Word Wenches

Serendipity or Help from the Gods?

Christina here. As writers, we do a lot of background research for our books and personally I like to go and look at the settings for my stories if at all possible. Having decided that my hero and heroine were going to end up in the north-east of England (Northumbria and Mercia as it was called in the 9th century), I really wanted to visit those places for myself to see first-hand what it was like. I persuaded my poor long-suffering husband to come with me, and as we had two very elderly dogs they came along for the ride too. And what a ride it turned out to be!

A 775 English miles roundtrip in two days – it was what I would definitely call an epic journey. And all done in torrential rain, which is very tiring for the driver (mostly my husband). But somehow it all worked out very well and although this might sound very fanciful, I actually felt as though the Norse gods were with me, helping me to find exactly what I needed. Because the weirdest thing happened – although it was raining the entire two days – and I’m talking deluge here, not just a shower or two – each time we stopped at a site I wanted to see and photograph, the rain stopped for just long enough to give me a chance to do that. Coincidence? I started to doubt it. I mean, what are the chances?

Tales of Faerie

 

Walter Crane, Snow White

 

“The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found

Jesse Wilcox Smith illustration

there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories" 

Susan here, thinking about fairy tales – they fill my bookshelves and always have, from tattered, beloved childhood copies to antique fairy tale books to anthologies and academic studies of fairy tale themes. I still read them. I still love them.  

“I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.” --Mae West

Among my favorites are an old copy of the complete tales of The Brothers Grimm, and other collections of Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, and Andrew Lang—The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, the Green Fairy Book (and The Yellow, Pink, Grey, Violet, Crimson, Scarlet, Orange, Olive and Lilac Books). 

Illustrations by Sheilah Beckett

My favorite as a child was probably the Little Golden Book of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, so beautifully illustrated by Sheilah Beckett. When I was very little, I sometimes slept with my fairy tale books, absorbing the stories night and day. In college, I loved reading studies of fairy tales—Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, Marina Warner’s fabulous From the Beast to the Blonde, the work of Jack Zipes, and more.

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” --Albert Einstein

Fairy tales go back thousands of years, along with myths and legends, as far back as caves and bright fires and the urge to explain why the stars sparkle, the wind blows, why thunderclouds look like dragons, and that a sunbeam or a rainbow may be a magical being in disguise. Stories explore life and give us choices and tools to address and comprehend what we encounter in the realm of reality.

I learned about life, love, good and evil, morals, integrity, and absorbed the

page from a Walter Crane edition of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales.

elements of classic storytelling from reading fairy tales. I was equally enchanted by the illustrations, turning pages just to study the pictures, copying them in crayons, constantly learning (when I was three, I drew princesses in pink dresses all over the family Bible—in my defense, the endpapers were blank, and I had crayons!). The story and life elements were subliminal, but took hold. I was just loving the stories, the characters, the brave girls and boys, the triumph over obstacles on the road to a happier life. All useful lessons, years later.

Arthur Rackham, Woman in the Wind

 

 

"In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected." --Charles Dickens

It’s well known now that fairy tales, myths, and legends are essential for building, expanding and strengthening a child’s understanding of right and wrong, cruel and kind, hope and fear and how to overcome. They demonstrate basic tools of humanity, compassion, loyalty, ingenuity, and their opposite qualities too. Good doesn’t always win, but the tales provide a matrix for understanding archetypes, the quest and the journey, the crucial importance of choice. They give us a glimpse of a mysterious world beyond our own, a world of fairies, elves, witches, dragons, dark ones and light ones. Child or adult, we can learn or be reminded that there are forces in life we can’t always control or explain, but we can call up strength and integrity. And they show us that no matter the outcome, it’s important to do the best thing for ourselves and for others.

“The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous 'turn' (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist,' nor 'fugitive.' In its fairy-tale--or otherworld--setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur.”  --J.R.R. Tolkein

AskA Wench: does writing get easier?

Anne here, and this month the Ask-a-Wench question is one often asked. It started off as "After so many books, does the writing get easier?" To which every single wench emphatically answered "No."  Not much of a blog there.

So we changed it to: "After so many books, does the writing get easier or harder? What is the hardest part of creating a story?" which gave us a little more to talk about.

Pat says:  Without even knowing how the other wenches respond to the first part of this question, I can almost hear them all shouting: “Heck, no!” in probably ruder terms. With each book, we learn a little more and have to think a little harder. And then, if we wish to stay creative and original as the number of published books piles up, we have to stretch our imaginations further and further to give readers new stories.

For me, the hardest part is, and always has been, writing a plot. Characters are easy. They populate my head. They kick around, chattering, demanding this scene or that—scenes that do not necessarily work with my perceived plot or any plot at all. Occasionally, this works and new ideas take off, but only in straight romance. If I mean to include a mystery. . . My characters aren’t heavily into logical clues and need to be taken by the hand—or the throat—and forced into line. And then it’s up to me to keep timelines and clues and characters straight so the plot follows without readers stopping and saying “Hey, what? Didn’t they just do that in the last chapter?” With my memory, that’s a real challenge!

Send For The Doctor

Anne here, and today I'm diving down another research rabbit-hole — medical treatments in Regency-era England. (And be warned, this blog is a little bit gruesome.)

Whenever I have a character who is injured or falls sick in one of my novels, I research it. I choose the disease or injury that the plot requires and consult helpful friends — I have two doctors, several nurses and a very knowledgable paramedic in my circle, and they're all very good about having their brains picked.

Of course they know how the injury or disease will unfold today, but I'm writing about a time when there were no antibiotics, and even germ theory was barely born. Most doctors in the Regency era simply didn't believe in such nonsense as germs or bacteria. Surgery was performed with no regard for cleanliness, doctors wore filthy coats—often coming directly from the autopsy room to the operating room—with pride.

So researching the treatments that were common in my historical era is fascinating—and horrifying. To my modern eye they read like a torture manual.

For instance if a character caught the 'flu or pneumonia, measles, smallpox, and most kinds of fevers, the common medical practice was to first to bleed them, cutting into the skin (no anaesthetic back then) and draining the blood into a bowl — a pint (half a litre) or more was not uncommon. This was mostly performed by barber-surgeons, not by physicians. Scarification was another method — using a spring-loaded instrument to produce a series of small cuts.

The purpose of this was to "balance the humors". Disease was believed to result from an imbalance in the natural humors, or fluids, of the body—they being blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm — a theory dating back to ancient Greek medicine.

Away to the Highlands

Nicola here. Last week I was lucky enough to be on holiday in the Scottish Highlands, staying in a historic cottage above the town of Braemar. There aren’t many things that I have in common with the Queen, but for a few days we were within 20 miles of each other as Braemar is just down the road from Balmoral Castle! Our cottage however, whilst very comfortable indeed, was a lot smaller than the royal residence although just as interesting historically. Braemar too is an absolutely fascinating little town with a hugely interesting history and I had the treat of taking both an exclusive tour of the town and of the castle with two different but equally knowledgeable guides, and I thought I would share some historical snippets here.

Turning Over a New Leaf . . .

Andrea here. As summer begins to unfurl here where I live in New England, the profusion of colors and textures—both wild and cultivated—coming to life have me thinking about gardens. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am NOT a gardener. Other than the annual rite of planting impatiens in the big urns on my entrance steps and herbs on my deck, I don’t have the patience to dig and weed, and work toward a vision that may take years to come to fruition. But I truly appreciate the artistry, and am grateful to those who have a passion for cultivating the earth.

My recent walks reminded me of a fascinating story in botanical history. One of the many books (too many—I really need more bookshelves1) stacked on the overflow table of my TBR and Keeper piles is The Brother Gardeners, by Andrea Wulf. It’s wonderful history revolving around a small group of men who started the movement of trading seeds and specimen plantings between America and Britain, which changed the face of the English landscape.

At the heart of the story is Peter Collinson, who was born into a prosperous English mercantile Quaker family. His father was a cloth merchant, dealing in high quality fabric both in Britain and its American colonies. Collinson, who couldn’t attend university in England because of his religion, took over the family business. But his real passion was botany.

Cruising the Chesapeake part 2

Cruising the Chesapeake 2

by Mary Jo

I chronicled the first part of our April Chesapeake Bay Revolutionary War themed here.  Now for the second exciting installment!

Washington, DC:

After leaving Yorktown, Virginia, the site of the British surrender to the new United States in the Revolutionary war, we headed north. Next stop: Washington, DC.!

As usual, there were several excursions available to passengers.  The Mayhem Consultant and I are fond of taking coach tour overviews because they give a broader sense of the area and show both highlights and lesser lights. Also, the guides are generally specialists in local history and have many interesting things to say. 

Our Washington coach tour was of this type, and because it was in DC, there were a number of monuments and memorials.  We saw a nice assortment of these, but the one that impressed me the most was the Marine War Memorial which is adjacent to the Arlington National Military Cemetery.

 

Chaises Longues

Christina here, and today I’m waxing lyrical about a piece of furniture - the chaise longue, a perfect place for reading!

I can’t remember when I first became aware of the existence of chaises longues, but it must have been when I was quite young. At that time, I didn’t even know it was a French expression as I hadn’t begun to study that language. But because Sweden had appointed a Frenchman as their king in the early 19^th century (long story, but they invited one of Napoleon’s generals to become king and he accepted) there are a lot of words in Swedish that are borrowed from French. This was one of them and I knew it under the weird Swedish spelling – schäslong.

What I clearly do remember is that from the moment I first saw one, I wanted to own one, desperately!

WWR — What We're Reading in May

Anne here, bringing you the latest reading recommendations from the wenches. There's a fair bit of crime — some cozy, some police procedural, some medieval mysteries, there's time slip and WW2, there's a delightful word exploration book, and there's even some romance! 

Pat recommends THIEF OF SOULS  by Brian Klingborg She says: I enjoy the occasional police procedural if the writing is strong and there’s a good hook. The author kept me reading,  and the setting was an unusual hook—a small town in northern China. The protagonist, Lu Fei, is a middle-aged (although they keep calling him young, he’s forty) inspector on the police force, never married, who drinks too much, and is good at martial arts. Okay, raise your hand if you’ve read that before. <G> But it all works. Young women are being murdered, their organs removed, then sewed up again. The author takes us through the workings of the police department, all the petty government hang-ups, the interdepartmental fighting, all the things we normally see in the usual Brit and American police stories, only with a Chinese twist. I had to look up the author to see how he knew these details, and he’s apparently lived in China but isn’t Chinese. Still, it felt authentic.

Inspector Lu has never married because he wants to marry for love. He quotes Confucius but he’s an independent thinker and an honest cop. You really have to like him because he tries so hard. And better yet, the author manages to keep the killer a secret almost to the point that Lu works it out. So we get to feel smart and not too annoyed with our hero when it takes him a few pages more. If you enjoy  a good police procedural and reading about China, you might want to check this out.

Andrea says: this month I seemed to be a WWII state mind, as I read two books set in the era. They were very different in style but I loved both them.

I’m a huge fan of Kate Quinn’s The Alice Network and The Huntress, and her latest novel, The Rose Code, is equally mesmerizing. It’s a heart-thumping dual timeline story set at Bletchley Park, the famous top secret British codebreaking enclave during the war, and several years after as the three heroines are forced to crack one last code . . .

It features three young women from completely different backgrounds and temperaments who find themselves thrown together as roommates after their skills at solving puzzles bring them to be part of the British efforts to crack the enemy codes—an effort that is keeping the country from defeat. Quinn gives readers a fascinating look inside Bletchley Park as she weaves a compelling tale of friendship, heartache, secrets and betrayals as each of the women struggle to define her dreams and deal with her own weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

A shocking betrayal breaks their friendships apart at the end of the war, only to have a coded message several years later force them to reluctantly come together again to catch a traitor. I couldn’t put it down!

Annoying Heroines

Free Clip Art, Wikimedia Commons

Christina here and today I’m going to have a little rant. A while back, I read a trilogy with a hero I absolutely adored, but at the same time I couldn’t stand the heroine. I found her intensely annoying, not in any way worthy of the hero’s love and devotion, and so immature I wanted to slap her! I carried on reading the entire series because I wanted to know how things ended for the hero, and whether the heroine would redeem herself in the end, but I almost had to force myself. That’s not how it should be, is it?

A heroine ought to be someone we like and empathise with. Sure, she can be naïve or immature at the beginning of a story (or a series in this case), because we’ve all been there and lessons need to be learned before we grow up and understand certain things. She doesn’t have to be perfect – none of us are, after all – but she does need to be likeable. At the very least, she should have some very good reasons for NOT being likeable, if that’s the way the author wants to play it.

What we absolutely don’t want is a heroine we dislike intensely.