Black Hawk. With Knife

Striking out at DABWAHA

Edited to Bring everything up to date --

I didn't make it through the second round of DABWAHA, which was kind of a disappointment. 

But I enjoyed playing.
 I continue to think of this as a kind of insidious video game.

There are still prizes for those who follow the contest and guess the next round of winners.

Go  here.

DABWAHA rides again

Like, wow

I was idly dropping by to see who would be in DABWAHA this year.  And, oh wow, Black Hawk is in there.

Let me repeat that.  Black Hawk is in DABWAHA.

Wow.



Now, you are probably muttering, "DABWHAT?"

Let me tell you about it. 

DABWAHA is a yearly contest put on by Dear Author and Smart Bitches where Romance and quasi-Romance books slug it out for world domination.
For information on the contest and how to play (vote) see here. 

Lookit   here   for the DABWAHA books. 
DABWAHA always has great books and if you haven't read all seven of the Historical Romances in contention, I am led to a 'Why Not?'

Anyhow, here's the list.
(Click on the author to go to author website.)

• One Night is Never Enough by Anne Mallory
• Unveiled by Courtney Milan
• Sea Change by Darlene Marshall
• Black Hawk by Joanna Bourne
• What I Did for a Duke by Julie Ann Long
• Silk is For Seduction by Loretta Chase
• The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton by Miranda Neville

I'm going to add some others that are not Historical Romances, but they are particularly cool.

• Heart of Steel  by Meljean Brook
• A Lot Like Love by Julie James
• The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley
• Fate’s Edge by Ilona Andrews

Now.  Here's a suggestion of how you can help promote works you admire.

In DABWAHA, you not only get to vote and participate and cheer your favorites on.   YOU  -- yes, you. (don't go looking over your shoulder) -- YOU get to nominate your favorites for the contest, one in each category.  Go  here   to add your favorite book that somehow got overlooked in the mad scramble.

I nominated:

Mercedes Lackey's Beauty and the Werewolf in SciFi  ISBN 0373803281
Grace Burrowes' The Virtuoso in Historical Romance  ISBN 1402245701
C.S. Harris' Where Shadows Dance in Crossover  ISBN 0451233956

because those are all three just excellent.

The AAR recognition and . . . rejoicing in Fictionville

Most excellent reader Valerie G writes to tell me she sees the celebration this way:

Congratulations on the AAR reader's poll recognition of The Black Hawk, Adrian and Justine!  Richly deserved!

In their universe, I imagine there's rejoicing all round.

There will be a celebration to honor Justine and Adrian at Doyle's place in the country, with presents for the happy couple.  Doyle, Grey, Sebastian and Pax chip in on a pair of matched knives, perfectly balanced for throwing, of course. (Later in the evening, Adrian tests them against the mantelpiece.). Ladislaus gives them a set of fake identity papers, because - well, you can never have too many sets of fake identity papers.

Annique, Jess, and Camille present a silver tea service that Maggie picked out. Severine thinks about baking something, but Maggie talks her out of it.  Carruthers sends a cactus.  Felicity scowls, so they know she's genuinely pleased.

The party goes on late into the night (or early into the morning, depending on how you look at it) with equal parts champagne and shared stories of the Game...

Hoo Boy, Black Hawk is Best Romance at All About Romance

Oh wow.

Black Hawk has made an incredible showing in the All About Romance Reader's Poll.
Here.

(People liked it!!  They really liked it!  Lookit!  Lookit!)
(hyperventilates and uses up most of her exclamation points for 2012.)



Go here to see the covers of the other wonderful books readers chose.  You can click right through and have a close look and buy.  It's a wonderful list because these are fellow readers talking to you. 

This is the great stuff that came out in 2011.  Something for everybody.


Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews
Seduction of a Highland Lass, Maya Banks
The Black Hawk, Joanna Bourne
The Perfect Play, Jaci Burton
Silk is for Seduction by Loretta Chase
The Other Guy's Bride, Connie Brockway
Breaking Point, Pamela Clare
Dragon Bound, Thea Harrison
My One and Only, Kristan Higgins

Notorious Pleasures, Elizabeth Hoyt
Fifty Shades of Grey, E.L. James
When Beauty Tamed the Beast, Eloisa James
A Lot Like Love, Julie James
The Admiral's Penniless Bride, Carla Kelly 
What I Did for a Duke, Julie Anne Long
To The Moon and Back, Jill Mansell 
All They Need, Sarah Mayberry
Curio, Cara McKenna
Unraveled, by Courtney Milan 
Unlocked, Courtney Milan 
Call Me Irresistible, Susan Elizabeth Phillips 
Just Like Heaven, Julia Quinn 
Treachery In Death by J.D. Robb 
New York to Dallas by J.D. Robb 
Archangel's Blade, by Nalini Singh
Stranded With Her Ex, Jill Sorenson 
Yours To Keep, Shannon Stacey


This is what I said at the AAR site:

I don't know what to say. I am touched beyond measure and utterly flabbergasted. Thank you. 

Black Hawk was a hard book to write. Five years ago, when I was putting the finishing touches on Spymaster's Lady, I firmly relegated Adrian to supporting-character status. He wasn't sequel bait, I thought. He was too hard, too cynical, and too wounded to ever make hero material.

"But I found myself fascinated by him. He kept trying to take over other people's books. After a bit, it became apparent the only way I could get Adrian to stop upstaging the current hero was to give him a book of his own.

"I am so happy to think of my Justine and my Adrian coming alive in peoples' minds. If I was writing of the long journey these two had to take to earn their happy ending, I'm overjoyed to know readers liked traveling with them.

"I am so proud that Black Hawk holds these honors for 2011. Thank you, everyone who voted. And thank you, AAR, for supporting the Romance genre for all these years.

image Hawk attrib phae

2011 AAR Reviewers Choice: Black Hawk

I am so happy

I am deeply honored to get the nod at All About Romance
for Reviewers Choice for 2011,
for The Black Hawk.

The AAR announcement is Here.

They say such nice things about the book.  I'm blushing. 

Now, being perfectly honest here, I nipped in to top place, but just barely.  It was very close.  I just squeaked by these two great books:

Silk is for Seduction, Loretta Chase
The Rose Garden, Susanna Kearsley


These are the other Historical Romances the AAR reviewers loved:

A Night to Surrender, Tessa Dare
The Orchid Affair, Lauren Willig
What I did for a Duke, Julie Ann Long
Heartbreak Creek, Kaki Warner
A Lady's Lessons in Scandal, Meredith Duran 
When Beauty Tamed the Beast, Eloisa James
Follow My Lead, Kate Noble

If you are kind enough to like my books -- and I can't imagine why you would be reading the blog if you didn't -- you should go buy these.  Wonderful books.

A Black Hawk Excerpt

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

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

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 (What I'm doing here . . .)

This is soooo overtaken by events.  Just read right on through.

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

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.

Grappling with Hoops of Steel

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?

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

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.

Banner finis

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! 

Banners Yet again.

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. 

Finished the Page Proofs.

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.

You know you're on deadline

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.

Adrian looks like . . .

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.

Black Hawk -- the Excerpt

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.