The Housing Situation

I have been pounding out the JUSTINE manuscript in a conscientious manner for the last couple o' days, which means I haven't been blogging.  I am quite utterly uninhabited except for pictures of Justine's bedroom up in the attic of the brothel and worries about what POV I should be in. This is fine for me.  Not so interesting for anyone else.

So I cannot blog, really,
the mind being dry and empty as a tin can put out for recycling by a conscientious householder.

Instead of writing something of grave import or practical use, I'm going to complain about the bird situation in my yard.

This requires an explanation.
A lengthy preamble.
A prorogation, even.

This next immediate bit is an example of why we don't do prologues.  Because they are all a form of special pleading, aren't they?

I will now insert a fold so people do not have to upload the many pictures that follow if they do not want to.

I will just warn you that there is nothing about writing below the fold.
Just philosophy and birds.

Let Them Eat Brioche

One of the minor disappointments of life is that there are no croissants in the Regency. My characters can enjoy flaky rolls, buns, sliced bread, tarts and all sorts of pastries for breakfast, but croissants didn't arrive in Paris till the late 1830s.  They're as anachronistic on the Regency table as cornflakes.

Regency folks can chow down on brioche though.  We got brioche.

Brioche is a light yeast bread, eggy and somewhat sweet -- though the recipes tell us it was less sweet in 1800 than it is nowadays -- frequently carrying a nice surprise of nuts or raisins.  It was a veritable breakfast cliché in Paris in the Eighteenth Century.  Brioche would have been comfortable and familiar on any wealthy English breakfast table, those being the ones influenced by the French way of cooking.  By 1820, brioche was so common in England it was standard in cookbooks.

Which brings us to the question . . .  

 . . .  and click here for the rest of the posting, over on Word Wenches.

photocredit dessert first

Technial Topic -- Outlines. I mean, like, why?

In the comment trail, excellent commenter Annie said:

But I can't quite imagine how I'd outline a story, since all I have are scenes. The few I've written down I already know would have to be thrown out--the setting isn't right, the characters are a different age than I thought, etc. And then there's a character off stage who's not even in the story, and I find him really annoying. I'm in awe of you and other writers who can live with the unrulyness.


Scenes come up and clamor for attention and we love them all as a hen loves her chicks.
But we must stop thinking -- Is this scene not wonderful?  Is this scene not cool?  And start thinking -- what does this scene do? 

An Outline is simply a list of scenes that tells the story. 

Lots of stuff goes on in our fictive world . . . . battles and betrayals and getting yer hair cut and eating asparagus.
We have to pick just a few morsels of all this activity for the manuscript.

We fall in love with the scenes that come to us.
It is a traditional weakness that we collect up wonderful scenes that take place before the story actually starts and make them Chapters One-through-Three.  This leads to many a carefully crafted Chapter One-through-Three being torn out by the roots. 

All along, we create scenes that serve no story purpose. 
They become outtakes. 

It's like some cruel sacrifice to the Writing Gods.

In the end, in a mood of cold, dire ruthlessness quite alien to our character, we will gather to our bosoms the few, favored scenes that tell the story and toss the others away onto the scrapheap of our subconscious where they will jitter at us in dreams for the next decade which is why we are like this.


How do we take the inchoate mass of possible scenes -- which are not in any order and some of them don't fit at all and we have no idea how they relate -- and make story?

Well . . . we outline.

Basic process, (and I am talking about my process, since I have no idea what anybody else does,) is we work backwards. 
We go from what we need back to what we have imagined. 

Ok.
There are several kinds of scenes we need.

I) -- We need scenes that convey plot. 

Plot consists of a series of Necessary Actions.  You know something is a 'Necessary Action' because if you leave it out or you change it, the story doesn't happen.  All else being equal, we try to show these Necessary Action on stage because they tend to be interesting.

II) -- We need scenes that change the protagonist. 

In a coming-of-age story, the change might be his developing maturity.  In a spy thriller, this might be the villain deciding to blow something up, or the hero deciding to leave his comfortable retirement and go hunt villains.

In Romance genre,
(I love Romance genre because it is straightforward,)
this character change is growth of the love relationship.

In a Romance genre story, we show the Character Change as a series of Romance Stages.  There is an analog to the Action Plotting in that there are Necessary Romance Stages.
You know something is a Necessary Romance Stage because if you leave it out, the love relationship doesn't hold together.  It seems unrealistic. 

(Erotica is not Romance genre because there is no development of a love relationship through a series of stages.)  

See how when I talk about the kind of scenes we need I am not saying, scenes that 'explain why,' or scenes that 'set up the story,' or scenes that 'reveal character'? 
We do not write scenes to convey information. 
Really.  We don't.  There are reasons for this.

III) -- And we need scenes that are just so wonderful we can't leave them out.
"No, we don't."
"Yes, we do."
"No."
"Yes".
"Oh, go ahead and add them.  I can't stop you.  But the editor is going to jerk them out anyway."
(jo's subconscious pouts.)

Just about every scene in the final manuscript will be built around either Necessary Plot Action or Character Change. That's what we outline.

See how this helps corral the little darlings?

Even before we begin to outline we can shoo away many of those clucking, fluttering, beloved scenes
because they do not contain the protagonists learning and changing,
do not contain action that is essential to the plot,
and a good many of them do not even occur within the brief span of the story here-and-now.

This gets rid of much of the chirping throng.


SPOILERS lie below the cut.
BIG SPOILERS.
Just don't go there if you haven't read Forbidden Rose.

Interview 'avec moi', a Forbidden Rose giveaway

It is with some chagrin I note yet another website is eager to give away their copy of Forbidden Rose.

And yet, there it is.  The excellent writers at 'All The World's Our Page' will give you a chance at a spanking new copy of Forbidden Rose if you drop by and comment at 20 Questions.

While there, you will have the opportunity to

1) read the 20 Question interview with me where I natter on about life, writing philosophy, coffee shops, 'story as the elephant in the writing playpen', and other matters of breathless interest;

2) discover a brief excerpt from Forbidden Rose which might be entitled 'Jean-Paul and His Knife' or 'What Maggie and Doyle Were Doing Before They Had Wild Monkey Sex';

3) read the similar but more interesting and polished 20 Questions with Deanna Raybourn which will absolutely require you to go out and buy her books if for some inexplicable reason you have not already done so.

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.