Showing posts with label Spymaster's Lady. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spymaster's Lady. Show all posts

Monday, April 12, 2021

The Latter Stages of Editing

I was talking to a friend who is looking at the final stages of her Southern Gothic manuscript. She says, kinda doubtful, "What do I do next?"

I thought about what I do in the later production stages.
"Well," says I, which gives me a moment to organize my thoughts, "I pick out the five or six Emotional High Points of the story and then I look back to see how I have prepared the reader for them."

I expand on that, since we're neither of us in a great rush with something burning on the stove and she is willing to be patient with me.

I says -

You got a few couple places in the manuscript where you want the reader to FEELTM .  

-- Not solve a problem or enjoy the sunset or ponder the mysteries of the universe, but get angry or jealous or guilty or sad or ashamed or lustful or horrified
or something. 

FEELSTM ya know. Words with emotion attached to them. 

Because the reader is there for the FEELSTM, this being fiction.

These five or six scenes of important Feels are almost always going on in the protagonist's POV, btw,
because why would you want to waste this storytelling emotional charge on a minor character's subplot anyhow?
Unless you do want to, in which case that is also cool.


Look at Annique when she discovers her mother has been lying to her about everything important for years and years and years. 

The actual scene attempts to tug the emotions. Yes.

But it does that by having a foundation made of solid blocks of Feels,
rather than just blocks of information. 


It's built on scene after scene of Annique missing her mother and hearing her mother's wisdom in her head.

We see Maman again and again through Annique's eyes, with all of Annique's Feels firmly attached.

-- Now Maman was dead in a stupid accident that should not have killed a dog. Maman. Maman, how I miss you. -- p. 5

--The mindless optimism of the English. Who could comprehend it? Had not her own mother told her they were all mad? --
p. 6

-- She laughed, a deep, throaty sound copied exactly from Maman. -- p. 55.

And so on and so on.


The reader's emotional belief in Annique's pain and shock at Maman's betrayal comes not from explanations and reasons, not information or backstory or assumptions about a mother and daughter relationship.
It's dozens of little Feels scattered everywhere.

 

TL:DR version: When you want to punch up a late stage manuscript, consider looking at the big-ticket Emo scenes. Track back to make sure the emotion of that scene is supported by previous Feels.




*****

photocredits Deedee86, Sarah Richter, press 👍 and ⭐, Peter H


Friday, August 10, 2018

Some random questions on the stories

A kindly reader has asked a few questions.  I paraphrase the questions and answer them below, in case anyone is interested.



Lucille seems tragic, but with a touch of inhumanity. 
The long and short of it is, Lucille is not a nice person. 
Taking a toddler to France in dangerous political times is iffy at best, so we start with that. Then Lucille's loss of her husband and her imprisonment, rape, and torture made her very hard. Cold. Fanatical almost.
Annique paid the price.

Annique's eidetic memory was recognized as soon as she could talk. It's the key to why she was in France at all. If she hadn't been uniquely useful, her mother would have sent her back to England when Annique's father died.


Frankly, Lucille exploited Annique and spared her very little. Just as Lucille spared herself nothing.

Was Lucille a villain who manipulated and used her daughter and later Justine in a despicable way
or a heroine who stepped up when England's existence was at stake?
Was she a woman who sacrificed everything she cared about for England's sake?
Or a selfish ideologue?

Or, like, all of the above?
 

I don't explain and we never go into her head. I try to show her as a woman with regrets. I'm hoping the reader will find her believable as a person and wonder about her and feel sorry for her. 



She had just a touch of inhumanity

On the exculpatory side:

Lucille, as a high-level officer of the Secret Police, curbed some of the evil things going on. Justine's rescue from the child brothel and sending Justine to help the last of the Caches are two examples of Lucille's work.


Did she really keep a brothel?


 Well ... yes.


I have trouble writing about historical whoredom. It needs somebody wiser than me.


Women had few career choices in this era. Some women, for one reason or another, became whores. A rich, well-run brothel like the one Lucille ran was an island of safety in a city visited by war, revolution, riot, and the occasional bout of starvation. The woman working there were grateful to be in the place. They had different expectations than run in the world of 1867 or 2018.

So I'm trying to deal with difficult historical realities in the context in which contemporaries would have judged them. Also trying not to be too realistic.


She raised Annique to be a spy, naively committed to France, while using her for the opposite cause. She set Annique up for the heartbreak and disillusionment in TSL,


Lucille wouldn't have felt it was morally dreadful to be a French patriot. Lucille spent her whole life among French patriots and, I think, loved some of them. Arguably, France was on the right philosophical side in that war.

Lucille chose loyalty to the British. She left Annique free to choose which side she'd be on. 

Annique feels betrayed when she sees all her letters and reports have found their way to the British. A tough day to be Annique.


What happens to Grey and Annique?

I don't say what happens to Grey and Annique after the end of TSL, since I want to be free to return to the timeline and write a story there if I ever decide to which I probably won't though.

I'm sure they had a true HEA, which means they both found uses for all their talents. Maybe out in India. Or maybe they went under deep cover in the south of France and ran a safehouse. I know they did exciting things.



Why does Shandor have a Hungarian name? At least, the spelling isn't Hungarian but the sound of it is.


It's a Kaldarashi name. A Rom name.


At the end of Rogue Spy, what was Galba's final reaction to Pax's insubordination?

All along, Doyle and Grey kept Galba in the loop about what was going forward. Galba, in the manner of senior management since the dawn of time, turned a blind eye to what he couldn't prevent . . . and what was ultimately serving his purposes.

Galba would have preferred that Pax not be the one to kill his own father, (Who among us wishes to promote patricide?) but he approves of the overall outcome.

After the close of the book Galba gives Pax a legendary and wide-ranging chewing out. Then Grey, Doyle, and Galba take turns interfering with wedding preparations to brief Pax on what they expect from him when he heads back to Italy.


Who replaced Grey when he retired?


Some "guy I didn't need to name or worry about what happened to him" took over. Then another guy, likewise. Then Adrian.



When Adrian stepped into Galba's shoes as Head of Service, the position of Head of the British Section was taken by -- you guessed it --  another "guy I don't need to name or worry about."


All else being equal I'd rather not name or describe characters who aren't necessary to the action because I always have more than enough characters anyhow.


How did Justine learn about Lucille's death and how was she affected by it? I expected to see this come up in The Black Hawk when the story moved parallel of the events in Spymaster's Lady and Vauban's death was mentioned.


[SPOILER]
What we're looking at here is the section of Black Hawk that begins with Hawker coming to Justine's window carrying a letter and ends when Justine shoots Hawker.

[END SPOILER]

In this time frame Vauban had been dead about a week. Lucille, who has been in Italy for months, has been dead a few weeks. 
The action of TSL begins after the action of this section ends.

Before this Black Hawk section opens .... Lucille dies. Annique leaves immediately for Paris. Soulier's resident spy sends word of Lucille's death to Soulier in London. LeBlanc's assassin, having killed Lucille, spends a lot of time attempting to find Annique and finish the job. He then wastes more time trying to track her north. Eventually the assassin rides for Paris and reports to LeBlanc.

During the TBH section, only LeBlanc, Soulier, a couple messengers, folks in Italy, and Annique know about Lucille's death. Justine meets none of these people except LeBlanc and he's not about to reveal he knows Lucille is dead because he has no legitimate way to have this news.

After the BH section, Paris Secret Police get the info.

So Justine doesn't learn about Lucille's death "on stage," as it were, and we don't see her reaction.

Tuesday, April 03, 2018

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:
 
 

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)

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Timeline confusions (SPOILERS)

WARNING:  HERE BE SPOILERS


I've had a couple people come away from the timeline of the books a little confused.  In fact, the sound of heads banging on desks is about deafening.

So let me provide a general comment on the timeline as a Guide for the Perplexed.  And then I'll probably do it again in a week or so, but with more specificity than I can scrape together right now. And I'll only do that if I'm not buried in work of some kind or another.


We have three confusing time periods. Like ... sometimes I have two books happening at once.

1794 -- And we are in Forbidden Rose. Hawker, Pax and Justine are all young. Hawker is 12 or 13. Justine, 13. Pax, about 16.
Galba is Head of the Service. Grey has not yet joined the Service. Annique is living with the gypsies at this point. Doyle is a senior Independent Agent. Hawker is merely a raw possible recruit, on probation.

In 1794, Hawker walks onto the stage in Forbidden Rose leading a pair of tough little donkeys. About a third of the way into Forbidden Rose Hawker will meet Pax when they change duty at the watching post on Maggie's house. A bit later Justine and Hawker meet for the first time on the street outside Doyle's prison.
Black Hawk also visits 1794. This is in the first fallback section from the frame story.  We open that segment with Justine and Hawk getting together in Paris in front of the now-inactive guillotine.  This is the day after Doyle is freed from prison in Forbidden Rose.  In this segment of Black Hawk, Pax, Hawker, and Justine go to the Coach House and rescue the last Caches-in-training. 

Forbidden Rose and the 1794 section of Black Hawk then come together and end with the same scene. That's the one where Justine gives Severine into Maggie's keeping.

1802 -- This is where things gets complicated, because now we got three books involved.

In 1802 Justine and Hawker are 19 or 20. Pax is 24 or so.
Galba is Head of Service. Grey is Head of the British Section. Hawker is a young Independent Agent.

We have an 1802 segment of Black Hawk full of our three young spies saving Napoleon from an assassin. At the end of that 1802 section of Black Hawk, we see Justine shoot Hawker. This is on page 228.


The action of Spymaster's Lady opens five or six days after that shooting scene. Offstage, Grey and Hawker got picked up when Hawker was getting himself out of the Louvre. There is Hawker in prison, dying from Justine's bullet.  Annique gets thrown into the cell and they're off!!  Hawker, Grey, Annique and Doyle run headlong across France.

Rogue Spy starts when we're in the middle of the Spymaster's Lady timeline.  The two stories go forward in parallel. Action of one story happens while stuff is going on in the other.

While Pax in that tavern working up the courage to go
to Meeks Street, Grey and Annique are walking across Devon to London.

When Hawker visits Daisy's house in Rogue Spy it's been maybe three weeks since he was shot. He's only now come to terms with his final breakup with Justine. Meanwhile, across town, in Spymaster's Lady, Grey is dealing with Annique as a prisoner at Meeks Street.

Rogue Spy wraps up with the death of the Merchant but Spymaster's Lady continues. So later events like  Meeks Street headquarters getting shot up and Annique escaping to Soulier's house take place after Cami and Pax have already been married and sailed for France.



1818:  1818 is the frame story of Black Hawk. It's 16 years since Justine shot Hawker. Sixteen years since Cami and Pax, Grey and Annique married.

Hawker is Head of Service. Galba has retired. We haven't visited their timelines, but we can assume Cami and Pax, Grey and Annique have had many adventures in the intervening years, done important work, and have settled into a happy life. Maybe they have kids even.
And in 1818, Hawker and Justine marry.



So that's the way all these events spread out.
And that's just as clear as mud, isn't it?

Go ahead. Ask me something. I'll try to clarify.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Technical Topic -- Where does the Spy Stuff Come From?


Most Excellent Reader Elizabeth asks:

"Could you talk about how you come up with all the various capers and escapades for your spies? 
All the fiddly bits that string together to make up the jobs they pull basically. 

How do you do that? How do figure out the pieces and then put them together?"


Hah!  Bit of a tough question.
Plot devices. I haz them.

One good thing is that the spy stuff is all 'plot device', really.  The stories do not hang on the outcome of any of the spy stuff, except in Forbidden Rose where the actual historical politics are important.
All this running around, doing stuff, is just plot device, That means I can plug one thing or another thing into that spot in the story.  I have something to accomplish and it doesn't much matter which 'device' I choose. 

So, for instance,  I had a spot in Spymaster's Lady where I want my heroine to escape Meeks Street.

I set up an event -- a plot device -- that makes the escape possible.
I need a plot device because it is not like my Meeks Street guys are going to go out one afternoon and leave the door open behind them.
But it could be anything, so long as it opens up Meeks Street so my heroine can escape.

I considered a bunch of possibilities. 

Sorta like this coach
I can have a coach drive by and men shoot out of it, hoping to hit somebody in the house. 
(My heroine escapes because they have loosened the bars on the windows.)

Or I could use a cat playing bagpipes
I could have some bad guy throw a satchel bomb over the side wall.   Or they leave a box of explosives at the front door as a delivery.  Or they park a wagon outside with a bomb in it.
(That would loosen the window bars but good.)

Or maybe somebody drives up a load of cobras and dumps them in the back garden
Cobra, which Adrian could have got hold of
(and everybody has to get out of the house and she escapes in the confusion.)

Or the baddies could steal Congreve rockets or fireworks and set up on the next street and lob some explosive rockets through the air.
(That makes a nice weakened spot in the house wall for the heroine to pull the bricks away and slip through.)

Or somebody could sneak up to the roof and drop a keg of gunpowder down the chimney.  Boom.
(Which blows through the bars they have blocking the chimney and the heroine is up and away through that chimney.)

There are others.

I don't have to stick to one possible caper.  I have a choice of many.
I pick the one that lets my hero and heroine do exciting things together.
And is, like, plausible.
I try out all these possibilities in my mind and toy with them and brainstorm with myself.
Gordon Riots. My answer to folks who think London wasn't violent
I go with the scenario that comes to my mind most clearly and strongly.

Where did I get the ideas for the possibilities I list above?

The coach drive-by comes to my mind from the Gordon Riots and various other riots of the period.

The satchel bomb -- I was in Paris when somebody threw one of these into a building.  Shook the glass in my windows but good. 
Cobras are in an old trunk novel I have under a bed somewhere. 
The rockets came to my mind because I like fireworks.  (I did a Word Wenches blog on period fireworks.) 
The keg of gunpowder is from the 'Infernal Machine', plot to assassinate Napoleon. 
Putting something down the chimney is from the story of how Hawker first entered Meeks Street.   

How do I figure out the details of making the 'spy stuff' happen?

Research.
And more research.
(Le sigh.)
Lotsa research.

None of that shows up in the scene, drat it, but my life is just full of finding 1800 stuff out. 

If I want my bad guys to do something as simple as arm up and go shoot into a house,
I can't do that till I ask myself --

What kind of neighborhood 'police protection' would be available at that time. 
(Short answer -- none.  Paris had police.  London didn't. That's why London had muggings and gang rapes in good neighborhoods and periodic riots.) 

Would the available neighborhood protection prevent a shooting or chase down the criminals who did it?
(No.)
What kind of weapons would be available? 
(I know more than I want to about period guns  Much more.  Ye gods, that is boring research and there is infinite scads of info.)

Would somebody be able to get hold of a bunch of guns? 
(Peace had come.  Much corruption in 1802 in the matter of army weapons.  Lots of weapons lying about in London) 

Would Frenchmen be conspicuous in London?
(It was the Peace of Amiens. Lotsa Englishmen travelling to France. Lots of traffic the other way.  London was full to the gills with Frenchmen.)
This is a metaphor for Research

How fast could they shoot? What would it sound and smell like?
(Y'know, Youtube is just a wealth of research goodness.)

What were security bars made of, how did bars get set in the windows; did London houses have bars; would a shotgun blast loosen a bar; how widely were they spaced; how much space does somebody need to climb between bars
 ...?
(Endless research.  Endless.)
And yes I really did work all the stuff out.  All the details of the 'spy stuff'.

So the long answer is above.
And the short answer is, "I dream up what should happen.  I picture it.  I spin it out of all my experience.  I blue sky it.
Then I research the details
to see if it could really happen."

Sunday, June 23, 2013

One of Those 'Friends Without Benefits' Situations



A kindly reader asks:

"I was a little questioning about the interactions between Annique and Adrian. Some other reader's reviews suggested that he was a little bit in love with Annique, now obviously this was after he had met Justine so I was wondering if  you could elaborate  on this ..."


You roll your characters up in the same blanket in a ruined monastery and folks wonder if they're maybe a little bit more than 'good friends'.
But, really, I was just trying for friendship between those two, which is probably naïveté on my part.  Maybe there is a certain unlikeliness that one would cuddle up next to Hawker and feel only an innocent appreciation of the warmth.

Would they just be good friends, those two?

Well ... why friends at all?

Once Adrian and Annique meet, a sense of camaraderie between these two is almost inevitable.
They're experts in the same profession; they speak the same 'language' as it were; they depend on one another; they're running from the same enemy. 
And Adrian has always had an admirable gift of true friendship with women.

At the beginning of Spymaster's Lady, Annique feels protective toward Adrian and amused by him.  She likes him.  She respects him for the spy he is and the greater spy he will become.  But it's not romantic love.  (I maintain.)  Annique is sexually attracted to the older, harder, more powerful Grey instead of the wild, brave, brilliant boy her own age.      

But why not both?  Why not les sexy overtones between Adrian and Annique?
What are they, deficient in vitamins?

Well ... there's this.  Adrian quite deliberately marks out a platonic relationship between himself and Annique.  He teases, but makes no real sexual overtures.  Once it's clear Grey is attracted to her, Adrian doesn't let himself even think of her in a sexual way.  That's one of the virtues he brings from that criminal gang background of his youth.  A friend's woman is utterly taboo. 

And then, there's Justine. 
The influence of Justine defines the Adrian-Annique friendship.  She's only glancingly mentioned in Spymaster's Lady, and not by name, but she's at the forefront of Adrian's mind throughout the book.  We don't see this because we don't go into his thoughts, the book not being about Adrian, after all.  (We go into his POV once.  I think it's once.) 

The action of Spymaster's Lady takes up a few days after Justine shot Adrian.  (We see it happen in Black Hawk.)  When, in TSL, our feverish Hawker jokes about the wound, he's remembering that Justine led a pack of soldiers after him.  That she tried to kill him.  That's what he's not saying to Grey and Doyle when he's being lightheartedly heroic.
Justine's betrayal is the subtext of Adrian's behavior through much of Spymaster's Lady.

(I love to use the word 'subtext' and don't really care if I'm using it right.  Life improves tremendously when we learn not to care about using the word 'subtext' incorrectly.)

Anyhow, TSL opens with Adrian's betrayal and loss. That bullet hole defines Adrian's reaction to Annique.  He's been so battered by the end of his passionate, deadly, complex relationship with Justine that a new sexual attraction would only be painful.  The protective friendship with Annique is exactly the healing he needs.  Maybe the emotional tie with Annique is stronger because he thinks he's lost Justine forever. 

So anyhow -- responding to that question --  that is how I see the relationship between these two.  But every book is a partnership between the author and the reader.  If readers see the Adrian/Annique relationship differently and the books don't directly contradict . . .
Go for it.
Take the story where you want it to go.
Or, anyhow, go for it till I write something elsewise.

Monday, March 25, 2013

Out-take from Spymaster's Lady

A bit of old draft attrib photostever
Doing other stuff today and writing on the WIP, I came across a bit of Spymaster's Lady that didn't make it into the manuscript. 
So I figgered --  I'm never going to use this.  Let's post it on the blog and maybe somebody can get something out of it.

This piece would have fit in the part of the story where Annique and Grey are first entering London.  Instead of passing through Covent Garden and heading off to Meeks Street, they stop for a while.   In this early draft version, Annique was going to write something important at this point.  That disappeared in a later draft.


The fictional locale -- this tavern -- continues to exist in the Spymaster's fictive world.  It just hasn't made its way into a book yet.

****

Covent Garden
ETA this first paragraph.

She had slept, on and off, through the night and the early morning while Robert, and the horse Harding, brought her all the way to London.  She awakened suddenly in the dawn to the sound of wagons on cobblestones and women in white kerchiefs selling ladles of milk from the huge cans on the back of their carts.  The sky was still pink when he brought her into the Covent Garden, which was not a garden at all but instead a market of incredible size, full of flowers and vegetables and chickens in cages, complaining.

In a street to the side of the market was the tavern called the Crocodile, which from the look of it was an accustomed meeting place of smugglers and other clandestine types.  They knew Robert well, but did not once say his name or look at him directly or ask for payment.  It was only 'Yes, Sir,' and they brought him ale to drink and a meal of beef which was a loathsome habit in the morning and thoroughly English.

For her, by some miracle, they conjured up black coffee in a tin pot and fresh rolls, so she was ready to forgive them as much as they wished.  She allowed Robert to gift her with that coffee and another meal later in the morning.  She did not have the strength to argue with him any longer, being disheartened and frightened by what she was about to do. 

He was an even more important smuggler captain than she had realized.  He sprawled at the end of the bench, his feet propped up, his back to the wall, his coat lapped about him, and dozed all the long morning.  Men of all types and degrees, and a few women, came and went from the tavern.  Not one glanced in his direction.  Only important men can be so anonymous. 

He made her safe there, from the denizens of that place and from those far worse who lurked in the streets outside.  In safety, she could perform the next step in the great task she had set herself.  She chose her spot, near the window where the light was good, and wrote and wrote and wrote in the small black book she had bought.

She held it now.  To buy a blank-papered exercise book and ink and quills and blotting paper had consumed three and tuppence.  But that was not in any way the cost of the book she turned over and over in her hands.

"I did not know I would be this afraid," she said.  "Or that I would be ashamed."

Robert stood beside her with his arms crossed.  It was as if he were on watch while some smuggled cargo was landed – alert and focused and awaiting events.  The horse Harding would have been more inquisitive.

********

ETA:  This out-take above slid into another, also not used.  So I will add that.  Two out-takes for the price of one.  Hey.  Such a deal.

Anneka, in this draft, is carrying a coded book to England.  She has promised Adrian to drop it off at Meeks Street.  As part of her own plans, she is doing that.

In the later draft I simplified the story and eliminated the whole six- or seven- thousand word subplot.  Aren't you glad? 


*****


She held it now.  To buy a blank-papered book and ink and quills and blotting paper had consumed two pounds, ten, and tuppence.  But that was not in any way the cost of the book she turned over and over in her hands.

"I did not know I would be this afraid," she said.  "Or that I would be ashamed."

Robert stood beside her with his arms crossed.  He was a brew of complex emotions, most of them hidden from her.

 Number Seven was made of gray stone.  Thin, white curtains hung in the windows, so one could see out of but not in.  She did not know if anyone were watching her at this moment.  "I must reveal myself to these men," she said.  "I have the greatest wariness of them.  Fouché's organization is the best on the earth, of course – those are the men in France I worked for when I was a spy, you understand – but these British are nearly as good.  I have been their enemy all my life.  Now I stand in their country not twenty feet from their stronghold.  It is a sobering thought.  I must leave London immediately when I have passed over this book to them."

"Yes," Robert said.

"You are being silent to me again."  The book was getting damp in her hands because they were sweating so.  "You have not even asked what it is I do here."

"You're going to bring that book to that house."

"Truly one would think you were a fish, the amount of curiosity in you.  What I do here is risk my neck, all so I may become a traitor to my people.  It will keep me awake at night for the rest of my life."

"I doubt it."  He was a man of many certainties, Robert the smuggler.

"Hah.  I will show you."  She opened the book and let the pages flow under her fingers.  "Look.  This is code.  Not one I know, and I have no skill in dissecting them.  But I do not need to take the code to pieces to know what is in here.  When I saw it first in France I saw at once what it must be, written in so many hands, with the numbers in it, and organized just so.  This is a report on the ships that Napoleon builds to invade England.  When and where and how.  It is the work of many cunning men, this book."

"I see."

"You do not see.  For you there would be no problem.  You are not political  You would toss it overboard, or light a fire with it, or give it to those men ..."  She glanced once more at Number Seven, Meeks Street.  "... in there.  It would be all the same for you.  For me, matters are less simple.  A mile from here is a man named Soulier.  A Frenchman.  By all the duty of my life, I should take this book to him." 

"Why don't you?"  Robert crossed his arms.

"Oh ... it is complicated."  She scuffed her feet upon the pavement.  "I made a promise, for reasons that seemed good at the time.  That is some of it.  But, in truth ...  "

Truth stuck in her throat, as it did, occasionally.  She would say it, though.  She would admit to herself what she was doing.  "I am come here to put a weapon into the hands of the English."

"A weapon?"

"Of a kind.  Not a weapon of soldiers.  One of politics.  Battles do not hinge upon seven ships here and twenty there, most of which the British have been told many times.  And they do not know of the false hulls, which will never be completed, and the many ships hidden in the south and ...   well, many matters that make this book not so correct as the men who wrote it would like to believe.  But I will not tell you these things.  They are not good for you to know."  She sighed.  "The dangerous secrets ... matters of battle plans and troops and supplies.  I assure you, they are not in this little book."  They were firmly in her brain.  But of that she refused to think at all. 

"Useless is it?"  Robert looked at her without any change of expression.  For all he was a smuggler captain and most intelligent, she could be speaking Romany to him.

"Useless to soldiers.   This is another sort of weapon.  Words can be most powerful, my Robert.  Your English diplomats will lay this tally of ships upon the conference table and give the lie to Buonaparte when he claims that he wishes peace and demands concessions."  She scowled at what she held, since it tormented her with several hard choices.  "This book will be the cat in the pigeons of many dovecotes.  The French, themselves, do not know of these ships.  The ordinary people.  They do not want more war."

"Nobody wants that."

"Perhaps not.  But those nobodys do not become traitors this fine morning."  She wiped first one hand, and then the other, upon her skirt.  "So I will tell the French what Citizen Buonaparte keeps up his sleeve.  And it may be the men of Paris and Lyon and Rouen will see that those hundred ships never sail at all.  I have planned this for a week, my betrayal of my country.  Now I must do it.  When I have finished, I shall be so disgusted with myself I shall not even care if Duval finds me."

"Don't be silly, Anneka." 

"You are right.  I shall still care and for that I despise myself also."  She shrugged.  "But this is to make a drama.  I have been well trained not to make the dramas.  Stay here, mon ami, when I go across and do this thing.  These are not people you should involve yourself with."

"I go with you."  He said it in a voice not susceptible to argument, being like paving blocks, set closely.  So she let him come because she was frightened and wanted him next to her, even if it were dangerous for him, a little.  With a man such as Robert beside her she could face even this. 

Dull and respectable was written on all the stones at Number Seven Meeks Street which showed that even stones could tell lies.  The wide door was placid, as if it were a mouth that had swallowed a thousand secrets and grown fat on them.  It was a solidly built house with bars on the windows.

"Go ahead, Anneka," Robert said.  "Let's get it over with."

So she rapped loudly, using the knocker which was in the form of a curled rose.  In a minute, a boy opened the door, taller than she was, but probably three years younger.  Anneka dropped the book quickly into his hands.  "A man asked me to bring this to you."

But the boy wasn't looking at her.  He was looking past her.  At Robert.

Robert took her shoulders, which startled her for it was the very first time he had willingly put his hands upon her.  The boy stepped back and Robert pushed her carefully and rapidly across the threshold, into the house, into a room which was a dull, tasteless parlor, stiff with disuse. 

"Robert ..."  She tried to turn, confused.  His hands tightened.  "I don't want to be here, Stop it, Robert."  The boy locked the door behind them and went to unlock another door on the far side of the parlor.


Friday, January 18, 2013

Class and the Spymaster Fictive Universe


I was writing to excellent reader Ann today, talking about the blog post I did on how we write about Regency-era slums and got to thinking about how I deal with 'class' in the books.

Do I consciously write about social class in these books?
Yep.  I figger we all reveal our attitudes and beliefs unconsciously as we write ... so I might as well be aware I'm doing this and use it.



Take Lazarus.
Lazarus is motivated by resentment of the class that ruined his servant-girl mother and drove her into prostitution.  This is the class to which his father belongs.  The class Lazarus would enjoy if he'd been legitimate. 

Lazarus runs an empire of violence and theft, in part, because he figures his minions are entitled to take what they want.  The rich do.  Why shouldn't the poor?  He's self-educated and brilliant.  He can't help but see the inequity in the laws of England.  He ends up with great sympathy for the French Republican cause.

In his private life, his special ire is reserved for women of the privileged class who commit crimes that would land a servant girl in jail or send her to the gallows.  Again, class motivates his actions.
 

Adrian's life journey is shaped by a desire to become 'a gentleman'.  He walks, like Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid, on sharp knives every step of the way.  He finds himself, like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, unable to go back to what he was and yet unable to be comfortable with what he becomes. 

He measures his own success by his ability to pass as a member of the upper class. And yet, Adrian only passes for a gentleman; he never becomes one.  He watches, judges, and shrewdly assesses the rich and powerful . . . as an outsider.  He can never buy into their narrower view of the world.  He uses privilege, but doesn't believe in it.

Adrian originally admired the French Revolution, liking the leveling effect.  Then ... an outtake from Forbidden Rose has him watching a tumbril take a family with teenage girls to the guillotine.  We don't see the scene onstage, unfortunately, but that was a turning point of his life.  It outraged him.  He would never again be tempted by revolutionary violence.  Years later, he rejects Napoleon as an ambitious opportunist.  By that time, by 1799, Adrian is wholly committed to the British Service. 

But he never rejects France's social reforms.  Philosophically, Adrian is all for dismantling aristocratic privilege.  He doesn't act on this because social equality is never offered to him as a viable choice in the 1789 to 1818 timeframe. 
One reason Adrian gets along with Justine is they have no basic philosophical disagreement.


Doyle is more sympathetic to the idea of an aristocracy.

He plays at being a coachman or a laborer without assuming the interior life of one.  He's an aristocrat inside.  Born one.  Schooled and trained as one.

More than that, Doyle's a practical man rather than an idealist.  He believes a hierarchical society is inevitable, so he aims for a humane and workable system -- a fair, stable, well-run government with gradual change toward equality and social mobility.


The discussion Adrian and Doyle have at the beginning of Forbidden Rose is meant to show their different points of view.  (This is prior to Hawker's disillusionment with the bloody side of revolution in France.)

[Doyle and Adrian approach the orangerie at the chateau. It's savagely destroyed.]
 

    Hawker followed him, crunching glass into the gravel.  “The boys in that stinking little village waited years to do this.” 
   “Did they?”
    “They dreamed of it. They’d sit in those pig houses in the village with the shutters closed and the wind leaking in. They’d think about these fancy weeds up here, being coddled, all warm and happy behind glass. Down there,they were freezing in the dark. Up here, they were growing flowers.”
     “That’s fixed, then. No more flowers.”
     Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hawker stoop and pick up a rock, draw back and throw. Glass fell with a thin, silver discord. The heroic revolutionaries of Voisemont had missed one pane. Destruction was now complete.  
 

Justine is my most ideological character.  In 1818 she's going through a period of disillusion, as idealists will.  She's seen Napoleon fall.  She's seen Paris turn away from the Revolution and accept the Royalists back in power.  It'll be a few years before she gets her political fire back. 

Justine saw her degradation and loss not as a male/female issue -- not so much, 'men did this to me' --  as a class and power issue.  'The rich can get away with anything.' "In a just society these things would not happen.'  She responds to her hurt with a desire to right the wrongs of society.  She becomes a political person.

Justine's journey is one of rebuilding herself after absolute destruction.  Part of this is reclaiming her place as an aristocrat. Though she's despised aristocrats, ironically, it's a measure of her complete healing when she can say,

     “I will come to live with you in your great mansion and be a lady again. I will be a DeCabrillac, and face down the world if they make accusations. I will shake out your haughty mansion like an old rag and make it comfortable to live in.

She becomes something she has fought against, because Adrian needs this from her.  It's her gift to him.


Justine, too, is someone who doesn't buy into the class paradigm.  She may claim her name and position, but I see her taking her aristocratic space cynically.  She's gotten subtle in the Police Secrète.   Give her a few more years and she'll be the Grande Dame of the Reform Movement, infiltrating the camp of the enemy, still fighting the good fight.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Spymaster's Lady in audible German Woot! Woot!

It looks like The Spymaster's Lady (Die Geliebte des Meisterspions)
is coming out as an audible book in German next month. Here.  So wonderful!  Wow.

Der britische Meisterspion Robert Grey reist nach Frankreich, um die berüchtigte Spionin Annique Villiers aufzuspüren. Durch einen Zufall landen beide in derselben Gefängniszelle und müssen zusammenarbeiten, um sich zu befreien. Robert glaubt, dass Annique wertvolle Informationen über Napoleons geplanten Angriff auf England besitzt. Er will sie deshalb nach London bringen. Doch Annique gelingt es ein ums andere Mal, sich ihm zu entziehen. Und Robert muss schon bald feststellen, dass die schöne Französin tiefere Gefühle in ihm weckt.

Here's the printed version in German, btw.  I'm told the translation is wonderful.

Friday, September 16, 2011

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.