Chapters One and Two

Ok. Chapters One and Two, which were 5000 good, middle-draft words, are out. They don't land us in the middle of the action, which is where a story should start. They're too bloody contemplative.

So. Out they go.

No more rabbit scene.
I really loved that rabbit scene.

Blast.

TSL and the aspect of violence

I'm pulling up a comment here to talk about.

Could you please tell why all the spy in SL are considered by each other to be "deadly" if they are so concerned about taking human life. Annique obviously considers it a huge deal, but the others? Your earlier comment about Doyle made it sound like everyone understood the Game and were gentlemen/gentlewomen intelligence gatherers. Thanks.

I was thinking about this sort of thing all morning.
Quaker Meeting does a lot of soul-searching on Memorial Day, as you'd imagine. I spent time considering violence and where my characters stand.

TSL presents four views of violence.

Annique -- youthful idealist -- is willing to risk her life to avoid killing an enemy. For her, each life and death is significant and personal. She's a 'small-picture' person. For her it's always this square on the chessboard.

You see this when she's trying to decide what to do with the Albion plans. She translates the impact of an invasion into 'this farm wife', 'this house burned', or 'this French soldier drowned on the beach'. It's never -- 'what will this do to the geopolitical position of France?'

She casts her decision in terms of philosophy, but it is, at heart, a bone-deep distaste for dealing death. I'd guess that dates from her father's hanging. It is no accident that, of all the parts to play among foreign armies, she chose to work in the medical tents.

Grey -- professional soldier -- has the nineteenth-century career soldier's view that killing has rules. Grey would, and did, kill without hesitation, qualm or remorse under the conventions that allow him to do so. He's an honorable man, and death fits within his code of honor. Following this code, his conscience doesn't trouble him.

Like any good officer, he's chary of using deadly tactics when lesser force achieves the goal. And there are 'rules' of spying, different from the rules of engagement in war. More of that below.

Adrian -- trained killer, damaged soul -- doesn't hate death, the way Annique does. He doesn't believe in the rules of armed combat, the way Grey does. At nineteen or twenty, he's still groping his way toward a useable morality. He takes cues from his fellow professionals as to what's 'right' and 'wrong' in these, for him, puzzling ethical situations.

Doyle. I'm in the middle of working on Doyle right now. He's humane and cynical. I can see that much. He's more detached than any of the others. We don't get beneath his surface in TSL.

Anyway -- work in progress on Doyle.


Now ... wandering back to the question.
The first inquiry is 'why are all the spies in TSL considered to be 'deadly?'

Well ... 'Dangerous' is probably a better rendering. The capacity for violence exists in all four major characters, but it remains largely latent.

Annique has been drilled for years in the arts of self-defense and escape. Doyle, Grey and Adrian are considerably more lethal than Anneka, and their skill at dealing death, much more finely honed. Those three have all killed in the line of duty.

But it is not this potential lethality that gives them value as spies. The traits they all share, what they admire in each other, what marks them as master spies, is not a knack for death.

Adrian sums it up when he says of Annique --

"We get reputations in the Game – you, me, Doyle, all of us. I recognize her work when I see it. Annique Villiers is playful and wise and stealthy. Slip in, slip out, and you never know she's been there. If she killed anybody at all, I never heard about it."

Doyle stands in front of the inn, watching Annique do nothing whatsoever but eat breakfast, playing a part. It impresses the hell out of him.

If I may venture a modern analogy ...?

A systems analyst might occasionally move a 40-pound desktop unit from one office to another. But that's not what he's hired for. It's not what his colleagues mean
when they say -- 'He's a hell of a programmer.'

If you managed a brilliant analyst with a bad back, or one in the fourth month of pregnancy, you'd barely notice that they couldn't move equipment. You'd just call in some jackass from the mailroom to do the heavy lifting.

In Annique's case ... her handlers wouldn't put her in a position where she needed to kill, any more than a camper would pick up his Nikon to pound in tent stakes.


Second half of the O.P. question is:

Your earlier comment about Doyle made it sound like everyone understood the Game and were gentlemen/gentlewomen intelligence gatherers.

Not 'gentlemen'. No.
But professionals who understand the 'rules'.

Annique says,
"In the Game, we do not kill one another in this bloodthirsty manner that would leave us all dead. "
Even today, in a nastier world, intelligence agencies don't target each other's professional personnel. It's pure practicality. Nobody wants to be targeted back.

TSL This and That Errata

Debbie S has asked a couple questions about timing and dates and the specifics of this and that.

Adrian's past. When I try to imagine him falling in love, I wonder where he learned tenderness if he was raised on the streets. He obviously has learned it by SL.

Maggie's story will introduce us to Adrian at about age 12. He's harder and colder at 12 than he was later, but he's not without warmth and humor. And he has a particularly soft spot for women. The street girls he grew up among provided the only warmth and comfort in his childhood.
I'll try to show Adrian being humanized by the influence of Doyle and Maggie.


(and i'm intrigued by his being shot, from below, by a lady who may be a French lover in the game, on a street, where Grey was also and they were too late--do we ever learn that story?)

It'd be fun to write that part of the story, wouldn't it?
Adrian was inside when he got shot. In a bedroom, I think. And yes -- it was the infamous French woman who shot him.


Grey's age--when I read the book, I assumed he was 36 because he says he was Robert for 26 years before he became Grey and that he knew Doyle for 10 years. Nothing in the book shows he knew Doyle before he moved over to the service. I was surprised to learn he's only 27.

Grey and Doyle got to know each other years back, while Grey was still in the army. Doyle, the field agent, spends time interacting with the British Army and Military Intelligence.
Grey joined the Service in his mid twenties, and acquired his nom-de-spy when he became Head of Section. He's 27 or 28 when the story opens.



Annique's surprise that Grey followed her to Soulier's doesn't make sense since he's always told her he would and since she thought she had only 15 minutes to get out of the house. Conceivably she would be surprised that he was able to find her...

That's it exactly. You've got it. Annique didn't think Grey would find her this quickly, if at all.

EDITED TO ADD the two other questions I hadn't answer earlier.


Annique was injured at the start of May, which is short of the full five months before the story starts. Vauban dies the last day of July (six weeks before the story starts,) and Maman, the fifth of August, (about five weeks before.)
Annique, talking to Robert, says "it has been six ... no, five weeks," since her mother's death. She should have said, "it has been six ... no, seven weeks,"


>>>Annique's comment to Robert about their spending time together not being good for him either (implying he's attracted to her) (right before the bullets start flying) p 208 and his response about "men have died..." doesn't fit with her thinking he's not attracted to her both before and after that. <<<<

There's an attraction between the two of them. It's not, to Annique's frustration, being expressed physically. But, as she says ... 'We have gone beyond that. Touching or not touching doesn't matter to what's between us.' They both acknowledge the tie between them.

Tech Tops -- More best of the Worst -- #2

More 'Best of the Worst Writing Mistakes'


Echoes.
An obvious and venerable error. Words breed and duplicate inside sentences and hop like fleas from one sentence to the next.

Not -- Audie preened under the attention, holding his fashionable silk sleeves wide before an attentive audience of teen fashion moguls.


Trivial intervening action.
This is one of the 'will-you-please-get-to-the-point' errors. The character has action. The character has dialog. Introduce these two and let them shake hands.
Just Do It.

Not -- Deirdre slammed her cup down into the saucer and pushed the chair back and got to her feet and circled the desk and walked across the room to where Trevor stood. She stepped close to him and tilted her head back, poked him in the chest, and said, "You are coyote scat."

But, Deirdre slammed the cup down. She was across the room in an instant. "You," she poked him in the chest, "are coyote scat."


Cliché phrases.
Cliché, never good, reaches its succinct worst in the form of a hackneyed phrase.

Not -- Free as a sparrow. Happy as a clam. Sly as a fox. Bottomless pit.
But -- Bottomless as a sparrow. Happy as a fox. Free as a clam. Sly as a pit.


Mixed levels of emotional context.
Nothing wrong with this if you're trying to be humorous. Otherwise ... you may achieve humor by accident.

Not -- Chaos, annihilation and discomfort traveled in the wake of the army.
Not -- She lost her home, her virginity and her credit cards in one fell swoop.


Non-linear order of emotional content
Related to mixed levels of emotional context, except that all of these levels can exist happily in the same sentence. They just have to be lined up right.

Not – At camp Phoebe learned to tie knots, become a trusty friend, and make her own bed.
But -- At camp Phoebe learned to tie knots, make her own bed and become a trusty friend.

Not – Sauron killed whole villages, cost men their immortal souls and uprooted families.
But -- Sauron uprooted families, killed whole villages, and cost men their immortal souls.


Pig-tail phrases.
These are phrases – cliches of a particular sort – that drag along extra, iterative words.

Squabble back and forth, return again, jump up, sit down, nod up and down, her own thoughts, his own beliefs, the fun of it, closed fist, staying here, shook his head back and forth, button up, walk forward, strut about, shrugged a shoulder,

These are different from phrasal verbs like
Shut up, clear up, close down, shove off, gloss over, take in ..

With both pigtail phrases and phrasal verbs, in each case, you have to determine -- In your usage, is there a difference between the 'closed fist' and the 'fist'?
Between 'open up' and 'open'?


Saying and conveying.
Information conveyed by action doesn't also have to be explained.

Not – Bagley strolled to the front of the room where everyone in the audience could see him and began explaining.
But -- Bagley strolled to the front of the room and began explaining to the audience.

Not – Phillip lit the small fire to warm himself and leaned towards it, shivering.
But -- Phillip lit the small fire and leaned towards it, shivering.

Not – Nolan's low forehead creased in puzzlement. "What are you doing here?"
But – Nolan's low forehead creased. "What are you doing here?"


Photocopy phrases and doublemint sentences.
Doubling up on a concept in adjoining phrases or sentences. This includes unnecessary appositives.

Not – Titania crept silently down the winding staircase, making not the least noise.
But -- Titania crept down the winding staircase.

Not -- The final result of all his work, the effect he was looking for, lay at the bottom of the casket.
But -- The final result of all his work lay at the bottom of the casket.

Not -- Bernard was worried about Arnie's new pet. He had an anxiety attack every time he considered the consequences of adopting a warthog.
But -- Bernard had an anxiety attack every time he considered the consequences of Arnie's new pet, the warthog.

Not -- Kathleen was lighthearted and frivolous and couldn't be counted upon to accept responsibility. She never took anything seriously, not even important deadlines.
But -- Kathleen was lighthearted and frivolous and never took even important deadlines seriously.



The trivial obvious.
Just don't tell us what we already can see. If you add a detail, make it an important detail.

Not – Fu Manchu stood up from his chair.
But -- Fu Manchu stood.
Or even -- Fu Manchu stood up.

Not -- Gillian set her glass down on the table.
But – Gillian set her glass down.
Or -- Gillian set her glass down next to the bottle of poison.

Not – Gregory drove the car down the street in the direction of the Minute Mart.
But -- Gregory drove to the Minute Mart.


Ambiguous pronouns.
The English language delights in confusing us.

Not -- Jean had never quite forgiven Georgia for beating up her boyfriend, Fergus, in second grade.
But -- Jean was protective of her boyfriend, Fergus. She'd never quite forgiven Georgia for beating him up in second grade.
Or -- Georgia beat up her boyfriend, Fergus, in second grade. Jean had never quite forgiven her for it.

Not -- Falmouth often played competitive darts with Milsom and discussed his lack of skill in that endeavor.
But -- Falmouth often discussed Milsom's lack of skill when they played competitive darts.
Or -- Falmouth used to discuss his lack of skill at competitive darts when he played with Milsom.


Classic run-on sentences.

You want run-on sentences? You can have them. Just keep hooking random sentences together with 'and'.

Hambly and Undine hunted frogs by the light of the moon and took them home for dinner and served them flies, which they enjoyed, and then returned them to the swamp with their compliments and went back to their house at the edge of town to get drunk.

Look at that sentence.
Have pity on the poor readers.
Put a period where you have to take a breath.
Whew.

Writing spies

I was thinking about spies, today, and how we represent them in fiction.

My Maggie is fallen among English spies even as I speak.
The more I move into Doyle's head, the more I have to show him as the 'spy' he is.

But it's not as easy to portray spies as you'd think.

One swims uphill, (can one swim uphill ...? maybe I mean crawls ... ) against a general opinion that all spies are James Bond, (or Jane Bond) -- sexually insatiable, with black belts in thirty obscure forms of combat, able to rappel down buildings on a line of dental floss, armed to the back molars, killers without mercy, cold-blooded as a flock of sharks.


Which has nothing whatsoever to do with real spies, of course, in any era.

TV has much to answer for.


Doyle, walking into France in 1794, is on a mission he knows will probably end with him killing somebody.

Now, espionage, 1790 style, was virtually all observation and reporting. What we'd call Humint nowadays. Valuable spies were those who could seek out information, undetectably extract it, and bring it home. Intelligence gathering intelligence, if you will.

Doyle has to do more than oserve, this time out. He's staring at the likelihood he'll have to kill somebody. He doesn't take it lightly.

The problem is, the minute I say -- 'Doyle is a spy' -- some readers are going to lose any sense that murder of an unarmed civilian might be troublesome to Doyle's conscience.
Doyle's dilemma is not merely lost. It becomes a wallbanger.

For some readers it'll be ...
'Real spies act like James Bond. Doyle doesn't. Ergo, he's not a real spy. I watch TV and I know.'
Why folks would assume that nations, now or ever, trusted their spying exclusively to bloodthirsty and athletic sociopaths, I cannot imagine.

The first decision I present Doyle in the story, (Chapter Four,) is whether he will protect his mission or behave decently.

I know how he decides, of course. But when I show his thought processes, none of this is going to be the least JamesBond-like.

I dunnoh how to make folks accept a more intelligent and less sanguinary view of the spy game.
Zeesh.

Auction Madness

The Novak Auction has such lovely things.

This is the 4th Annual On-line Auction for Diabetes Research.




EDITED TO REMOVE THE PHOTOS,
now that the auction is ended.

Annique looks like ... Jessamyn looks like ...

For anyone interested in what Annique looks like ... I kinda pictured her as a young Natassja Kinski.

Can't post her picture, not having the rights, but there's a link to it. Here.

There's no reason heroines have to be beautiful. Not generally. But Annique's job calls for a degree of beauty, so she gets to have it.

Jessamyn is another reasonably pretty girl, but the generality of mankind doesn't turn to watch her pass in the street. I'm thinking Robin Wright. Here.

Maggie -- The beginning

I'm beginning work on Maggie.

This is all rough draft stuff here.
I'm not even sure I won't throw most of this away ...

8200 / 120000 words. 7% done!
Rough draft of MAGGIE

Technical Topics -- Tagging with Action

This isn't going to be of much interest to anyone except writers.
Might not be of interest to them either, when it comes right down to it.

Let me natter on for a minute about 'tagging with action'.

A 'dialog tag' is the set of words that tells us who is speaking the dialog.

'Said' and 'said-isms', ('he replied', 'he swore', 'he promised', 'he shouted',) are the most common dialog tags.

"I've made a right mess of this turkey," Tom said, off handedly.

"Let that sylph go," a voice drifted up from the inky depths of the well, "or ye'll get well acquaint with cold water."

"I'm going to erase this and start over," Tom remarked.


I've marked the dialog tag in blue.

But we can move beyond the 'said' and the 'saidism'.
For instance, dialog can even sit there without any tag at all ... the reader just knows who is speaking. That's a very elegant way to tag dialog.

Probably the second most common way to tag dialog is to give us an action that belongs to the speaker of the dialog.

"I'm not ready to commit myself." Tom shifted from one foot to another, nervously.

Bert flung out a warning hand. "Careful. That's a viper pit ahead of you on the path."

Betsy took a reflective lick off the back of the spoon. "Needs more salt."


In those three sentences, we haven't used 'said' or any of its cousins. We've used action. Action tags.

Now some action tags are used very often.
Consider -- he looked, saw, noticed, glanced, gazed, peered, twisted, turned, got up, stood up, walked, sat down, grinned, smiled, laughed, sighed, nodded, shook his head, lifted his chin, jerked his head, breathed, drew in a breath, let out a breath, inhaled, exhaled, sucked in air, gasped ... and so, infinitely and somewhat boringly, on.

There is nothing wrong with these familiar action tags. Careful writers use them all the time.

One trap we fall into, though, is using these stereotyped, twitchy action tags again and again. We can send our characters through a kind of nervous, pointless dance as they grin and raise eyebrows and nod and frown and . . . you get the idea.

One way to avoid the twitchy, overused action tags is to write an extended action. An extended action doesn't flash by and leave the next line to be tagged by another bitty action. An extended action lasts a long time. Maybe the whole scene.

There are two basic kinds of extended action used for dialog tagging.

Action may be 'story action' that changes the outcome of the story. This action goes on during the dialog, but it is also, in and of itself, important. Betty bops Marcus over the head. Chrissy crashes the Jeep. Stacy shoplifts. Mother mixes poisons.

Or the action may be 'stage business' -- stage business is interesting enough, but it's in there mostly to give our characters something to do with their hands. Betty beats cake batter. Chrissy cracks eggs. Stacy stocks the shelves. Mother mixes salad dressing.

Story action is first choice.
Any scene, any chapter, any line, we're always saying to ourselves 'Tell the story.'

'Stage business', as a technique, is neither right nor wrong.
It's one of the writer's tools. But we have to recognize it when we write it. We have to be sure there isn't some 'story action' we should be using instead.

And we have to pick the best, shiniest 'stage action' in the world, one that tells us about the characters or paints a vivid picture of the scene or foreshadows disaster and delight to come
or does some interesting storytelling stuff like that.

Tech Tops -- The 100 Best of the Worst - #1

As part of a larger project -- the '100 Best of the Worst Writing Mistakes' projects -- I'm pulling together writing mistakes.

Here's a few. Thirteen of them. I'll post more later.


Word choice: Superfluous 'that’s'.

At the polishing stage of the redraft, do a search on 'that'. Every time a sentence reads fine without 'that', pull it out.

Not – It is clear that Joanie dunks donuts.
But -- It is clear Joanie dunks donuts.
Or better ... Clearly, Joanie dunks donuts, which frees the predicate from the verb 'to be', which is nearly always an improvement.


Paragraphing: Logical connectivity.

Paragraphing is an art. We need to be aware of the subtle breaks in the ongoing action that signal a movement of attention or a change in emphasis. We tidy related thoughts, description, and action together into their logical and appropriate paragraph.

Powerful stuff, paragraphing.

Not –

"I'm sick of your shenanigans, Macy." Tregarth wound another length of fishing line around his hand, making a neat bundle. A woman's scarf, Macy's scarf, red as blood, lay folded on the plank.

Lose ends of the nylon line blew back and forth in the wind. Macy sat in the prow looking out over the Severn. "I never meant to hurt anyone."

But --

"I'm sick of your shenanigans, Macy." Tregarth wound another length of the fishing line around his hand, making a neat bundle. Lose ends of the nylon line blew back and forth in the wind.

A woman's scarf, Macy's scarf, red as blood, lay folded on the plank. Macy sat in the prow looking out over the Severn. "I never meant to hurt anyone."


Paragraphing: Segregation of dialog.

When dialog ensues, it owns the paragraphing.

Segregate action, description and all kinds of tags related to a character into that character's paragraph. The one with that character's dialog. Do not let one character's constellation of narrative wander into a paragraph belonging to someone else.

Not –

"Christmas shopping weeds out the weak." Beatrice kneaded her feet, which hurt. Mary nodded happy agreement.

"And there's 23 shopping days left," Mary said brightly. "Plenty of time for Darwinian selection to kick in."

But --

"Christmas shopping weeds out the weak." Beatrice kneaded her feet, which hurt.

Mary nodded happy agreement. "And there's 23 shopping days left. Plenty of time for Darwinian selection to kick in."


Dialog: As you know, Bob.

This is a classic. We have a bolus of backstory, so we set up talking heads to tell it to each other for the benefit of the reader.

As you know, Bob, today, March 3rd, we celebrate the founding of the Beta Colony.

Whenever you lay backstory in the mouths of characters, (and this is a fine technique for conveying backstory,) ask yourself
(1) do these two guys already know what is being said?
and
(2) would they talk about it right now?


Dialog: Addressing characters in dialog.

Folks do not call each other by name several times in a conversation. They just don't. Go listen to people talking. They never say each other's names.

It's tempting to tag dialog by inserting personal names into it.
Resist temptation.

One exception is if you have a couple of people in the room and the speaker needs to indicate who he's talking to.
In this case he probably would address each by name.

"We'll put you down for the raffle tickets, Vernon. Chester, can you be in charge of security? And, Ellie Mae, I want you to pick pockets. Mom, you get drunk. Do we all have this straight?"

People also 'address by name' in moments of stress and passion.
Unfortunately, this is not useful for tagging dialog, because in moments of stress and passion it is generally clear who is saying, "I adore you," or "This is for what you did to Cynthia," and to whom.


Word choice: 'Now' and 'Then'.

These are often fluff, added where the sequence of events is obvious, or when the current moment doesn't need to be emphasized.

Not – Vernon didn't believe in Santa Claus now, whatever he'd thought at seven.
But -- Vernon didn't believe in Santa Claus, whatever he'd thought at seven.

Not -- Marlene tied the pony to the fence and then climbed over, leaving the reins behind her.
But -- Marlene tied the pony to the fence and climbed over, leaving the reins behind her.


Word choice: 'It'.

Every 'it' wants to grow up to be a noun. Some of them should do so.

On later polishing drafts, reconsider every 'it'.
Replacing the flavorless and imprecise pronoun 'it' with a more spritely and informative noun is a good way to pack together thick, rich prose. 'It' is also a word with a better-than-usual aptitude for being vague and misleading. 'It' is sly.

Make sure the meaning of every 'it' is just crystal clear to the meanest intelligence because there's some fairly misleadable people out there.

Having carefully considered your 'its', one by one, you leave most of them in place.
'It', with all it's faults, is useful, simple, workaday and unobtrusive.

So. Go thou and improve many of your 'its'. Add a new noun when that enriches the paragraph.
But do not be snookered into automatically upgrading every single one of the pesky things.

Not – Lester pulled back on the arrow and shot it deep into the woods. But -- Lester pulled back on the arrow and shot the black shaft deep into the woods.

Not -- Serena prepared a meal of hominy grits and spam. When it was ready she called the boys.
But -- Serena prepared hominy grits and spam. When breakfast was ready she called the boys.

But also
not -- Reginald pulled out the heavy, square brass box and locked the secretive metal casket with a gold key.
Instead -- Reginald pulled out the heavy, square brass box and locked it with a gold key.


Word choice: 'That' as a pronoun.

The little brother of 'it' is the pronoun 'that', yet another word that wants to become a noun. Often 'that' lures us to write two sentences when we only have one sentence worth of material.

Not – Claude was worried about defeat. He feared that more than hunger or thirst.
But -- Claude feared defeat more than hunger or thirst.

Not --- Adrianna deplored Marianne's stupidity. She knew that was the major roadblock.
But -- Adrianna knew Marianne's stupidity was the major roadblock.

Not – Here's the red nose. Give that to the Clown.
But -- Give the large red nose to the Clown.


Word choice: Word sound as an aspect of character.

The words we choose are not just a set of dictionary definitions strung together. They have sound.

The narrative and dialog, both, are full of gutturals, plosives and harsh clicks, syllabants and tonal vowels and smooth, mealy murmurs, blunt Germanic words, complex, educated Latinate words.

Look at the acoustics. Match the sound of words to the character.

Give each character a theme of Germanic choppiness or Latinate length. Use this 'themed sound' in character dialog, in internal monologue, in deep POV, in description of the character, and in the narrative that marches by when the character is onstage.

Thus – Petroff battered the crowd with blunt logic while Leonid impressed the audience with his eloquence.


Description: Specificity: Lack of quantity.

Not – a lot of money, a whole bunch of crayons, many venal faults, large fields.
But – Two hundred dollars, three boxes of crayons, seven unpleasant and venal faults, two hectares.


Description: Specificity: Lack of quality.

Not – bright dresses, frigid cold, bad smells, loud noise,.
But -- cherry-red and lime-green dresses, a windchill factor of minus six degrees, the smell of three-day-old fish, raucous church bells.

Not – unworthy suitors, major obstacles, good opportunities.
But -- liars and greedy pigs, six armed guards waiting in the walkway, a chance to buy into the accounting firm.


POV: POV name in POV.

When we see the personal name of a character, we figure we're not in that guy's POV.

Reason for this --
In deep POV we're thinking along with the POV character. We're right inside his head. We are him.

Folks just don't think of themselves as 'Clyde' or 'Horace' inside their own heads. They think 'I' or 'me'.

Now in Third Person we can't actually do 'I' and 'me' all that much except as Internal Monologue. So we use 'he' and 'him'. This is not an entirely logical choice but it has the virtue of not being 'Clyde'.
'Clyde' is so alien and illogical it shakes us out of POV altogether.

In practice, (because the sublunary world is imperfect and we have to just suck it up and live with that,) we tend to use the personal name once at the beginning of the chapter or the scene or the POV switch just so we know whose head we've landed in.
After that – we use 'he' or 'she' instead unless we've worked ourselves into a corner where it's either the personal name or some vast stupid circumlocution in which case we wince and use the character name again and take up writing real fast hoping no one noticed.

Not -- Jane knew trouble was coming. The giant black bats that filled the sky, the earth tremors, and the trees dripping blood were sure signs. Jane tried to remember if she'd paid her last life insurance premium on time.

But -- Jane knew trouble was coming. The giant black bats that filled the sky, the earth tremors, and the trees dripping blood were sure signs. She tried to remember if she'd paid her last life insurance premium on time.


Verbs: 'To be' and action.

One aspect of 'to be' is that it states what is. Put the verb 'to be' into the predicate and you present the scene as a static and straightforward painting.

Sometimes you want to do this. Sometimes the most important information about a scene is that is exists. It is set before us.

But when 'to be' is the predicate, this call for at least a brief reconsideration in the late draft polish.

This leads us to the general advice ... look around the neighboring sentences till you find a more exciting verb than 'was' and use that one instead.

Not – The oatmeal was nutbrown, wholesome and steaming.
But – The wholesome, nutbrown oatmeal steamed.
Or, better yet – He dropped the bowl of wholesome, nutbrown, steaming oatmeal on the floor.

Not – The sky was high and blue, cloudless, a scorching bowl of merciless sun, the expanse broken only by a pair of frightened birds.
But – Reuben rode in under a sky high, blue, and cloudless. A pair of frightened birds broke from cover as he passed, flurrying upward under a scorching bowl of merciless sun.

Japanese Spymaster's

I found out today that Spymaster's Lady will be translated into Japanese. So those of you who were waiting for the Japanese edition ... you are in luck.

I am wondering how you do a French accent in Japanese, but I don't think anyone will ever be able to tell me.

I'm actually hoping it comes out as a manga.

Tech Top -- Words, words, words ... #2

Harking back to word usage in Spymaster's Lady -- I'm looking at some more of the comments on word usage.


p. 99 "fixed her wagon..."
okay, couldn't find in OED, found one on-line reference linking it to the mid 19th-Century westward movement in the US.
I love the phrase, and its implications, but it sounds contemporary; "settled her hash" 1803, is British and means the exact same thing.

I'm inclined to agree this is 20C.
Googlebooks doesn't show it before the 1940s, 1950s.

Modern. American.

I was just plain wrong, wrong, wrong.
Heck.


p. 143 "mufti"--1816--did you find an earlier source; but it sounds rather Raj-ish to me, but as excellent, succinct description

I didn't find mufti, in this meaning, any earlier than you did.

Now I'm going to explain/excuse my use of mufti on three grounds.
(cough)

The first is that sometimes we run into words -- cosh is another one -- for which there is no good, simple substitute.

A conscientious writer wouldn't use them out of their era.
I cave. I use them. I am so bad.

Second ... the OED date is the earliest authenticated public written record.
I'm betting ... especially with this kind of soldiers' slang ... that the words were current in the spoken language for a good long time before they got into books and the press.

I feel ok using slang a decade before the OED date.

And last ... my folks had lots of contact with India and the men who served there. They'd be some of the earliest English speakers to pick up this word.



p. 184, and elsewhere "sweater" I think is later, and had, esp. earlier on, sports implications (1882).
A knit top worn for general purposes, and esp. by fisherman, would simply be a "jersey."
The date on this is also a little late, 1836, but the OED spec. mentions fishermen, which seems to make it more legit.

Well heck.
Jersey.
I just know a lot of readers would have had trouble with 'jersey'.

I didn't know 'sweater' was so late.
And now that I know, I wish I didn't.
Blast.

Lots of knowledge is like that.



pp 239 & 245 "bathrobe" orig. US, 1902; I always recommend using "dressing gown" which is the same thing, but much older and more British.

I was using bathrobe because I couldn't think of a clearer term.
I knew it might be wrong. I should have thought more on this.

The problem with 'dressing gown' is that Americans --
the ones who aren't flopping around out at sea over the whole thing
-- are likely going to think 'peignoir' when they hear 'dressing gown' instead of picturing a garment that can be made of flannel or lined cotton, and is as suitable to a male as a female.

So I feel like I can use 'dressing gown' for the heroine, but not our hero. Because the connotations are all wrong. Same for 'wrapper'.

What I should have maybe used was banyan. I'll do that next time.


So ... looking at my four bads here.

'Fixed his wagon' was a downright mistake.

'Mufti' squeaks in under my own personal wire as authentic in context.

'Sweater'. Total blindside on that one. Because of the way I used it ... I would probably make the conscious choice to use the anachronistic word.

'Bathrobe' I would rework just the smallest amount and replace with banyan.

Basket of Books for Diabetes Research

The excellent Kim Castillo is auctioning a basket of Romance book goodness as part of the 2008 Online Auction to Benefit Diabetes Research.
I'm (cough) in the basket, so I cannot recommend it too strongly.

Here

For those of you who don't already know about this wonderful spot -- see the home place. Here.

The Amazon Petition

At Dear Author here is the ipetition to ask Amazon to respond to the recent case of an author harassing an Amazon reviewer for a 3-star review. Three stars is too low for this author, who routinely manipulates the Amazon system to get high reviews.

The harassment is described here. The author, a Deborah Anne MacGillivray, apparently hired a private investigator and tracked down the reviewer's name. Tracked down her address.

Tracked down the names of her children ...


Says MacGilivray ... 'we now have her name, her husband’s name, her chidrens’ names, her grannies and great grannies name. Her address phone number and email. lol…quite interesting.'

No. It is not lol.

This is a stalker. This is stomach-churning. This is creepy.

Pronunciation

Somebody asked ... 'How do you pronounce Annique's name?'

The answer --
the same answer you'd give for how you make pancakes
and other weighty issues like that --
is,
'It depends.'

Doyle pronounced it ... 'Ahh NEEK'. Rhyming it with Monique.

But Grey and Adrian (and Annique's mother) made almost three syllables out of it, because they were speaking with accents from the south of France. The last syllable would be pretty weak and breathy.
They'd sound something like . .. 'Ahh NEEK eh.'

You know how somebody from Boston would pronounce 'Jane' as one short syllable, but somebody from Texas would draw it out till it's almost two? It's like that. But not exactly.

My Lord and Spymaster Errata

First erratum of the story.


Sebastian, when he identifies the plant as 'horehound' is, of course, incorrect. It is ground ivy. Glechoma hederacea.

Bad Sebastian! Bad, bad Sebastian! Study your biology.

Technical Topics -- Words, words, words ... What the galleys have taught me

Here are some words and phrases that did not exist in 1810, or did not carry their modern meaning.

heck
shut up
hump
hangover
sugar cube

What I have learned is that you will discover 'shut up' is not authentic Regency-speak only after you are in the galley stage of production and only if you have used it fifteen times.

One more run through the draft. Just wish I had ...

Galleys

My Lord and Spymaster Cover

The My Lord and Spymaster cover is up at Amazon.

So pretty.

As soon as I finish the galleys of MLAS, I shall try to get that cover onto the blog.
(This is not trivial if you are as technologically ham-handed as I am.)

The cover artist for both books is Judy York. Her website is here. You can see the Loretta Chase 'Lord Perfect' cover right on the front page of her Romance section. Cool, yes?

I'm not sure ... could that Loretta Chase cover possibly be the same model -- Nathan Kamp -- as the Spymaster's Lady cover?

Nathan Kamp has a site here if you want to, y'know, look at some abs for a bit.

When I'm writing and I get stuck, I click to Lolcats. Here.
Nothing seems impossible after a few dozen lolcats.
I wouldn't be surprised if N.K.'s abs turned out to have the same aspects of transcendence.

Out-take from The Spymaster's Lady

Someone asked how Grey reacted to Annique getting her sight back. The first time he saw he with her eyes working, was he startled?
Or what?

This is an out-take from the working document of The Spymaster's Lady.
(Annique is called Anneka in this draft.)
This bit of story, in Grey's POV, didn't make it into the final draft.


***

Doyle's smuggler contacts passed word that Anneka would be landed in Dover. She was easy enough to spot on the docks. But he was expecting a blind woman. She wasn't blind.

Grey stood in the shadow of a tavern doorway and studied her. Her eyes were definitely working. It was Anneka Villiers he was dealing with, so he had to ask himself if he could possibly, possibly have been wrong about her eyes.

But no one on earth can control the dilation of the pupils. She'd been blind.

More than that, today a kind of wonder clung to her that said the light of her eyes had been taken and returned to her. She looked from coiled ropes to the peeling, rocking boats to a herring gull perched on a bollard and collected the sights into herself like a farm girl putting eggs carefully into a basket.

In the middle of all that noisy, fish-filled squalor, she stood and grinned. Her face transformed itself to the cheeky, blazingly-alive Gypsy boy he'd seen juggling in the town square in Bruges. The light inside her was brighter than sunlight glinting off the sea. For the first time he realized how shadowed she'd been the whole time he'd known her by fear and exhaustion and blindness.

Was she carrying the plans? He didn't see how. He'd bet she wasn't carting a spare handkerchief under that hideous dress. Too bad. It would have been easier for both of them if she'd had the plans on her.

She pulled a shabby black scarf around her countrywoman dress and started into town. It was the first mistake he'd ever seen her make, that clothing. Nothing on earth could make her look a farm girl.

She walked like a dancer through the filthy streets. Like a fire flickering. None of the sailors lounging along the quays or on the doorsteps of brothels called after her. They'd buy a black-haired Irish whore tonight and dream about Anneka, but not one of them thought Anneka's quality was within his reach.

The next hour was busy. He wasn't the only man waiting for her at the dock. Somebody else had been alerted by the same smugglers. There were rats on her trail. He set his men to picking 'em off as soon as they showed themselves. But he had only three agents with him and God knew how many people were after Anneka Villiers this warm fall afternoon. She didn't spot them herself for a while, too busy enjoying life to be properly careful of it.

She was in the market, smiling at some oranges, when she noticed the cut-throat who'd been shadowing her for a block and a half. It was pure joy to watch her slide into the crowd, smooth as slicing water, and vanish.

He sent Fletcher to deal with yet another thug who was lurking among the chicken coops and he took off after Anneka.

He was in time. Barely.

She was cornered in an alley, squared off against five times her fighting weight. Duval and two of his bully boys. When he got there, she'd reduced one Frenchman to a whimpering welter of blood. She was having less luck poking a hole in Henri. She couldn't get close. The Frenchman had a reach like an ape.

So he took care of Henri for her. He didn't break his neck. Anneka kept leaving the bastard alive for some reason and it seemed polite to defer to her judgement. All he did was bounce him off a wall and, hoped, crack one of his shoulders. Then Anneka put a knife into Duval – his arm, not his throat. That was enough to send the pack scurrying.

She sagged against the wall, breathing hard, pale as parchment. If he'd come into that alleyway five minutes later ... the thought of her, bleeding her life out in this dim, ugly squalor, hit like a body blow. She was game enough, and a clever fighter, but she lacked edge. He clenched his hands into fists to stop them shaking.

If she were his agent, he wouldn't let her off the front steps without a backup.
*****