Reading Order

Here's the publication order of the six books of the Spymaster Fictive Universe. It's a perfectly fine order to read them in, IMO. 

I mean, that's the order in which I learned about the characters.

 

So. Publication order is:
 

Spymaster’s Lady  

My Lord and Spymaster
Forbidden Rose
Black Hawk
Rogue Spy
Beauty Like the Night 

 

The chronological order of events is:

Forbidden Rose  (1794)
Spymaster’s Lady (1802)
Rogue Spy (1802)
My Lord and Spymaster (1811)
Black Hawk (It covers several time periods between 1794 and 1818)
Beauty Like the Night (1819)

 And that's also a good order to read them in. So you win either way.

And there are some minor works in the Spymaster's Fictive Universe:

Gideon and the Den of Thieves (novella) (1793)
Not currently available.

Intrigue and Mistletoe in the anthology Mischief and Mistletoe (1815 and a bit)

My True Love Hath My Heart in the anthology The Last Chance Christmas Christmas Ball.

Her Ladyship's Companion (30-year-old Regency) (1818)

Technical Topic -- Using the City

A wonderful reader wrote, asking "What sorts of resources do you use to make your cities--London and Paris, in particular--so convincing?  . . .   find your London to be almost a character in and of itself."




As to making the city part of the story . . .  I think we gotta use scenery in a dramatic sense.

When two characters are talking, we layer in lots of stuff between their dialog and internal thoughts to make 'time' pass at the correct rate.  Scenery is one of the things used as a pacing device.

When Justine is walking down the steps in the Coach House and she's really scared I put in description of what's on the walls and what the downstairs looks like so the reader can get a gut feeling of being scared along with her.  That emotional response wouldn't have time to form if I took fifty words to move her from the upstairs to outside the door where she listens to the Tuteurs. 

Likewise, when Jess and Sebastian have left Lazarus and sit looking out over the Thames, the description of the Thames spaces out realization and revelation.  Lets it  unroll slowly. 
Likewise the underground journey in Forbidden Rose is meant to make clear that the rescue attempt is a long, perilous, uncertain, process. If I just said -- "and then they spent a couple hours bumping around in the semi dark till they found ... "  -- it wouldn't let the reader absorb the emotion.

Scenery puts the characters in passing time.

 attrib esprit du sel

Scenery is also symbolic.  It has meaning.

In Forbidden Rose, that passage through the darkness is Orpheus rescuing Eurydice.  Justine going down the stairs to face a great fear is every hero picking up his sword and going forward to meet the dragon. Sebastian and Jess sit face to face and talk, while the River Thames, which is their past, (Jess' mother used to take her there; Sebastian used to scavenge the banks,) flows beside them and away, carrying their past while they reveal it to one another.

The writer needs images.  Contemporary paintings and drawings are great for this. 

But it's not just about having the images in the writer head.

I think it is a mistake to just  'travelogue' a setting.    Sure enough, we need to describe the city.  Describe it vividly.  Tell everybody what the city looks like and what the weather is and colorfuldetailslikethatthere. 

But that's not enough.  The writer has to use the setting to accomplish more than "Isn't this exotic?"  We have to make the setting tell us about the characters.  We match setting to the characters' feelings and purpose. We make setting symbolic.

We supercharge the visuals.  We make them full of feel.

Technical Topic - Why Are They having Sex on a Cactus?

Someone mentioned --
this is a kinda summary and paraphrase here --
the unlikelihood that our Hero and Heroine would fight a pitched battle in the morning, scamper like hell cross-country in the afternoon, and then fall onto their bedrolls in the evening with energy enough to stage a six-page sex romp.


And I have to agree.
Even when I was young and and limber I could manage no more than two out of three of those on a good day.

So why do we see love-on-rocks romps and stufflikethatthere in good Romance?

Why do skilled writers give us this sort of over-the-top scene?

More to the point -- why do readers love these scenes?
Why does the reader suspend disbelief here, when she'll go ballistic on the authenticity of the fish knives?

Couple of tropes at work here.
One I think of as 'Naked in the Heather':

genuine heather

Our redoubtable hero and heroine think nothing of stripping down to the buff and having at on a heather-covered hillside in the Highlands, in March, taking no notice of gorse bushes and rocks and bristly heather and, well . . . March in Scotland.

genuine sand

The H&H make love on beaches, (with sand in every crack and crevice and I do not mean among-the-tidal-rocks crevices,) in haystacks, on New York City ledges high above the traffic, and in public toilets at the airport, (Ewwww.)


The other trope I call 'It's Only a Flesh Wound, Honey', which is often also Glad-to-be-alive Sex.

Our H&H take time out for some nookie while fleeing packs of ebil men armed with AK-47s or rising hurricane waters or, nowadays, zombies. Nor are they deterred by various wounds acquired in their travels.
One can only marvel at the good health and general enthusiasm of all concerned, frankly.

Why are these tropes not merely tolerated, but popular?
I haz theories.

genuine passion

One is that readers see sex in these unlikely situations as a sign of overwhelming passion. They know they would be distracted by the prospect of hermit crabs scuttling over their private parts on some secluded beach.
The heroine isn't ...
because she's transported by passion.

Many folks come to Romance genre for a fix of exactly such overwhelming, transformational, the-world-well-lost-for-love, crazy passion . . . an indifference to gorse bushes and gunfire being absent from most folks' real lives because they are not fruitcakes.

And readers enjoy the mix of desperate, adrenalin-producing action and sex because it's just plain exciting. They'll tolerate the unlikelihood that one would pause for a quickie in the middle of hot pursuit if the sex is really, really good.

Romance writers use these old reliables because they work. The tropes heighten emotion. They feel familiar and comfy to long-time readers. 

Now.  Full disclosure here.  I did the Glad-to-Be-Alive-Sex thingum once that I know of.  It was in  .... um ... My Lord and Spymaster.  Jess and Sebastian have escaped, unhurt, from the lair of Lazarus.  Jess had done some knife fighting in that incident.

genuine Romance book

****

Oh, but she was amusing him, wasn't she? 

 [Sebastian said,] "When you brush up against death, you want to couple afterwards.  I found that out years ago.  I didn't know it worked the same with women.  Does it?"
 
"Does this time," she said frankly.  "Mostly I was real young.  And the last couple times I was so seasick I didn't want to do anything but curl up and die. 

******

So that is my own particular contribution to this trope.


Writers have the special joy of watching really good writers subvert these tropes.

not quite a sex scene, however

Remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where a bruised, exhausted Indy falls asleep before the H&H can make love? Spielberg pokes fun at 'It's Only a Flesh Wound, Honey,'and makes the writers in his audience fall in love with him.

Technical Topics - Fight Scene

I was thinking about how we do fight scenes.  I'm kinda writing one.  Though not quite.

It's more an ambush scene.

So, anyhow,  I've gone back to look at a particular fight scene.  This one occurs early in My Lord and Spymaster.  Adrian and Sebastian meet Jess in an alley.  Violence ensues. No surprise.

Now, unlike those guys who write car chases for the movies, I'm not just fitting in 8 minutes of special effects.  I'm trying to tell 'story' with this fight action. Story leads up to the fight, lies inside it, and continues afterwards.
The little scenelet here is not really 'about' the fighting (though fighting might be the whole point in another sort of book.)  My goal, in writing this fight scene, is to show Sebastian's reaction, rather than the details of fight.

Writing fight scenes or furious action scenes of any kind, the technique includes short, easy sentences and lots of Germanic-origin words. Lots of white space. You try not to get bogged down in description. And, of course, the POV character thinks and acts like himself all through the action.  You use all your POV tricks to make this happen.

So let me look at a fight scene.

***

"Behind you! Sebastian!" Adrian's shout.

He saw them then. Silent as beetles, two men scuttled toward him.

More followed, slipping from doorways and corners. Under cover of the rain and fog, the pack had stalked in, unseen, converging from three directions. They were Irish, from the Gaelic they tossed back and forth. They carried knives and clubs and chains. These were vermin from the dockside, deadly and cold as ice.* They'd sent the girl as a honey pot to hold him while the gang closed in. She'd smiled at him while she was planning to watch him die. **

"Run from me." He let her loose. "Run fast."

But she backed away, wide eyed, breathing hard.*** "How? Nobody knows I'm here." That was shock in her voice and fear. She turned in a circle, looking for a hole in the net closing round them. And he knew she was no part of this. No decoy.

"More of them down that way. A baker's dozen." Adrian dropped out of the fog, into his usual place, taking the left. They were two against that many. Long odds.

He picked a target--one in front, where his friends would see him die--and threw.^ The bravo collapsed with a sucking, bubbling neck wound. The familiar stink of death rose in the alley. He pulled his second knife.

The thugs hesitated, sending glances back and forth, fingering blade and cudgel. Attack or retreat. It could go either way.

Then one man broke ranks and lunged for the girl.

She was fast as a little cat. He'd give her that. Cat quick, writhing, she bit the filthy arm that held her and knocked a knife aside and wrenched loose. She skipped back, clutching a long shallow cut on her forearm. "Not hurt. I'm not hurt."

attrib colorblot

No tears, no screams. Pluck to the backbone. She was also damnably in his way. He shoved her behind him, between him and Adrian. Protected as she could be.

If this lasts long, she'll get killed. "Mine on the right." He threw and his blade hit badly and glanced off a collar bone. ^^ One man down. One wounded. That would have been two dead if he'd had the sense to stay sober. "Waste of a knife. Damn."

His last knife was in his boot. Not for throwing. This one was for killing up close.

He forced his mind to the pattern the attackers wove, trying to spot the leader. Kill the leader and the others might scatter. Adrian danced a path through the bullyboys, breaking bones with that lead-weighted cane of his. ^^^

No way to get the woman to safety. She stayed in his shadow, using him as a shield, white-faced. She's been in street fights before.

Then he didn't think about her at all. Chain whistled past. He grabbed it and jerked the man off balance and drove his knife through a gap in the leather waistcoat, up under the breastbone, to the heart.

For an instant he stood locked, face to face, with the man he'd just killed--a thickset red-head with pale skin and vicious, gleeful, mad blue eyes. Outrage and disbelief pulsed out at him . . . and drained away. The eyes went blank.

Then the dead bastard thrashed, rolled with the knife, and took it down with him as he fell.

No time to get it back. A crowbar cracked down on his shoulder with a bright, sour, copper pain. He fell, dodged a boot, and rolled away as Adrian took down his attacker.

The girl screamed.

Up. He had to get up. He was on his feet, shaking his head, trying to see through a black haze. The girl was stretched between two men, being dragged away. He staggered through madness and confusion, fog and pain. Adrian was swearing a blue streak.

Under the chaos, he heard a monstrous racket of wheels on cobblestone. A goods wagon rounded the corner.

The girl tore loose, leaving her cloak behind. She reeled straight into the path of the horses and slipped on wet cobbles. She had a split second to look up and see hooves. Her face was a mask of raw terror.

He launched himself toward her. Too late. He knew he'd be too late.
The driver wrenched on the reins. Horses reared and squealed.

Frantic, she jack-knifed away from the striking hooves. She was so close to scrambling to safety . . .

attrib onceandfuturelaura

She slipped on the rain-slick cobbles. The wagon skidded. Iron rims shrieked on the stone. The wheel hit the side of her head with a soft, horrible thud. She whipped around, and wavered upright for an instant, and slumped to the dirty stones of the street.

Gaelic broke out. Shouts back and forth. Limping, dragging their wounded with them, the gang retreated.

He stepped over a body and ran to the girl.

She lay huddled on her side, as if sleeping, covered with blood and mud, her pretty dress torn halfway off her. Her hand lay upcurled on the cobbles, open to the falling rain.

******

* We've done a description of the alley in the chapter and a half before this so we don't have to describe the setting any.  We do have to sketch of description of the oncoming villains, because they are a new addition.  Having sketched them in right first,  we don't need to talk about the setting or the combatants during the actual fight sequence. This is a Good Thing.

** This fight scene serves several story purposes. One purpose is to show Sebastian that Jess is honest. In the fight scene we travel from Sebsatian suspecting her to Sebastian admiring her.
Because Sebastian changes his mind, the fight scene is also a transformation scene. Important stuff happens that could only happen under this sort of challenge.

attrib filmhirek

*** A fight scene is not just blows and weapons and footwork.  When appropriate, it's facial expression and body reaction.

^ We don't say, 'Sebastian is a skilled fighter'. We show him well-armed.  We show him planning and thinking like a skilled fighter.


^^ Fights are not just about skilled moves, perfectly executed. There's also one klutz screwup after another and good, solid, well-planned actions that don't work.

^^^ My fight scenes are wordy and internalized, rather than fast, brutal and explicit.  That's because I'm writing historical love stories aimed at women.  I figger at least some of them do not want to hear the details of blood and gore.  The '8-minute-car-chase' school of writing may not appeal.

What suits my purposes will not suit everybody.  Learning to write fight scenes involves comparing the flavor and technique of many styles.


Oh.  I said it's good to use all the POV tricks.  Here's the ones included.

-- Internal Monologue: If this lasts long, she'll get killed.

-- Self-directed comments that do not quite become Internal Monologue: No time to get it back; Up. He had to get up; Too late. He knew he'd be too late.

-- Specialized knowledge only the POV character can have: Adrian dropped out of the fog, into his usual place, taking the left.

-- Word choice that sounds like the POV character talking: fast as a little cat; damnably in his way; pluck to the backbone; the dead bastard thrashed.  Sebastian calls Jess, 'The woman' because he doesn't know her name yet.

-- Decision by the POV character, provided without buffer: He picked a target; he threw.

-- Judgement and assessment made by the POV character: That would have been two dead if he'd had the sense to stay sober; Kill the leader and the others might scatter.

-- Sensation is POV-directed and POV-immediate: he stood locked, face to face, with the man; disbelief pulsed out at him; a bright, sour, copper pain.

Forbidden Rose is Out In Italian (and some other covers)

Forbidden Rose is coming to Italy.  Here.  I think maybe today.  I am so happy.

If you have an Italian grandmother, this will doubtless make a good present for her.

Okay.  Okay.  I know this is not of great general interest to anyone reading an English-language blog.  But my very first foreign translation, many years ago, was into Italian and I am just delighted and a half to see Forbidden Rose travel to that far country.


ETA:

Alert Reader Laura points out My Lord and Spymaster is available in -- I think that's Chinese.  The book is here and seems to be for sale, so if you happen to be learning to read Chinese it is available for a side-to-side. 

Following the MLAS tradition, established by the original, puzzling, this-is-not-related-to-the-story title, the Chinese cover has nothing whatsoever to do with the adventures of our Sebastian and Jess who, you will remember, only step foot on a ship while it is safely docked in London. 

I hope folks don't pick this one up looking for a hearty tale of adventure at sea.  And shipwreck.  I am uneasy about the fate of this ship on the cover. I mean, look at those rocks.  Ouch.

As long as I have you here looking at MLAS covers ... would you like to see the stunningly beautiful cover the German publisher has give me for My Lord and Spymaster?  Eine Riskante Affare.

Yes.  Of course you would.  Click on the picture and you'll get a close-up.

Isn't it lovely?


(It's up for pre-order here if you're studying German and want a good comparison read.  The first book, Die Geliebte des Meistrerspions, here, is a great translation.) 

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.

Le Maître de mon cœur

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 . . .

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.

Walking Sticks and Canes

I'm talking about Sticks and Canes over at Word Wenches.

I am now a Word Wench.
*jo hugs herself madly*

This is so wonderful.

I am so delighted.

Word Wenches is THE cool blogplace to be.

And I am there.  From now on.

Yes!!






*cough*

Settling down now to talk about canes and walking sticks in a historical Regency sorta way . . .

I'm here to talk of walking sticks and canes carried by the haut ton of England and France.

English gentlemen, long before Teddy Roosevelt showed up to advise this, walked softly and carried a big stick.  Every other portrait shows some nattily dressed fellow  with a walking stick pegged jauntily into the ground or a slim baton negligently tucked under the elbow.  The dress cane was the quintessential mark of the dandy for three centuries, part fashion accessory, part aid to communication, part weapon.


And I suppose you could always just to lean on it.


More here

The Order of Reading

Down in the comments section, some folks were wondering --
What order should the books be read in?

The order in which they were written?
. . . .  (1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (2)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  (3)

Or the year in which the stories are set?  Their chronological order?
..  (1794 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (1802)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  (1811)

Or, like . . . alphabetically or something. 

This is what excellent commenter Annie said here:

". . . the reviewer [on Amazon] advises that the books should be read in order, by which she means chronologically by time period rather than the order in which they were written. 

I've been ruminating on the implications for the (or more particularly, my) reading experience ever since. Would I have read TSL differently if I'd encountered Adrian and Doyle first in FR?"

Which is the cogent point.

The books are meant to be standalone.  Everything a reader needs to enjoy and understand the story is contained in the book at hand.  We always start with the, 'You Are Here', on the map and explain the local topography, even though the territory stretches out large from there and we only cover part of it.

But the reading order is going to make a difference in how the continuing characters are perceived. 

An example of this, probably the most important instance so far,
(though I have another one I'm writing into the JUSTINE manuscript,)
shows up in the relationship between Doyle and Annique in Spymaster's Lady.

In TSL, I've tried to create a non-threatening and non-sexual role for Doyle.  There he is in 1802 -- all large, strong, masculine, and young enough to play a romantic hero.  But I don't want the reader to see that.  When Doyle and Annique interact -- alone together in her bedroom or sitting scrunched next to each other on the seat of the coach -- the reader is not meant to get any sexual vibe at all.

In Forbidden Rose, eight years earlier, Doyle is presented as an earthy, sexual man.  At least, that's what I'm trying for. 

If a reader brings the 1794, Forbidden Rose, sexual Doyle to Spymaster's Lady, she has an enriched view of Doyle.  She knows him better.  Because of that, he's going to feel like a 'bigger player' on stage.  And, most important, the scenes between Doyle and Annique might have undertones I'm trying to avoid.

So complicated.   Remind me again why I decided to set several books in the same fictive universe.


If I'd written the books in chronological order, I would have seen these problems of TMI about continuing characters and dealt with it in some cunning and just incredibly nuanced way that does not come to mind at the moment.

But I didn't.
Not a bug, as they say in the software industry.  It's a feature. 

So I think what I come out with at the end of this is:

If you read the books in the order in which they were written, you're going to see the characters develop as they did in my own mind.  You'll find out about them in the way I found out about them.

If you read the books in chronological order, everything is going to fit together neatly with the ongoing historical events.  And you should -- I hope -- get some sense of the growth and developing relationships between my folks.

If you go in chronological order, there will be no 'spoilers' about who ends up with who and gets happy endings. 

Though really, Romance genre is not the place to come if you want to be surprised at the end of the book that the hero and heroine live happily every after.

Animals in the House

I delight in animals . . . all kinds -- from wild tigers to tame kitty cats.  The feistier they are, the better I like them.  I try to put at least one in each of my books.

SPYMASTER'S LADY introduces us to Tiny, the huge black dog that guards the house. 

Follow the rest of the blog here to Romcon

creative commons attrib bloohimwhom

Technical Topics: Paying an editor

Here you see me hauling advice back from another spot so I can give it twice.

The question was -- 'Should I pay an editor or Book Doctor to go over my manuscript before I submit it?"

"Hell no," says I.

That is the brief answer.
I do not, perhaps, so much excel at 'brief',  but I can do it.
As you see.
The much looonger advice is below the cut,
where it is fairly happy to remain unless this topic grinds your opticals.

Technical Topic: Before the Seat of the Pants

One of several unprofitable debates in writing circles is whether it's better to 'Outline and Plan' or better to be a 'Pantser' which is somewhat jumping off a cliff, flapping yer wings, and discovering what the story is about as you fly along.

There are successful writers playing both sides of this field.  They probably do other things that involve numerology or sacrifice of radishes or wearing funny hats or drinking coffee on the Rue Satin-Michel or sitting down to write naked,

though it is to be hoped no one tries all of these simultaneously.

Lots of different working styles.  All the methods have practitioners who build story just fine. All of them are 'right'.


But before the Seat of the Pants . . . before The Extensive Outline . . how do we first approach story?

If I were handing out advice wholesale, (because, for instance, I didn't want to buckle down to work this morning,)  I'd say to start writing before you know the story.

Bits o' News

Good news of various types.


First off:
My Lord and Spymaster will be coming out in French.  That's a little surprise for me.  My understanding is that Romances set in England are not so often translated into French.  I am very pleased.

Other good news is
Spymaster's Lady --  you will doubtless remember that the French rights for that were sold some time back --  will be available in May, as Le Maître du Jeu.  (Master of the Game)

This is a popular title. There are half a dozen books with this name, including, interestingly enough, one of John Grisham's books.  I don't live all that far away from Grisham.  And no, I've never run into him that I know of.

Maître is here,   And it's at Amazon.ca here.  It's not at Amazon.fr, so it may not be on sale in France itself.   This is a pity.  I was looking forward to knowledgeable, snarky comments on the historical inaccuracies.

I do not have a cover picture, but doubtless one will appear sometime, somewhere.


Moving along in the good news parade . . . I've finished
the First VERY Rough Draft of JUSTINE. 
It weighs in at 90K words. 

I'm not sure why this particular rough draft is so slight.  The Second Rough Draft should be 100K to 110K which is more typical of my first drafts.

First Rough Draft
90000 / 90000 words. 100% done!

Second Rough Draft
3000 / 110000 words. 3% done!

The Second Rough Draft has got itself shortened a bit because the very first thing I did was throw out one of the first four chapters.  Always a rousing start to a redraft.

And final good news is, I have a copy of the reprint for Spymaster's Lady in my hands.

In person, it is a just lovely.  Beautiful.  The cover is graceful and dignified and impressive.  Just a little sensual.  The print is easy to read.

I got all sniffly, holding it.