Free copy of Forbidden Rose

You want a copy of Forbidden Rose?  You haven't bought one yet?

Here's your chance.

Fellow historical writer Deniz -- she does YA -- is giving away a copy of Forbidden Rose.  Here.

YEAH!!!





Drop a comment by her blog to enter, then read down the page a bit till you encounter 'sahlep'.

Sahlep is not a magical kingdom located in the Mountains of the Moon or a Rock Star from Israel or a breed of long, slinky dog.  It's an ancient beverage made of orchid flour, still served in Turkey.

It's so ancient, it was a predecessor to coffee and chocolate in Europe.  As 'saloop' it was popular in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century coffee houses in England. 

The wiki, here, explodes the notion that the name means 'fox testicles', which takes somewhat of the fun out of it, do you not think?

Outtake from Forbidden Rose

You may or may not know this;
I spent a lot of time agonizing over the beginning of Forbidden Rose.

I rewrote the beginning a dozen times.
I'm still not sure I made the right choice. *g*


Here's  a beginning I wrote and discarded and put in and took out and put in and took out.
It was almost Chapter One.
Instead, it went in the waste basket.  Such is the life of a writing snippet.

******* beginning of outtake *****

France was a black line cut between the starred sky and the sea.  They were killing each other in Paris and at convenient spots in the countryside, all in the name of Revolution.  Doing it in imaginative ways.  The gates of hell were open and all the devils were loose.

If there'd been a general increase in liberty, equality, and fraternity, he hadn't seen it.

William Doyle took a wood cask from a smuggler, rested it on the gunnels to shift his grip, and lowered it over the side, down to outstretched hands.  The next cask was ready when he turned back.

Everyone worked in practiced, heavy-breathing silence, in the dark.  The rhythm to it came half came from these Devon smugglers, who knew about heaving bales and boxes from one boat to another, half was the sea itself.  The sea lifted the French fishing boat towards him and drew it back, then lifted again.  He and a barely-seen Frenchman timed the waves and passed cargo when the ships knocked sides, clapping against the bags of sand that kept the hulls silent.

This cargo was Assam tea leaves, pressed into hard blocks and packed tight in waterproof kegs.  It'd be poured into teacups in the Faubourg St. Germaine by the end of the week.  He didn't expect to get to Paris half that quick himself. 

If he ever got to Paris.  That was looking damned problematic.

His own personal cargo was the two crates over there, bobbing in the French boat. Counterfeit notes.  Troublesome stuff.  Then there was the boy, also troublesome.  He was starboard, puking his guts over the side as he'd been doing with some regularity, every ten minutes, since they left Dover.

Almost made him feel sorry for the murderous little animal.  Almost, not quite.
   
This was just a duckfooted mess of a job.

Doyle hefted the last keg, grunted, and handed it down.  Soft-footed on the deck, whispering, the French smugglers scuttled about, tying and securing and covering illegal cargo with canvas and fish.

The transfer was complete. Time to get a move on. The boy crouched with his back to the forecastle, pale gray in the flicker of the dark lantern, sullen as a dirty rag. 

He strolled over and nudged all that suffering with his boot.

"You."  He spoke French.  The boy understood just fine. "Get the bags." 

No response.   

"Or stay on the boat.  They'll drop you off somewhere.  Mid-Channel, probably."

The boy, Hawker, got to his feet and staggered off to get their luggage.

***** end of outtake *****


I kinda regretted not using this.

Now, just in the interests of full disclosure and maybe somebody is interested in how this all works, down below the cut I've put up what this little segment actually looked like when I set it aside.
Which is to say, with all the notes I make for myself still in. 

My Dog

Could anyone possibly be interested?

Me.  My dog.  My coffee.


Here we are, me and Brittany. She's a ... can I call her All American Dog? We think she's collie and husky.

But maybe it's more complex than that.
It's a wise dog that knows its own father.



I drink coffee in the morning and make up a pot of tea for the late afternoon.

When I'm working at home, Brittany is right there keeping me company while I type away.

Here, you see us having the day's first cuppa. That's Brittany just checking it out for me. Note the 'walking ware' -- those are classic cups.

Find more, much more, incredibly extended more,  here

Walking Sticks and Canes

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

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

This is so wonderful.

I am so delighted.

Word Wenches is THE cool blogplace to be.

And I am there.  From now on.

Yes!!






*cough*

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

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

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


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


More here

What you need . . .

I was writing along elsewhere, talking about what you need to get a first novel published.


The question was brought up as to whether anyone could work like the devil and learn lots of craft and become a wiriter . . .  or if it's a gift that you either have or don't have.
In short, a fairly standard discussion that comes up a lot.

I brought my posting back with me from that site, stuffed in me cheek pounch.


ISTM you need a couple three things -- I'm coming up with a list of six -- to be successful in fiction.

Three of these imperatives are out of your hands.
Three, you can maybe do something about.

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.