Word Wenches

And the Wiener is ...

For participating in the discussion regarding gondola rides, LINDSAY wins an autographed copy of Loretta's Your Scandalous Ways.  Lindsay, please contact Loretta or me with your mailing address.  Congratulations, and thanks for participating in the discussion!

Here today, gondola tomorrow

From Loretta:

Didst ever see a Gondola?  For fear
    You should not, I’ll describe it to you exactly:
‘Tis a long cover’d boat that’s common here,
    Carved at the prow, built lightly, but compactly;
Row’d by two rowers, each call’d ‘Gondolier,’
    It glides along the water looking blackly,
Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe,
Where none can make out what you say or do.
  (Lord Byron, Beppo)

Thus opens Chapter One of Your Scandalous Ways.

Thanks to all the screen adaptations of Jane Austen's work, most readers have some idea of what, say, an early 19th C carriage looks like.  But the early 19th C gondola--the carriage of Venice, whose streets are mostly water--may not be quite so clear.
Since gondolas play a big role in Your Scandalous Ways--much as a carriage might in one of my English-set “road books”--I’m going to expand on Byron’s evocative and witty description.  And, as always, I shall supply visual aids.

The first thing we modern readers need to get used to is the cabin or felze.  People think of a gondola ride today as romantic, but the passengers are in public view.  In the time of my story, the passengers were likely to be inside the felze.  It would have a door, casement windows, Venetian blinds, and a cushy interior. (Katherine Shaw kindly sent me this photo.  Please scroll down this page to see another.)

Thus Byron’s “coffin clapt in a canoe.”  It was quite private--and yes, in Your Scandalous Ways, I take advantage of that privacy in more than one scene, as in this excerpt.

      He needed desperately to be taught a lesson.
      Unhurriedly she slid shut the casement beside her and closed the blinds.  She reached across him, letting her bosom brush against his chest, and closed the window and blinds on his side.
      As she moved back to her place, she felt his chest rise and fall a little faster than it had done a moment earlier.
      She folded her hands in her lap.  “There,” she said.  “No one can see.”
      “There won’t be anything to see,” he said.
      “We’ll see,” she said.

Today, a gondola ride is an expensive luxury, reserved mainly for tourists.  It's faster and much cheaper (and noisier) to board one of the water taxis or buses.  In Byron’s time the gondolas
were everywhere.  Picture these black vessels with their little cabins, like black taxicabs, converging on a theater.  “And round the theatres, a sable throng,” as Byron puts it. 

Here's a recent view of the rear of La Fenice opera house, where Francesca's gondola would be waiting to collect her after the performance.  Below it is a (mid?) 19th C view.

     "After midnight, when the theaters let out and the parties began, the lights of hundreds of gondolas danced over the canals and candlelight twinkled in the windows of the palaces.  Here, where no coach wheels and horses’ hooves clattered over pavement, one moved in a quiet punctuated only by voices.  Carried over the water, conversations ebbed and flowed around her, as though in a great drawing room."

And no, the gondoliers did not then wear the straw hats with the ribbons and they did not sing.

In the time of my story, one would glide along in the vessel in a quiet world.  As Lord Byron's friend Hobhouse wrote, “during the night a profound stillness reigns though the canals and streets, interrupted only by the warning cry of the gondoliers, and the drop of their paddles, or by the tinkling of some solitary guitar."

Research is the closest I can come to time travel.  The challenge is to make my hero and heroine’s surroundings vivid in the reader’s mind without letting it intrude.  I don’t spend pages going into all the details of gondolas.  And I cannot illustrate my books.  But I’m thinking this blog is enough to let you answer one of those time travel questions so many of us have fun with--and get a chance to win a free book.

If you could ride in a gondola in 1820 or a gondola now, which would you rather and why?

The winning commenter will receive, sometime in early June, a signed copy of Your Scandalous Ways.

Clubs

Jo here.

Unfortunately Bibiana can’t be with us this time (and yes, it is a delightfully appropriate name, isn’t it?) but I happened to be reading a book on gentlemen’s clubs, and they drank a lot of port and brandy, so I though I’d share some tidbits from that. 

Also, I couldn't find a picture of Charlie even in London, though he's been there, so here's one of him frolicking at Versailles.

The book is The Gentlemen’s Clubs of London by Anthony Lejeune and Malcolm Lewis, and I just noted that their names aren’t on the front, only on the spine, which seems so delightfully, understatedly English. :)

This book was sent me by a fan after she found it in a booksale, but it seems moderately rare. It’s written in the delightful style of one who really knows his clubs, and that seems to be Lejeune. Lewis seems to have been responsible for the many illustrations and photographs. Alas, being temporarily without a scanner, I can’t share any.

It seems to me that historical romances – and I include mine – don’t give quite enough weight to the gentlemen’s clubs. Wodehouse, for example, with the Drones' Club, or Ian Fleming with Blades, is probably more on the mark. Of course they had an advantage, both being men, and the sort of men who had a club or two as naturally as they had shoes.

Romances are also mostly written by women for women, who probably would rather their menfolk be at home than at the club. In fact, the book includes a poem that is a lament by neglected wives, though attributed to one Tom Hood.

Of all the modern schemes of man
That time has brought to bear,
A plague upon the wicked plan
That parts the wedded pair!
My female friends they all allow
They hardly know their hubs;
And heart and voice unite with me,
“We hate the name of clubs!”
(Doesn't "hubs" sound strange?)

You can read it all here in a book of Hood’s work, published in 1861. Of course earlier, women had clubs such as the Bluestocking salons, and Almack's, but men were allowed, even encouraged. Anyone know of any exclusively for women? If not, why not?

http://tinyurl.com/5zedf7

It strikes me as a book full of delicious tid-bits. Can anyone find one?

Can you recall any memorable scenes set in a

London

club? What’s the betting (how very clubbish!) it’s a scene where the heroine invades, probably dressed as a man? So, what about a realistic scene, with men only?

Here we go with the tasty morsels. (I’ve only used ones from clubs existing up to 1820.) The book is arranged alphabetically, so that’s the order things will appear. Skipping the American et al, we arrive at the Beefsteak, originally the home of the Sublime Society of Beeksteaks, a very venerable club, founded in 1735, though there were a number of others. The main purpose was to eat and celebrate beef and all the solid English values it represented.

(Which led me to this Hogarth picture "The Gate of Calais, or the Roast Beef of Old England." Check it out and the explanation behind it here. Ah, the world wide web. Always a new and sticky thread.)

I was actually looking for this.
"When mighty roast beef was the Englishman's food,
It ennobled our hearts and enriched our blood.
Our soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good.
Oh! the roast beef of England,
And Old England's roast beef."
Henry Fielding, 1735.

The famous Beefsteak Club is in Irving Street, between Leicester Square
and the Charing Cross Road. (One of those English quirks is that quite a few streets are the Charing Cross Road, the Edgeware  Road etc, presumably because they were originally heading to those places. However in most places they become simply Bolton Road, Chorley Road, etc. ) Unlike most clubs it is and has always been a single room with one long, communal dining table. The membership is a mix of peers, politicians, academics, and people from the arts, which is perhaps representative of that earlier age when mingling seemed to come naturally.

In its early days it had only 24 members, and even the Prince of Wales had to wait for an opening. They dined at 2pm  -- this was a typical dinner hour and in 1808 it moved to 4pm and in 1833 to 6pm in keeping with the drift to the evening meal -- every Saturday between November and June (the months when gentlemen were most likely to be in London rather than at their country estates.) They ate beefsteaks followed by that great favorite, toasted cheese, washed down with port, porter (ale), punch, and whisky toddy. They wore blue coats, buff waistcoats and buttons which said “Beef and Liberty!”

The original club died in 1867, killed mostly by the railways, which were taking people out of Town on the weekends, but it was revived in 1876 as an everyday dining club and moved to the present location.

There’s more at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beefsteak_Club but no pictures. Shame about the scanner. I’ll try to put up some another time.

 On to Boodles!

This is another famous club that doesn’t get much play in historical romance, perhaps because it sounds like the sort of place Bertie Wooster would hang out. In fact, according to Lejeune, “Solidity and tranquility make up the atmosphere of Boodles.” It was largely free of political affiliations and anything else that might cause disturbances. It was Ian Fleming’s favorite club because he said a pub should be dull. Perhaps that’s why we romance writers avoid it. :)

Edwin Boodle was head waiter at Almack’s when it was in Pall Mall in the early 1760s.. It later moved to 28, St. James’s street, to a place previously inhabited by the Savoire Vivre club. Now Lejeune spells that Scavoire and I don’t know why. Anyone?

Boodle’s had a bow window even more famous than the one at White’s. Apparently Sir Winston Churchill, when made an honorary member, had only one request – that he be allowed to sit in the window and smoke a cigar. But who knew there was also a Boodles (without the 's) Jewelers, established in 1798? That could create confusion in a novel, couldn't it?

Check Boodles the jewelers out here.

I really think that’s long enough for a blog, isn’t it? I’ll be continuing to make notes from this book, and I’ll share them either here or on my Minepast Blog.

 

Thanks to everyone who bought A Lady's Secret and put it on the New York Times in print list (top 20) for four beautiful weeks. Don't forget Lovers and Ladies, which has also been selling very well. :)

If you're wondering, I'm now working on Christian's story. It'll be out next year with the title, The Secret Wedding. No clubs in these books yet, but it was early days for clubs. Social life outside of home or court was still centered on coffee and chocolate houses, where nearly everyone was admitted.

As I said above, society became more restrictive over time, not less, and some think that the easy mixing of educated people in London in places like coffee houses contributed to Britain's rising greatness. The lists of famous minds who might be chatting on any particular night is dazzling.

On the other hand, the reason it became more restrictive was expansion and the rising middle classes. There were just too many people and everyone didn't know everyone anymore, so there were private clubs, and then clubs for this sort of person, and that profession, and that nationality.... Progress? Who can say.

Jo :)

 

Cover Conspiracy!!!

By Susan/Miranda

Here at the Wenches, we like to discuss covers.  We talk about covers we’ve had (Cover Girl) and covers we wish we had (A Makeover for Lady M). Our covers, other authors’ covers (Art vs. Commerce), good covers, bad covers, and really, really ugly covers.   I suspect much of our fascination with covers is that authors often have very little input into what goes on the front of our books.  We open those jpg files from art directors with great trepidation, each time hoping against hope that we got a “good one.” 

So imagine my surprise to see that the subject of cover-art is suddenly considered big-time news in the rest of the (non-Wench) world.  There it was, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the third-oldest surviving newspaper in the country, a venerable journal that has won eighteen Pulitzer Prizes –– there, on the front page of the section, a bold-faced headline that couldn’t be missed:

These book covers say women are dumb

Well! Not much grey area in a headline like that, is there?  The article that followed was written by one of the Inquirer’s most popular columnists, Karen Heller, and here’s the link so you can read it yourself. 

On first reading, I completely agreed with Ms. Heller.  I, too, am heartily sick of the cover-art conventions for books targeted towards women readers, from cheesy clinches to empty Adirondack chairs to the random, faceless body parts favored for chick-lit.  (Yes, I know, my last two covers have featured headless women, and yes, I would have preferred they have had heads, and we’ll leave it at that.) 

I also agree that a writer’s entire career can be determined by the pigeon-hole of a cover.  Consider all the fantastic books out there that will never even be seen by a wider audience, let alone purchased or read, because they have the single word “romance” printed on the spine, and a “romance” cover on the front.  (A good many excellent Wench books would surely fall into this category.)  Ditto “women’s fiction.”  Why are so many women writers singled out and branded like that?  Books like The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks or Love Story by Erich Segal or even Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy aren’t labeled women’s fiction, though in theory they could be. They’re just fiction, suitable for all readers, and not banished to the “girl ghetto” section.

It’s worked in reverse as well.  Consider an author like Louise Erdrich, whose complex, spiritual novels of families and lovers evolve from her own Chippewa heritage.  Currently she’s regarded as one of the most important American novelists of her generation, and deserves to be, too. But what would have happened to her career if, in the beginning, some misguided art director had given her a “western romance” type cover?  Would she have ever found her audience of both male and female readers, and the literary reputation that’s come with it? (OK, so most likely she would, but in the wonderful world of publishing, believe me, ANYTHING is possible.)

I was getting up a righteous head of steam to match Ms. Heller’s, with all kinds of proof to back it up.  But then I began to think a bit further, and realized it’s not quite so easy to win the argument with feminist indignation.

Because women DO read more than men, and buy many more books than men, too.  Every bookseller will tell you that.  Therefore tailoring cover art to the biggest possible readership makes sense, doesn’t it?  And if romance-reading-women-readers are the largest group of book-buyers, then offering them books that look like every other book they’ve already bought and enjoyed –– books that tell them in an instant what's inside –– is good business sense, isn’t it?  Why fix it if it ain’t broke?

As the wise man says, I dunno.  But maybe you do, or at least you’ll have an opinion you’d like to share.

Do you agree with Ms. Heller that these book covers say women are dumb?  Is it demeaning to women readers and writers to have such “Lifetime fuzz” (Ms. Heller’s term) and other hearts-and-flowers-Barbie-pink clichés on the covers of our books?  Or is it just smart marketing?

Hold That Wine!

Due to a possible scheduling conflict, Jo's 5/14 guest, Bibiana Behrendt, may be moved to another day.  The operative word here is "may."  Bibiana is an expert on classy wines and spirits, and we're really looking forward to her visit with us. Here’s the link to her book on cognac.

So stay tuned, folks.  If we can't get the schedule squared away by Wednesday, we'll bring Bibiana in at a later date. 

Aristocratic Titles

  Finally!  The contemporary proposals are sitting on various desks in New York City. Our wenchly brainstorming session has been processed, resulting in reams of ideas.  Outlines for the next two historicals are slowly developing.  And I can research again!!

Currently, I’m buried under books on Bermuda for a new idea that’s been niggling at the back of my mind.  I can see right now that I’m going to wish I’d actually been to Bermuda to pull this off.  Maybe, if miracles happen, we’ll find time in the fall.

But in the meantime, after a long time away from the proper world of Regency England, I’m dipping my toe in again, if only for the opening chapters.  And to my dismay, I’ve forgotten many of the tangled complications of titled aristocracy.  Did you know that in 1812, there were only seventeen dukes in England?  And most of them were probably crusty old fellows moldering away in their clubs and country homes and nowhere near as dashing as we make them out to be. (photo of 12th duke of Norfolk)

There were only a dozen marquesses (and just spelling that is one of the reasons I prefer not to use that title, unless I’m feeling masochistic), although during the Regency, the title was still marquis.  Which looks even worse in today’s dialogues, sort of sounding like a Regency theater with flashing candlebra, maybe.

Fortunately, there were 94 earls, and earl is a good Anglo-saxon title that sounds as nice on the modern ear as duke. If I’m pulling titles out of a hat, I tend to choose earl because it’s easy. And the heroine gets to be a countess, which I like even better.  But in the case of my current project, the new earl is dead.  And his brother before him. And the earl before that.  Messy situation.  Anyway, I want a distant cousin to inherit the title.  But any old cousin won’t do.  According to my research, he has to be the eldest surviving male of a direct descendant of the title, or some such rot.  So I have to draw a blamed family tree to figure out where I can find this guy.  And then I started wondering if this gormless heir might have been called viscount before the last earl sank to the bottom of the sea…  And I gave up for the day.

What I want to know is…who made up these rules? And for pity’s sake, why?   It must have been  headache-inducing memorizing everyone’s titles and ancestors just so guests knew in what order they should go into a society dinner!  No wonder they frowned on divorce and ostracized the scandalous.  Who would know where to place them at the dinner table? (link to etiquette book)

It’s bad enough that people try to figure out their position on the human family tree by condemning other races to the bottom and walking over their neighbors to clamber to the top, but why on earth go out of the way to create an artificial hierarchy? 

Apparently, I’m not done with revolution. I see an American historical coming on.

What is it in human nature that makes us want to know we’re better than the next guy, if only because our father was born three minutes earlier? Or our ancestors arrived on a Norman war ship instead of an Irish potato boat?  Can I join the committee that makes these rules?

The First Time

Years ago, Kathe Robin, the doyenne of Romantic Times reviewers, mentioned to me that the consummation scene in a historical romance was very important to her.  The words stuck with me as I thought about why that was true, for true it certainly was.

Before I continue in this vein, I want to emphasize that I don’t think a romance has to have explicit sex to be a great romance.  Some of my favorite romances never go beyond a kiss or a held hand, yet they pulse with yearning and emotion and romance.  An example of those is Lady Elizabeth's Comet by Sheila Simonson, which I just finished reading for the fifth or tenth time since it came out in 1985.  (The occasion of this reread was the delightful knowledge that the book is now available in e-format at Fictionswise http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/ebook66571.htm  for a mere $5.99.)

To return to my meditations on the importance of a consummation scene: a romance is a dance of emotions and psychology as the characters clash, connect, and ultimately commit.  Physical attraction is obviously part of the equation, but more than that, it’s one of the elements of the developing relationship. 

(A quote from Lady Elizabeth’s Comet, since it shows that physical attraction existed even in traditional Regencies: 

“How came I to feel so strongly? I had not loved Clanross when I poured laudanum down his throat. My feeling for Clanross was not an overnight flower. It had been growing for some time. When was it planted?
It happened, I reflected, after he started walking the grounds and bathing in the lake and began to feel better and look less wan and sleepless. It is a dreadful thing for a woman of intellect to admit so physical a criterion for love. I wanted to evade the fact but there it was. I was a mere animal after all, drawn by a bright eye and a healthy complexion.”

Sexual intimacy is about many things, including pleasure, power, and vulnerability.  All of those play into the psychology of the developing relationship.

Since a great romance is about two unique characters whom we come to care about deeply, it makes sense that their sexual relationship is equally unique and reflects their individual natures.  Looking at someone and thinking, “Hot, hot, hot!” is all very well, but it’s only one step—and not always the most important one. 

Historically, society was much more aware of the potentially destructive power of sex.  Procreation was essential to the race, but it carried the risks of death and disease.  Smart women didn’t indulge in sex lightly.  Men who wanted to be sure that their heirs were really of their blood wanted faithful wives. 

So a historical heroine is not likely to allow sexual intercourse unless she’s safely married, or in the grip of overwhelming emotion.  In a truly intense situation, she might weighs the pros and cons and decide to risk going ahead despite the consequences.  Or, occasionally, she’s so innocent that she doesn’t quite understand what’s going on.

A marvelous example of this last is in Laura Kinsale’s The Shadow and the Star.  The heroine is a suffocatingly innocent Victorian miss, raised by little old ladies.  Leda Etoile has absolutely no idea of the mechanics of sex, but she does find handsome Samuel very attractive.  In some ways, Samuel Gerard is as innocent as she—except that as a child, he was the victim of vile abuse, and has Huge Issues. 

The story can be read as a treatise on the value of sex education classes, but it is also one of the most power, passionate, heartbreaking consummation scenes I’ve ever read.  (Nor is this the only brilliant First Time scene Kinsale has written.  Her characterization, sensuality, and wordsmithery are superb.) 

Sometimes my characters are married when they first come together.  With luck, it’s a marriage of convenience.  <G>  This is an enduringly popular plot set-up because it takes two people who may be near strangers and throws them together into the same bed, so they must negotiate an acceptable personal relationship.  (The Bargain is a classic MOC.)

I’ve had several of books when the characters are operating under powerful emotions and decide consequences be damned.  In Thunder and Roses, for example, the hero is devastated because he blames himself for a mine collapse that killed a close friend.  So the heroine decides to distract and heal him in the most compelling way she knows.  My heroines are often lower in the class structure than my heroes, and that changes the dynamics some, but even so, sex is never done lightly. 
                                                                                                   
I thought back to some of the more unusual “first time” scenes in my own stories.  In The WIld Child, the heroine, Meriel, is considered mad and she has certainly lived in a way that makes her immune to social strictures, so she sets out to seduce the hero.  Poor Dominic is an honorable man and has several extremely powerful reasons to resist her charms, so he fights his attraction, and Meriel, every inch of the way.

I quite like honorable heroes who don’t necessarily fall into bed easily.  Honorable men also care about consequences, including the risks of intimacy to women they care about.  In The Bartered Bride, the hero and heroine have their First Time under circumstances that offend his very soul.               

I also have a fondness for ‘lost love regained stories, where a couple come together again after long separation.  The combination of love, lust, anger, and fear make for an intense relationship as they try to resolve what separated them in the past.  This intensity makes their intimacy fraught with emotional landmines.  In Silk and Secrets, the hero and heroine married too young, and have been separated for a dozen years for reasons so painful that Juliet can’t even speak them aloud.  He is on the verge of execution before they come together, not wanting to waste what precious hours are left.  Since this is a romance, naturally they survive—and have to deal with the consequences of passionate intensity in a relationship that is as conflicted as it was before. 

Two of my three contemporaries feature reunion scenarios (I told you I liked this set-up).  In The Burning Point, there are huge trust issues that must be resolved.  In The Spiral Path, the protagonists are in the process of getting a divorce when the heroine, who wants desperately to direct a movie from her own script, persuades her soon to be ex-husband to star in it so she can get the necessary financing.  The movie bores into the white hot centers of their troubled souls, and the stress is so great that soon they are sleeping together while saying that it hasn’t officially happened because neither of them can bear to deal with the consequences. 

A friend said that the wedding night in my Veils of Silk was the most different she’d ever seen, since the hero is impotent and their whole marriage of convenience is based on this fact.  And that’s just the beginning of the complications!  For me, these First Time scenes are very complicated to write because they take place on multiple levels of emotion, psychology, and physical reaction.  How does she feel?  How does he feel?  Are there still conflicts and emotional barriers between them?  Will one or both pull back emotionally afterward?  Are their levels of commitment different? 

And then there is writing the actual physical details.  I’m not into extremely clinical, so I try to write scenes that are emotionally engaging and clear enough so that readers will know what’s happening.  Too euphemistic can get silly, too purple and my fellow Wenches my revoke my Wenchly license <g>, and too pornographic will turn off a lot of readers.  (The illustration at the left is one of the most graphic I ever had, since the hero is basically wearing nothing but the heroine.

Not surprisingly, I usually spend days writing and rewriting a consummation scene, layering in emotion and details and trying to make the result worthy of the characters. 

And then there’s the bad-sex scene.  One doesn’t see this often in romances, but it happens.  (Jennifer Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation comes to mind.)  More often, of course, we give our characters great sex.  Why should we make our fantasies as clumsy and awkward as real life? <G>

So what are your favorite consummation scenes?  Which struck you deeply?  Did some go sailing into the wall?  (No titles or authors, please.  We’re a very polite blog.) 

What do you think goes into making a great love scene, especially a First Time?  I'd love to hear--

Mary Jo

What's Not In A Name?

Edith here.

I just finished revisions on a new book! Yes! It's out next December: HIS CONVENIENT BRIDE, Avon books.

It's a good un'!!

And my very next book  - out this very May 27th - is: HIS DARK AND DANGEROUS WAYS!

I has such fun with that.

But I'm now working on a new proposal. 
That means I have to come up with a whole batch of new names. 
Naming characters in a book is just as hard as naming babies, and just as chancy.

I've recently been gifted with two new grandsons.
Hugo on the east coast, and Sebastian on the west coast.
Their parents agonized over what names to give them, and did not consult me.  Or if they did, then they ignored whatever I said, which I forget now anyway. 
Hugo and Sebastian.
But you'd  think they'd listen to a person who has written over 30 books, wouldn't you?
So some of the names I proposed were way too historical.  So what?
Wouldn't you want a son named Attila?  You could nick-name him "Hun." 
sigh. 
Nobody listens to mothers anymore.

But the point is that I am mother to all my characters, from dashing dukes to evil villains, though villains can be named most anything... except perhaps for Snidely McWhiplash, or something give-away like that.

The hero of my new book: HIS DARK AND DANGEROUS WAYS is Simon Atwood, Lord Granger.  And our heroine is Jane Chatham.  The villain is.... you'll have to see for yourself!

Now I have to name all new characters.  Add to that the fact that I hate to re-use names, and what you have is a problem. 

I have six "Name your Baby" books sitting on my desk even as I write this.  I firmly believe that a name helps shape the character, in fiction and in life.

For example, if I'd been named "Elizabeth" as my mother told me I might have been, I'm convinced I'd have had more fun.  I could have been "Liz" or Lizzie" or "Liza."   Then I would have been able to sing torch songs while sitting on pianos, or have been a madcap, dancing in the Plaza fountain at Midnight with a slew of adoring, handsome playboys cheering me on.  What a life I would have led!

Edith writes books.  She doesn't even dance in the shower.  Even her dog doesn't cheer her on.

So I name my characters carefully.

A hero named "Oscar"?  Or "Lester"?  Or "Bruce"???  Not to mention "Alan" or "Barry"?

Perfectly nice names in real life, but not names to dream about in a literary heart breaker.  Especially a Historical one.

"Hugo" or "Sebastian"?  Too creepy to write love scenes with the hero bearing your grandson's name!  Besides, I already used them, long before the babies arrived.

Charles Dickens was the king of names.  He kept a notebook in which he jotted down names which struck him as odd or unusual.  He was a master.  Think "Ebenezer Scrooge."  The very name for a miser.  It leaves the lips in a sneer when you say it.  Brilliant! 

Contemporary writers have an easier time, I think.  And though I'm not comparing myself to him, Dickens was, after all, a contemporary writer.

Historical heroes and heroines have to sound like they fit in their era.  I was shocked - I tell you shocked!  when I discovered that the Great Georgette Heyer had a character named "Tiffany"!  Who'd a thunk it?  My editor would have me committed if I tried to slip a "Tiffany" into a novel set in the Regency era.  But Georgette done it!

Rhett and Scarlett were perfect names.  And who was the weakling?  "Ashley."  Works.  But only for that one book because the characters are so indelible.  And I don't take names from other books.

Take inspiration from the movies? 
Our current heroes have good names, but not thrilling ones.  There's Johnny (as in Depp) and Robert (as in Downey, Jr.) and Jude (as in Law).... Wait  That's a great name!  But "Sir Jude"?  uh uh.
It would be hard to write about lord Viggo too, wouldn't it?

Old movies?  I can't have Historical heroes with the same names of once adored hunky movie heroes such as: Rudolf (as in Valentino) and Tyrone (as in Power) and Farley (as in Granger - though "Lord Granger" is neat for a hero's title, as in HIS DARK AND DANGEROUS WAYS.  Too bad that Lord Farley and Sir Tyrone wouldn't work.)   

Names in Historical novels come in trends, just as names do in real life.  Recently, masculine names in Historical Romances and films and TV were all: "Rock" and "Wolf" and "Spike"...  hard names to show this guy is one tough testosterone filled character. 

But the trend is slowing.  I guess all the best name got used up, leaving nothing but "Sledge" and "Hammer" and "Philip's Screwdriver" yet to be used.
(Oops!  Forgot "Mike Hammer!"  There goes another one.) 
Some hard guy names are still thriving in real life.  I note with interest that there's an adorable toddler in my grandson's nursery school named "Stone."   

Still, times they are a'changing.

It's different for females, even in this era of "spirited women" and "feisty" heroines.  They don't have to have names to show they're not pushovers anymore.   Sweet "Mary" and shy "Violet" can kick butt with the best of them. That's the whole point of feminism.

So now, here I sit, looking for plausible heroes with great macho, but not stupido, names.

Got any suggestions?

****THE WINNER OF THE AUTOGRAPHED Edith Layton book is: liz !

That's what the impartial judge picked. That name really must have something gonig for it!

Please contact me at elaytonfel [at] aol.com with a good snail mail addy and it will be posted ASAP. :)

A Makeover for Lady M

Susan Sarah here ... we've discussed covers before at Word Wenches, and I'd like to revisit the wonderful world of cover art, with a twist -- not to look at lots of lovely, lovely covers (and we Wenches have been collectively VERY fortunate in terms of cover karma!) -- but this time to toss around some ideas and to hear what you all think about cover art for mainstream historicals, rather than romance covers for now.

The trade paperback edition of LADY MACBETH will be out next spring, and the publisher is whipping up fresh back cover copy and choosing clips from the reviews and quotes for the book ... and they're discussing cover art. Instead of a "Mini-Me" version of the hardcover jacket art, the trade paper edition may get a whole new cover. They haven't decided about that yet, but the possibility seems strong. And they've asked me for ideas and input, so I've been thinking about it ....

  I have ideas and images to suggest to the art dept., but I'd love to hear what readers think. LADY MACBETH is a mainstream historical, falling within the range of fictionalized biography; these novels are primarily female-centric historical fiction, focusing on actual historical women. What sort of covers work best for these books? And in particular, what would suit the historical Lady Macbeth?

I am a sucker for a beautiful cover, whether original cover art or a fine art reproduction. I drool over color, design, composition, motif and theme, and I've sometimes purchased a book on the strength of a gorgeous or at least successful and fascinating cover. And I love the fine art covers often seen on mainstream female-centric historical fiction. The art historian in me (with thousands of artworks somehow still catalogued and computerized in my brain) loves wandering through bookstores looking at the virtual galleries of cover art displayed on front tables and racks.

Wenches Susan/Miranda and Edith have had gorgeous portrait and fine art covers for their mainstream novels (see sidebar), and Mary Jo has also had gorgeous covers for her hardcover fantasy historical romances. Susan/MIranda is lucky enough to have actual portraits of the main characters of her novels--not everyone has the advantage of cover art by Sir Peter Lely!

From the first, the art for LADY MACBETH posed a dilemma for the art department, with that early the 11th century setting. No contemporary portraits existed, and 11th century art, while beautiful in its own right, looks downright academic on a juicy novel, without the impact of a Waterhouse or a Rossetti, let alone a vibrant Lely portrait. So the landscape art for the hardcover jacket of LADY MACBETH was a wonderful solution -- evocative, exciting, and very striking. 

If we're not going to see the golden tones of the Lady Macbeth castle cover, what then? What sort of image might evoke my 11th century Lady Macbeth, and be marketable, interesting, striking cover art? Would a fine art image of a lovely, poignant or compelling anonymous woman, probably done in the 19th century, be right for this book? Some art depts. love to portray women with heads partly or completely missing (this especially suits some Tudors), but I don't think that's the look for Lady Macbeth. Considering the time period of my book, we could see a swatch of the Bayeux Tapestry, or a manuscript illumination. Or another Scottishy landscape or castle. Not sure those work either for the trade edition.

Secretly I long for a lush, painterly, romantic and gorgeous Pre-Raphaelite image, though that may not happen -- some publishers think that trend is winding down, and they're searching for new looks. ::sigh:: All the Waterhouses were taken by the time my book came out.

Have so many beautiful fine art images appeared on bookcovers by now that the fresh, breathtaking impact (though individually and indisputably gorgeous) is diluted? We see repetitions in fine art covers, no question. Partly this is due to the finite number of available and suitable images, and art departments looking at the same sources -- and the permissions of museums and collections can be expensive and may come with conditions that limit and influence what shows up on a cover.

What cover styles do you prefer for hardcover and trade historical female-centric fiction? (whew, that's a mouthful). Are you a fan of fine art portrayals of women for historical books, or are you over them and attracted by something more unexpected? Does a fine art cover signal to you what sort of read it is, and is that a good thing, or a tired thing?  Do you like landscape covers for their power to evoke a time and place, or do you find them a little distancing, and prefer the immediacy of a human image?

And the art dept. would love to know, and I would too -- what sorts of covers capture your interest as a reader looking for a good historical novel, and does it influence you to buy the book? Thanks for any and all suggestions!

Susan Sarah

Pub crawling, or sort of....

Hi, here's Jo, late for her day. No real excuse except forgetting what day of the week is what.

Things are still going well for A Lady's Secret. It'll be #10 on the NYT this Sunday, and it's also on the Publishers Weekly list for the third week. We threw a party last weekend chez Beverley, and someone sent a balloon, as exhibited by the Cabbage Patch Kids and other toys. (Also duly admiring the list in the paper, and Billy dazzled by reflected glory!)*G*

I've been having fun researching Doncaster for my next book. The main action starts in Sheffield, but before I knew it, they were off to Doncaster about which I know nothing other than that It's a racing town. (Growing up in England in a family that listens to the radio a lot, the young mind accumulates strange things. There's the daily weather report for the fishing trade, talking about places like Dogger Bank, and there's the regular reports from horse racing, including places like Thirsk (which was one setting in Secrets of the Night) and Doncaster.)

Doncaster was actually the setting for the first modern horse race, in England at least -- the Doncaster Cup, and then later for the much more famous St Leger.
All about the St Leger That was started by Major General St Legerwhose career is typical of the period of the Malloren novels, and the Marquess of Rockingham, who both surely knew Rothgar and the Countess of Arradale.

There's one of Rockingham's horses of the time.

Below, we have Rockingham in his peerage robes. Does it bother you or turn you on to think of Rothgar in a similar get up for a state event? Even the baddest-boy peer hero had to wear such outfits. I sometimes amuse myself with that image.*G* There are more period portraits here. Check out, too, the portrait of the Montague sisters, and the explanation of the bared shoulder. Portraits are so fascinating.

My wandering research trail thus led me to Rotherham, particularly connected to St. Leger the person, and a nice site with historical links. History of Rotheram which included a couple of enclosure acts in the early 1760s and some details of weekly wages in a variety of industries at the time.The wages page.

I wasn't so much interested in the lace making in Bedford or even the potteries in Rotheram, but the plating and cutlery in Sheffield was nice, even though the detailsl will probably not make it into Christian's book. How does Major Lord Grandiston end up in Sheffield and Doncaster? Thereby hangs a tale, to be called The Secret Wedding, but unavailable until next year, even to me, as I'm only about half way through.

Men earned 14s 6d, women 4s, and girls 3s The only reason I can see off the top of my head for there being no boys' wages there is that they were all apprentices, who wouldn't be paid in a regular manner. Such figures give context to the expenditures of the more highly born, but only to an extent, as there was a huge divide. A traveler might spend at least half of that man's weekly wage to stay one night at an inn if he has a carriage and horses.

But come to think of it, the price of a good hotel room today -- say $200? -- could be half  the weekly income of someone on the poverty line. Those 14/6 men, however, were prosperous skilled workers.

If you don't know, s is a shilling, and there were 20 to a pound. d is a penny (from the  Roman dinari, they say) and there were 12 to a shilling. And there were halfpennies and  farthings back then, too. (Farthing was a quarter of a penny.) Arithmetical problems about the price of apples were lots of fun when I was a child.

The same page also shows the price of mutton as a reference for the value of the wages, and it seems to have been about 2s a stone, I assume for the undressed carcass. (A stone is 14 lbs). Never know when it comes in useful!

In addition, I wanted to find out about the inns and pubs in Doncaster. First I found a good website about the modern state of affairs. Which now will not let me access it. I'll post the link later. That led me to fire off a query to the Doncaster Local Studies Library about which inns existed in 1764, which came through brilliantly, and then with maps from the period!

But, but, looking at the list I see this:

Black Bull - opened 1760, rebuilt 1920. Nice, as that's one I had down to mention.

AND: The Black Swan - opened 1730, no record of landlord in 1764, 1st landlord
mentioned John Webster in 1775

Those of you who've read A Lady's Secret will know that an inn called The Black Swan has some minor significance, even though that one is far away in the south.

It's the sort of detail that makes the writer's heart take a turn, for both good and bad reasons. It could be a gift, or a major disturbance in the storyline. If this was Ithorne's boo, I couldn't ignore an inn called The Black Swan if it was anywhere in his range. With Christian, I think I can. It would be a distraction. So it's a nice turn of the heart -- a little nod to alternate reality.

And it sent me looking for Black Swan Inns anywhere in the UK that were open in 1764.
I found this one. Can you find more?

Thank you, internet!

Jo