Music Hath

Jerusalema

Haven't though about this one in a bit, but it cheered me up today.

Lyrics in translation here.

Jerusalem

x 2

Jerusalem, my home.

Rescue me,

Join me,

Don't leave me here!

 

x 2

My place is not here,

My kingdom is not here,

Rescue me!

Come with me!

 

Save me, save me, save me,

Don't leave me here,

Save me, save me, save me,

Don't leave me here!

 

My place is not here,

My kingdom is not here,

Rescue me!

Come with me!

 

Save me, save me, save me,

Don't leave me here,

Save me, save me, save me,

Don't leave me here!

 

Thanks! ❤
thanked 1143 times

Precizați site-ul sursă, dacă preluați traducerile mele. Merci!
Share music and kindness! :)

Submitted by Super Girl on Tue, 29/09/2020 - 10:50

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/jerusalema-jerusalem.html-0

Whatever gods there be

I'm thinking tonight about how characters deal with the acquisition and use of immense magical power.

How do you write this?

Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs, Nalini Singh, and Charlaine Harris handle this by giving other characters lesser but still important powers. The mucho powerful character is part of a continuum. There's shared experience and a knowledge base. There are systems in place.

Often their power arises from discipline, work, study, diligent effort. The character's attitude toward power is signalled by a history of deliberately building that power. They're not so much conflicted. The character gets a magic sword because they've
trained in swordfighting since childhood.

This is Iron Man's power arc or Batman's. Not Spiderman's. You may still get reconsideration of motive and responsibility in use of power, but it's late in the arc.

Often characters develop new abilities in immediate response to threat. The action separates acquisition of new power from a later intellectual exploration and emotional response to it. The emotional response may be explored in scenes of relative quiet with a trusted advisor.

But the internal response is explored. In an earlier posting I looked at a book where the two protagonists are destined to in some way become an abstract universal constant.
Like becoming Pi or E=MC².
This sounds uncomfortable and destructive to a sense of self,
but we don't see the emotional and intellectual internal fallout in the characters as they grow and change.

The author leaves the story before the characters get more than a taste of their universal constant-hood. The author is not looking at that aspect of the story. We don't take step into the apotheosis because is simply not the author's intent.

How is this handled? How well does this work?

I feel as if  the author deliberately moves the story slightly into mythos mode. Into traditional storytelling. Eastern European Folk tales and American Indian Folk tales show surreal illogic of character motivation. There's virtually no internals and self examination.

I'll have to reread Zelazny's Lord of Light and see how he handles this.

How else?

Well, there's a magical child growing up to be a more-than-human avatar in Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series. Two of them, in fact.

We got Bran who is the Pendragon, son of King Arthur. He's a minor character with magic. 
How does he feel about all this?
We don't see deeply into his POV so we're not sure.

This works okaybecause this is a tertiary character. And the author responsibly tidies his story neatly away in the end. In the series farewell scene, we see Bran renounce his potential for magical power. He will be a vanilla human to do human work in the world. 

In a couple hundred words Cooper shows us what's been going on in Bran's mind the whole time. It makes an emotionally satisfying wrap up and we didn't have to overbuild a minor character to look at this.

Will Stanton is the more interesting character problem.

Eleven-year-old Will learns he's one of the Old Ones — human incarnations of magic, born to save the world from a rising evil. In four books we see him sweat and suffer and fear his way to agency and power. His internal growth from boy to a powerful adult in a kid's body is convincing and, in many ways, tragic.

The author shows Will knowing and regretting the distance that opens between him and his family and friends. At what point does he cease to become a human boy? Some good internals there.

***

Romance genre studies human emotion. What do the protagonists feel? Authors flay it out on the dissecting table for all to see. They build the plot structure to reveal those feelings. They stud the page with internals and emotional conflict.

Mostly Romance explores the love relationship and at least one emotional conflict. It's interesting to look at magical power as the emotional conflict
Lots to think on.

 

       

Godlike Powers and the Young Protagonist

I read Middlegame by Seanan McGuire over these last few days and enjoyed it. An intricate book with good and interesting worldbuilding. Fantasy action adventure -- is that a thing? Mythos roadtrip?
Interesting, anyway. It's set partly in Berkeley.

Further thoughts:
The protagonists are enduring and brave. Appealing. I like them and want to read them.
Tunnelling down into the book in an analytic manner, though, the two protagonists feel lacking in agency. In part this is because they are children for some of the book.
But I find them oddly incurious about the magic they work.
Other people bestow magic upon them. Others give or withhold knowledge, lie to them, manipulate them emotionally, menace them, rescue them and tell them where to go and what to do. 

There is a flavor of  European folk tale about the storytelling. The simplified motivation and characterization that is the oral tradition.
When I'm in this traditional storytelling mode I accept those ancient and honorable story conventions, and do not ask myself if illiterate woodcutter's sons and naive goose girls make good and wise kings and queens at the end.

But in contemporary urban fantasy . . .  the real world setting and conventions make me ask myself how the young adult protagonists will deal with the mantle of absolute power that's been thrust upon them.

The kindle edition of Middlegame seems pricey to me, so you might suggest your library buy it. McGuire writes several series. Rosemary and Rue is the start of the October Daye books.

Checking out library books supports funding for the library and it encourages them to buy more of your favorite authors. If you drop favorable mentions and reviews on the internet that will also support your bestie authors.

Technology and the Blog

I had a little problem with the comment aspect of my blog.

I pursued research on the net. Then I did stuff that will probably make it worse.

My actions are in the spirit of the village shaman trying a new varietal of sage in his cleansing ritual. Ya gotta have faith.

Somewhere in the middle of the Twentieth Century technology moved beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend as a whole. Outside our tiny area of specialization we're no more than chimps with socket wrenches. We bang on the metaphorical carburetor and try pumping the gas a couple times and once in a while the thing starts.

Technology is smarter than we are.

Turn and Live With the Anmals

I'm drinking a cup of coffee before dawn and listening to my recently-booted furnace wheeze into life. 

When I get up in these transition days of spring and crawl out from under the warm covers of my bed and find myself shivering, sometimes I go close the window and turn on the furnace. 

Right now I'm thinking about that one small choice. First choice of the day.

It's not that I mind shivering as a matter of principle. There's no moral imperative to stay at 70° plus or minus 4. Discomfort usefully reminds us we're living beings, not enameled birds sitting on a golden bough.

Speaking as a responsible citizen of the commonwealth of the world, it makes a lot more sense to put on a sweater and warm up the 1.76 cubic feet (on average) of a human body than to heat the 17,000 cubic feet of the main floor and basement of a house. 

I like leaving the windows open because it makes me feel part of the natural world, at least that world as expressed by this well-groomed and almost-painfully-cozy small town neighborhood.
It's not precisely "Nature is red in tooth and claw" here -- unless you count the battle of the political yard signage -- but there's sky and bird song and green stuff growing. I can close my eyes and feel a little connected to the oncoming dawn.

I heat the place for the dog. 

She's getting old. She sleeps most of the time now, sitting on the sofa, tucked up close to me. The fur of her muzzle is white. When I take her to the dog park, she mostly sits and watches the other dogs chasing back and forth. When the house cools down over the night she curls up close and circular on her dog bed. 

I turn on the heat because I want to keep her warm.
Taking care of the dog is also part of the natural world.
Humans have been doing this a long time. 

Shepherdess me, six thousand years ago, would have crunched through the new snow to check out the spring lambs in the early dawn after a chilly night. My dog would be at my heels,or leading me to any particularly vulnerable creature who'd had problems in the dark hours.

When we sat down to share breakfast I'd check her paws and pick cockleburs out of her fur. Scratch her back and fluff her fur and comb her with my fingers. Talk to her as the sun comes up.

So this morning, that was how I communed with the Natural World even in my muffled-up, still and quiet, house.
Me and the dog, man. Me and the dog.

Good Deed for the Day

 Did my good deed for the day.

I saw on my local Next Door loop that somebody had spotted a lost rabbit near me.
White bunny with b ears.

"Ah. Poor Lost Bunny" thinks I to myself.

Then I saw a rabbit in my back yard that afternoon -- white with brown ears -- and I figured I had found the bunny.

It came to my attention as it ran in and out and around and under the storage shed at the bottom of the garden,
dodging  a pack of little kids who were trying to catch it with lettuce and carrots and what turned out upon closer examination to be a parsnip.

There were eight kids,
from age nine downward,
contributed by the neighbors on both sides.

By the time I got my shoes on and collected the cat carrier and went out
there were also two fathers, two mothers, and an abuela.

So I let everybody discuss the matter at length for forty minutes or so
while the rabbit hid in the gopher holes under the storage shed

Then it was time for dinner
and everybody got dragged home
promising to come catch the rabbit tomorrow
and I was left alone with the logomorph.

I  went to sit in the grass near the storage shed and wartched the trees.
After a bit,  the bunny came out.
It was really a tame little rabbit.

The bunny ate violets
and I sang Ella Fitzgerald songs to it
(Someone to Watch Over Me and Cry Me a River mostly..

Slooowly I inched  my butt closer
song by song.
The sun began to set.

SNAP! I grabbed it
and put it in the cat carrier.

I took it to the SPCA. I was messing about in the dark and trying to figure out how to get the little bunny transferred from the cat carrier to one of the cages they have there to receive lost animals after business hours ...
one last employee saw me and came to help and took the bunny off my hands.

I hope the owners come find it.

If not, it is so beautiful and friendly I just know someone will adopt it as soon as the six day waiting period is up.

It was a good day.

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 FEEL^TM .  

-- 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. 

FEELS^TM ya know. Words with emotion attached to them. 

Because the reader is there for the FEELS^TM, 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

Viridian

 Learned a new word today:  viridian.

 

This is a bluish-green pigment consisting of hydrated chromium hydroxide or, simply, the color itself. Seems to be one of those words you find just about only in a paint box.

 

I picked it up in Jim Butcher's  Turn Coat.

I love new words.

The painting is Vincent Van Gogh's Café Terrace at Night, 1888, which the stream of time has washed ashore in Ontario.

Pigments Through the Ages tells us:

"Van Gogh used for a painting only some tubes. Never all. For his masterpiece, Night Terrace he used: Prussian blue and viridian and some carmine for the blue air and the door in the front. Yellows were only chrome lemon and for the orange he used the chrome lemon and geranium lake."

Massively impressive. His painter's pallet carried two colors of blue.

side note: viridian in 1888 contained traces of chromium oxide borate as a byproduct of production. Modern viridium doesn't, so modern fakes don't. Though I suppose art counterfeiters have caught on to that by now

Mulan and Plotting

Watched Mulan -- the live action movie, not the cartoon.
It works, and the story message is one a lot of young girls and women want to hear.

Technical weakness in the presentation of the soldiers who are closely associated with Mulan. The final group of five or six who survive to the end. The strike team.

 There's physical differentiation between them. That's good. But give them nicknames. Give them something distinctive in their outfits. Have something one of them won't eat. One whistles as he strolls around. One is anxious and wakes up with bad dreams. One tells shaggy dog stories. 

 

The movie differentiates with individual backstories, which they confide to Mulan. 

More interesting, I think, to give the revelation of backstory to the group.  The pessimist among them has one view. The optimist, the humorist, the prima donna, the playboy show who they are as they react to the same story.

We've seen this group building in a thousand war movies. Army unit, cops at the station, or criminals doing a heist become a close-knit group. Showing Mulan joining such a group would add an interesting dimension. It is a missed opportunity, I think.

 

Hollywood knows how to economically differentiate within a group.

Unheroic Protagonists

I spent today thinking about sacrifice and resolve. These are not among my strengths, unfortunately.  

I have written characters who just bubble with these virtues. Do we always write about traits we admire rather than traits we happen to have?

Anyhow, I was mulling on things like . . .

Can we write suitably upbeat stories about protagonists who are not and never will be heroic?
If we did, would those be better stories?
More honest work?
More perceptive creations?
Can we sorta compromise by writing strong and virtuous protagonists, but including ordinary weak, realistic, conflicted characters as well-regarded secondaries?

I thought about this while I was buying barbeque from Mel's here in town. I am trying to find a barbeque place.

When I lived on my mountain I had a first-rate BBQ place down the hill on a small obscure road.It was convenient to my cabin insofar as anything was convenient. It sold traditional, wholly authentic, and just whoop-de-doo good country BBQ on Friday and Saturday and Sunday.

Hhere in town Mel's didn't please me. I will feed the rest of it to the dog Mandy who is less picky. But Mel's is well regarded. Goes to show something.

I've decided we need all sorts of stories for all sorts of readers and there's no harm in writing what comes naturally even if it isn't very realistic. 

So I'll pretty much do what I want and not worry.

Biscotti

Wikipedia says

"The word biscotto, used in modern Italian to refer to a biscuit (or cookie) of any kind, originates from the medieval Latin word biscoctus, meaning "twice-cooked".  In other countries, the term "biscotti", used as a singular, refers only to the specific Italian biscuit known in Italy as cantuccio."

So now you know enough to talk intelligently about æ•biscotti.

 

I am passing along an exciting discovery I made yesterday. 

Many biscotti are disappointing because they are not crispy and hard. They are just biscotti-shaped ordinary cookies. Whole Foods, which is often excellent in the baking department, makes disappointing biscotti.
They are not cooked enough to dry them out.

Whole Foods and most of the recipes I find on the net missunderstand the whole concept of "Twice Baked."

Here's how to twice-bake Whole Foods biscotti.

Take the Whole Foods, already-cooked biscotti home
and put them on a baking sheet in a 200° F oven
for two and a half to three houses.

It's not quite "immediate quite good biscotti"
but it is "two or three hours later, quite good biscotti."

Store in a tightly sealed jar. They should last weeks.

 

This is labelled philosophizing because I find food philosophical.

    * * * * *   

 

A couple weeks ago I withdrew from Twitter and FaceBook and Word Wenches. I did this because I was getting burned out by social media.
I wasn't writing.

So I'm putting the little snippets I would normally drop into Twitter into the blog here.
It's bleeding off the urge to chatter mindlessly online.

 

.

    * * * * *   

 

 

 

 

The Equinox

Today is one of the four cardinal points of the solar year.
The Vernal Equinox

.Night balances day. Darkness balances light.

It's a good day to think about balance in life.
Also a good day to put a lighted candle in the window to delight oneself and the passers by.
Also a good day not to set the house on fire.

A Bibliography for Historical Writers

Joanna Bourne's 

Useful Bibliography for Writing Historical Language

Especially of the English Regency

General Resources:

The Oxford English Dictionary Online. https://www.oed.com/  It’s prohibitively expensive to subscribe to, but my be available through your school or city.

Partridge’s Slang and Unconventional English may be worth buying in hardback. Not online, but it’s inexpensive secondhand.

Etymology Online is a fast and accurate way to look up the origin of many words:  
https://www.etymonline.com/

Les guillotinés for a list of folks killed by the guillotine. Useful for French period names.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:French_people_executed_by_guillotine_during_the_French_Revolution

Merriam-Webster Dictionary is fast:  https://www.merriam-webster.com/  https://www.merriam-webster.com/ Many online dictionary sites are good with date of word origin.

Google Advanced Book Search will tell you whether a word or phrase occurs in your period of interest. You see it in place in the book, so it also shows how the word or phrase is used, which is especially handy. https://books.google.com/advanced_book_search

Google Ngram, to see how common a word was. This site compare your target word to all other words avilable in Google books of that year. Books NOT entered into Google will be missed.  Very rare words may be missed. 'S' and 'F' are indistinguishable breore 1800-ish. If a word only pops up once or twice, double check the title page to make certain the published date has been entered correctly.
https://books.google.com/ngrams 

Separated by a Common Language is a fine blog talking about the differences between US and UK usage.
https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/

Phrase Finder is another blog looking at origin of phrases. Good spot for info on the hard data that shoots down folk etymology.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/no-room-to-swing-a-cat.html

 

Dictionaries, Mostly

https://books.google.com/books?id=6aElzaWwzkQC

Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Giving the Derivation Source, Or Origin of Common Phrases, Allusions, and Words that Have a Tale to Tell

Ebenezer Cobham Brewer 1905

https://books.google.com/books?id=LXMKAAAAIAAJ

Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: Revised and Corrected with the Addition of Numerous Slang Phrases Collected from Tried Authorities

Francis Grose, Pierce Egan 1823

https://books.google.com/books?id=kOU_AAAAYAAJ

A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English: Abridged from the Seven-volume Work, Entitled: Slang and Its Analogues

John Stephen Farmer, William Ernest Henley 1905

There’s also a seven-volume set of this Farmer and Henley on Google Books

https://books.google.com/books?id=YBqdugEACAAJ

https://books.google.com/books?id=UZhBAAAAYAAJ

https://books.google.com/books?id=QLATAAAAQAAJ

https://books.google.com/books?id=rtN2vgAACAAJ

https://books.google.com/books?id=ZOZ3tgAACAAJ

https://books.google.com/books?id=zrATAAAAQAAJ

https://books.google.com/books?id=n5e8oAEACAAJ

https://books.google.com/books?id=D6NBAAAAYAAJ

https://books.google.com/books?id=42UPAAAAYAAJ

Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States

John Russell Bartlett  1860

https://books.google.com/books?id=z3kKAAAAIAAJ

A Dictionary of the English Language

Samuel Johnson 1755

https://books.google.com/books?id=eH1FAAAAcAAJ

English Synonyms: With Copious Illustrations and Explanations, Drawn from the Best Writers

George Crabb 1826

 

Regency Period Plays, Songs, Fiction, Letters, and Memoirs

Ursula Le Guin Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction that I mentioned in the talk.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/no-room-to-swing-a-cat.htmlhttps://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/no-room-to-swing-a-cat.html

https://books.google.com/books?id=6rdCAQAAIAAJ

The surprising adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew, king of the beggars: containing his life--a dictionary of the cant language and many entertaining particulars of that extraordinary man

Robert Goadby  1812

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20177/20177-h/20177-h.htm

John Bull: Or, The Englishman’s Fireside

George Colman  1803

https://books.google.com/books?id=Qis9AAAAYAAJ

The Universal Songster  1825

https://books.google.com/books?id=EgwyAQAAMAAJ

Letters of the Late Lord Lyttleton

William Combe  1807

https://books.google.com/books?id=r7QSYPYHHngC

Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Written During Her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa; to which are Added Poems by the Same Author. Stereotype Edition, According to the Press of Firmin Didot

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 1800

https://books.google.com/books?id=rfowj2M-XxAC

Tom & Jerry: Life in London, Or, The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq. and His Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom, in Their Rambles and Sprees Through the Metropolis

Pierce Egan 1821

https://books.google.com/books?id=9YYoAAAAYAAJ

Boxiana; Or, Sketches of Ancient and Modern Pugilism: From the days of the renowned Broughton and Slack, to the championship of Cribb

Pierce Egan 1830

https://books.google.com/books?id=0pr9jZmoLN8C

The New London Spy; Or, a Modern Twenty-four Hours Ramble Through the Great British Metropolis

John Fielding 1794

https://books.google.com/books?id=6wcmAAAAMAAJ

Ben Brace: The Last of Nelson's Agamemnons

Frederick Chamier 1840

https://books.google.com/books?id=AsgxAQAAMAAJ

Memoirs of Theobald Wolfe Tone: Written by Himself. Comprising a Complete Journal of His Negotiations to Procure the Aid of the French for the Liberation of Ireland (Volume 2 of 2)

Theobald Wolfe Tone  1827

https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/hsmith/autobiography/harry.html

The Autobiography of Sir Harry Smith

Harry Smith  1787-1860

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42078/42078-h/42078-h.htm

The Letters of Jane Austen

Jane Austen 

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8901/8901-h/8901-h.htm

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/9921/9921-h/9921-h.htm

Byron’s Letters and Journals, Volumes 1 and 2

George Gordon Byron

https://books.google.com/books?id=NrAwAAAAYAAJ

The British Minstrel, and National Melodist: A Collection of the Most Esteemed and Popular English, Scottish, and Irish Songs, Duets, Catches, Chorusses, Glees, and Comic Recitations;

1827

https://books.google.com/books?id=UghXAAAAcAAJ

The Vindictive Man: a Comedy, in Five Acts

Thomas Holcroft  1807

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25063/25063-h/25063-h.htm

The Beggar’s Opera

John Gay  1728

https://books.google.com/books?id=1LQyAQAAMAAJ

The Clubs of London: With Anecdotes of Their Members, Sketches of Character, and Conversations

Charles Marsh 1828

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433066581178&view=image&seq=7

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=yale.39002040279656&view=image&seq=9

Gleanings in Europe, Volumes 1 and 2

James Fenimore Cooper 1837

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55998

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60440

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57060

London Labour and the London Poor, Volumes 1, 2 and 3

Henry Mayhew 1840s

https://books.google.com/books?id=rpO81uJPAu0C

More Mornings at Bow Street: A New Collection of Humorous and Entertaining Reports

John Wight 1827

https://books.google.com/books?id=MpkLAQAAIAAJ[jb1] 

The New bon ton magazine, or Telescope of the times

1818

https://books.google.com/books?id=-UVKAAAAIAAJ

The Sportsman's Calendar: Or, Monthly Remembrancer of Field Diversions

John Lawrence  1818

https://books.google.com/books?id=j_QIAAAAQAAJ

Thoughts upon hare and fox hunting, in a series of letters

Peter Beckford 1797

https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Physical_View/Z9kHkAEACAAJ?hl=en

https://books.google.com/books?id=tY2QBWmRYjwC[jb2] [jb3] 

A Physical View of Man and Woman in a State of Marriage: With Anatomical Engravings, Volumes 1 and 2

 M. de Lignac  (trans. Louis François Luc) 1798

https://books.google.com/book?id=wqguAAAAMAAJ

Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolkd

John Gobson Lockhart  1821

https://books.google.com/books?id=EgwyAQAAMAAJ&num=10

Letters of the Late Lord Lyttleton

William Combe  1807

https://books.google.com/books?id=r7QSYPYHHngC&num=10

Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Written During Her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa; to which are Added Poems by the Same Author. Stereotype Edition, According to the Press of Firmin Didot  1800

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25305

The memoirs of Fanny Hill

John Cleland  1749

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6593/6593-h/6593-h.htm

The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling

Henry Fielding 1740

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/521

The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe  1719

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.

Joanna on Oranges ... and Lemons

Here's an old post of mine, pulled up from Word Wenches, because it's rainy and I am tired tired tired of the scene I'm working on over at the Work In Progress.

 

Oranges and Lemons, Say the Bells of St. Clements

 

Oranges and Lemons,
Ring ye bells at St. Clements.
When will you pay me,
Ring ye Bells at ye Old Bailey.
When I am Rich,
Ring ye Bells at Fleetditch.
     Tradtional Counting Rhyme 

There are any number of interpretations as to what this all means, but I see it mostly a reminder that poetry does not necessarily have to make sense.


Those of us with a keen interest in botany will have noticed that oranges -- not to mention lemons -- don't thrive in the British climate.  Well, maybe down in south Devon where hopeful souls sometimes plant palm trees.  But citrus isn't plucked off the tree on Hampstead Heath or in the Welsh mountains.

What is an orange doing in an old, old counting rhyme?
Not to mention lemons.

How come?
Because the Regency and Georgian folks imported their oranges (and lemons) enthusiastically or grew them enthusiastically in greenhouses. 

You can see the rest of this post at:

http://wordwenches.typepad.com/word_wenches/2013/09/oranges-and-lemons.html

Reading Order

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

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

 

So. Publication order is:
 

Spymaster’s Lady  

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

 

The chronological order of events is:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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