Word Wenches

Beginning the year

(Jo here with a picture of me at the wedding with two CBKs -- Davy and Billie. It's a very grainy picture. Sorry.)

Here I am on Saturday, and very unprepared. Has anyone else found having the big holidays on Monday very discomknockerating? No, I have no idea how to spell that, but it's a word. Or sort of a word. I've been feeling that Monday is Sunday for weeks now, and that's thrown everything else out.

So I just have some thoughts to start this new schedule.

1) January 6th is Twelfth Night, as noted, and I've embraced the idea of starting the New Year on this day. It feels so much more sane. Christmastide, with all its lovely flurry, is over and 2007 is really on its way. It's a much better time to assess the year past and make plans for the year to come because there's more calm, within and without.

2) 2006 was a very good year for me, but very busy. Everything was both good and busy-making. That includes two books out (I only expected one to be published last year); a family wedding; a long trip to England (that's St. James's Palace in London) and Word Wenches. Because we share the load it's not a heavy, but I like to check out the blog every day because it's so interesting.

3) I'm hoping 2007 will be a little more easy-going. When I send off Lady Beware next week, I'll be able to goof off a bit. My next deadline should be far, far away. Some authors can write fast, but my natural pace is between 9 months and a year per book. I can put the book aside to work on other things, but I need that long stretch for it to mature. I want to play with some shorter fiction. I want to return to the ideas for medievals bouncing in my head. (Strange castle somewhere.)
I have other, non-writing things to explore.

Last year's books were The Rogue's Return, which was mostly set in Canada, which was a lot of fun. And To Rescue A Rogue, with my opium-addicted hero. Next year brings Dragon Lovers in March and then Lady Beware in June.

And another twelve months of Word Wenches.

Yum. And here's another image just because I like it. 2007 will be a year, I hope, of indulging in small, harmless pleasures. Join me in that.

Jo :)

Dangerous to Know: A book and its cover

by Mary Jo

“He was going to be hanged on Tuesday.”  Okay, that’s apropos of nothing, but I’m not usually good at opening lines, and this was one of my better efforts.  The gentleman about to be hanged is Andrew Kane, the gamblin’ man hero of the only Western novella I ever wrote.

That novella, “Mad,  Bad, and Dangerous to Know,” has been paired with my very first Regency romance, The Diabolical Baron, in an NAL trade paperback edition called Dangerous to Know, just hitting the stores now.  The fun part is that it has a totally gorgeous cover.  I mean, we’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but what can I say?  The guy on the cover of DTK is hot.  Sophisticated readers choose by author, of course.  Buying a book because of a cover hunk is beneath us.  Or should be.  <g> 

I think the illustrator was the same one who did the terrific cover for Jo’s compendium, Three Heroes.  (Her volume is two novels and a novella, the results of what Jo unofficially called “The Year of Three Georges.” <g>) 

To be honest, I haven’t figured out if my DTK hunk is supposed to be Richard, the ex-army captain hero of The Diabolical Baron.  Or Jason, the Diabolical Baron himself, and also a hero.  Or Andrew Kane, the Victorian gambler who left his civilized English home to find adventure and danger in the Wild West.  The hunk’s costume looks sort of Regency, but the zippered fly on his breeches isn’t exactly period. 

But I’ve been in this business too long to worry too much about the details (though I remember my first editor saying plaintively that for the amount the illustrators were paid, they could jolly well afford to buy a costume book.  She might not have phrased it that politely.  <g>)  These days, I tend to pragmatically judge a cover by the standards of “Does it look good?  Will it attract attention?  Did the illustrator understand human anatomy?”

That last question is the designer in me.  I studied figure drawing in art school (not that I was very good at it), and I can spot when an arm is so long or so short that it qualifies as deformation.  And then there’s the famous example of the three armed heroine on the cover of Castles in the Air, an early Christina Dodd book.  That book was on the shelves before anyone noticed. In fairness, each of the heroine’s arms looks perfectly  normal. There are just too many of them.  <g> (Here's a link to a page on Christina's site where she gives an amusing riff on the story: http://www.christinadodd.com/castles.php 

But enough about covers.  As an author, I’m naturally delighted when earlier work becomes available again, though I do worry about a possible disconnect between the gorgeous, modern looking cover and the content.  The Diabolical Baron was my first book, with all that implies—semi-omniscient points of view and a seriously Georgette Heyerish voice.  Stylistically, it’s rather diifferent from what I write now.  But the book was a Rita finalist (called the Golden Choice in those days), and won my first Golden Leaf award from the New Jersey Romance Writers, so I hope that my rather contrarian plot still works on a story level.  (That's the book with the original Signet Regency cover on the right.) 

In the story, a classic Regency rake hero—tall, dark, bored, and rich, the Best Catch in the Marriage Mart, accepts that it’s time to produce an heir and picks the name of a young lady at random from a prescreened lot.  (He won’t accept anyone really ugly or with mad relatives.)  The contrarian part comes when the shy young lady in question has ideas of her own, and the classic Regency match doesn’t work.  But it’s a romance and has happy endings, and it was quite jolly to write because I didn’t know anything.  (The blue cover is a reissue, done up to look more like a historical.  Signet has done very nice object covers on my reissues.)

“Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know” was originally in a Signet anthology called Rakes and Rogues.  It had a good concept but a rather bad cover.  This was during the era of The Topaz Man and it had two versions of him, but the composition was weak and Steve looked distinctly green. 

I can no longer remember what my story inspiration was, but I’d read that there were a lot of English adventurers kicking around the Wild West, so one thing led  to another. The story is one of my better novellas, I think. 

So what do you think about covers?  Does a good one get you to pick the book up for closer study?  Have you ever bought a book just because you loved the cover?   And if you did—did you regret the purchase?  <G> 

POSTSCRIPT: I wrote this late last night, and totally forgot the good part--a book giveaway!  The winner of a signed copy of Dangerous to Know will be drawn from the comments to this post that go up between now and midnight Sunday Pacific Time.  (If anyone wonders, I use an internet random number generator to choose.)

Mary Jo, who has bought a book or two because of the cover art, but blames it on the fact that she's a designer and can't help herself 

Wise men & women

       From Loretta:
      
      One question frequently asked of writers is, “Where do you get your ideas?”
      My reactions to this question vary.  A panicked expression.  A blank stare.  A wisecrack, like, “I keep them in a candy box.”  But mainly I’m puzzled.  What does the question mean, really?  “How do you do it?” or “What is the process of creating something out of nothing?”  Both questions are about impossible to answer.
      In any case, finding myself without any blog ideas last night or this morning, I have followed the time-honored custom of authors everywhere:  Steal.
      Robert Benchley, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Benchley) --he of the Algonquin Round Table was born in Worcester, too, where he didn’t stay long--had this to say:
      “Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author’s soul.  If that upheaval is not present, then it must come from the works of any other author which happen to be handy and easily adapted.”
      Well, there was the newspaper, sitting handily by my cup of coffee, with an article in the Local section about Three Kings Day, the Twelfth Day of Christmas, known in our circles as Twelfth Night.  Susan/Sarah, Susan/Miranda, and Edith have told you about various traditions in the British Isles.  The newspaper enlightened me about Hispanic traditions.
       The children of Hispanic nations, according to the article, get their holiday gifts on 6 January.  “On the night of Jan. 5, children gather up the freshest grass they can find in their back yards, stash it all in a small shoebox with a wish list and place it underneath their beds.”
      This employs the tooth fairy concept, like the cookies and milk left for Santa Claus.  The hay is left for the camels.  Sometimes a bowl of water is there, too.  Next day, the “hay” is gone and gifts appear.
      At first I thought this must be tough on the kids living among those who get their gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.  They have to wait nearly two weeks more.  But reading on, I found that these Three Kings gifts are in addition to the ones Santa leaves.
      But wait!  There’s more!  After this, come the octavitas--the “eights”--eight days after the Three Kings--more parties, caroling, and more presents.
      One interviewee said that people made fun of Puerto Ricans “because it’s like we never stop celebrating Christmas.”  Well, what’s wrong with extending a holiday celebration, particularly one that helps brighten the dead of winter?
      Which, by the way, it isn’t in Massachusetts.  We are having the warmest winter on record.  I don’t mind the warmth factor but we New Englanders have the idea that you need freezing weather and snow to “kill the germs” and so we are all enjoying the warmth while worried about, oh, plague or something.
      While I’m stealing stuff, here’s some more about 6 January that was news to me.  I was aware that in some of the Eastern Orthodox churches, Christmas was celebrated on 6 January.  This, as I understand, has something to do with Julian vs. Gregorian calendars, a topic I am not equipped to discuss on account of how it gives me migraine.
      But there were Julian calendar adherents in England as late as the 1820s, at least.  Says the 1827 edition of William Hones’s The Everyday Book, “According to the alteration of the style, OLD Christmas-day falls on Twelfth-day, and in distant parts is even kept in our time as the festival of the nativity.  In 1753, Old Christmas-day was observed in the neighbourhood of Worcester* by the Anti-Gregorians, full as sociably, if not so religiously, as formerly.  In several villages, the parishioners so strongly insisted upon having an Old-style nativity sermon, as they term it, that their ministers could not well avoid preaching to them.”
      *This is not my and Robert Benchley’s Worcester, BTW, but the English one--and one of these days I may do a blog on how it’s misspelled and mispronounced, even by English persons.  “Worcester," I say patiently, "as in Worcestershire sauce?  Yes?”  Then I get the same look I give people who ask where I get my ideas.
      

A Scottish New Year's

Welcome to Wednesday, January 3rd – Susan Sarah here. 

We pulled a little switcheroo, so that a few of us – myself, Jo, and Loretta – will appear on slightly different days. I’m the Wednesday Wench now!

Christmas, New Year’s, and Twelfth Night traditions have been very nicely covered by some of the other Wenches by now, but I thought I’d put a bit of a Scottish spin on things (being the Wee MacWench).

Hogmanay. What a weird word. It’s the Scottish term for New Year’s Eve, used for centuries in the Highlands as well as the Lowlands – and even the Scots don’t know what it means! Some say it derives from the French – possibly aguilleneuf (au gui l’an nuef) or in Normandy hoguignete, terms for gift-giving at the new year. Some think it’s an old Saxon term, “Haleg monath” for “holy month.”

Personally I think the French and Saxon is stretching it, and that the origin is much earlier and more on home turf. Others suggest that Hogmanay is a phonetic approximation of some Gaelic phrase, perhaps Oiche Mhadainn or Og Mhadainn (Good, or New, Morning), or the phrase “Theacht mean oiche”meaning midnight is here, other phrases for candle-night, or New Year’s Eve. When spoken aloud, they're not far from the sound of "hogmanay."

And there was even an early 19th c. gentleman who was convinced that Hogmanay derived from the phrase “hug-me-now” and was intended as an old parlor game (played by English-speaking ancient Celts, apparently), and as such was an aspect of the dancing and merriment and general goofing around that was part and parcel of the Scottish Christmas season celebration. A traditional Scottish dance at Christmas time, Regency-style, began with a kiss on the cheek, so one sees where this gentleman’s mind was straying.

My vote’s on some Gaelic derivative, which supports an early origin for Hogmanay celebrations. Since a very early Scottish New Year’s custom involved young men running around the streets of villages wearing animal skins and banging on drums and kettles and blowing horns and pipes to scare away evil spirits (these fellows were called “guisers”) –so Hogmanay traditions go way back, before the Scots spoke Scots (“hug me now”??). And, taking into account the changes in calendars over the earlier centuries especially, it's worth pointing out that Hogmanay, and Christmas, were celebrated anywhere from late September to late January until the dates were finally fixed.

Christmas in Scotland also went on for days – the “Daft Days” they were sometimes called, the twelve days between Christmas and New Year’s Day filled with celebration, visits, dances, and gift-giving. January 6th and Twelfth Night was celebrated in Scotland, with revelry the game of the evening, and a king and queen chosen from a bean hidden in a cake. This was an especially popular custom at the court of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Along with gift-giving, dances, celebrations by torch light, there was also the Highland game of playing ball – later called The Ba’ – sort of a version of shinty, which is similar to hurley, hockey, and soccer on a wild and wide scope. A stuffed leather ball is kicked and played from one goal to another – usually two houses, identified by piled plaids on their doorsteps – and these might be at opposite ends of a village, or even between two villages and over part of a glen. It was a wild, raucous game that required two teams and could involve hundreds of boys and men. The streets were lined with cheering specators as the Ba’ was kicked and propelled in and out of streets, through kailyards and chicken yards, up and down heathery hills, and the mad playing would go on all day long. 

On New Year’s Day is the tradition of the First Footer, which Edith told us about the other day – generally a handsome young dark haired man is considered the most lucky if he’s the very first to set foot in your house on the first day of the year (and who wouldn’t consider THAT a lucky omen!). In some parts of Scotland, redheaded women and blond men are considered very unlucky to see first thing on New Year’s –a tradition that probably goes back to the Viking invasions.
BTW, my red-haired Scots-Irish mother (and her red-haired sisters and Fraser mother) thought this was a lousy tradition. 

Another old Scots tradition is Handsel Day, which is the day after New Year’s Day, Jan. 2nd, when gifts were traditionally given out – originally as tokens of gratitude to servants and others who lent their help during the year, and sometimes as small gifts between friends and family.

And there’s no New Year’s anywhere, nowadays, without “Auld Lang Syne” which was written (at least in its most lasting form) by the Scots poet Robert Burns. He patched it together from some traditional verses, and improved it with a couple of new verses of his own.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o'kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

To hear Auld Lang Syne as the Scots render it, here’s an audio clip of Dougie MacLean singing Burns’s Auld Lang Syne on his CD, Tribute. His version is also on the compilation CD, Brave Hearts: http://www.amazon.com/gp/music/wma-pop-up/B00000J7UP001010/002-3261447-3243250

Cheers!  May 2007 be kind to each of you, and bring you great good wishes.

Susan Sarah

p.s. For more about the First Footer and Hogmanay partying in Scotland, check out my novella, "The Snow Rose" in A STOCKINGFUL OF JOY, set in the rollicking 16th century.

DUCHESS Makes "Editor's Choice"

Susan/Miranda's DUCHESS continues to make waves.  DUCHESS has been getting some great reviews, and now it's been named an "Editor's Choice" for November by the Historical Novels Review. DUCHESS was also featured on the cover of that issue.  Inside, there's a very nice interview, and it was written by Wenchling Teresa Basinski Eckford.  Congratulations, Susan/Miranda.  Well done!

NEW POSTING SCHEDULE

Good morning, Wenchlings.  It's the New Year, and it's time for a change!  We've revised our posting schedule a bit, just to keep things interesting.  Here's the new schedule, for those of you who like to keep track:

Monday--Susan/Miranda

Tuesday--Pat

Wednesday--Susan/Sarah

Thursday--Loretta

Friday--Mary Jo

Saturday--Jo

Sunday--Edith

Happy 2007

Pat Rice checking in for 2007!

This is what happens after a long vacation--I forget what day of the week it is! Mea culpa for being late today.

Loretta has suggested that the wenches discuss traditions, but in my traditional manner, I have no traditions, <G>  unless one counts voluntarily moving from one house to another on an average of every three years a tradition. We were obviously meant to be nomads.  And one thing wandering teaches us is to adapt readily to one’s surroundings, so traditions really don’t have a lot of time to develop in our family.

When the children were young, we did our best to have live trees that we decorated with homemade ornaments because my penchant for gorgeous glass does not work well with children in the house.  Balancing the Christmas morning opening of presents against the need to drive for four hours to eat the traditional Christmas dinner with our families, and both families wanting us to arrive on Christmas Day, required a LOT of adapting.  So each year was juggled differently.

As the kids became teenagers, we lived in houses with two story ceilings perfect for twelve-foot trees and my adoration of beautiful ornaments.  Dragging a stepladder out to place delicate ornaments twelve feet above our heads didn’t last long.  The trees were lovely and impressive and we keep them in our photo album these days.

Now the kids have grown up and moved to the far corners of the earth, and Christmas Day can be spent in Costa Rica or California, or sometimes, even with us.  (Will someone please explain to me why my generation had to travel to visit parents on Christmas, and now, instead of our children visiting us, we’re still the ones traveling on Christmas Day?)  Any traditions these days involve how to get gifts through airline security.

And, you know, I’m pretty cool with being traditionless.  It means I don’t have to put up a tree if I don’t want to, or one of the kids saying “remember when we did….?” Followed by us repeating whatever that fun pastime had been (usually food is the memory most fondly recalled—real eggnog, spicy coffecakes, homemade cinnamon rolls, and lots and lots of cookies).  So instead of being traditionless, we actually have decades of varied traditions to carry on as needed under whatever the circumstances we’re in that year.

I know our family is pretty weird in being so nomadic.  How many of our readers prefer to stay in one place? How many of you prefer to explore? And---how many of you who prefer to stay in one place ended up traveling instead?!

Happy Twelfth Night! (Five Days Early, & in the Manner of Samuel Pepys)

From Susan/Miranda:

Welcome back to the Wenches, and many thanks to Mary Jo for the Reindawgs!  We’re glad to return from our holidays, and hope yours were rich with joy, happiness, good fellowship, and other such splendid things.

While Twelfth Night is still a few days away, I’ve decided to address it today for several reasons. As the traditional (and more secular) conclusion to the Christmas season, it seems appropriate to mention it now, at the end of our own holiday break. Twelfth Night slips by virtually unnoticed here in modern-day America, but it was an important holiday in the past. Since I’m sure that my Wenchly compatriots will be discussing the celebration in various time periods, I’ll launch the Twelfth Night-ship with a look at the festivities during my (for now) favorite era, Restoration England.

Which means, of course, my first mention in 2007 of Samuel Pepys.  He’s over there to the right, wearing the stylish Indian gown he hired especially for this portrait by John Hayls (now in the National Portrait Gallery, London), and trying very hard to look as haughtily genteel and handsome as he wished he truly could have been.

For those of you firmly ensconced in other eras, Samuel Pepys was a minor administrator in the Naval Office under Lord Sandwich in the 1660s, following Charles II’s return to the throne after Cromwell’s death.  Pepys would be completely forgotten today if not for the fact that he kept a relentlessly detailed  daily diary that has miraculously survived.  Intended for his own eyes and no others (he wrote in a personal shorthand code), he describes not only momentous events in London like the Plague and the Great Fire, but also what he ate, what he wore, where he shopped, how he scolded his servants and loved his wife, and, most importantly for us today, how he celebrated Twelfth Night.

For example, in 1661, Samuel noted that Twelfth Night was celebrated on the seventh of January, not the traditional sixth.  The sixth that year fell on a Sunday, an inconvenient Sabbath for drinking and carousing, and so the celebration was shifted a day, much like Americans today casually move the Fourth of July to the fifth to make a  three-day weekend. 

In the 17th century, Twelfth Night was the day for taking down the evergreen boughs that had been put up as decorations on Christmas Eve (as Jo noted in her Christmas blog.)  Before this was done, silly songs were sung, dances danced, and games like Blind Man’s Bluff played by children, and by adults who’d drunk a sufficient amount to make this entertaining.  Samuel liked to make this a special night for his friends by hiring a fiddler for singing and dancing, and making sure there were “good fires and candles” in his house.

In 1663, he celebrated by taking his wife to the theatre: “after dinner went to the Duke’s house, and there saw Twelfth Night acted well, though it be but a silly play, and not related at all to the name or day.”  Perhaps he can be forgiven for this; Cromwell’s Puritans had shuttered the theatres for twenty years, and even Shakespeare was still a novelty to be rediscovered by Samuel’s generation.

His celebration was more subdued in 1662, when he was a guest at the house of Admiral Sir William Penn (the father of the founder of Pennsylvania): “a merry fellow and pretty good natured, and sings loose songs.” Alas, there were no “loose songs” that night, “it being a solemn feast day with [Sir William], his wedding day, and we had a good chine of beef and other good cheer, besides eighteen mince pies. . . the number of the years he hath been married.”

Eighteen mince pies sounds formidable, but even that appears to have paled besides the traditional Twelfth Night cake.  In 1668, Samuel spent twenty shillings for the ingredients alone for this cake (which in a time when common servants and laborers had annual incomes of four to six pounds, made for a costly cake indeed.)  Twelfth Night cakes were large, dense fruitcakes, with a pea and a bean baked inside.  Whichever guests found these in their pieces were named the King and Queen of the evening, and had the right to order everyone else around, apparently to high hilarity, until the party finally broke up at nearly dawn.

For anyone who’d like to try to replicate such a grand cake, here’s the link to the recipe offered by 18th century cook Hannah Glassem on the Colonial Williamsburg site: http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/Christmas04/recipe.cfm

But in addition to the usual heavy drinking of all Restoration celebrations, it was Twelfth Night, rather than New Year’s Day, that was the time for reflection and resolutions.  Though Samuel made his nearly 350 years ago, they sound suspiciously similar to the resolutions I'll make for myself today (except, of course, no one in the Restoration worried too much about eating less and exercising more):  “This night making an end wholly of Christmas, with a mind fully satisfied with the great pleasures we have had by being abroad from home. . . that it is high time to betake myself to my late vows, which I will tomorrow, God willing, perfect and bind myself to. . . that I may. . . increase my good name and esteem in the world, and get money, which sweetens all things, and whereof I have much need.  So home to supper and to bed, blessing God for his mercy to bring me home after much pleasure, to my wife and house and business with  health and resolution to fall hard to work again.”

So what about you?  Any grand or modest resolutions you'd like to make -- and share?