Class and the Spymaster Fictive Universe

I was writing to excellent reader Ann today, talking about the blog post I did on how we write about Regency-era slums and got to thinking about how I deal with 'class' in the books.

Do I consciously write about social class in these books?
Yep.  I figger we all reveal our attitudes and beliefs unconsciously as we write ... so I might as well be aware I'm doing this and use it.



Take Lazarus.
Lazarus is motivated by resentment of the class that ruined his servant-girl mother and drove her into prostitution.  This is the class to which his father belongs.  The class Lazarus would enjoy if he'd been legitimate. 

Lazarus runs an empire of violence and theft, in part, because he figures his minions are entitled to take what they want.  The rich do.  Why shouldn't the poor?  He's self-educated and brilliant.  He can't help but see the inequity in the laws of England.  He ends up with great sympathy for the French Republican cause.

In his private life, his special ire is reserved for women of the privileged class who commit crimes that would land a servant girl in jail or send her to the gallows.  Again, class motivates his actions.
 

Adrian's life journey is shaped by a desire to become 'a gentleman'.  He walks, like Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid, on sharp knives every step of the way.  He finds himself, like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, unable to go back to what he was and yet unable to be comfortable with what he becomes. 

He measures his own success by his ability to pass as a member of the upper class. And yet, Adrian only passes for a gentleman; he never becomes one.  He watches, judges, and shrewdly assesses the rich and powerful . . . as an outsider.  He can never buy into their narrower view of the world.  He uses privilege, but doesn't believe in it.

Adrian originally admired the French Revolution, liking the leveling effect.  Then ... an outtake from Forbidden Rose has him watching a tumbril take a family with teenage girls to the guillotine.  We don't see the scene onstage, unfortunately, but that was a turning point of his life.  It outraged him.  He would never again be tempted by revolutionary violence.  Years later, he rejects Napoleon as an ambitious opportunist.  By that time, by 1799, Adrian is wholly committed to the British Service. 

But he never rejects France's social reforms.  Philosophically, Adrian is all for dismantling aristocratic privilege.  He doesn't act on this because social equality is never offered to him as a viable choice in the 1789 to 1818 timeframe. 
One reason Adrian gets along with Justine is they have no basic philosophical disagreement.


Doyle is more sympathetic to the idea of an aristocracy.

He plays at being a coachman or a laborer without assuming the interior life of one.  He's an aristocrat inside.  Born one.  Schooled and trained as one.

More than that, Doyle's a practical man rather than an idealist.  He believes a hierarchical society is inevitable, so he aims for a humane and workable system -- a fair, stable, well-run government with gradual change toward equality and social mobility.


The discussion Adrian and Doyle have at the beginning of Forbidden Rose is meant to show their different points of view.  (This is prior to Hawker's disillusionment with the bloody side of revolution in France.)

[Doyle and Adrian approach the orangerie at the chateau. It's savagely destroyed.]
 
    Hawker followed him, crunching glass into the gravel.  “The boys in that stinking little village waited years to do this.” 
   “Did they?”
    “They dreamed of it. They’d sit in those pig houses in the village with the shutters closed and the wind leaking in. They’d think about these fancy weeds up here, being coddled, all warm and happy behind glass. Down there,they were freezing in the dark. Up here, they were growing flowers.”
     “That’s fixed, then. No more flowers.”
     Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hawker stoop and pick up a rock, draw back and throw. Glass fell with a thin, silver discord. The heroic revolutionaries of Voisemont had missed one pane. Destruction was now complete.   

Justine is my most ideological character.  In 1818 she's going through a period of disillusion, as idealists will.  She's seen Napoleon fall.  She's seen Paris turn away from the Revolution and accept the Royalists back in power.  It'll be a few years before she gets her political fire back. 

Justine saw her degradation and loss not as a male/female issue -- not so much, 'men did this to me' --  as a class and power issue.  'The rich can get away with anything.' "In a just society these things would not happen.'  She responds to her hurt with a desire to right the wrongs of society.  She becomes a political person.

Justine's journey is one of rebuilding herself after absolute destruction.  Part of this is reclaiming her place as an aristocrat. Though she's despised aristocrats, ironically, it's a measure of her complete healing when she can say,

     “I will come to live with you in your great mansion and be a lady again. I will be a DeCabrillac, and face down the world if they make accusations. I will shake out your haughty mansion like an old rag and make it comfortable to live in.”

She becomes something she has fought against, because Adrian needs this from her.  It's her gift to him.


Justine, too, is someone who doesn't buy into the class paradigm.  She may claim her name and position, but I see her taking her aristocratic space cynically.  She's gotten subtle in the Police Secrète.   Give her a few more years and she'll be the Grande Dame of the Reform Movement, infiltrating the camp of the enemy, still fighting the good fight.

Word verification

Folks -- for years I've let the comments roll without word verification or moderator intervention. 

In the last couple months I've been deluged with spam.  Ten or twenty hits a day. The Blogger spam filter catches 90% or them, but I still have to track down the others.  It takes time and effort and it annoys me no end.


So.  Comments will now require word verification.  I apologize.  I hate to do this to you.

Those Lively Regency Streets

Regency streets would have been fairly active and interesting places, what with knife grinders, pot  menders and chimney sweeps, milkmaids and streets sellers hawking everything from cherries to hot codlins -- not to mention the miscellany of enterprising pickpockets and cut purses and those generally operating on the windy side of the law.



Exciting, those Regency streets.

'Hot Codlins' are roasted apples, in case you didn't know and were wondering.


There was a little woman, as I've been told,

Who was not very young, nor yet very old;

Now this little woman her living got

By selling codlins, hot, hot, hot!



But I digress.


Along with all those buyers and sellers, intent upon the mystery of commerce, there were artists out there hustling a living.


You had your street musicians.  Most often, they'd be playing something portable, like a violin or a hurdy gurdy.  I do not feel impelled to discuss what a violin is, but hurdy gurdy's are kinda interesting.   



Drop over to read the rest at Word Wenches.  Here.
Still to come ... Hurdy gurdys, Raree shows and Punch and Judy.

Caroling, Caroling in the Regency

This little screed on Christmas music comes about because I don't listen to commercial radio.  That is because such channels are full of people trying to sell me used cars or banking services or beer and after a while I want to go over and beat my radio to death with a stick.

But durn it, at Christmas I want to listen to Christmas music, so I ventured out into the musical world beyond PBS.  And it was painful.  After I had not beaten my radio to flinders for several days, ('Flinders' is a fine old word, popular in the Regency, and it means splinters or fragments.  It's of Dutch or Scandinavian origin and always plural.) I decided to compile a playlist and the heck with the radio.

But all that got me thinking about Christmas carols.


Go here to read the rest at Word Wenches, though there are no more pictures of cats, alas.

The Christmas Playlist

Christmas Playlist

All I Want For Christmas Is You ... Mariah Carey
Angels We Have Heard On High ... Sixpence none the Richer
Blue Christmas  ... Elvis Presley
Carol Of The Bells ... John Williams
Christmas Don't Be Late ... Alvin and the Chipmunks
Coventry Carol ... Loreena McKennitt
Deck The Rooftop ...Glee Cast
Do You Hear What I Hear ... Destiny's Child
Driving Home For Christmas ...Chris Rea
Feliz Navidad ... Jose Feliciano
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas ... Frank Sinatra
Here Comes Santa Claus ... Gene Autry
I Believe In Father Christmas ... Greg Lake
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus  ...  Jimmy Boyd
I'll Be Home For Christmas ... Bing Crosby
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear  ... Josh Groban
It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas ... Johnny Mathis
Joy To The World ... Aretha Franklin           
Last Christmas ...  George Michael
Let It Snow! ... Ella Fitzgerald
Little Saint Nick ... The Beach Boys   
Mary, Did You Know ... Clay Aiken
Merry Christmas ... Chuck Berry
O Holy Night ... Celtic Women
Rockin' Around The Cristmas Tree ... Brenda Lee
Santa Baby ... Kylie Minogue
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town ... Frank Sinatra
Silent Night ... Elvis Presley   
Silver Bells ... Olivia Newton-John
Twelve Days Of Christmas  ... Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters
We Need A Little Christmas ... Angela Lansbury
What Child Is This? ... Charlotte Church
White Christmas ...The Drifters   
Wonderful Christmastime ... Paul McCartney


(All of these are available on Iomoio except for the Anglea Lansbury song. I got that on iTunes.)

German Forbidden Rose

My German translation of Forbidden Rose will be out in May 2013. 

Isn't it lovely?

Technical topic -- The Regency East End

Someone asks --

In re the Regency East End ... Would you happen to have any book recommendations?




Indeed I do:

Berm, Chaim, London's East End, (mostly late Victorian Information.)

Gerzina, Gretchen Holbrook, Black London: Life before Emancipation.

Holmes, Thomas, London's Underworld.  here. 

Low, Donald, The Regency Underworld.

Victorian East London Dore

Mayhew, Henry, Mayhew's Characters.   (See also Quennell, Peter ed, London's Underworld.  This is a selection from Mayhew and available used and cheap.  Mayhew is written mid-century but info is earlier.  A lot of Mayhew's work is on the net. For instance --  here. )

Rose, Millicent, The East End of London. (I don't have this one myself, so I can't vouch for it, but I keep meaning to look it up in a library.)

Two Citizens, How to Live in London.  here.

Have a look at the maps here and here.


Here's a Victorian account:

We dismiss our cab: it would be useless in the strange, dark byeways, to which we are bound: natives of which will look upon us as the Japanese looked upon us the first European travellers in the streets of Jeddo. The missionary, the parish doctor, the rent collector (who must be a bold man indeed), the policeman, the detective, and the humble undertaker, are the human beings from without who enter this weird and horrible Bluegate Fields. 

We arrived at Whitechapel Police Station, to pick up the superintendent of savage London. He had some poor specimens - maundering drunk - in his cells already - and it was hardly nine o'clock. 

We plunge into a maze of courts and narrow streets of low houses - nearly all the doors of which are open, showing kitchen fires blazing far in the interior, and strange figures moving about. 

At dark corners, lurking men keep close to the wall; and the police smile when we wonder what would become of a lonely wanderer who should find himself in these regions unprotected. "He would be stripped to his shirt" was the candid answer - made while we threaded an extraordinary tangle of dark alleys where two men could just walk abreast, under the flickering lamps jutting from the ebon walls, to mark the corners.       Jerrold Blanchard, London: A Pilgrimage 1872

I feel like I gotta get up on one of my hobbyhorses here.

London workmen Victorian

The most important thing about the rookeries of London in 1802 -- and the Roman tenements in 79 AD and the slums of SE Washington DC in 1960 -- is that the denizens of the place were 'at home'.  They weren't dwelling in some landscape of horror. 

And they were ordinary folk.  The men and women in these stacked-up, decrepit buildings and dirty streets were ordinary, well-meaning, hard-working people, not monsters.  The violent gangs hanging out on street corners were a dangerous minority who preyed on and were hated by everyone else.  
 

Clothes sellers, late C19

When the heroine makes a wrong turn and ends up in a bad neighborhood, she hasn't fallen into a pit of vipers.  Those people passing her on the street, the ones living three flights up in every building, are no better nor worse than the well-dressed crowd she'd meet in Mayfair.  Her maidservant grew up a block to the left.  Her cook has a brother living down at the end of the alley and visits him every Sunday.  Your heroine's problem is not that the streets are populated with slavering hyenas.  It's that she's conspicuous. 

In My Lord and Spymaster I try to show the heroine as someone who comes from the mean streets, who understands them, who recognizes the dangers but doesn't see the place as some filthy hell filled with demons.

St Giles, in the Regency. See the streetlamp

The alley to the right was Dark Passage--and wasn't that a fine descriptive name?  To the left was Dead Man's Way.  Another piece of poetry.  When she was a kid she'd run this warren barefoot.  She knew these streets, knew every thin trickle of an alley that ran into Katherine Lane.  She'd been born in a grim little attic a dozen streets to the north.  Time was, she chatted friendly and easy with every beggar and pimp on the Lane.  She could have ducked into any of these taverns and been welcome to dry out by the fire.  Now she was a stranger.  Not Jess, any more.  Now she was 'Miss Whitby' and she didn't belong.  

and

From the outside, all rookeries look the same, but some are more dangerous than others. 
Ludmill Street was peaceable in its rough way.  Safe enough, if you knew what you were doing.  When a pair of Irishman approached, making monetary offers, she snapped back, sharp, in Italian.  They left her alone, thinking she belonged to the Italians.  There were lots of hot-tempered Italians in this section who didn't like even their whores approached by Irishmen.  A few hundred yards further on, she sent an Italian boy on his way with a Gaelic curse.  Lots of hot-tempered Irishmen in this quarter, too.  

When she got to the Limehouse, to Asker Street, it would be considerably more dangerous.  She'd be unwise to visit alone.   

Every illustration we have of the East End of London from the Regency period is someone from outside, making a point with his picture or his description.  Saying as much about himself as he does about what he's reporting.  Hogarth's Gin Lane is propaganda.  Propaganda from the good guys, but still, a selection of detail to make a point. Bob Dylan's 'Propaganda all is phony' sums it up.


How this relates to writing --  I'm good with 'she wandered into a bad section of town' trope as a reasonable way to put the heroine in peril.  But I regret when these scenes imply that the poor of London were a seething cauldron of evil into which she had incautiously been tipped.  I dislike the: 'they look like me and are well-dressed = good; They look different and are poor = rabid animals' equation because it strikes too close to attitudes from our own era. 

This is Bond Street.  Not as fancy as we imagine it.

If I wanted to research a scene in the East End in 1800 . . .   Yes, I'd go to books and learn the geography of the place and the physical conditions and the particular 1800-ish habits of the local criminals.   But I''d want to think about the bad sections of a modern city and the people who live there and how I'd represent the adventures of someone who walking into those streets.  When I exaggerate for high drama -- what am I saying about my character and myself?  When we're writing about the past, we're also writing about the present.

. . . much later ETA: 
I got a review on a short story of mine that said -- paraphrasing here -- "Your heroine falls on hard times and works in Whitechapel scrubbing floors.  I can't believe that.  Is 'scrubbing floors' supposed to be a euphemism?"
The implication is, all the thousands of young women in Whitechapel were whores.
The implication is, there were no respectable poor living in Whitechapel.
The implication is, poverty = depravity.

When we look at the past, we see our opinions and expectations reflected back at us.  
    

Booty Tuesday --Kristen Callihan's Firelight

Carrying home booty

This is Booty Tuesday and, as is my wont, I am giving away absolutely free with no strings attached, wonderful books.

Signed.

This week is your chance to win a SIGNED copy of Kristen Callihan's first book, Firelight.  Those of you who are particularly alert in these matters will know Firelight was just listed by Library Journal as one of the ten best Romance books of 2012.  (Click on that to see the Library Journal entry which is very interesting.)  Callihan is sharing the limelight with folks like Nora Roberts, Loretta Chase, Grace Burrowes, Cecelia Grant, Sherry Thomas and Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

Cool, huh.  Are you going to tell me you haven't read Kristen Callihan yet?

Oh dear.  But, wait -- we can remedy that.  This is Booty Tuesday.  Book-winning may be in your future.

From the book:

"Why do you wear that mask?"

"Asks the woman whose beauty might as well be a mask."

"Pardon me?"

The immobile black mask simply stared back, floating like a terrible effigy over broad shoulders.

"What is beauty or ugliness but a false front that prompts man to make assumptions rather than delving deeper.  Look at you."  His hand gestured toward her face.  "Not a flaw or distortion of line to mar that perfect beauty.  I have seen your face before, miss.  Michelangelo sculpted it from cold marble three hundred years ago, his divine hand creating what men would adore."  He took a step closer.  "Tell me, Miss Ellis, do you not use that beauty as a shield, keeping the world at bay so that no one will know uour true nature."

"Bastard."

They have this kinda adversarial relationship, these two.

To be eligible to win Firelight, write and post a poem in the comment thread of this post. 

Use one of the following words from the cover:

Kristen, Callihan, firelight, fire, light, great, price, talent, sexual, tension, jaw, drop, plots, weave, brilliant, dark, darkest, London, series, flame, ignite. woman, torment, plague, birth, strange, powerful, gift, entire, life, struggle, contend, exceptional, abilities, innocent, irreversible, mistake, family, fortune, decimate, forced, nefarious, nobleman. burn, eternity

Your poem can be a 
Limerick
Haiku    (traditional or non-traditional)
Rhymed couplet
Quatrain  
blank verse
or any other rhyme or poetry form you fancy.  I am not particular.

I'll pick one lucky commenter (US and Canada only, sorry) from the comment trail on Saturday.

You can also buy Firelight here should you not be feeling poetical.  Overseas folks can buy Kristen's latest book, Winterblaze, from Book Depository, here.   

EDITED TO ADD:

Booty Tuesday has TWO books to offer this week.
One signed copy of Firelight
And one signed ARC (That's advanced reading copy.  It's the first, first, first look at the book in print) of Kristen's new book, Winterblaze.

There will be two chances.  The first is for folks who have written a poem and it's for the best poem.
The winner gets to choose which book she wants.

The second chance -- this one a simple drawing -- is for the remaining book, whichever it is -- and both folks who write poems and those who just comment will be entered in that one.

So if you really, really really can't write a poem, you still have a chance to win a book.

And if you can write a poem, you have two chances.

I feel as though I've made that very complicated, but it's quite simple really.

Self Publishing versus the 'Big Guys' Publishing

I'm following yet another discussion of whether one should self-publish or publish with a Major Publisher.  And I'm trying not to comment in the midst of that because this here is not my field of expertise.  I'm pretty much wholly ignorant about both sides of the arugment.

So I thought I'd go back here to my blog and talk about it in graphics, since I can make a fool of myself on my own blog.

Now, this is my wholly-made-up-guesswork take on the success rate of people who query their completed fiction manuscript to the major publishers in New York.
Remember, most submitted manuscripts are just purely awful.  Nobody who reads this blog falls into the perfectly dreadful manuscript group so you do not necessarily need to worry about the success rate in general.


This attractive graphic to the right is the getting-into-publication rate for those who decide to self- publish.  You will note it has a tiny sliver of folks who attempt this and do not quite succeed.  They are too gormless to use smashwords or the like.

I will just mention that I would fall into that select group were I to try to do this.




Now we hustle onward and come to some more sheer guesswork on my part.  This is the earnings per book.  The first brightly colored graphic attempts to convince you I know what novels earn in the first couple years after they're released by one of the major publishers.

Should mention that, when I say major publishers, I'm including not just the Big New York Six (soon to be Five), but about everybody who plays the print game and gets distributed by the big brick-and-mortar retailers.  Tor.  Kensington.  Them folk. 

The pinky-white slice is books that earn less than $1000.
Moving up in remuneration, and going counter-clockwise or the ill-fated widdershins direction, the red slice is books earning more than $1000, but less than $5000. 
I've assigned green to the great majority of books and assigned a profit of between $5000 and $15,000.
The navy blue slice is books that bring in more than $15,000.  It's not a negligible proportion, really.

.   

I would not go to the barricades to defend the accuracy of this graph ...  but it 'feels' about right.   If anything, I think I'm underestimating the percentage of books that earn more than $15,000.

And, at last, we come to the profits on self-published books.

The info I'm presenting with that big sweep of beige is that most self-published books earn less than $1000. 

Books that fall into that little sliver of higher profit tend to be erotica, or published by authors with a significant platform, or books by those also print published, or work from those who understand marketing and promote diligently.  

Or, of course, all four.

So what am I saying with all this other than I like pie charts?

There are mobs of prophets and orators out there who want to sell writers something -- whether it's a product or validation for their own choices.

What do you want out of publication? 

If you need artistic freedom, if you hunger to put your work in front of readers, if you have something you must say,  if you don't need or expect much money, if you know you can't be published by the Big Guys -- for whatever reason,
then self-publishing may be for you.
You're in good company.  Generations of LitFic writers have felt exactly this way.

If you want to reach more readers and have a reasonable chance to make enough money to live on frugally, (well ... very frugally) try for traditional publication.

Booty Tuesday -- Yasmine Galenorn's Shaded Vision

Carrying home booty

This week is your chance to win a SIGNED copy of Yasmine Galenorn's Shaded Vision.

This is the second book by Galenorn I've given away, so I must have absentmindedly plucked up two at her table while she was looking the other way.  

Shaded Vision is one of her Otherworld novels which are just chock full of paranormal characters.  This one is about Delilah, one of three (somewhat) weird sisters.  She's the werecat of the trio.

I'm very fond of cats.
Anyhow, the usual suspects are out in all their otherworldly menace and all hell is breaking loose, as it is wont to do in Galenorn's novels.


From the book:

"When did Toby start working for you?" I was determined to needle him just a little about it.  After all, that was what friends did.  And Carter was our friend.

He glanced up at me, and a little smirk crossed his face.  "About two months ago.  He was working for a client of mine.  We . . . the attraction was immediate.  So he came to work for me.  The attraction won't last.  He's one of the djinn, and they don't make good long-term lovers.  But it will be fun for the duration.  And I needed the company.  And the help."

Can you trust a djinn?"  Camille frowned.   I knew that look.  It meant that she didn't trust Toby any more than she trusted a skunk in heat.

"No, but that is why he is not allowed access to private information, and why he doesn't have a key to my place.  Do not trouble yourself, young witch.  I will not compromise the integrity of my operations with a veil of sex haze.  But it has been a long time since I've found someone to my liking, and I plan to enjoy myself in the meantime.  And before you ask, I don't ask what equipment my lovers have, merely if they want to play."

Fun for the duration.  Djinn are like that, apparently.  Who knew?

To be eligible to win Shaded Vision, write and post a poem in the comment thread of this post. 

Use one of the following words from the cover:

Yasmine courting, darkness,  shaded, vision, other, world, deliciously, dark, spectacular, hot, erotic, bewitch, mix, magic, passion, frost, sister, sexy, savvy, intelligence, agency, half, human, power, Fae, any time wrong, usually,wicked, witch, husband, vampire, werecat, death, maiden.

Your poem can be a 
Limerick
Haiku    (traditional or non-traditional)
Rhymed couplet
Quatrain  
blank verse
or any other rhyme or poetry form you fancy.  I am not particular.

I'll pick one lucky commenter (US only, sorry) from the comment trail on Friday.

Fall Comes

Fall is creeping up the mountains.  I have trees yellow as lemons, yellow as saffron, yellow as candleflame at the edge of the yard. 

Booty Tuesday -- Lauren Willig's The Orchid Affair

Carrying home booty

This week is your chance to win a SIGNED copy of The Orchid Affair by Lauren Willig. (Signed with her own authorial hand.)

Laura Grey's first assignment as a British spy is to gather information on Andre Jaouen, right-hand man to Napoleon's Chief of Police.

Did I ever mention how fond I am of Regency spies?   International intrigue and Regency clothes.  Paris. Hot Frenchmen.  Oh my. 

From the book:

"Now, Andre, watch how it's done."

Something in the way he said it made Laura suspect that he was talking about more than the rules of flirtation, but when she looked at Daubier, his rumpled face was guileless as a child's.

"I am all ears," said Jaouen.

Daubier made a tsk noise before turning his attention back to Laura.  With an elaborate flourish, he lowered his considerable bulk over Laura's hand.  She could hear his corset strings creak with the effort.

"My dearest lady," he huffed, from somewhere in the vicinity of Laura's knuckles.  "I am rendered speechless by your . . . "

"Tidiness?" suggested Laura, as he paused for a noun.

To be eligible to win The Orchid Affair, write and post a poem in the comment thread of this post. 

Use one of the following words from the cover:

Lauren, orchid, affair, sparkling, continue, elevate, romance, pink, carnation, sheer, fun, sure, please, draw, reader, perilous, tale, intrigue, secret, deception, identity, hide, heart, pride, prejudice, live, history, plenty, full, veteran, governess, Laura, Grey, joins, school, spy, Andre.

Your poem can be a 
Limerick
Haiku    (traditional or non-traditional)
Rhymed couplet
Quatrain  
blank verse
or any other rhyme or poetry form you fancy.  I am not particular.

I'll pick one lucky commenter (US only, sorry) from the comment trail on Friday.

Booty Tuesday -- Kristan Higgins' My One and Only

Carrying home booty

As you know, I returned from the RWA National Conference last August with Booty!
But this is not a book from RWA National.

This is a book from COFW, 

which is the Central Ohio Fiction Writers where I was over last weekend giving a loooong talk to everybody about POV and a shorter but still, to some, interminable, talk about plotting.

 (I am going to recommend the COFW conference to everyone.  It was great fun and right sized and the workshops looked scrumptious.) 

Anyhow.  This is the second of two books I snagged at COFW.
Did I mention it is signed?

This week you may win Kristan Higgins' My One and Only.

This is Romantic Comedy from New York Times best sellers.  If you haven't tried Kristan Higgins, this is your chance.

From the book:

"I just have to.  It's not a big deal."  I faked a smile and tried to tie the shoulder strap of my dress, but my hands were shaking.  Still couldn't look at him.  It felt as if something big and dark, something that wanted to do me harm, and damned if I wasn't close to tears.

"Harper."

"Nick."

"Look at me."

What could I say?  No?  I obeyed, glancing at him briefly.

"Harper, I love you."  His gypsy eyes were solemn, completely sincere, and that thing in my chest gave a fast, hard, painful twist.

 I love a road trip book. 

"this funny, poignant romance"  Publisher's Weekly

To be eligible to win My One and Only, write and post a poem in the comment thread of this post. 

Use one of the following words from the cover:

One, only, love, marriage, take, novel, Kristan, story, just, thought, life, figured, divorce, attorney, harper, break, catch, bad, enough, wedding, cruel, twist, fate, cross, country, road, trip, sympathetic,back, home, blazing, help.

Your poem can be a 
Limerick
Haiku 
(traditional or non-traditional)
Rhymed couplet
Quatrain  
blank verse
or any other rhyme or poetry form you fancy.  I am not particular.

I'll pick one lucky commenter (US only, sorry) from the comment trail on Friday.

Moving Up Hill

As some of you may know, much of the past six months has been devoted to moving out of the old house and into a new one.  I'm one mountain range further west now.

I was not consciously following Horace Greeley's advice, but here I am anyway. 




This to the left is my old office.   

To the right we see my old office after I took it apart and started packing stuff.  I entered a phase of my life when I couldn't find anything.  Those brightly colored little squares are postit notes.  Me, trying to stay organized.

Failing mostly.  

You can see the dog has on her dubious face.  Herding dogs don't like change.  They just know that change is bad for the sheep.

This is my new office, before the books got unpacked and put in place.

That's my desk here.  I've set it up in the back in the corner of the big main room, behind the sofa, not far from the fireplace.  Way across the room, I look out the back windows where the eastern light comes in.

I haven't lit a fire in the fireplace yet, but I've got wood.  A friend brought me a truckload today as a 'housewarming gift'. 

 
Next here, you see me with the books and files put away.  The baskets on top hold envelopes and office supplies.

The top two shelves on the left are my TBR books.  I have rather more than I can ever read, I'm afraid.  They are not merely stacked two deep, they are crammed in till there's no room for a temperance pamphlet.

But the files are moving into the places they fit and it's getting so I can mostly find things.

The rest of my books are over here in this long bookcase that's off to my right as I sit at the desk.

The top two shelves are my Keeper books; the rest is reference materials. I had to thin out quite a bit of both when I moved.  Ouch.

My dog still looks pretty dubious, don't you think?

The cat, on the other hand, has adapted well to the new environment.  She's the color of Appalachian rocks and when she sits still, she's pretty much invisible.

The back porch has a view down mountain.   I look out to the east.  The rising sun is probably a good omen.

Round about that last mountain that you see in the distance is where I moved from.

I'm high enough that I see clouds below me lying over the valley.  I look down on hawks circling on the wind currents.








Sometimes the clouds just walk up the hill and cover everything.  Surreal.  Beautiful.
Damp.

Now I understand why folks in Seattle drink strong dark coffee. 

Mischief and Mistletoe and my Own Short Story Therein

Pretty cover, isn't it?

This title may be unique in that it contains two words I have to 'think about' before I can spell them.  (Hint: I can actually spell 'and'.)

At Word Wenches I've posted a couple hundred words about some of the stuff that went through my mind while I was writing this short story.  Of equal interest, the other Wenches are doing somewhat the same thing, so if you follow along before and after my posting you will have a view into the minds of those other authors as well.

I notice that I did not include an excerpt of the story.  I will do so here:

******

She fell out of the dream, thumping down, cold and trembling, into reality and night.

A hand clamped over her mouth.  A body, heavy as lead, held her down, muffled her in the blankets so tightly she couldn't break loose.  Couldn't get her hands free to claw.  The strength was huge, hard, unfightable, male, infinitely strong, and it surrounded her everywhere. 

He muttered into her ear.  "It's me, dammit.  It's Jack.  Hold still and listen!"

The fire had died low and orange.  She saw images of the fire in his eyes, close, close.  Her body knew Jack.  It had been two years since they touched, but she knew him instantly.

She went still.     

The timbers of the old inn creaked and groaned like the hull of a ship in high seas.  Outside, winds twisted and howled and pulled at the glass of the window.  The draft up the chimney was a shrill, intermittent whine.  In the big bed in the corner, Miss Trimm snored determinedly.  The French girl slept silently in the trundle bed.     

"You know me now," Jack said.  "You'll be quiet?"

She nodded.  Oh, she knew him, all right. 

His hand went away, but he didn't.  He stayed, covering her with his weight, looking down.  He had the same hard eyes.  Even when she'd been in love with him, even when she'd thought he was harmless, she'd always seen the hardness in his eyes and wondered about it.

He jerked his head once in the direction of the door and let her go.  Noiseless, he lifted himself away from her and was gone into the dark of the hallway.

**********

Intrigue and Mistletoe

 

Mischief and Mistletoe is out in the big wide world as of last week.  I am so delighted to be part of this anthology. 

Let me just meander aside here for an instant and mentiion that I haven't written a short story since I was in Grade School, so the whole concept was a bit baffling.  I had ta kinda feel my way through this.
Since I write Regency spies as my own particular metier, I figured my contribution to the anthology should be ... Regency spies.

I'm sticking with the secrecy and intrigue, of which there was any amount lying about in this time period, but shifting my focus just a bit.  One of the sad realities about spies in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries is that much of the spying they engaged in was against their own countrymen.  While the English crown certainly worried about the French armies milling about across the Channel, they were somewhat more terrified of the disaffected at home. They spied upon them diligently. 

In several of my books, my protagonists have been patriots on opposite sides of the long, bitter political struggle between France and England. In this short story, I considered the problems of a spy working in his own country.



For the rest of this posting ...  pop on over to Word Wenches through this link here.

Booty Tuesday --Simone Elkeles' Perfect Chemistry

Carrying home booty

As you know, I returned from the RWA National Conference last August with Booty!

But this is not a book from RWA National.

This is a book from COFW, 

which is the Central Ohio Fiction Writers where I was over the weekend giving a loooong talk to everybody about POV and a shorter but still, to some, interminable, talk about plotting.

(I am going to recommend the COFW conference to everyone.  It was great fun and right sized and the workshops looked scrumptious.) 

Anyhow.  This week we get to the first of the books I snagged at COFW.  Next week, the other.

Did I mention they are signed?

This week you may win Simone Elkeles YA Romance, Perfect Chemistry.

Let me just say, this book is not for the faint of heart.  

It is gritty.  And tough.  And full of ... High School Students.

(You think vampires are scary?  You have seen, like, nothing.)

From the book:

"Miss Ellis?" Mrs. Peterson says. "It's your turn. Introduce Alex to the class."

"This is Alejandro Fuentes. When he wasn't hanging out on street corners and harassing innocent people this summer, he toured the inside of jails around the city, if you know what I mean. His secret desire is to go to college and become a chemistry teacher, like you, Mrs. Peterson"

Brittany flashes me a triumphant smile, thinking she's won this round.  Guess again, gringa.

"This is Brittany Ellis," I say, all eyes now focused on me. "This summer she went to the mall, bought new clothes so she could expand her wardrobe, and spent her daddy's money on plastic surgery to enhance her, ahem, assets. Her secret desire is to date a Mexicano before she graduates."

Game on . . .

This book has 1592 ratings on B&N, which I didn't even know you could DO.  This means roughly everyone in the world has read it and given it a five-star rating, except possibly you.

This is your chance. 

 To be eligible to win Perfect Chemistry, write and post a poem in the comment thread of this post. 

Use one of the following words from the cover:

Simone, perfect, chemistry, chemical, rules, attraction, reaction, high, school, Chicago, south, north, side, exactly, compatible, element, head, cheerleader, Brittany, Alex, lab, partner, class, explosion, result, teen, love.

Your poem can be a 
Limerick
Haiku 
(traditional or non-traditional)
Rhymed couplet
Quatrain  
blank verse
or any other rhyme or poetry form you fancy.  I am not particular.

I'll pick one lucky commenter (US only, sorry) from the comment trail on Friday.