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.
*****

Contract

Sold both Anneka and Jessamyn in a two-book deal to Berkley.

Yeah!
This is so cool.

Superagent has been unceasingly supportive.
"It takes a while."
Well ... yes.
I have not gone mad.

In case there is someone in the outer reaches of Alaska who hasn't heard me mewling about this ...

Once upon a time, I got myself an agent and she began the submission process for ANNEKA.

While she was doing this, I'd keep writing on the next ms -- JESSAMYN -- and try not to think about the business of selling.

I worried about ANNEKA's inherent marketing problems,
(it's set in France, for instance, and its got that plot twist,)
and whether it would be publishable at all. So I figgered I'd need to finish and sell JESSAMYN and maybe another historical Romance ms before I could bring ANNEKA back into play.

Then I polished ANNEKA, last time polish, and Superagent sent it out on December 16, to Berkley.

Christmas intervenes.*

January 11, I'm typing away in the hallowed halls of Panera, where I can work, as opposed to being at home where I keep doing things like walking the dog or washing the floor in the kitchen.

Phone call. Could I pick up orange juice on the way home? Oh. And the agent called and left a message on the answering machine. She asked if you'd call her back.

So I headed home to call her back.
Hoping.

And I got better than I'd hoped for, by golly.
Not just ANNEKA sold.
The 'next book' sold. Not even on proposal. Just .... sold.

Gee.

We discussed stuff like the dates I would have to turn in revisions of ANNEKA, when the synopsis and three chapters for JESSAMYN would be due, when the completed ms of JESSAMYN could be ready.
(Oh my.)

The agent wanted dates I would be happy with that more or less matched what the publisher was likely to need.

I think agents must lead difficult lives.

We did a quick tour of advances and royalties. Advances are more and more coming to be paid in three parts. Less advance money comes up front on acceptance.

le sigh


Then she turned her charger and headed back into the fray, off to finish the negotiation, my favor streaming in the wind behind her.

Yesterday, I got a call from Superagent saying the deal is done. It'll be a while before the contract arrives, but basically, it's done.

The revision process begins.

(Exaltation and fear.)


So,
-- I have to do revisions on ANNEKA.
-- Write a synopsis for JESSAMYN.
-- Finish the bloody JESSAMYN ms.
-- And I need titles for ANNEKA and JESSAMYN.

If I could think up titles for manuscripts I wouldn't calling them after the female protagonist.



JoB

* Which is why I wonder about this received wisdom of not submitting over the Christmas Season. Maybe everyone refrains from submitting and that means it's a good time ...

Insert chapter

Finished the insert chapter of the party scene today. It's now Chapter Twelve.

I went streaming onward through the draft, adding a word here and there to reconcile old draft with the new and simplified plot structure. We're cool up to Chapter Sixteen (new.) Stopped there for today.

Jess shows up at Meeks Street. Some fact mods. I'll have to shift and shade some of the emotion too, I think.

Ran into a member of my crit circle at Paneras. Small towns ...

Oh. And I'm recycling Anneka's boyfriend for Jessamyn. This lets me salvage some writing. Yeah!

Now with Anneka I originally wrote it that she had this idealistic young Dutch soldier boyfriend and the two of them snuggled madly in a horse barn under the moon when they were sixteen. All very tragic, him getting killed.

Which left my Anneka NOT a virgin when she meets Grey, but with no troublesome boyfriend hanging about, which is what I wanted, virginity being so bloody cliched.

But when I tried to make this play with the spy setup
ARRGGHH
Sauvignon and Soulier would have had her EARS if she'd done anything that stupid --
army camps being impossible for even the chancy contraceptives of the era
and pregancy being about a surefire result of unprotected sex over a period of months.
Which would leave Anneka out in the field with no way of getting an abortion except among the whores.

I have to be at least a little realistic about this.
So -- no Dutch boyfriend in the horse barn.

But with slight changes he will do very well for Jessamyn, who needs to dispose of HER virginity, virginity being such a cliche and all.

But that left me with poor Anneka, of course, being all virgin.

I piddled around with changing the boyfriend to Rene and then killing HIM off -- which was some more nice writing that I can't use AT ALL now. But that never really worked with the spy setup either.
Nobody would pair a a lively, warm-hearted 16-year-old up with a boyfriend-handler and then send them to work hundreds of miles apart.

And I couldn't see Lucille sanctioning this. Lucille's always thinking she might send Anneka home if the war ever dies down.
She's also keeping Anneka ineligible for courtesan duty, not wanting her to take that professional route. So she'd watch the girl like a hawk when she wasn't in the field.

Just too many reasons Anneka wouldn't have casually misplaced her virginity.
She's not that kind of woman.

And I absolutely refuse to have Anneka raped.

Oh well. I made her a very uninnocent virgin. No coyness underlies the plot anywhere.

And I picked up the barn scene whole and recycled it, which is tidy of me.

Technical Topic -- Query Letter

La Belle Americaine was asking about query letters. I've pulled out mine and set it here for whatever interest it might be.

Went something like ...


Dear Agent,

[60 or 80 words of why I went to this agent. Basically -- who she represented that I admired.]

I've just completed the manuscript of a 120,000-word, Regency Historical, Anneka. May I submit three chapters and synopsis, or the entire manuscript for your consideration?

[100 words on my publication credits.]

Anneka is the story of Grey, spy master of the British, and Anneka, sneaky, experienced agent of the French. They disagree about politics, philosophy, national pride, and how to brew coffee, but they agree on one thing – Napoleon's invasion fleet, lurking in Boulogne harbor, must not sail.

Sometimes at odds, sometimes forced into an unwilling alliance, Anneka and Grey flee rogue French agents, dodge knives, argue moral choices, pluck bullets out of secondary characters, play subtle spy games, and gradually, inevitably, fall in love. Grey must discover that Anneka's cunning, deadly competence rests upon idealism and rock-solid integrity. Anneka must learn to trust Grey, even as he makes her his prisoner ... even as he betrays her. In the end, they are both willing to sacrifice life, and their life's work, to stay together. Anneka makes the fateful choice between Grey and her loyalty to France.

I see their relationship as Bogey-and-Bacall – the tough, tender, sexually-charged mating dance of a man with a duty and a woman with a mission.

How do enemy spies make love? ... Very carefully.

Please let me know if you would be interested in seeing Anneka.

Yours truly,

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

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.

ANNEKA Line Edit -- Day Fifteen

I've finished the line edits.
Over the weekend, I'll review them.
With luck, I'll send them off to New York on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning.

Today, I am, (among other things,) doing taxes.

Doing taxes makes my stomach ache.
Worrying about whether the line edits of ANNEKA will solve the Big Plausibility Problem makes my stomach ache.
Worrying about the opening of JESS makes my stomach hurt.
I am one unhappy puppy.

Last night I did a 'compare versions' on ANNEKA.
My, my, what a lot of little red additions I have made.

The big question hangs in the air -- Did I solve my major problem?
Did I make the big transition in the middle of the story?
Did I solve the Big Plausibility Problem?

We will see what the editor says.

In other news ...
I must rework the very beginning of JESSAMYN to make the protagonists more accessible.

I have pulled my Jo Beverley down from the shelf to leaf through the openings. How does she put the reader in touch with the characters? She's very introspective. Very much 'in voice'. This is what I need.

Out-take from Spymaster's Lady

A bit of old draft attrib photostever

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

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


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

****

Covent Garden

ETA this first paragraph.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

********

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

"Yes," Robert said.

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

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

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

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

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

"I see."

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

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

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

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

"A weapon?"

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

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

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

"Nobody wants that."

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

"Don't be silly, Anneka." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Line Edits of Anneka -- Day Two

Worked through the real simple word changes up to page 267.

Solved two or three of the little questions.
Did some work on two of the big clarify-what's-going-on problems.

Progress.

I still don't know what I'm going to call Anneka. It's hard to think of another name.

Inserting a chapter

I'm repeating myself, but the polishing of Anneka was just about the most valuable exercise I could have done. It's given me insight by the bucketful in dealing with Jessamyn.

I'm worked my way through completed ms, making small but significant changes. Simplifying. Improving the narrative drive of the suspense plot. Some places I'm working these small changes through to final form. Some laces I've just left blue notes and I'll clean it up when I do the final substantive draft.

Today I began inserting a chapter of new material after Sebastian in Jess's Office and the Adrian-and-Sebastian-search-Jess'-room scene. That's where I insert the chapter about Jessamyn not being a virgin that I stole from Anneka -- who ended up being a virgin, poor chick, because her nasty spy bosses didn't like her boinking all and sundry.

Not sure what I'll do with the rest of this new chapter It'll come to me tonight maybe.


Superagent got the ms I mailed on Dec 2.
Today.

Day 15 of Anneka polish -- done

Finished the Anneka polish about 2 o'clock.

Then sat down to print 407 pages.

(no. you don't really read this. It just shows my day.)

Add paper. Discover that printer is set for draft rather than display presentation. Figure out how to fix this which takes an incredibly long time. Print a while. Jam. Jam. Jam. Add paper. More problem with jamming. Decide to open a new ream of paper that will not be as DAMP as the opened ream. (Virginia climate) Add paper. Discover that for some reason pages 10 to 28 were never printed. Print them. Machine jams. Add paper. Reprint page 78 which has done that sticky-together bit where it comes out on two pages. Machine jams. Re-ink cartridge. Add paper. Discover that page 10 was, unfathomably, printed twice. Machine jams. Something wrong with the cartridge which involves taking it out and re-re-inking it. Add paper. Reprint page 235 which has done that sticky-together bit where it comes out on two pages. Add paper. Add paper. Add paper. Page 171 has stange shadows of letters upon it. Reprint. Machine jams. Add paper. Add paper. Add paper. Add paper. Reprint page 379 which has done that sticky-together bit where it comes out on two pages. Machine jams. Add paper. Add paper. Take entire manuscript and go through, checking to see that every page is actually there, in order, right side up and legible. Remove 11 blank pages that have wandered into the manuscript. Sit down to rest. Remember that I need a cover page and try to print it. Cannot print it because The Kid (through whose computer I must link to get to the printer) has her computer turned off. 'It's breaking up!, say's she, sounding like Scotty. Fiiiiinaly print cover page.

Look at completed manuscript. Wonder if I made the right choice of font.

It is now too late to go out and mail this puppy. Will do it tomorrow, then drop superagent a line to say it's mailed.

And so to bed.

Anneka polish Day 13

On Day 13 ... we stand .. .


91K out of 111K

83%

The final, late, desperate polishing of Anneka ... I find myself obsessing over commas.
That is probably diagnostic of the last time you should look at a draft. When you find yourself obsessing over commas, it is time to move on.
Not that that's the only thing I'm obsessing about, you understand.

Back to Anneka for a bit

The dog chewed through the sofa pillow tonight. I now have a sofa pillow with the edge chewed off. Ah. The house just gets homier every day.

I'm going to put JESSAMYN to one side for two weeks to do a quick polish of ANNEKA. We shall see.

This would make me all optimistic and productive again, except that I have an Attila the Hun of a cold.

It's cool to polish a ms you haven't looked at for a while.

It's like this -- Before I went to live in Africa, way back when, I put a lot of stuff into storage. (Actually I put a lot of stuff into storage I meant to take with me and vice versa because the moving company was staffed by cretins who mixed the boxes up.)
Anyhow, when I came back from being overseas I pulled my stuff out of the crate. I'd forgotten all these nifty things I owned. It was like being given boxes and boxes of presents by somebody who had exactly my taste.

(And, of course, I had all that toothpaste and shampoo and soap I'd meant to bring with me to Lagos.)

Picking up a manuscript after a couple months is like that. It's this real neat story, written just the way you'd write it. And you get to EDIT it.
So cool.

Reconsidering Anneka

I'm beginning to think I can work on ANNEKA a bit more. Really.

I see a way to cut about 8K words.


A friend, at Panera, bought an iced green tea, which I had never had before. Very odd. Sort of like koolaid for Martians.

More Questions

Couple more questions.


3) How long did it take you to write THE SPYMASTER'S LADY? Was it your first
manuscript?

It's not my first manuscript. I wrote a sweet Regency Romance for Avon back in the early dawn of the modern era. Then I went to work overseas and raised a couple kids and got busy writing lots of impenetrable technical non-fiction.

For years, I wrote fiction in little corners of time. I wasn't satisfied with any of it. I wanted to expand the scope of the story and I couldn't seem to do it. I have maybe four or five completed manuscripts trunked away.

Maybe I was learning my craft.
I dunnoh.

Somewhere in there I started playing with scenes that would eventually end up in the Spymaster's Lady manuscript. Worked on them a bit and didn't get far. I'd get all complicated and tangled up in plot. Put it away. Worked on some other projects.

Then in February of 2003 I got evacked out of Saudi Arabia to the US and found myself with time on my hands. I picked up the notes and bits of scenes I had in a folder for Spymaster's Lady. I liked my characters. I liked the scenes. The plot was garbage. But I could write another plot.

"Let's run with this one," I said to myself.

Eighteen months later the Spymaster's Lady manuscript was finished.
 

4) What was your journey to publication?  

As I say, I finished Spymaster's Lady in mid 2005.  It was on the shelves in July 2008.  Three years.

First came the strange and horrible process of writing a query letter and a synopsis. And I started the next manuscript, because that's what you do when you are writing your query letters.

It was time to go agent hunting. I looked up the RWA list of agents who represented Historical Romance. I subscribed to Publisher's Marketplace. I bought Jeff Herman's Guide and the Writer's Guide to Literary Agents. I searched the web for the agents who represent my favorite authors.
I made spreadsheets. I googled agents.

I came up with a list of the five top agents I could possibly want. The dream agents. The A list.
I mailed out queries.  I guess it was August.

By the end of the month, I had three requests for the full manuscript. A month after that, I got 'the call' and signed immediately.
This was all Good, Excellent, and Scary.

The agent began sending the manuscript out to publishers.

And I started collecting rejections from major publishers. I got six or seven of them. Some found the plot unlikely; some already had a full list of Regency Historicals; several liked the book but didn't think they could sell a French-set historical. One editor pointed out that I seemed to have problems with grammar and usage. Was English my native language?

The agent said not to be discouraged. Finish the next manuscript, she said. Spymaster's Lady would sell, but it might not sell as the first book.

Then, in December, an editor moved to a most desirable publisher. The agent sent Spymaster's Lady to her.  On January 18 I sold the manuscript of Spymaster's Lady, (then called ANNEKA,) and a second, to-be-written manuscript, (that was JESSAMYN which became Lord and Spymaster,) in a two-book deal.

Spymaster's Lady hit the stands 18 months later.

photocredit.  The bathtub is supposed to be a gift from Napoleon to somebody in Louisian, so it's a period bathtub

Anneka Line Edits -- Day Six

I should be calling this 'Spymaster's Lady' line edits, since that's the title. I think.

I'm on page 280 of the line edits.
Since this is the easiest part, I save it for when I'm too zonked to do anything else.
I get zonked doing these line edits. It's hard.

I have two major things I gotta do.

One -- I'm trying to plausible the central transitional plot device. I've backtracked and filled in some foreshadowing. Now I'm buckling down to the scene itself.
More work there.

Other -- I need to add backstory for my McGuffin.
I wander through the manuscript crying plaintively 'Where can I put in backstory?'
I can spend three hours fitting in 50 words.


In other news ... the Forum marathon starts tomorrow. I must gird my, like, y'know, loins

Out-take from Spymaster's Lady

'Moth' asked if there were any other out-takes from My Lord and Spymaster.

I couldn't think of anything from MLAS, but I do have a scene from Spymaster's Lady.

It's a scene I rather like. I regretted pulling it out of the manuscript.

Where it lived ... about three-quarters through Spymaster's Lady, there's a dream sequence with Annique's mother. I put it in that spot, in part, because I wanted to explain Lucille a little bit.

In the end, pacing demanded a very short dream scene, so I abandoned this writing.
With, y'know, regret.

It's a rough draft. And I never got it slimmed down and turned into a dream. So this reads like a realtime event mostly.


***********

She hunched under the blankets, holding onto to them. There was only darkness. That was all there would ever be. Darkness.

"You will get up now and eat. You have eaten nothing."

"It doesn't matter."

"You must begin training. There is work to be done and you lie abed."

"There is nothing I can do. I have become nothing. Go away" ... and leave me to die.

"Nothing. You have decided then, to be nothing." Maman dragged her from the bed, pulled her by the arm, by the hair. "I will not argue."

Maman pushed her across the room, out into the hallway. In her nightshift, she stumbled through darkness that was halls. Then to the stairs, and up and up.

"I do not want to practice walking." She dragged her feet, sullen as a child. "Or eating or fighting. Or anything. Leave me alone."

They walked up stairs, endless flights, up and up. She went along, not bothering to struggle. Limply resisting. It would infuriate Maman.

Then it was cold and hard under her feet. They were outside on the roof. Somewhere. She had not tried to find her way around the chateau. It did not matter. Nothing mattered.

"Here." Maman shoved and poked at her back. Rough stone railing brushed by. "Take another step. Good. This will do." And she let go.

Anneka felt wind on her face. "What is this?" She stretched her hand out and there was nothing. Nothing in any direction. She did not know where she was.

"Maman?" Darkness. She turned and didn't know which way was back. Which way was forward. Everything was empty around her.

"Maman. Where are you?"

Silence. She heard her heart beating and, far below, tiny voices.

"Maman!"

The wind whistling up from below, under the skirts of her nightgown. She stepped back. Back. Her foot stumbled.
She grabbed at air. Screamed. She was falling ...

She threw herself forward, toward the point of balance, and slapped her arms wide. Momentum grabbed her and tried to spin her into the dark.

She was flat on her belly, hugging the stone. She lay her head down, cold with terror. Sobbing air in and out of her lungs. Safe.

How to fall. How to fall safely, exactly where and how you choose. She had learned to fall before she could read. It is the first law of fighting -- how to fall. Her body remembered.

Wind screeched around her, tugging at the cotton on her back. She reached out. She was on a narrow stone walkway, over the air. She could reach from side to side of it, cup it with both hands.

She was weak as wet cloth. "Maman." It was a croak. A pitiful whisper. And everywhere around was only dark. Maman had left her here.

Tears leaked across her face, biting cold paths. "Maman. Help me."

No answer. She was alone.

She breathed in and out for an endless time. Waiting for someone to rescue her.

She would stiffen soon, if she did not move. She would become clumsy. And she was shaking with the cold as well. She must move, or she would fall and die.

Sometimes life is simple.

Now that she listened, it was easy to know where the open air was, and which way must lead back to the roof.

The first letting go, the first shifting of her hands, was the hardest. After that it became possible to creep and creep like a worm over the stones. The parapet that edged the roof was blessedly solid. It was carved with flowers or leaves. She pulled herself up and over, clamped to those flowers and leaves like an inchworm.

It took her an hour, crawling back and forth, to find the door Maman had brought her through. It took that long again to work her way down the stairs, recognize the proper floor by the smell of beeswax and potpourri, and find her way to her bedroom.

Maman was waiting for her there. She could hear breathing, over the spit and crackle of the fire. She could smell perfume. Lavender and bergamot.

She shuffled across the room, bent like an old beggar woman, sweeping the air in front of her with outstretched fingers, heading for the heat of the fire. She hurt in a million tiny cuts and bruises. The stickiness on her hands was blood, where she had scraped herself, falling. She had left a red trail on the walls of this pretty chateau.

"I hate you, Maman."

"I know, cherie." Cloth swished on cloth. Maman came to her. "I know."

Maman took her against warm, scented silk

She had not realized she was crying until she could do it against Maman. Yes, she was snivelling. "I could have died."

"There is always that chance. You must wash now, or the cuts will become infected. Then we will practice fighting. I have thought of techniques a blind woman can use."

"I cannot even walk. It is stupid to try to fight when I cannot even walk. We should practice walking first. Besides, I am starving to death."

"We will eat first. Then we will fight."

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.

Visualizing Eleven

The JESS 'Synopsis and Three' are polished and done and mailed ... so that's one thing out of the way. One of the great joys of having this under contract is that I don't have to write a query letter. Oh Joy.

The ANNEKA revisions have not yet landed on me.

So it's back to writing JESS.

Chapter Ten ended with Jess and Sebastian facing off in her office, both of them filled with suspicion, each with an agenda.

Chapter Twelve seems to be that scene at the party where Adrian confronts Jess ... and probably a few other things happen.

I need a bridge.

It might be time for Jess to go talk to her father.

If I do this chapter, I need a core action and purpose. Jess' growth? Hmmmm ...

So far, I've just walked in the front door of Meeks Street. Lots of excitment tomorrow when Jess faces her father.

Making progress

I'm making progress. But I'm writing the easy parts, kinda.

What it is ...

My Averatec stopped printing the 'm'.
This makes an appreciable difficulty in writing, by the way. You'd be surprised how many words have 'm' in them.
I await a new keyboard.


Rough draft 1

59000 / 130000 words. 45% done!


Meanwhile, I'm sitting in coffee houses, working on my old laptop, doing the easy stuff.

This old laptop is the one I wrote Anneka on and I'm fond of it. But it is gaping open at the corners with its mechanical innards showing and 10% of the screen doesn't work and the 'b' key is unreliable.
Though not as unreliable as the 'm' on the Averatec.

My soul gets battered when my laptop doesn't work well. I have a close and personal relationship with my laptop.
We are more than friends.

So I am doing easy little sketches of the scenes I see.

Even taking this into account, I've made some progress.