Joanna here, talking about that fashion accessory of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the shawl.
Why shawls? We wear form-fitted, sleeved outer garments mostly —
coats and sweaters and parkas and anoraks and Macintoshes — in the
Twenty-first Century and feel pleased and practical doing so. Why did
folks spend centuries throwing loose garments around themselves that
didn’t button up and had to be draped and fidgeted with in a manner that
may strike us as awkward?
I think an ideal of feminine beauty was at the root of it. The drape
and swirl of a shawl, the varied possibilities with all their minute
adjustments were alluring to the watcher. Displaying the shawl was an
art, and this length of silk or wool might well be the most expensive
object a woman wore.
So let’s talk paisley, since we’re talking shawls.
Paisley is based on a repeated, teardrop-shaped design pattern called
a bota or boteh – a word that means “shrub” or “cluster of leaves” in
Persian.
This boteh is an ancient pattern, widespread in rugs, paintings, and
tiles. It's an abstract shape that probably comes from the
simplification of many sorts of feathers, fruit, flowers and so on in
older designs. That is, there's no one origin. It's derived from many
complexities that lost detail as they were copied and recopied.
In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries the East India Company
imported these Indian designs to Europe where they became immensely
popular. Soldiers returning from service in the East brought back
lovely, expensive scarves of silk and soft Kashmir (cashmere) wool to
their sweethearts and family. The British version of the scarves might
cost more than 20 pounds. Sir Walter Scott’s French bride Charlotte
Carpentier was given a Kashmir shawl in 1797 for her trousseau that cost
50 guineas, a huge sum in those days.
Period portraits are full of these Kashmiri scarves gracefully
swirled round the shoulders of women in flimsy low cut, high-waisted
dresses. The survival of generations of scantily clad British beauties
doubtless depended on these lengths of wool.
Almost as soon as the imported scarves arrived, they were copied
enthusiastically by European weavers, among them the craftsmen of the
Scottish city of Paisley, so much so that the Persian design ended up
named "paisley" after that city in Renfrewshire, Scotland, far, far from
the exotic mountains and plains of the East.
The handlooms and, after 1820, Jacquard looms, of the misty north
produced quite a good imitation of the original Indian product. But it
was not a perfect likeness.
Throughout the import period, imported Kashmiri shawls were more
expensive and preferred over the British version. The colors were more
varied. Even at the height of Scots weaving they were using a mere 15
colors as opposed to the more than 40 colors used in the Eastern
imports. The quality of foreign weaving superior, and the fabric itself
was lighter. British shawls were made from sheep’s wool. Kashmiri
scarves, from softer, more supple, more lustrous goat’s hair. And
Kashmiri weavers used the “twill tapestry technique”.
Those of you in the know about weaving technique will recognize that
this means the horizontal (weft) threads of the pattern do not run all
the way across the fabric but are woven back and forth around the
vertical (warp) threads to where the color is needed again. This is the
way Europeans weave tapestries. And no, I knew nothing about weaving
technique before I looked this up.
When you’re through trying to figure out what that weaving stuff
means you will be asking “Why didn’t the British import Kashmiri sheep
and raise their own soft goat hair? They tried in 1818, but didn’t get
good hair production. Britain wasn’t cold enough, apparently.
Anyhow, the creamy ecru background of many of the scarves in those
Regency portraits is the natural color of goat’s fleece. Also, the
finest goat wool, like the finest sheep wool and, for all I know, the
finest cat fur, comes from the underbelly of the animals. These are the
little factoids that make life so cool and give you something to talk
about at parties.
How popular was the Kashmiri shawl?
Pretty popular, as per:
“…a fine cashemire shawl, with brown background, and richly
variegated border, is generally thrown over the dress, in which is
united both comfort and elegance.”
La Belle Assemblé, 1806
“…over these is thrown, in elegant drapery, a long Indian shawl
of the scarf kind, the colour of the palest Ceylon ruby, the ends
enriched by a variegated border…”
La Belle Assemblée, 1812
(Though I’m not sure what color a “pale Ceylon ruby” would be.)
After the Regency period, in the age of many petticoats and full crinolines, scarves expanded to accommodate. We get huge scarves in this era.
And here's another example of the difference between imported scarves
and British ones. The British-woven scarves might weigh three pounds.
The imported Kashmiri shawl of roughly the same size, five to nine
ounces.
And eventually, the paisley-patterned scarf went away, as fashions
will. Paisley shawls declined in popularity after the 1870s. It's likely
the new fashion of bustles meant shawls no longer draped attractively.
And block-printed fabrics – ever so much cheaper – became popular. This
undermined the exclusivity of the paisley shawl.
So, there you have it. The shawl we all know and love from Historical
Romances. How many downtrodden heroines have been sent off to fetch the
cranky dowager's shawl and run headlong into the hero?
Now me, I have a fine wool shawl that lives over the back of my
favorite chair all winter long. It's from Kashnir, I think, and has
genuine botehs on it. When the woodstove heats my front nicely, the
shawl covers my back.
Friday, September 08, 2017
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
Interviews in which I reveal many secrets
One at USA Today Happily Ever After ...
with Keira Soleore
and one at All About Romance
with Dabney Grinnan.
And another one with Anne Gracie at Word Wenches. That one's at:
http://wordwenches.typepad.com/word_wenches/2017/08/beauty-like-the-night.html
I talk about the characters in the Spymaster Fictional Universe and what they're up to when they're not appearing in the books.
I say stuff like:
"He (Lazarus) gave up stealing women in 1812 after My Lord and Spymaster. You could say he’s reformed,"
"... as people of the future we know the British won. My characters don’t know that. The possibility of invasion and defeat is very real."
"When my agent went to publishers with Spymaster’s Lady and couldn’t sell it month after month, I’d take the dog for long walks, seeking out lonely, windswept paths around the suburbs, whimpering, “They were right. You can’t sell a story set in France,” and stuff like that there, rather than planning who should be the protagonist of book six."
so, since they are fascinating interviews, do go check them out.
In other news,
I stopped this morning and picked up a box turtle that was about halfway across the Blue Ridge Parkway. I parked on the grass verge and picked it up. I carried it a mile or so south to a place that seemed better for its longevity.
Smallish box turtle. I don't know if that's the local breed or if it was a young and stupid turtle. No picture because I didn't think of it. I had not yet had my coffee.
My turtle ... shall we name it Helen ... had totally retreated into its shell and was sitting there in the middle of traffic. I dunnoh. Maybe it was trembling in fear. With turtles, it's hard to tell.
If I had cars whizzing past me I would curl up and do the same, but it is not a successful strategy when dealing with cars. This is a nature observation of wide applicability.
Tuesday, August 08, 2017
A dog story with, I hope, a happy ending
Very much like me except for the hat |
Boogied out of the cafe in early afternoon, bought groceries, picked up Indian carryout, and headed home in a leisurely manner, pleased with myself and the world because I'd done good work.
Take out food somewhat Like my own |
Bout halfway home I looked at the scene ahead. Something was going on. Folks were slowing down. Cars were stopped on both sides of the road.
So I slowed down, came to where the source of the trouble was, pulled over. and stopped.
Ah ... There was a dog in the road, running back and forth across four lanes of traffic, not quite getting killed. Couple of folks were being futile but well-intentioned deploring this. And the dog was very unhappy and scared.
Not the dog, just asimilar dog |
Maybe he belonged to a woman. In any case, the dog came, and when I patted the seat and said, "Up," he jumped up, looking relieved, and I closed the door.
I had achieved lost, frightened, huge, many-toothed, put bull. "Yipee," thinks I.
So now I had this dog -- no collar -- in the car. An unhappy & scared dog, but one who would be inclined to trust me since I was making all the right moves. Obviously it was time for me to get in there too, behind the wheel, and concentrate on not smelling frightened.
Hoookay.
I have done this before, actually.
A couple few times.
Because I am not quite bright.
So I headed for my go-to ASPCA which is large and no-kill and one that I know how to get to. I had to drive twenty miles back in exactly the way I had come because karma is a bitch.
The dog took this all fairly calmly and scrunched his way around the front seat and back, walking over bags of groceries with which the car was plentifully supplied -- there go the tomatoes -- and obstructing my sight pretty thoroughly but he didn't bite me which I think was generous of him.
The Charlottesville SPCA |
Four or five of them, milling about in a pack, took him gingerly at the back door, I wasn't allowed to come into that part of the building so I couldn't see him all the way to his cage,
I will assume the volunteers know what they're doing so I did not call helpful advice after them, though perhaps I should have. Really, one calm person on the leash would have been preferable.
I had Indian food for dinner followed by the egg custard I made yesterday. Then I watched Time Team dig in a field.
A good day, especially if the pit bull's owner comes to find him again, or really -- from the pit bull's view of things -- a good day because he didn't get hit by a car.
He looked kinda like this dog above, but this is not him. I was doghandling instead of taking pictures so I don't have his picture.
Monday, August 07, 2017
A rainy day in the country
A very happy plant |
It's one of those days when I don't know whether the rain is helping the farmers out or spoiling the standing hay, so I just send general good will to the plant kingdom and hope they are all as happy as my fuchsia.
Fuchsia is one of those words I never spell right the first time and I don't use it often enough to make a mnemonic for it. (I can spell "mnemonic" though, which is one of life's little ironies, isn't it?)
This is whatit'll look like tomorrow |
My writing friend showed up with thoroughly wet hair --
drowned-cat-level wet hair -- and I thought she'd parked the car in
Timbuktu, (... took me a while to spell that one,) and run into the
safety of the cafe.
She said, No, she'd gone running and taken a shower and that was why she was wet.
I associate with people who get up at dawn and go running in the rain. It is no wonder I feel taken aback in most encounters with real life.
In other news, I m hacking away at the WIP and while I do not have just
exactly an order of events, I am getting the character voices settled
down which is almost as good and maybe even better.
To the side is a picture of Andrea Pickens, Mary Jo Putney and me at RWA National where we talked about "Why History" and generally enlivened an early morning with our observations.
There is also a picture up top of one of the plants on the back porch of the cabin, picture taken in the bright sun of last month but now enjoying the driving rain.
She said, No, she'd gone running and taken a shower and that was why she was wet.
I associate with people who get up at dawn and go running in the rain. It is no wonder I feel taken aback in most encounters with real life.
Andrea Pickens, Mary Jo Putney and me |
To the side is a picture of Andrea Pickens, Mary Jo Putney and me at RWA National where we talked about "Why History" and generally enlivened an early morning with our observations.
There is also a picture up top of one of the plants on the back porch of the cabin, picture taken in the bright sun of last month but now enjoying the driving rain.
Thursday, July 13, 2017
Anticipating stuff
Me, embracing the chaotic |
I don’t like to expect things. If you don’t go about
anticipating wonderful things, you don’t get disappointed when they don’t
actually happen. If you accept that the
world is inherently chaotic and slipshod, you can just shrug and say something
fatalistic in the face of disaster and get on with the work of trying to fix
stuff, which is one’s purpose in the world, or at least mine.
But today I am foolishly anticipating
and hoping air conditioning will come to my little house in the hills next
Tuesday. My fingers are crossed. Inside, I am wriggling like a happy puppy.
If we take "happy puppy" in a metaphoric sense.
Right now, in Real Life — (the whole Real Life thing is much over-rated,) — it is still early morning, but the temperature in the house is edging up toward 90°. The relative humidity is that of two feet under the surface of the swimming pool at the Y.
If we take "happy puppy" in a metaphoric sense.
Right now, in Real Life — (the whole Real Life thing is much over-rated,) — it is still early morning, but the temperature in the house is edging up toward 90°. The relative humidity is that of two feet under the surface of the swimming pool at the Y.
Me, being warm |
privileged cat |
My cat is as unhappy as it is possible for a well-fed, well-brushed,
pampered cat to be, which is to say pretty durned sullenly displeased, like
Queen Victoria when some battle in the Sudan is not going well.
My dog — (I gotta say my dog is very similar to me in temperament, except
she is unfailingly brave and honest and also regularly tries to disembowel the
UPS man, none of which three character traits I share) — endures, looking
more and more unhappy as the summer progresses.
My computer simply refuses to work at 90°. Wise computer.
The nice people at the plumbing company
have promised me air conditioning — (Why, you will ask is the plumbing company
involved in this. I can only reply, “Small town.” This is a comment of wide
applicability.) — for the last six weeks or so.
In roughly 117 hours and six minutes
the nice men from plumbing will show up in their white truck; the cat will
vanish to some alternate Scandinavian dimension under the IKEA couch; the dog
will abase herself adoring before the workmen as is her custom; and I will
drink tea and try to make intelligent comments; the workmen save the stupidest
of these to delight one another in the truck going home.
At some point, Tuesday? Wednesday?
Thursday? one of these nice men will flip a switch and I will be cool. And
dehumidified. My cat, dog, self and computer will be sooo happy.
Anyhow, that’s what I’m anticipating.
Friday, July 07, 2017
They call bread the staff of life, using staff in the sense of “a long stick used as a support when walking or climbing or as a weapon”, which is to say, metaphorically, since even the most warlike among us seldom take up baguettes and plunge into battle. What we mean when we talk about bread this way is that it supports us and keeps us alive.
This was true all through the historical period in which I interest myself – the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Bread provided most of the calories of the average person’s diet. Maybe 60%. (This was in the days when most folks were trying to scrape together enough calories to keep themselves alive, not trying to avoid them.) Beer – bread’s funtime cousin – contributed another 20% of calories. That’s 80 % of what folks lived on. Bread and beer were fueling the European working man.
They didn’t necessarily know they were getting their protein from bread, because getting protein in the diet does not seem to have been a high priority, as per this handy table which may be taken as more or less representative.
From this you will see that your average bloke in 1750 Strasbourg (this was a table easy to find if not totally relevant to 1800 London, but I’m talking Big Picture here) was spending 20% of his income on beer and getting only a teensy bit of his yearly protein. Put another way, the fellow was spending as much on beer as on soap, linen, candles, lamp oil, and fuel combined. He doubtless found this worthwhile.
Bread was almost sacred. The custom I’ve seen of making a cross on a loaf of bread before slicing it would have been widespread a century or two back. In church, bread was the body of Christ and a sacrament. You didn’t mess around with bread.
Beer didn’t have quite that cachet, but it was still pretty cool.
Bread was cheap protein too. Lookit this nifty comparison of the cost of protein in silver. Bread and beans were king. Half the price of meat when it came to providing protein.
I admit I’m surprised to see the relative expense of eggs as a source of protein. We think of eggs as cheap protein nowadays.
Cheese which is so expensive on that chart I keep thinking it must be some kinda typo. When we think of a farm wife as in charge of the eggs and cheese economy of the house, this certainly implies she was running a profitable little business of her own.
But there it is, laid out in very general terms. Up to modern times European folks were bread and bean eaters. We’ve left this behind in a lot of ways. Bread is no longer the center of people’s diets. (Though I remember my father always wanted to have bread on the table, even if it was cornbread, often as not.)
This was true all through the historical period in which I interest myself – the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Bread provided most of the calories of the average person’s diet. Maybe 60%. (This was in the days when most folks were trying to scrape together enough calories to keep themselves alive, not trying to avoid them.) Beer – bread’s funtime cousin – contributed another 20% of calories. That’s 80 % of what folks lived on. Bread and beer were fueling the European working man.
They didn’t necessarily know they were getting their protein from bread, because getting protein in the diet does not seem to have been a high priority, as per this handy table which may be taken as more or less representative.
From this you will see that your average bloke in 1750 Strasbourg (this was a table easy to find if not totally relevant to 1800 London, but I’m talking Big Picture here) was spending 20% of his income on beer and getting only a teensy bit of his yearly protein. Put another way, the fellow was spending as much on beer as on soap, linen, candles, lamp oil, and fuel combined. He doubtless found this worthwhile.
Bread was almost sacred. The custom I’ve seen of making a cross on a loaf of bread before slicing it would have been widespread a century or two back. In church, bread was the body of Christ and a sacrament. You didn’t mess around with bread.
Beer didn’t have quite that cachet, but it was still pretty cool.
Bread was cheap protein too. Lookit this nifty comparison of the cost of protein in silver. Bread and beans were king. Half the price of meat when it came to providing protein.
I admit I’m surprised to see the relative expense of eggs as a source of protein. We think of eggs as cheap protein nowadays.
Cheese which is so expensive on that chart I keep thinking it must be some kinda typo. When we think of a farm wife as in charge of the eggs and cheese economy of the house, this certainly implies she was running a profitable little business of her own.
But there it is, laid out in very general terms. Up to modern times European folks were bread and bean eaters. We’ve left this behind in a lot of ways. Bread is no longer the center of people’s diets. (Though I remember my father always wanted to have bread on the table, even if it was cornbread, often as not.)
Wednesday, July 05, 2017
Small Town Fourths
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I am surrounded by small town Fourths of July ... (Fourth of
Julys?) By parades, fireworks, heat and holiday America.
In my closest little town, along with the taco trucks and
BBQ, we got jello-mold-and-potato-chip family picnics. We got gatherings of convivial
folding canvas chairs with drink holders, the drink holders being occupied by beer
cans or red plastic cups of Mountain Dew.
The police force is out, crisscrossing the crowd in an
earnest way. Midsized kids run around yelling. Every once in a while, in the
middle distance, somebody sets off a firecracker.
There are flags. Flags on street poles of the parade route. People
carrying flags. People wearing them. Flags on cars.
The other nearby town, next town over, used to be a whistle
stop on the railway. It is become somewhat a suburb for the closest tiny city.
Here, twenties and thirties folks sit in the same canvas chairs. There are
fewer kids in the crowd, all of them dressed in natural fibers. Dogs wearing red
kerchiefs round the neck, meet and greet friends from the dog park and are
decorous.
Folks take out fresh peaches and sandwiches made with whole
meal bread and thermoses of kombucha. Some of the men doff their shirts to bask
in the sun.
I don’t watch the fireworks in either town. At dark I go out
to my back porch and sit on one of my Adirondack chairs – made of the finest
plastic – and look down the valley where folks are putting on their own
fireworks displays.
In the past these have been small affairs. I can see – oh –
a dozen of them. Little, bright shows that must be set off in some farmer’s
field. They’ll let off twenty or so, and
then further up the valley somebody else will take it up.
I imagine everybody knows who’s doing what. I like to think
of the teenage boy of the family running out to light a fuse and getting out of
the way fast.
“That’ll show ‘em,” Mom says in satisfaction. “A retrocentral flower spray. Better than the Joneses had last year.”
“Yup,” says Dad.
“That’ll show ‘em,” Mom says in satisfaction. “A retrocentral flower spray. Better than the Joneses had last year.”
“Yup,” says Dad.
This year, right below me, something rather more was going
on. Big complex fireworks. Professional stuff. It probably lasted close to an
hour. And I could hear a crowd ooohing and aaahing.
I’ll have to ask at the Post Office who put that one
on.
Friday, June 30, 2017
Visitors to the cabin
I'd been hearing this kinda fluttery banging for a bit, while I went type type type type and ignored it.
"What's that?" I thinks, not paying much attention to myself which is always a mistake.
And then a bird comes flying across the room which catches my wandering attention.
Being the brilliant person I am and skilled in the ways of the wild,
(just call me Hawkeye,) I say "Durn it. A bird's got in," and schlep
over to where the bird is battering itself against the window going flap
flap flap in a frantic way and doing itself no good.
I stand for a moment mulling over stuff like "How do I get the window open without hurting the bird or scaring it off to go bang itself against other places" and "What kind of bird is that?"
I'm easing the window open when the dog trots up and grabs the bird and makes for the door. Which is open.
Very smooth move. Fast as the dickens that dog.
"Now I'll have to chase the dog down and take the bird away from it and I'll probably kill the bird in the process if the dog hasn't already," thinks I to myself, looking for my shoes.
Then back comes the dog. immediately, looking nonchalant. I mean, it was fifty seconds round trip. So either the dog dropped the bird, dead, somewhere in the immediate vicinity, or the dog dropped it not-yet-but-inevitably-soon-to-be-dead, or the bird got away or the dog let it go.
Mandy-the-dog has a good bit of hound in the general mix. Who knows what atavistic instincts rose up in her.
The dog was being soft-mouthed to the bird, it had seemed to me. I will hope for the best, bird-wise.
"Why do you do this to me?" I says to Mandy.
Then the other bird that had been flying around the house banged against a different window and brought itself to my attention. This was a two-bird incident, I realized. They come not as single scouts today.
This time I was not befuddled by having my mind in 1730s Paris and I reacted more quickly.
"Oh no, you don't," I said to the cat and lifted her bodily from my desk.
Desperate flapping continued against the window over my desk. This was a male goldfinch. Okay.
I went to the kitchen, took one of my kitchen towels from over the sink, softly softly catchee goldfinch went I, and chucked it out the door.
We are mostly winning in the catching birds sweepstakes today. I feel good, taking it all in all, though I am puzzled by two birds simultaneously deciding to try their luck indoors. It is not as if I get birds flapping around in here as an everyday event.
But anyway, do not assume that my life is dull just because I am living in the middle of all these trees. Lots of stuff
goes on here. Lots.
I stand for a moment mulling over stuff like "How do I get the window open without hurting the bird or scaring it off to go bang itself against other places" and "What kind of bird is that?"
I'm easing the window open when the dog trots up and grabs the bird and makes for the door. Which is open.
Very smooth move. Fast as the dickens that dog.
"Now I'll have to chase the dog down and take the bird away from it and I'll probably kill the bird in the process if the dog hasn't already," thinks I to myself, looking for my shoes.
Then back comes the dog. immediately, looking nonchalant. I mean, it was fifty seconds round trip. So either the dog dropped the bird, dead, somewhere in the immediate vicinity, or the dog dropped it not-yet-but-inevitably-soon-to-be-dead, or the bird got away or the dog let it go.
Mandy-the-dog has a good bit of hound in the general mix. Who knows what atavistic instincts rose up in her.
The dog was being soft-mouthed to the bird, it had seemed to me. I will hope for the best, bird-wise.
"Why do you do this to me?" I says to Mandy.
Then the other bird that had been flying around the house banged against a different window and brought itself to my attention. This was a two-bird incident, I realized. They come not as single scouts today.
This time I was not befuddled by having my mind in 1730s Paris and I reacted more quickly.
"Oh no, you don't," I said to the cat and lifted her bodily from my desk.
Desperate flapping continued against the window over my desk. This was a male goldfinch. Okay.
I went to the kitchen, took one of my kitchen towels from over the sink, softly softly catchee goldfinch went I, and chucked it out the door.
We are mostly winning in the catching birds sweepstakes today. I feel good, taking it all in all, though I am puzzled by two birds simultaneously deciding to try their luck indoors. It is not as if I get birds flapping around in here as an everyday event.
But anyway, do not assume that my life is dull just because I am living in the middle of all these trees. Lots of stuff
goes on here. Lots.
Friday, June 23, 2017
Getting Stuff Done and Not Done
Most of staying sane in the freelance writing world is doing what you can
get done, rejoicing in that, and jettisoning the rest with a minimum of regret.
So I'm sitting here in my comfy chair at 5 in the morning,
clean,
hair washed,
well-fed,
wearing soft, loose, comfortable clothes,
exercised up as of yesterday,
with a pair of lidded pots drying on the shelf at my potmaking class at the community college,
my herbs getting watered by a sporadic, sweet rain,
me watching the dawn,
with a working computer,
wild birds fed,
the dog and cat sleeping in their chosen perches,
all of us listening to French torch songs of the 20s,
and me formatting this Indie novella for publication.
I am fortunate beyond my deserts.
I don't get everything done, but I get the big things right.
I don't get everything done, but I get the big things right.
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
More on the writing life ... and dogs
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I want to let Mandy-the-Dog free to run about the woodland
a-chasing of the deer
(hums, “My heart’s in the Highlands. My heart isn’t here.” )
and otherwise amusing herself when I go down into the valley to the coffeeshop where there is air conditioning and, well, coffee.
and otherwise amusing herself when I go down into the valley to the coffeeshop where there is air conditioning and, well, coffee.
But if I leave the door open so she can get in and out, Mandy hears me start the car
and takes off, even if she has been given a big plate of chopped chicken breast
and should be wholly immersed in that. Mandy comes bounding after me with
admirable speed and follows me all the way down hill, about a quarter mile and
a bit, to the mailbox.
Bound, bound, bound goes Mandy, chasing after me.
I stop at the mailbox and put my head on the steering wheel
and am pretty sure Jane Austen never had this problem.
Mandy will not get into the car with me. She has been there
and done that and knows I am going
to drive her back and lock her up in the
house. No fool, Mandy.
So I turn around at the mailbox and drive back to the cabin.
Bound, bound, bound goes Mandy, but this time uphill.
I lure her inside with tiny bitty dog treats which I hide among
the sofa cushions and under the edge of the rug. She will find them, or I will,
eventually. Thus I demonstrate the triumph of human cunning that has kept us
one jump ahead of the canine community all these years.
I close the door behind me and drive off in the direction of
coffee.
I need hardly say that the cat takes no part in this drama,
demonstrating the feline cunning that has kept cats one jump ahead of both the
human and the canine community all these years.
Monday, June 19, 2017
I’m making an honest effort to promo more.
A friend has helped me learn to make memes.
I put one on my author page in Facebook and I feel very proud of myself.
This is obviously the slippery slope.
Now you will see many awkward memes in my postings.
Lucky you.
Resolving to promo and meme is the equivalent of promising myself I’ll
go to the gym to push around weights and move levers, which is to say it
is something I know is good for me but which fills me with deep
reluctance.
Why is promo necessarily connected to writing?
I rather like writing.
In other philosophical questions, why don’t they hook up all those gym machines to generate electricity and run the lights? Those bike machines could be powering the air conditioning or something.
We’re a practical people, we Americans. Surely we’d be more enthusiastic about exercise if it did something useful.
Surely I’d be more enthusiastic about making memes if they performed some useful social duty.
So. Promo.
“Go buy my books. Pre-order the next one.”
Here ...
(You have been promo-Monday-ed.
I won't bother you again for a while.)
Why is promo necessarily connected to writing?
I rather like writing.
In other philosophical questions, why don’t they hook up all those gym machines to generate electricity and run the lights? Those bike machines could be powering the air conditioning or something.
We’re a practical people, we Americans. Surely we’d be more enthusiastic about exercise if it did something useful.
Surely I’d be more enthusiastic about making memes if they performed some useful social duty.
So. Promo.
“Go buy my books. Pre-order the next one.”
Here ...
(You have been promo-Monday-ed.
I won't bother you again for a while.)
Friday, June 16, 2017
The HEA and Dire Poverty
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Love is not all: it is not meat nor
drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
(I’ll interrupt here to point out she’s about defining the two lowest levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and goes on to deny their primacy.)
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
I
was on twitter last night, late in my time zone, chatting about whether one
could write a Romance where the protagonists were no-kidding-around dirt poor.
Is there an HEA for folks scraping by in the dangerous underbelly of existence?
HEA,
in case you have wandered in looking for information on the UN’s policy on
Education, is “Happily Ever After”. That, or HFN — Happy For Now — is required if a book is to be genre Romance. No happy
ending and you may be writing a love story or Woman’s Fiction or Literary Fiction
or Fairy Tales for Rabbits or perfectly lovely General Fiction, but it’s not a
work of genre Romance and should not be advertised as such.
This
isn’t talking about the poverty of a pioneer cabin, or a Western dirt-scrabble
ranch, or a small farm in Wales, or about the working-class life of most people
everywhere and everywhen. This is poverty with a capital P. The pure quill,
the desperate grinding-poverty poor.
So
I thought about poverty and genre Romance while I was reading tweets and
writing tweets and I came to a couple conclusions.
A San -- or Bushman -- person. They have the oldest DNA. They're probably like our distant ancestors. They are quite beautiful folk, btw. |
First
off, one may love deeply when the next meal is problematic and the chickens
have come down with mad hen disease. Happiness isn’t conditional on tea and
cakes, such as those in front of me. Young San heroes and heroines in the
Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa may snuggle together on the rocks, cheerful and content, filled
with gratitude for the day’s berries and nuts, hoping for an unwary antelope
tomorrow. The bitter and lonely trolls I meet on the net are not an
advertisement for a safe, rich, comfortable life.
I
poked around in the attic of my mind which is furnished with much oddly shaped
furniture when you come right down to it and considered love and happiness and
poverty and suffering and genre Romance.
Genre
fiction is market defined, which is neither good nor bad. It just is. Folks
don’t come to my genre looking for bleak reality. Most of them have a
plentitude of conflict, worry, and sorrow stocked up. They come to Romance for
the feelgoods. To get away from all that durned Reality. And if I’m taking their
money I’m going to give ‘em what they’ve paid for because that’s my contract
with the reader.
Which
brings us round to the original question — can one write a satisfying genre Romance with grindingly
poor protagonists?
I
considered Maslow. Maslow, for those of you who slept through Freshman Econ and
Philosophy, spoke of a “hierarchy of needs”. What is important to humans? He made
a pyramid that stacks the last two thousand years of thought on this into a single
graphic, the better to jog folks awake in Econ 101 and give them something to
doodle in their notebooks. I have no idea who Maslow was, btw. He may have
lived on a mountain top, cowering before black bears, instead of teaching at
some uni.
Anyway,
see the pyramid above. Every layer rests on satisfying the substrate below. The
general idea is you don’t go so much looking for love when you’re starving to
death or exiting stage left, pursued by bear. Like all simplicities, Maslow’s
hierarchy doesn’t quite cover reality so I will quote Edna St. Vincent Millay
who probably never heard of Maslow but argues on the other side anyway.
Edna |
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
(I’ll interrupt here to point out she’s about defining the two lowest levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and goes on to deny their primacy.)
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
Millay’s
poem speaks of the triumph of the third level of Maslow’s hierarchy.
When
I’m putting together the outcome of a story, I want to check off all — jo stops
to count — five Maslow levels. I want the HEA to plausibly suggest a safe and
comfortable future. Love itself gives the male and female protagonist those
upper three levels.
Yeah
love!
So
what about poverty and genre Romance?
Not exactly what I'm having now, but close |
I
decided the genre requires some absolute floor of pain and desperation for an HEA. Not tea and cakes necessarily. Okay. But not a life of starvation either. Not
assured safety, but danger and damage faced by the protagonists and survived
and overcome. (I’m thinking Outlander here.)
I
think poverty also works if the protagonists are sustained by what makes poverty
secondary. Medical missionaries; scientists living in an Amazonian jungle to
collect disappearing languages; a free-love, Vegan, farming commune, living in yurts;
(I know somebody who does this;) clear-eyed radicals living in the bowels of a
dystopian future city, fighting the dystopes.
I
know these books must be out there, the HEAs where the protagonists are poorer
than church mice, but it’s still an upbeat, hopeful ending.
So I ask you ... I come to lay it at
your feet for judgment. Can dire, grinding poverty with no prospect for better be
part of a satisfying escapist genre romance?
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Coffee is good. Coffee gives me something to do with my eyes and hands and mouth when my brain runs out of writing.
Coffee has caffeine. Whee!
(jo perks up)
I get lattes, which are thick enough and foamy enough that it's like eating something almost. When it comes to coffee, this is how I roll.
Tea passes through my heart and mind like a cool wind, leaving nothing behind but cleanliness and quiet. I like tea and the dawn.
Coffee, on the other hand, is the mudwrestling of beverages. I come away happy and exhausted and satisfied and covered with a thick crust of the experience.
Tea is aged cognac in a thin, round glass. Coffee is Oktoberfest.
Sometimes the barista puts a wonderful design on top of my drink. Last time it was a koi fish in celebration of my screen saver which is the nifty "Koi" program available in the Apple store.
Sometimes it's a bird or a tree.
I like eating things shaped like people and animals. Gingerbread men. Those chocolate rabbits that I eat, ears first.
Lattes with a tree or a bird drawn in the foam on top.
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