before it arrived. For some other weird stories about the period: see here.

From Mary Jo Putney:

Lord Uxbridge’s Leg

For the rest . . . head here

Cover Cafe Contest

2011-05-02T15:37:00.005-04:00

The 2010 Cover Contest is on! Here.

This is always fun.

Every year I go there and sigh over all the beautiful and excellent covers.
Alternate Reality is always breathtaking. I get envious. The paranormal folks get the best covers. Why? Why? Why?

Then I head straight for the Worst Covers of the Year. Because there is great snark involved.
I sympathize with the authors, but I can't help myself.

Anyhow. Forbidden Rose is in the 'Two Cover' category which delights me because I think that is a beautiful cover.

The information given about artist is limited to -- Artist: Cover Art by Lott Reps; (They are here.) Cover photo by Shutterstock; Cover design by Springe Design Concepts LLC (Penguin Group, USA)

I love that stepback cover on TSL.

Stepback by Judy York

mass market cover by Judy York

I do not know exactly which artist at Lott Reps did the Forbidden Rose cover.

Alan Ayers, here, did the trade Spymaster's Lady cover. Judy York, here, did the mass market Spymaster's Lady.

The Alan Ayers trade cover

My cat

2011-04-20T19:01:00.001-04:00

Having spent all yesterday looking into Regency cats, I will now post pictures of me and my cat.

My inspiration is a link the Most Excellent Annie contributed.

http://writersandkitties.tumblr.com/

The Regency Cat

2011-04-20T14:26:00.000-04:00

Talking about the cats of Regency England.

What kind of cats can our characters expect to encounter as they go about their adventures?
Lots of cats, for one thing.
While Englishmen may love their dogs, the English householder hated his mice and depended on cats to get rid of them. Defoe talks of forty thousand cats in London in the mid-1600s. "Few Houses being without a Cat, and some having several, and sometimes five or six in a House."

These London cats were working cats --
rangy, businesslike mousers and ratters. I see them dozing the day away in the kitchen, then rising in the night, roaming the house to do battle with vermin, meeting the enemy behind the plush curtains of the drawing room and down behind the sofas in the parlor. All the while, the gentlefolk snored in their beds.

But there were pampered, plump cats as well. We find them in paintings, batting at a soap bubble, peering into a fishbowl.

For the rest of the article -- including the breeds of cats you'd see in Regency London, see here

Technical Topic -- I've just written a Romance.

2011-04-13T02:46:00.002-04:00

Somebody wrote:

I'm a writer trying to break into publishing. I was wondering if you have any advice on who to query?

I am so glad to hear you're writing Romance. The genre needs all the good writers it can get.

As to finding an agent . . .

There are a couple of books that list most of the agents in the industry. Writer's Market and Jeff Herman's Guide are the two standard. Most libraries carry them, but it's probably worthwhile owning one or the other.

I used my own copy to make marginal notes of information I found in many sources. It was my 'central file", as it were.

I could cross through agents who flat-out didn't handle Romance. When I tracked down the agents of my favorite writers, I could add this information right in the Guide. And when I googled agents and read interviews they'd given, I wrote my impression of their outlook and personality in the guide.

It put everything nicely in one spot.

Another source is Agent Query here , which will give you a quick, partial list of Romance agents. Between the two books and the online source, you'll find more than you could ever query.

The trick is finding the right one for you.

Preditors and Editors here is a good spot to 'vet' your candidates, as is the Absolute Write Bewares and Background Checks Forum here. This will help you eliminate the outright frauds and the incompetents.

(Absolute Write also has sections for asking questions about agents and query letters and is just a generally excellent spot for a writer to hang out.)

It's worth subscribing to Publishers Marketplace here for a few months. PM lists many of the sales agents make to publishing houses. It will tell you which agents have sold and the sort of books they're selling. It is by no means exhaustive -- my own agent doesn't supply information there -- but it's another source of information.

Now, one approach in your agent search is to look at folks who represent writers with work similar to your own. You might look especially at debut writers. They'll have agents who are taking on new clients.
To get the name of an author's agent, check the acks page of their books, or google "author name + agent".

I'd suggest a Romance writer with a completed manuscript join Romance Writers of America for one year. Join your local chapter. Join some of the online, special-interest groups.

For information on query letters, see Miss Snark's Blog here and Evil Editor here.

Finally, if you plan to submit to Harlequin, you probably do not need an agent for the early part of your career. You can submit directly to HQN, (also to Avon and Tor.)

I wish you the very best of luck.

Le Maître de mon cœur

2011-04-09T12:50:00.000-04:00

My French copy of My Lord and Spymaster is out from J'ai Lu. Lovely cover. Just lovely.

This translates as 'The Master of My Heart -- which makes a bit more sense than 'My Lord and Spymaster'. Just IMO.

Adrian looks like . . .

2011-03-30T20:09:00.003-04:00

I'm gearing up to make the Romance Trading Cards for Adrian. I have a few possible faces and I . . .

I just don't know.

These are stock photos. I have not bought all of them, so I'm only going to leave them up till Saturday.

So, tell me which Adrian you like best. I'll send Romance trading cards to some lucky poster . . . *g*

ETA: There's watermarks on some of the photos. These will go away.

Photo A

Photo B

Photo C

Photo D

Photo E

ETA: I went and bought the stock photos so I could leave them up on the bog.

An Oil Lamp of my Very Own

2011-03-27T11:09:00.006-04:00

This is an ancient sorta lamp right here. atrb ranil

I wrote a blog over on Word Wenches about lighting sources in 1800, me talking about the technology that allowed you to find your way about in a gloomy world. My take on The Enlightenment, as it were.

In the process of this, I came up with some information on how oil lamps work. I had not given they mysteries of oil lamps a great deal of thought in all the long and busy years of my life, but from time to time I had wondered why the wick doesn't burn up. All that fire, y'know.

Turns out the wick is merely an agent to 'wick' liquid to the fire. The flammable liquid gets drawn up near the fire and vaporizes from the heat thereof and the vapor burns. The flame is located actually a bit above the wick when everything is going well. The wick gets charred from the proximity of the flame, but it doesn't provide the fuel of the flame, just a convenient perch for it.
Oil lamps were discovered independently all over the world, from Eskimo igloos to the deserts of Arabia, from Mayan hill villages to the plains of central China --
(unless you are of the school of thought that figures our ancestors were too stupid to figure out astronomy and agriculture all on their own and it was handed down by aliens, in which case I would very much like some of them to drop by and do my taxes for me, thank you,) --
all of which is very clever of people since I would not have thought this oil lamp stuff up myself.

Step Two: Adding yer olive oil

An oil lamp consists of oil, something to hold the oil, which may or may not be covered to help deal with the spillage issue, and a length of some burnable cloth thingum that is the wick.

Being of an inquiring mind, I set out to create an oil lamp. That's what all those pictures along the side are: me reverse-engineering primitive lamp.

Step One: I took one of my spoon rests -- this one is from a Polish pottery. It has traditional decorations, but I kinda doubt the spoonrest part is traditional. And it had a promising shape.

Step Three: The shoelace

Cutting that to length

Step Two: I sacrificed some of my salad oil. For you home gamers, this was extra virgin salad oil. (In my house, even the condiments are virtuous.)

Step Three: Lamp wicks, by 1800, were braided. Dunnoh why 'zackly but this evidently helps them do their wicking thing. So I figgered a shoelace would work. Use cotton, is my advice. I don't say that something polyesterish won't work, but I can almost guarantee it is not authentic to 1800.

Step Four: Soak the lace for a bit

Pull the wick up

Step Four: Let your wick soak up some oil,

and then light it.

The moment of truth

Step Five: Voila. You have your ancient oil lamp, not all that dissimilar to the ones that burnt over the desk of Homer or Voltaire, Murasaki Shikibu or Da Vinci.

I was, frankly, amazed that this worked.

And it burns the wick some

It flares up at first

Once it gets going, it burns with a nice steady flame and just about no smoke. No odor at all. Very clean and useful.

Then it settles down to a nice steady light

RITA

2011-03-25T17:13:00.001-04:00

Purrrrrr

I am so pleased. I've been nominated as a Finalist for the RITA in the Historical Romance category.

For those of you who don't follow Romance genre, the RITA is the Humongous Mother-Of-All-Contests Contest put on every year by the Romance Writers of America.

I'm in. I'm a finalist. I am so happy.
My agent sent me flowers.

When we're dealing at this level, getting the nomination is the win.

At DABWAHA for a bit

2011-03-18T10:03:00.002-04:00

Those of you who have been following my DA BWAHA saga know that I rather surprisingly slunk into the back row of the competition. I've managed to survive one bout and have now come up against the redoubtable Courtney Milan. In particular, her excellent Trial By Desire.

More below the cut:

It has been a question in my mind for the last day whether I would get eliminated by Courtney or wait and be knocked end over end by Loretta Chase's Your Scandalous Ways. This may turn out to be what they call a Hobson's choice.

It's interesting to come up against this particular book in competition. Trial by Desire and Forbidden Rose are eerily similar. In both case, strong heroines are driven to protect those at risk. In both cases they minutely organize escapes for these victims and cache them in secret hideaways. In both cases, the heroines assume the mask of harmless frivolity. In both cases the victims are put at risk by the law of the land. And in both cases, the heroines use the law of the land against the villain -- dispatching him, not with pistol or sword, but with the very law they work so hard to avoid. The law the villain has been wielding against them.

It's Friday. There's a couple few hours left in the contest today. Drop by and vote for Forbidden Rose in the contest.

HERE.

My Romance Trading Cards

2011-03-15T22:01:00.002-04:00

My Romance Trading Cards -- here. I'll be handing these out at the RT Convention and at RWA National. I don't know which one is going to be more popular -- the realistic or the manga style.

ETA: I wanted to do one for my Adrian, but I haven't really got my act together for this yet, so I won't be handing out an Adrian trading card at RT. I tried out a manga version -- no dice on this so far. I don't have enough dpis or something on my anime picture.

I will give this some more thought in April.

Writers and Cats

2011-03-15T12:17:00.001-04:00

My cat, (and me,) making a guest appearance in today's blog post at 'Isn't it Romanctic?'

I'm about halfway down the page, my cat appearing with the cats of such greats as Mary Jo Putney, Anne Stuart and Theresa Meideros.

We meet Hemingway's cat. There's also a beautiful screen shot from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I do not know what it is about writers and cats. They just seem to go together.
Is it because cats are graceful and restful? Because they are quiet and do not disturb the writer while she is working? Or is it that they seem to expect so much from us? I don't dare stop working early when I'm under my cat's eye.
. . .

For the rest . . . see here. I'm way down the page . . . and . . . ok . . . it's in Italian mostly. But the cats are fascinating.

How far the Candle

2011-03-14T04:32:00.001-04:00

I'm over at Word Wenches today, talking about light, and how folks avoided being the thing that went bump in the night and banged its shins in 1800 or so.

"How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world." William Shakespeare

For the most part, people took the low tech approach. Daily life followed the sun. Country folk got up with the chickens, not just because the chickens were making an almighty determined racket, but because there was a day of work to get to. Every hour the family stayed awake past sunset cost money.

They made good use of the daylight while they had it. The well-to-do had tall windows in their houses, the better to invite the sunlight inside. Even the stables had windows. If you want to shell peas or sew some fine embroidery, you took it to the window seat or went out to sit on the doorstep of the cottage. The hero is apt to find the heroine reading a letter on the garden bench because that's where there light was good.

"When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I'm sure it made the work seem that much more urgent. "
George Carlin

The rest at WordWenches here.

I'm In DA BWAHA

2011-03-13T14:15:00.002-04:00

I saw in Sonomalass's Blog this morning that I'm in DA BWAHA. Here.

This is wonderful and very exciting, and also worrisome, because there is nothing I cannot look at -- all eight sides, six in the physical dimensions and two in time -- and obsess over.

So I am surprised and pleased and delighted because I thought I wasn't in, but now it turns out I am after all.
Life is not so much good or bad, but more along the lines of weird.

My post with this year's DA BWAHA book pimping is here.

Who else is newly in?
These are the ones I know a bit about:

All I Ever Wanted by Kristan Higgins (She is so good.)

Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews (I.A. is now competing against herself. Magic Bleeds versus Bayou Moon.)

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (Yes! I mean, like, somebody is surprised . . .?)

Storming the Castle by Eloisa James (I haven't yet read this one, but I love her writing.)

My stones . . . Let me show you them

2011-03-09T14:42:00.000-05:00

I'm making comment over at Word Wenches (here) about stones in general -- and standing stones in particular. So I will celebrate some stones I am particularly fond of.

These two pictures show a couple of the few dozen large rocks I have transported one by one to my house so I can enjoy them.

I walk by my rocks and get all joyful because they are so whole and solid and perfect.

I am actually pretty easy to please.

DA BWAHA Finalists

2011-03-03T12:28:00.015-05:00

This is book pimping here.

The DA BWAHA is a yearly contest where Romance and quasi-Romance books slug it out for world domination.
For information on the contest and how to play (vote) see here.

This post here below is me reminding everybody of some wonderful books that came out in 2010.

I've listed 15 of the 64 DA BWAHA books. Most of them I've had the opportunity to read and like.
There's also some that are on my TBR shelf that I haven't got around to reading yet.

I'm saying -- "Hey, go take a look."
Because the DA BWAHA always has great books.

(Click on the book to go to the book. Click on the author to go to author website.)

Cold Magic by Kate Elliott
The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley
Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn
Naked Edge, Pamela Clare
Something About You by Julia James
The Time Weaver by Shana Abe
Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews
Iron Duke by Meljean Brook
Archangel’s Kiss by Nalini Singh
Last Night’s Scandal by Loretta Chase
The Summer of You by Kate Noble
Trial by Desire by Courtney Milan
His at Night by Sherry Thomas
Wicked Becomes You by Meredith Duran
Troubled Waters by Sharon Shinn

And, as long as I'm here,
let me add a couple few books that didn't get picked up by DA BWAHA.
These are some of the just Great Reads of 2010.
Some of them are just beautiful.

Lady Isabella's Scandalous Marriage by Jennifer Ashley
The Accidental Wedding by Anne Gracie
Whisper of Scandal by Nicola Cornick
Barely a Lady by Eileen Dreyer
Blameless by Gail Carriger
In Too Deep by Jayne Ann Krentz w/a Amanda Quick
Love in the Afternoon by Lisa Kleypas
A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh
Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin
Queen Hereafter by Susan Fraser King
In for a Penny by Rose Lerner
Ten Things I Love About You by Julia Quinn
Lessons in French by Laura Kinsale
The Golden Season by Connie Brockway
Sinful in Satin by Madeline Hunter
Promises in Death by Nora Roberts w/a JD Robb (ok. ok. It's from 2009. So sue me.)
The Wicked Wyckerly by Patricia Rice
Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie
Wicked Intentions by Elizabeth Hoyt
Marry Me by Jo Goodman
Three Nights with a Scoundrel by Tessa Dare

ETA:

Now I am going to add some few selected more books. Maybe like twenty. These are reader favs. These books competed for the 'empty slot' the DA BWAHA folks left as the 8th book in each category.

I've listed the ones I know a bit about and like. If I already mentioned them, I don't repeat.

YA
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (Finalist)
Matched by Ally Condie
The Duff by Kody Keplinger
Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

PNR/SF
Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews (Finalist)
Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs
Warrior by Zoe Archer
Play of Passion by Nalini Singh

Crossover
City of Ghosts by Stacia Kane
All Clear by Connie Willis

Contemporary
All I Ever Wanted by Kristan Higgins (Finalist)
The Search by Nora Roberts
Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor by Lisa Kleypas

Historical
Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean
The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig
Married by Morning by Lisa Kleypas
The Betrayal of the Blood Lily by Lauren Willig
The Heir by Grace Burrowes
A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James

For the whole shebang of 80 reader nominees -- go here. It's an interesting list.

If there's a book on the DA BWAHA list or some other 2010 book I've missed, let me know.

The backbone of a query letter

2011-03-02T18:23:00.006-05:00

Talking query letters,
which is one of the all-time horrible tasks in a writer's life.

Once you get past the, "this is why I am drawn to you as an agent," moment,
and the, "title, genre, length," moment,
you are likely to get to the "what is the story, anyway," moment.

There are two ways to go on from there. Two organizational styles, if you will.

1. You can relate the story.

Gordon and his squire rode into the tugley wood till they came to a mysterious hut beside a crystal lake. The wizard who lived there gave Gordon a magic ring and the words of a prophesy. "You will find what you seek in the mouth that does not close, behind the door that does not open." Gordon continued into the wilderness till he encountered some bandits who took him captive and . . .

and so on and so on.

The agent may or may not find this useful.

2. There's another way to approach the query.

This is not so much telling the story, as answering questions about the story.
We will choose questions of breathless interest to the agent.

This second sort of query is logically organized as 'question answering' --
an organization that may not be the way stuff happens chronologically in your story.

So. What questions?

What kind of story do you have?

Heat of the Blood is a paranormal thriller
Running with the Bulls is a Suspense novel
Bump and Grind is Contemporary Romantic Comedy

[with strong Romantic elements/with a mystery subplot/set against a backdrop of the California cult scene . . . or whatever is different about this story.]

Who is the protagonist?
What is her problem?

Kemp Trey is a paranormal investigator out to prove his best friend was murdered by demons.
Jenny Binn, Las Vegas cocktail waitress, is on the run from the mob.
Bumper Grind, porn queen, is determined to marry the Reverend Goodman.

What is the setting and atmosphere of the story?

in the dripping alleys of . . .
under the deadly sun of . . .
and heads for the sleepy hamlet of Righteous Valley.

What does she do about her problem?

Trey must penetrate the paranormal underworld to . . .
Jenny heads for the Rocky Mountain cabin that had belonged to her grandmother, planning to . . .
Bumper redyes her hair mousy brown, changes her name to . . .

We are not looking at all kinds of actions.
Only action that deals directly with the central problem of the story.

(We know what the central problem is because those actions are going to solve it, which is kind of circular, isn't it?)

What or who is the major antagonist?

and mets the goblin king who ordered the hit on his partner.
. . . the crooked lawyer who . . .
Reverend Goodman's spinster sister, Maude, is skeptical of . . .

We can spot the major antagonist because this is what the protagonist faces at the turning point or climax of the story.

What are the stakes?

may lose not only his life, but his soul.
accused of a murder she did not commit.
the one man she could ever love.

Heat of the Blood is a paranormal thriller set in an alternate near future. Kemp Trey, paranormal investigator, is out to prove his best friend was murdered by demons. He must penetrate the dripping, demon-infested alleys of the New Orleans French Quarter to face the goblin king who ordered the hit. One wrong move and Trey may lose not only his life, but his soul.

The question-answer query doesn't try to cover plot events unless they speak to the specific 'agent questions'.

Just general writing advice

2011-02-25T02:03:00.006-05:00

Someone asked --"How do I make myself write? How do I get writing again?"

First off -- congratulations. You're way ahead of most folks who want to write. You're doing it instead of talking about it.

Let me offer a few random pieces of advice.

-- Follow a writing routine. Same time. Same place.

Put your butt in the chair.
Write every day.

Treat writing as a job. You don't complain that you can't do the accounts today or you don't feel like teaching sixth grade this morning.
Write as if you were working for somebody else.

-- The edges of sleep are strong writing times.

Keep your computer set up and ready to go in a quiet place. If you have ideas when you're falling asleep, get out of bed and go type them.

Write early. Get up in the morning and head directly to the computer and work.
Eat later. Shower later. Walk the dog later. Don't talk to anyone. Hold onto the dream state as long as you can.

If this works for you at all . . . give the first hour of the morning to your writing.

-- Write in little corners of time. Keep a laptop with you, or a notebook and pen. Write while you're eating lunch. While you're waiting for the kid to finish dance class. On the flight to L.A.

-- Write even when you're writing crap.
Write bad stuff. Just write something.
Nora Roberts said, "I can fix anything but a blank page."
Fill up the page and edit it later. Just get something down.

-- Treat your writing as serious work. It's not a hobby.
It is more important to write than to have a clean kitchen floor. You can send out for pizza.

-- Trust yourself. There's endless creativity inside you. If you lose an idea, it returns to the sea of your unconscious. It will emerge again, that or something better.

And

AAR WIN for Best Non-UK Romance

2011-02-21T12:43:00.000-05:00

I am so very delighted, so honored, and . . . may I say . . . surprised and knocked off my feet and spit-drying-in-my-mouth excited, that Forbidden Rose won one of AAR's categories.

See all the winners here.

Forbidden Rose, winning 'Best Romance not set in the UK'.

This is what I say:

Thank you very, very much. I am honored beyond words that folks nominated Forbidden Rose.

This book was hard for me to write. I'd already pictured my hero and heroine as a happily married couple. I had to delve back into the past and imagine them much younger. See them at the moment they met. There was this also - their love story was set in a grim era of history. I wasn't sure anyone would want to join me in an adventure there.

Thank you so much for followin my Doyle and Maggie back into their dark and dangerous past. I am so delighted you liked the book.

I take this and I hug it close. Because this is isn't just one reviewer saying she liked it. This is READERS saying they liked it.

Since Readers were cool enough to say they liked the book, let me list the other cool books that won accolades. There is just nobody on this list that isn't worth tracking down and reading if you haven't already.

We haz links. Click on the author name to find out more about the book and buy it.

Best Romance of 2010

Last Night's Scandal by Loretta Chase

Honorable Mentions for Best Romance

The Forbidden Rose by Joanna Bourne

The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook

Best Historical Romance Set in the UK

Last Night's Scandal by Loretta Chase

Best Historical Romance Not Set in the UK

The Forbidden Rose by Joanna Bourne

Best Paranormal
The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook

Best Contemporary Romance

Something About You by Julie James

Best Short Story
Here There Be Monsters (from the anthology Burning Up) by Meljean Brook

Best Romantic Suspense
Naked Edge by Pamela Clare

Favorite Funny

Ten Things I Love About You by Julia Quinn

Biggest Tearjerker
Love in the Afternoon by Lisa Kleypas

Best Chick Lit/Women's Fiction

All I Ever Wanted by Kristan Higgans
The Bikini Car Wash by Pamela Morsi

Best Series Romance

Marrying the Royal Marine by Carla Kelly

Most Kickass Heroine

Elena Deveraux, in Archangel's Kiss by Nalini Singh

Best Romance Heroine

Olivia Wingate-Carsington in Last Night's Scandal by Loretta Chase

Honorable Mentions for Best Romance Heroine

Margeurite de Fleurignac in The Forbidden Rose by Joanna Bourne
Beatrix Hathaway in Love in the Afternoon by Lisa Kleypas

Best Romance Hero

Leo Hathaway in Love in the Afternoon by Lisa Kleypas

Best Romance Couple

Olivia Wingate-Carsington and Peregrine Dalmay in Last Night's Scandal by Loretta Chase

Best New Author of 2010

Rose Lerner

Best Love Scenes
Wicked Intentions by Elizabeth Hoyt

Best Romantica

Patience by Lisa Valdez

Black Hawk -- the Excerpt

2011-02-19T20:12:00.000-05:00

In celebration of February 19th, (why should one not celebrate February 19th, eh?) and because the excellent Annie asked -- here is a short excerpt from Black Hawk.

Black Hawk won't be published till November. We will hope this excerpt does not make that seem too soon.

***

Justine had told the boy to meet her at the guillotine. It was not because she was blood-thirsty--indeed, she was not--but because they would be inconspicuous here.

She was dressed as a housemaid today, in honest blue serge, white apron, and a plain fichu. She became indistinguishable as the tenth ant in a line of ants. She held her basket to her chest and leaned on the wall that marked the boundary between La Place de la Révolution and the Tuileries Garden.

She was too young to pretend to the august status of lady's maid. A thirteen-year-old must be a housemaid, no more than that. But a housemaid was exactly what a respectable woman would take with her when she went to an assignation in the Tuileries Garden. A housemaid could be left in a corner of La Place de la Révolution, bored and resigned, while her mistress played fast and loose with her marriage vows.

To play this part realistically, she assumed her appropriate expression of bored and resigned. She waited. Hawker would find her easily. She was still when everyone else was in motion. Nothing is more apparent to the eye.

This was a good spot for enemy spies to meet. From a hundred yards away Hawker could look across the Place de la Révolution and assure himself she was quite alone. The chattering stream of humanity that flowed through the square would allow him concealment as he approached. Beyond, to her right, the tight, milling confusion of the arcade and shops of the Rue de Rivoli offered a dozen paths of escape. Her good intentions would be clear, even to an English spy of limited experience.

Or perhaps not. She would not trust herself if she were an English spy.

DABWAHA

2011-02-18T23:00:00.009-05:00

Smart Bitches kicks off the 2011 DABWAHA event, here.

Nominate your favorite book. The entry form for nominations is online.

For instance . . . you might have liked some of these:

The Accidental Wedding by Anne Gracie, ISBN 0425233820

The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, ISBN 0316043966

Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin, ISBN 0373296142

Changeless by Gail Carriger, ISBN 0316074144

Forbidden Rose by me, ISBN 0425235610

Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie, ISBN 0312303785

Spider's Bite by Jennifer Estep, ISBN 1439147973

The Wicked Wyckerly by Pat Rice, ISBN 045123071X

Sequels . . . Love 'em or Hate 'em

2011-02-17T16:12:00.000-05:00

Over at Word Wenches, seven Romance authors discuss how and why they write sequels.

My contribution:

What's written in the pages of any book is only part of the whole story. There's worlds of delving and spinning, working and loving going on outside the scenes that land in Chapters One to Thirty-two. I think we all feel these stories buzzing and nudging at the edges of books, begging to be told.

And onward over here.

He loves her. Let me count the whys.

2011-02-12T14:53:00.004-05:00

In celebration of Valentine's Day . . .

Let us consider the delightful question of why the hero loves the heroine.

Let me count the whys . . .

1. -- Because of her strengths.

Why did the author write about this woman?
Why did the writer decide to spend a couple months inside the heroine's head?

Because the heroine is smart and funny, or strong, honest and kindly, or courageous and resourceful. Whatever she is . . . she has wonderful qualities.

Lasting love arises from an appreciation of the beloved's strengths and virtues. What the reader sees in our heroine, however deeply buried, the hero is going to see.

He loves her for being wonderful.

2. -- Because of her weaknesses.

Love is not only based upon what we want from the beloved, but also upon what we can give.
Nobody wants to live their whole life with somebody who doesn't need them.

If our heroine can't cope with large social functions or can't cook or is scared of lightning, the hero loves her because he can guide her through the intricacies of a formal dinner, or cook her a tarte tatin, or hold her during thunderstorms.

He loves her for what he can give her.

3. -- Because she has something he needs.

The hero needs something. Everybody does.
Validation of his beliefs. Healing for some past trauma. A challenge that excites him. Guidance. Inspiration. An audience. A safe harbor in a chaotic world.

He loves the heroine for what she can give him.

4. -- Because together they do what neither can do alone.

The two are greater than the sum of their parts.
They become a gestalt.
What is added to the mix when these two join hands?

Do they become Gilbert and Sullivan? Spies working together? The heads of a Nineteenth Century mercantile empire? Nick and Nora Charles solving crime?

He loves her because she is the other half of his team.

5. -- Because it is natural for him to love.

The Romance hero has a great capacity to love. He's not afraid to be a lover. Not ashamed to be a friend.

Heroes may express their love in a thousand different ways, but the heroic quality of these men springs from a heart that knows how to love.

And y'know what.
These are the same reasons the heroine loves the hero.

Technical Topics -- The Final Edits

2011-02-11T12:34:00.006-05:00

Someone asked: HOW can you tell if edits you made on work you let sit for a while are good?
I'm having A LOT of trouble with this.

Couple o' thoughts.

It seems to me the last work on the manuscript falls into three stages:

Rewriting
Final polish edit
Specific fixes.

It is good to know which stage are you actually in.

-- Are you committed to the major plot points? Do you feel the events make sense and they're in the right order and you are not going to fiddle with big story stuff any more?

Until you declare the plot pretty much fixed, you are still in the 'rewriting' stage, not the editing stage.

In 'rewriting' you're still dreaming up story. Your eyes are all unfocused and you get surprised by new stuff you come up with. You're not analyzing. You are still creating.

I'd say to finish this creative stage, if you can, before you start your last edits. It is frustrating to spend Tuesday nitty-grittying away at Chapter Twelve, then toss it out on Wednesday or change the POV or something.

-- The true 'final edit' process is a trip through the entire manuscript, reading out loud, fixing infelicities of language, character incongruities, plot glitches and pacing.
The final edit is going over the manuscript with a magnifying glass. it is inherently detailed, small-scale process work. The approach is starkly analytic. It works best if it proceeds as one fast, continuous run through.

-- During both rewrite and final edit, you may concentrate on specific problems. That is, you may go into the manuscript with a defined and limited goal.

This might be something your beta readers brought to your attention. Might be something your editor wants worked on.

You want to "expand the protagonist's internals," or "add more description," or "clarify how the suspense plot works."

In 'fix-it' mode, you skip forward and back, following that one thread of the story wherever it may crop up.

This limited-goal approach is tremendously useful. You look at changes in terms of what they accomplish for the story as a whole. You can ask yourself whether an edit expands the character POV or clarifies a story point instead of a nebulous 'is this better?'.

As a purely housekeeping note,
it's best to keep both old and new version. Come back in a day or two and compare them.

You can keep the old version in another document, or you can keep it in the major working document by putting it in brackets or a different font or color.

Secrets from the Underbelly of Paris

2011-02-07T01:48:00.001-05:00

It's 1800 or so.
There you are, sitting in a café in Paris, relaxing, wearing something Parisian with great éclat and style.
Unless you are feeling deeply philosophical it's unlikely you wonder about what secrets lie hidden beneath your feet.

"All secrets are deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets."
Cory Doctorow

It is not solid earth down there.

See the rest at Word Wenches here

Sign up for the AAR Annual Reader's Poll -- Best of 2010

2011-01-28T12:30:00.007-05:00

All About Romance is holding its Fifteenth Annual Readers Poll for Best Books of the Year.

It's here: http://www.likesbooks.com/ballotannualpoll2010.htm

What books did you read last year that impressed you?

What 2010 book needs more recognition?
What new authors blew your socks off?

Readers don't have so much chance to speak out. We don't all have blogs to hold up a book and say -- "This is great."
The AAR poll is the chance for readers to say, "I loved this hero." "I loved this book."

When I'm pointing folks towards Romance genre books, I always suggest they go to the AAR site and see what the readers there recommend.
Go -- recommend.

Who's the best hero? The best heroine? The best Funny Romance? The best erotica? The best paranormal?

And there's a category for 'most disappointing' if you just have to get that off your chest.

The poll runs till Sunday, February 6th at midnight.

When do they meet?

2011-01-28T12:12:00.005-05:00

Someone asked: In a Romance, how long can you wait before the hero and heroine meet?

All else being equal, [(all else) = (=)] in genre Romance, you put the protagonists together in Scene One or Scene Two.
This is because the story is about the relationship between the H&H
and you want to get the story started.

Now, sometimes you can introduce that relationship without putting the H&H onstage at the same time. Books might start with letters exchanged or one protagonist neckdeep in dealing with problems related to the other. In such stories the H&H do not 'meet', but they do have a relationship,
and that relationship is put onstage.

Or, look at the question the other way round --

What is more important in those early chapters than the relationship story? If you decide not to put the H&H together . . . are you instead frontloading backstory, worldbuilding, or suspense subplot. Consider whether those would be better fed in later as backdrop to your main line of story.

When traditional wisdom says, 'the H&H should meet in the first or second scene,' what C.W. is saying is, "Stop putzing about and Get The Story Started.'
That is good advice in any genre.

Technical Topics -- Five Pointers on Openings

2011-01-10T22:27:00.016-05:00

Someone asked:
What should I do? I'm sixteen. All my openings are lame.

Whether you start writing at sixteen or sixty, the mantra is: The first million words are for practice.

You are not unique in having trouble with openings. It is technically difficult to write the start of a story.

The very first page of a book has to strong-arm the reader away from the checkout line at the drugstore or the kitchen table at home over a bowl of oatmeal
and into your story.

You have to make the reader care about the character before she knows much about him.
Grabbing the reader is never about something the reader knows. It's always about how she feels.

But -- talking information here -- you also got to get across where everybody is and why,
and what it looks like,
and what's gone on,
and what just happened,
so the reader doesn't feel all-at-sea.

That's just in the first couple paragraphs.

So beginnings tend to give a writer the pip.
Even if she is not 16.

General advice
(and what is an army of suggestions without a general?)

1) Hit the ground running.

This is sometimes expressed as 'start in the middle of action'.
But what it boils down to is -- something interesting is going on.

Not so much, Grandpa lost the ranch fifty years ago.
And more, signing the mortgage that buys the ranch at great financial risk.

Not so much, the airport and talking about take-off and checking through baggage.
But more, the protagonist, 30,000 feet over Cleveland, noticing that the cabin crew are all giant penguins.
With teeth.

2) Reveal character.

Many people believe, (well, I do,) that stories grow out of character.

So one purpose of the first scene is to reveal character. We disclose the inner heart of our protagonist with action.

So, not so much folks explaining the protag's problems.
And more, noting that our heroine is up to her knees in dragon guts and wiping the ichor off her blade and shuddering but even so she steps over the still-twitching dragon and heads inside the cave.

3) Something is about to happen.

It's not just that Penelope has slain a large reptile. It's what awaits her in the cave.

It's not that Mary stands in the lunchline, swiping change from the backpack in front of her. It's Gregory, turning around, catching her with her hand on his wallet.

Why?

4) Leave questions.

Don't tell the reader all the 'why'.
Make the reader ask . . . 'why'?

5) Keep it short

Here, if ever, be concise. Stick to the point. The reader will forgive discursion later, when she is immersed in the story. Not on page one and two.

Forbidden On the ALA Genre List

2011-01-10T11:40:00.000-05:00

I am so pleased.

Forbidden Rose was short-listed by the American Library Association, Reference and User Services Association, on their Top Genre Fiction List.

The press release, here, says,
"The Reading List annually recognizes the best books in eight genres . . . This year’s list includes novels that will please die-hard fans, as well as introduce new readers to the pleasures of genre fiction."

I am delighted and honored that Forbidden Rose is on this list and in such wonderful company.

Romance

A Matter of Class by Mary Balogh, Vanguard Press.

A lady is ruined. A merchant’s son is trapped. Class differences loom large in this charming and playful take on the arranged marriage. Balogh’s Regency gem, where nothing is quite as it seems, is filled with affection and wit.

Short List:

Barely a Lady by Eileen Dreyer, Hachette

The Forbidden Rose by Joanna Bourne, Berkley

The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook, Berkley

Something About You by Julie James, Berkley Sensation

These are wonderful books.
These are the books you hand to your friends who say . . . "Romance is nothing but cookier-cutter plots and sex scenes."

(I mean, you hand them these books after you've sneered at them and maybe kicked them in the shins a little for being so closed minded.)

The Mac Arrives

2011-01-07T18:57:00.001-05:00

The Mac arrives in a plain brown box,
brought to the door by a stranger
in uniform.

I slit the side. It has paper triangles at each corner, tough and smooth, like playground equipment for juvenile pixies.

I slide it out.

This is when the cat comes to help.
"You have a computer that is not full of cat hair," says the cat. "I can fix that."

"Thank you," says I.

"Think nothing of it," says the cat.

The Macbook comes sitting on a soft cushiony black pad, with black and white things about it.

It's wrapped in a layer of thin plastic, which I remove, being handy that way.

The cat helps.

For a while I try to open the computer from the back, wrong way round.

"Hmmm . . ." hmmms I to myself. "I know this has a magnetic lock, but that is a very strong magnetic lock.

Eventually, I get it right.

and take the keyboard protection off.

Hello, Mac, says I.

Technical Topic -- Use of Images, Public Domain and Copyright

2011-01-01T15:01:00.022-05:00

This is somewhat an extension of the post on Art and Image Resources. It's talking about using the images on your blog.

Preface

Let me preface everything below by saying, 'I Am Not a Lawyer'.

I am an enthusiastic supporter of Intellectual Property rights since this is how I earn my bread, so I'm not going to suggest anybody go violating copyright.

Finally, I believe an artist has a moral and ethical right to control the sale of her own work.
I feel about cybertheft the way my chicken-keeping friend feels about foxes,
but without the gun.

Having finished all that prefacing, I'll do some backstory.
(If this were a work of fiction I would have lost all the readers long since.)

What is Public Domain?

Artwork and writing and Intellectual Property of every kind falls into two legal categories --

1. -- work that is protected by copyright.
That is -- somebody has rights on how the work gets used.

2. -- work in the Public Domain.
Nobody has rights to say how it gets used.
And the artist is most likely dead.

What's in the Public Domain?

In a rather large nutshell,
in the United States,
if the picture or writing was published before 1923 it's in the Public Domain.

You can find information about Public Domain at the authoritative and well-written Stanford and Cornell sites. You want details about in-or-out of copyright? See here.

I give a site for international law way down at the bottom of the page, but those are deep waters in which I do not swim or even float on a lilo.

Use of COPYRIGHTED Images

Copyright images can be put on your blog

if:

-- You buy rights to use the image. There are sites that sell all kinds of stock images. Ummm ... here. here. here. Sometimes this doesn't even cost much. Or,

-- You get permission from the holder of the copyright. When I write for permission, I've found blogs and commercial sites come back about half the time saying I can use their images. They want me to attribute and put up a link, which I am glad to do. Or,

-- The works are licensed under Creative Commons -- see the wiki here (thank you Larry Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred .) -- which means you can use them under specific conditions. Use requires attribution for many of these. You add it in small print in a caption or at the bottom of the blog.

You can copy creative commons icons here. Or,

-- Your use is 'Fair Use' alllowed under provisions of the Copyright Law. When it comes to artwork, 'Fair Use' is pretty stringently defined by the court. See Section Two here.

From a bloggers' point of view, Fair Use of images is likely to be (a) transforming the image to a new artwork, (b) using low resolution thumbnail views to talk about the art for non-commercial scholarly or review purposes. Court cases have held that thumbnails are so small and graphically inferior that they do not compete with use of images by the copyright holder. Or,

-- The work has been placed deliberately in the Public Domain.
Copyright holders can place images on sites that allow unrestricted download and use. Or,

-- It is a work produced by an agency of the U.S. Government. These are copyright to the U.S. Government and placed in the public domain. (However, works produced by Federal contractors or under Federal grants are not necessarily in the public domain.)

Use of Public Domain images

You can use exact reproductions of images of Public Domain artworks any way you want, including commercial and derivative use.

Wait --

Computer files of Public Domain images can be used?
Even those from private individuals?
Even those from museums?

Yes.

A simple, straightforward copy of a Public Domain painting or print can be used any old way you want.

Taking a picture of the Mona Lisa doesn't give you any rights to the Intellectual Property that is the Mona Lisa.

Owning the Mona Lisa doesn't give you Intellectual Property Rights either.

The ownership of the copy of a visual work, whether it is a painting, print, photograph, video recording, or .jpg file is distinct from the ownership of the Intellectual Property Rights.
Owning the physical work does not entitle one to the intangible intellectual property.

Photographing a work and creating a computer file of the two-dimensional visual image does not necessarily produce a copyrightable product. Making 'slavish copies' of works of art may require both skill and effort, but there is no spark of originality which would make the reproduction copyrightable. Indeed, the point of the exercise is to reproduce the works with great fidelity.

One way to think about the rights you acquire by making a copy is to compare it to Intellectual Property Rights to written works. If I quote War and Peace on my blog and move a few commas around, I do not then have the right to tell other people how they can use that novel. Even if I prove they copied it from my blog, I have not somehow generated rights to War and Peace just because -- hey, look, I'm so clever -- I copied it.

But the Museum site says I can't use the images.

In the comment trail of the post on Art Resources, the Excellent Annie writes, in part:

************

. . . If the painting or whatever is owned by a museum or is in the hands of a private collector, permission for its use may be and probably is required.

. . .

the reality is that institutions and private collectors have leverage here if only because individuals and publishers are not willing to cough up the legal fees required to challenge their assertion of . . . [reproduction rights].

********

Which is a good and careful approach for a publisher of print works to take -- and something to think about if you're planning to add illustrations to your manuscript.

But.

Museums, (may their shadow never grow less,) are as fallible as the rest of us. They give in to temptation and attempt to scoop up rights to which they have no shadow of a moral or legal entitlement.

For a summary of why they have no legal entitlement, see Public Domain Art in an Age of Easier Mechanical Reproducibility here.

I see no reason for bloggers to encourage a wholesale rights grab by private and institutional holders of the world's art heritage.

Will you get in trouble if you download a copy of Innocence Preferring Love to Wealth by Pierre Proudhon, currently in the Hermitage Museum?
I don't think a blogger has to worry about this.

It would be a poor and shabby world if bloggers were intimidated into giving up their rights to use Public Domain images.

What about the museum images of pots and swords and drinking cups?

Taking a photo of a drinking cup is a creative act. The picture of the drinking cup is copyright, even though the cup may be from 1599.

So --
Still Life with Drinking Cup painted in 1599 -- Public Domain.
1965 photo of 1599 drinking cup in the museum collection -- copyrighted.

Copyrighted images in a museum collection should only be used with permissions of the museum. The museum's restriction on the use of their copyrighted images is found in the small print someplace on the site.

What About Works physically in Other Countries? Are they Public Domain?

Is an artwork painted by an Italian living in Russia in 1896, sold in Germany, now displayed in Abu Dhabi, owned by a Brazilian conglomerate, posted on a website hosted in Switzerland whose owner is physically located in France, and downloaded in Hawaii
in the Public Domain?

Look. Let's just not go there.

My rule of thumb is that if it's before 1900 it's probably not copyright anywhere. Information on this international law is here, but I do not delve.