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

The Dark Side

I just wanted to confess that I've sent notifications to everyone who ever sent me an e-mail, telling them FORBIDDEN ROSE is out.

Also to everybody who ever friended me on facebook. 

And probably to total strangers.

I have gone over to the Dark Side.
Just letting you know.

And back to some questions

attribution glassandmirror

In the continuing, I-will-answer-stuff mode, let me pull up a few more questions and, like, answer them.

These questions are about the Spymaster fictive universe.

The next lot of questions will be about Forbidden Rose, but I want to wait a while until some folks have read it.

17) Do you have a formal background in history?

At Borders Books. . . the interview

Here I am at Borders . . . doing an interview and answering all kinds of interesting questions . . 

 FORBIDDEN ROSE

Setting: Paris. But this is the Paris of the Terror. In France it was Year Two of the Revolution, the month of Thermidor. For the rest of us, it was July 1794.

Subgenre: Historical Romance.

Hero:  William Doyle, spy.

They call him the best field agent in Europe. He’s not the enemy you’d pick if you have any choice in the matter. Unfortunately for Maggie, he’s in France hunting de Fleurignacs.


. . .  this continues at the Borders Books where I wax eloquent in the comment trail.

Here

An interveiw over on Romance Dish

I've been puzzled for a couple of years now about what to say I'm writing. Can I call it Historical Romance Adventure? Historical, because we're set anywhere between the French Revolution and Waterloo -- and isn't that an exciting piece of history? Romance, because every book is, at its heart, the story of a man and a woman finding each other.

But I also want to write an adventure. We talk about strong heroines -- did I say I'm a big fan of strong heroines? -- I want my strong heroine to get out there and do great deeds.

More at the Dish.  Here

Old Family Photos

For Memorial Day.

That's my father in the middle, with two of his brothers-in-law.  WWII.  He was a medical doctor on an LST.

They all three survived the war, though all three were badly wounded.

ETA:  Answering a question elsewhere . . . No.  That's not my mother.  That's my Aunt Doc.  And she's not terribly short.  The man in the middle -- my father -- is six foot, four inches tall which is why Aunt Doc looks short. 

Technical Topics -- POV and Simplicity of Language

I was thinking the other day about elaboration of prose and simplicity of prose. Thinking about it in terms of what I'm doing in my own manuscript.

Overall, I'm aiming for straightforward, spare, stripped-down prose. The goal of general narrative is to be invisible to the reader. The story goes along just talking. Just building a picture. This ordinary narrative -- for me -- shouldn't be something that's going to make the reader stop and look at the writing, either to remark on its cleverness nor, I hope, to wince at how awkward it is.

It's not easy to write short and simple. Mark Twain , famously, is said to have written to a friend, "If I had more time this would be a shorter letter."

And then we got POV.

When we're in Point of View, we should sound like the character. When we do that, the reader is maybe going to notice the taste and tenor of the language itself.

To take two extreme cases:

My simplest, youngest folks should have a great directness to their experience. A concrete observation of the world. Dead simple language.

An example of the prose I'm thinking about would be this dialect passage from Steinbeck's 'Grapes of Wrath'. Here, the POV character demands the simplest of expression.

And then the raids -- the swoop of armed deputies on the squatters' camps. Get out. Department of Health orders. This camp is a menace to health.

Where we gonna go?

That's none of our business. We got orders to get you out of here. In half an hour we set fire to the camp.

They's typhoid down the line. You want ta spread it all over?

We got orders to get you out of here. Now get! In half an hour we burn the camp.

In half an hour the smoke of paper houses, of weed-thatched huts¸ rising to the sky, and the people in their cars, rolling over the highways, looking for another Hooverville.

For other characters, we try for more mannered speech. Elaborate and complicated speech. For an extreme example, look at Bramah's 'Golden Hours'.

"Your insight is clear and unbiased," said the gracious Sovereign. "But however entrancing it is to wander unchecked through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?"

I love this clever complexity, this joyous sport with the language. I want to put something like this in the mouth of the characters.

It is immensely hard to write plainly. To catch the immediacy of an experience unfiltered by complex thought. It's also blindingly hard to write the speech of a complicated, eloquent character where every word comes to us already weighed in a discerning mind.

Hardest of all to slip from one voice to another as we change POVs. Just enough to make a poor innocent writer want to take up knitting or something.

Writin' slow

Can I tell you what annoys me?

Well, of course I can.  You're not going to jump through the screen and throttle me, after all.

Before I tell you what annoys me, can I just say 

FORBIDDEN ROSE 

IS OUT IN STORES AND YOU SHOULD DROP THE SPATULA AND LET THE HOTDOGS BURN ON THE GRILL AND GO BUY IT

!!

Okay.  Got that out of my system.

Forbidden Rose is not actually 'out' yet.  That is, it has not yet let down its hair and made an official bow to society and gone to its first ball and got permission from the patronesses of Almacks to dance the waltz.

It's more like Forbidden Rose is leaning over the stair rail and sneaks down to dance with her cousin and everybody smiles nostalgically and looks the other way.  That kinda 'out'.

So Forbidden is in some stores, but not in others, depending on who was stocking the shelves and whether 'release date' means anything to them or whether they are just wild-eyed anarchists.  Forbidden won't really be 'out' till Tuesday.

So you can go ahead and carefully deal with the Memorial Day hotdogs if you want.

But I digress.

Anyhow . . .
I was talking about what annoyed me.  I mean, besides leaf-blowers on Saturday morning and heavy perfume in places where I am trying to enjoy a meal and squirrels.


I am annoyed by people who write with the speed of lightning.

That Woman in a Red Dress

Those of you familiar with my 'cover obsession' will remember that I pointed out a certain similarity between the dress and cover model of Forbidden Rose and that of Susan Enoch's stepback for Before the Scandal.

I mentioned that here.

You probably have to click on the picture to see the detail.

More about covers below the fold --

Talking about the name, Annique

Excellent commenter mst3kharris brought up the point --

I'm curious: Annique's name is being spelled as Anneka. Was the spelling changed for the new edition? Also, does this mean I've been pronouncing Annique's name wrong all this time? I've always thought of it as like unique but with Ann.


I'm taking it out of the comment trail and posting it here because the answer got long.

Word Wenches

I'm guesting today over at Word Wenches, with an interview and everything.  It's all here.

The 'everything' includes a chance to win a copy of Forbidden Rose.

Word Wenches is where all the cool kids hang out.




Do you want to read more about Forbidden Rose?  My webpage is here.

Link of the Day

Courtesy of SBTB  . . .  Bronte Sisters Action Figures

  Here

Stuff for writers

Some links to stuff for writers.  I don't get a penny for this btw.

The shirt is  here

I put a few more below the cut

Delights from Abroad

You know how you see a photo of yourself and you say, "Could that possibly be me?"
I have somewhat the same reaction to seeing the manuscript I write being put inside a cover.
This is even more true when the book is in translation.
There is much, 'Can that possibly be . . .  ?' going on in my head.

Here is The Spymaster's Lady.  It's in Russian once again, and they seem to have given me a new cover. 

I like this cover and I liked the other Russian cover, which  I have put below the fold at the bottom because I am at the mercy of my academic training and am  unable to resist footnotes.

 Lovely covers, both of them.

Yeah!  Russian Romance industry.

The Mystery of a Courtesan

The cover blurb begins --
(I must say I find the translation intriguing.  It is probably not as exciting in the original.)

British secret service did not manage to catch the mysterious Annick Villiers nicknamed fox, which is easily transforms from a naive young provincial aristocrat in a brilliant, from the seductive courtesan in the boy-bum ...



Or:
Британским секретным службам никак не удается поймать таинственную Анник Вильерс по прозвищу Лисенок, которая легко перевоплощается из наивной молодой провинциалки в блестящую аристократку, из соблазнительной куртизанки в мальчишку-бродягу…

ETA:  My name is smaller on this cover.  Can I obsess about this?  It seems a small obsession and it's all in an alphabet I can't read.

The French cover has appeared, though not on Amazon.fr. 

I do not have a copy of this French translation.
Alas.

I am awaiting it eagerly.

So here is the French cover.

It is at Amazon.fr here.  just in case you read French.

I have said -- actually I have said this somewhat often -- that I do not understand marketing. 

Let me now just add that I really do not understand French marketing.

Brenda Novak auction

The Brenda Novak auction for 2010 is up and running. See it here. and here.
This is a very good cause and raises thousands of dollars every year for diabetes research -- something near and dear to my heart.

There are critiques being offered by various writers -- Eric Van Lustbauer, Candice Hern, Cathy Clamp, Madeline Hunter, Jim C. Hines, and by agents such as Jessica Faust and Christine Whittjohn and editors like Sauna Summers and Evil Editor.  (Search 'critique')

Lots of ARCs and signed books up for bid.  Diana Gabaldon.  Sue Grafton.
 Go here.
And you can get your name in a book! (How cool is that?) 
(search 'name')

ETA --

I've pulled the photos out of the blog posting, because I'm not sure of my copyright usage here.
I feel ok during the auction, but with works of art I don't want to infringe on the artist's rights.

Forbidden Rose getting closer

One  month till Forbidden Rose hits the shelves.
Just saying.

You can read more about Forbidden Rose on its webpage.  Here.

The cover is actually going to have more rose on it than this one on the left shows. 

I think. 

More like this:

See how the rose kinda went like Topsy and growed?
I don't have any of these books yet.  I think they have not been printed.  Cutting it close, are they not?

 In any case, showing a nonchalant acceptance of theoretical merchandise, you can buy it here. 

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.

And We Got Yet More Questions

Continuing with the questions that have piled up a bit . . .

15)  ---Are there any elements in the SPYMASTER's LADY that you wished you'd done differently?

There are quite a few aspects of my life I wish I'd done differently.  For instance, I wish I'd sold PHP Healthcare stock a few weeks earlier than I did. 

And I made this dish last night  - Fusilli Donna -- from a recipie my friend Donna gave me.  I forgot to add the 1T vinegar, which would have improved everything.  And there was the matter of forgetting to blanch the fresh spinach before I added it, though I coped with that fairly well.  In any case, it was very good the way it came out.

So it would be strange indeed if I did not look at the galley of a book and say -- Dang!  (using the exclamation point,)  I should have done that dfferently.

There's lots of places in Spymaster's Lady, (and in Lord and Spymaster and in Forbidden Rose,)  where I'd love to go in and jiggle with the writing. Make it clearer. Make it sweeter.

But if I were to come up with one particular place I'd change . . .

There's this scene in TSL where Grey has come up on Annique on the road out of Dover.  Grey, who's being 'Robert Fordham', insists on going with her to London.

Originally, I had four or five paragraphs of Annique's internals. We see her thoughts while she decides it's safer to take Robert with her than to leave him behind, him wondering about who she is and maybe going to the authorities.

In the earlier drafts, I show her adding up the things 'Robert' knows about her -- he knows she's French; she's illegally in England; she's a skilled fighter; she throws knives like a circus performer; and she has these shifty Frenchmen chasing her.
I have her thinking this over.
What am I going to do about this? Anneka ponders in a French accent. (trans. Oh la la, I am le screwed.)

She decides that no lie is going to explain all these various lethal skills.  I mean -- What?  She's escaped from a sideshow and has the lion tamer after her?  Keeping mum on the situation gets more and more suspicious.

So -- remember this was all in the draft -- I have Anneka decide to reveal about one tenth of the truth and say she's a retired spy because there's nothing like spreading a flimsy camo net of truth over the Big Knobbly Important Stuff you're planning to hide.

But this explanatory internal was long and boring and slow moving and . . . well . . . internal and I was up to the gizzard in internals along about then.  So I jerked it all out of the final draft.

I figgered it'd be fairly obvious to the reader why Anneka has to make some explanation of who and what she is and if the reader can come up with a more plausible story to account for all that then the reader's a better plotter than I am and probably a writer herself and she will be sympathetic.

But it was all not so much obvious to the reader, apparently.
My bad.

Looking back, I should have left in the part where I explained Anneka's reasons for being so 'open' with Robert, because we are not supposed to leave the reader scratching her head about such stuff and saying 'That was stupid of Anneka', when actually it was rather smart, IMO or at least that was the hopeful intention.

16) --You did an outstanding job with both sensory details and sexual tension -- were these elements you worked in naturally or reviewed the ms to find opportunities to ratchet up?

To which I reply -- Oh wow. Thank you so much.

I write in layers. That is, I make many drafts and go back to add detail. Every part of the manuscript is much niggled over.

But if we're looking at adding stuff at the level of scene, the love story -- the sensuality and sex -- is the core of what I was writing. That's what the 'story' is about. Those relationship scenes went in early. The rest of the pacing was moved around to accommodate them.

The 'action plotting' about drove me crazy, but the Annique/Grey interaction was pure pleasure to write. Came very naturally. 

the photo of old paper is cc attrib glass and mirorr

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.