Dates

I wanted to set the dates here and the ages. I hope I have all these right.

Leesee ...


Doyle and Maggie's Story takes place in July, 1794

The Spymaster's Lady -- 1802

My Lord and Spymaster -- 1811

Her Ladyship's Companion -- 1818


Birthdates. Doyle in 1764. Maggie in 1770. Grey in 1775. Sebastian in 1784 Adrian and Anneka in 1782, Jess in 1790.

Annique looks like ... Jessamyn looks like ...

For anyone interested in what Annique looks like ... I kinda pictured her as a young Natassja Kinski.

Can't post her picture, not having the rights, but there's a link to it. Here.

There's no reason heroines have to be beautiful. Not generally. But Annique's job calls for a degree of beauty, so she gets to have it.

Jessamyn is another reasonably pretty girl, but the generality of mankind doesn't turn to watch her pass in the street. I'm thinking Robin Wright. Here.

My Lord and Spymaster Errata

First erratum of the story.


Sebastian, when he identifies the plant as 'horehound' is, of course, incorrect. It is ground ivy. Glechoma hederacea.

Bad Sebastian! Bad, bad Sebastian! Study your biology.

Technical Topics -- Words, words, words ... What the galleys have taught me

Here are some words and phrases that did not exist in 1810, or did not carry their modern meaning.

heck
shut up
hump
hangover
sugar cube

What I have learned is that you will discover 'shut up' is not authentic Regency-speak only after you are in the galley stage of production and only if you have used it fifteen times.

One more run through the draft. Just wish I had ...

Galleys

My Lord and Spymaster Cover

The My Lord and Spymaster cover is up at Amazon.

So pretty.

As soon as I finish the galleys of MLAS, I shall try to get that cover onto the blog.
(This is not trivial if you are as technologically ham-handed as I am.)

The cover artist for both books is Judy York. Her website is here. You can see the Loretta Chase 'Lord Perfect' cover right on the front page of her Romance section. Cool, yes?

I'm not sure ... could that Loretta Chase cover possibly be the same model -- Nathan Kamp -- as the Spymaster's Lady cover?

Nathan Kamp has a site here if you want to, y'know, look at some abs for a bit.

When I'm writing and I get stuck, I click to Lolcats. Here.
Nothing seems impossible after a few dozen lolcats.
I wouldn't be surprised if N.K.'s abs turned out to have the same aspects of transcendence.

Good-bye Jess. Hello Maggie

I sent off the copyedits for My Lord and Spymaster on Tuesday.

This means I'm basically done with it. MLAS is about kicked out of the nest. Soon it'll be out there soaring on its own ... or fluttering on the ground making sad little chirrups waiting for a cat to come along and jump on it.

What lies ahead for MLAS ...

In New York they're taking those copyedits apart and putting them into electronic form, ready to make the galleys.

They'll send the galleys back to me. I'm not supposed to change stuff in the galleys, except typos, but I've picked out two places where I want to make bitty, bitty little changes. Ten or twelve words added in one place. One word changed in the other.

Then I send the galleys back and I'm done.

I've started blocking out the story for Maggie. I have a possible outline. Who is Maggie? What does she want? What does she need? What will she do to get it?

The books

Somebody asked ...


Book #4, (if I ever write it,) will be Doyle and Maggie's story. Set in France and England in 1792. Adrian will have a strong secondary role. I might give some walk-on parts to my old friends. (TBA)

The Spymaster's Lady is the story of Annique and Grey. Set in France and England in 1802. Adrian and Doyle have secondary parts. Giles Tarsin has a walk-on. (release January 2008. Berkley)

My Lord and Spymaster is the story of Jessamyn and Sebastian. Set in London in 1811. Adrian plays a secondary part. Doyle has a walk-on. (release July 2008. Berkley)

Her Ladyship's Companion is the story of Giles Tarsin and (jo tries to remember here) Melissa ... It's been a long time. Set in Cornwall in 1816 or 1818 ...? Adrian plays a secondary part. (release 1983. Avon)

Ferret Fur Flying

I was into ferrets before they were cool.
Kedger's the name of Jessamyn's ferret.


Excerpt from My Lord and Spymaster:


The Kedger's head popped up over the roof line. He poured toward her, carrying something in his mouth. She accepted a button. A little spit and a quick polish on her sleeve revealed it was brass. Amazing what Kedger came up with, even on a roof.

"You're going to make us rich if you keep this up." To please him, she dropped it in the sack. He sniffed after it a minute, then climbed up her arm to investigate her braids. Sniff . . . nibble . . . tug . . . tug.

"Anything in there I should know about?"

The Kedger responded with a comment on women who bounced ferrets around in burlap sacks.

"Sorry, mate. I'll be more careful next time."

He chirruped, still grumpy.

"Are you going to pull all my braids out, or just that one?"

He'd made his point. He took his place on her shoulder and dug his claws in, stretched up tall, and pointed his nose to the wind. South, he ordered.

Dithering more strongly

Well ... I took Kedger out.
Now I've put him back in again.

Because I really missed him.


So.

Words completed in the rough draft

40,675 / 120,000 (33.9%)

Days used before rough draft should be finished

56 / 123 (45.5%)

Still not keeping up ...





The difference between writing now and writing in Jane Austen's era is that quill pens never decide to stop printing closed brackets and quill pens never get wonky about 'P's and only hit them two times out of three and quill pens don't collect cookie crumbs under the keys and cat hairs all across the screen and quill pens don't suddenly decide to start writing all in capitals.
On the other hand you don't have to catch a goose before you boot up your computer.

Day 34 of 123

I'm in Day 34 of the 123 days I had to finish the manuscript of Jess after ... well after whenever it was I decided I really had to enter the final stretch.

The good news is I'm finally past the breakfast table in Chapter Seven.
It's in final draft.
That was a really hard scene.

I'm not sure I have it right even now.

I just know that I've got past it and I'm still alive and I will hope the reader doesn't die of bordeom over the crumpets and tea.


The bad news is I'm way behind in my word count if I expect to get this done by October 1.

The good news is that I have a fairly easy stretch to get through next, which should generate lots of happy words.

22,019 / 120,000 (18.3%)

JESSAMYN word count on rough draft

34 / 123 (27.6%)

Days till deadline


(edited to add --- When this was happening, I kept track of the process day by day. A year later, I went back and pulled all that dullness out. You don't have to go through every inch of the plod and niggle. Lucky you.)

Cover

I may never get out of Chapter Three

I was sitting in Starbucks yesterday, with my eyes closed. I was inside Jess, feeling the blanket she's wearing – she's not wearing anything else; she leads an eventful existence – and every once in a while I'd open my eyes and be back in Starbucks.

When I was Jess, I didn't hear the background music. When I was in Starbucks, I did. A fine jazz sax.

We travel into our story ... not for revision, redrafting, correction or proofing. But the first time, the creating time, we make the journey all the way to our world.



In other news, got the contract for Spymaster's Lady to sign.
Gee.
Thick little thing, isn't it?

Still in Three

I'm doing about the fifth draft of the last half of Chapter Three of JESS.
This is probably the final draft.
But then, I've thought that a couple of times before.

Why I'm doing this ...

When I shortened Chapter One to about half of its former glory
and chucked the prologue overboard, (Remember splash?)

I tossed out lots of Jess POV. The balance has shiftered too far away from her.
I need more Jess POV.
Which -- since I'm covering the same territory -- means less Sebastian POV.

I have beautiful passages in that Sebastian POV. I have clever, insightful, incisive, funny work in Sebastian POV.
(splash)

I have to go back and write the scene from Jess' POV.

I can do that. Yes.
But it's hard to write when you're pouting about stuff you had to throw out.

First Three of Jess

Just about through the final draft of the first three chapters of JESS. It is surprisingly difficult to lick the first three chapters into shape when the rest of the ms is still --- how shall I put this? -- somewhat diffuse.

I have more respect for those folks who can finish and polish just Chapters One through Three, standalone, to submit of send off to contests. Freaking hard.

The Prologue is gone. (splash -- prologue overboard.)
Chapter One has been reduced to a mere nubbins of its original long and winding action.
Chapter Three -- where I am right now -- will now contain two POV flips.

I hate POV flips.
It's holding my fingers to the fire, trying to write them, but the heroine has got to show a larger POV presence in these early pages.

Chapter One of Jess, about final

A young friend, 14, said one of those wise things that always surprise me. Don't know why it should surprise me that she's wise at 14, but it does.

I was complaining how hard it was to rewrite these first three chapters so they'd be in final form to submit.
She said, 'They tell us in dance – When it starts being a job ... quit.'

In other words, if it's not fun, don't do it.

I don't know why this helped, but it did.


So ... Today I finished another jiggle-this-and-that-word-around of Chapter One. It feels about done.
IF it is not too dense.
IF it is not overwritten.
IF I have not lost touch with the POV character's emotion.

I'll set it aside for a week. May I can come back and make an assessment. I'm either astronomically way off and should redo the entire first quarter of the story ... or I'm about ok. I will get an expert opinion on which it is when I submit.


And onward to Chapter Two. Once again, my goal is to eschew the glib and dig deep into the character. Free the man up from the matrix.


So weird. I dreamed about the character Sebastian last night. Never done that before.

Chapter One JESS

You'd think there would be only so many times you could rewrite Chapter One and stare at it and go stomping around the house and come back and save it as a doc and put it away and start all over again.

You'd think.

I've spent a week doing this.
I think I'm getting closer.

It's all a matter of slipping into VERY deep POV.


Here are some opening lines ...

This was England, so it was raining. Not clean, angry rain that might have done some good washing the street. What she had falling on her was a drizzle like a spoiled child, sullen and persistent and whiny.

or ...

It was London, so it was drizzling. Fog crawled up out of the Thames, smelling of ghosts and bad dreams.

or ...

Jess hated the dark. Worse than rats were likely to come for her if she was out after dark.

And the latest --

Once you get a taste for thievery, you never lose it. Papa mentioned that from time to time, with a little clout to the side of her head so she'd know he was referring to her.

Grumble, grumble, grumble ....

In other news, I took the dog out late last night. It was snowing fluffy wet flakes the size of kittens. We sat and looked at them for a while in the light from the front porch.

Mid April. Whole bunch of surprised plants in my front yard.

Visualizing Eleven

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

The ANNEKA revisions have not yet landed on me.

So it's back to writing JESS.

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

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

I need a bridge.

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

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

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

Chapter Nine done

And moving into Ten ... inside her warehouse, in Sebastian's POV.


final working draft of JESS

Jess Synopsis

Jo worked on the synopsis of JESSAMYN today. Jo has a nice final draft of the synopsis. Good Jo.

I used as my template the synopsis I submitted to Miss Snark way back when the story was still a series of 'this scene introduces so-and-so who does such-and-such'.

I had to modify matters in the last half of the synopsis because it turned out so-and-so not only didn't do such-and-such – sometimes so-and-so didn't even make it to the next draft.

I have set the synopsis aside to cool for a day. I'll come back for a new read which will tell me if it is (a) comprehensible, (b) logical and (c) if the weak attempts at humor should be removed.
(They probably should.)

Oh goody. I just remembered I will be seeing friends on Wednesday. I can ask them for an opinion.

Lucky friends.
I will warn them.

I have four or five days before I'm supposed to send this synopsis and Chapters One to Three to Superagent.
Are we cutting this close?
Yes.

In other news ... have hacked my way through the first third of Chapter Eight, leaving the topiary of a final draft behind me. Have established Sebastian's attitude towards Jess nicely.

The chapter, unfortunately, is talking heads to some extent. I better revv up the Adrian-Sebastian conflict.

(Is that too many –ians? Am I going to have to rename Sebastian?)