Word Wenches

Farewell to dragons.

It’s the end of Dragon Month, and I get to round things out with the last appearance of Billie and his guardian dragon. I wonder what the CBKs will get up to next?

Dragon month has been lots of fun. I note that many of you have decided to try Shana Abe's books for the first time. Say thank you to the Wenches for pointing you in the right direction! I hope you’re also sampling our fellow dragon lovers, Barbara Samuel and Karen Harbaugh. Be sure to check out Barbara's wonderful stories of hiking and Karen's information on yarn Again, say thank you!

And of course you've all read Dragon Lovers, yes? It's doing splendidly. Hip, hip, hooray!

(I'm feeling terribly English -- perhaps gearing up for St. George's Day in April -- and the English use a lot more exclamation marks than Americans. There’s a different nuance to them in our mind. Check out a British author. While you’re at it, if you haven’t noticed before, look at the quotation marks in UK published books. Single, not double. Yet really, we don’t notice, do we?)

Back to dragons. Found the Temeraireseries? These are Naomi Novik’s fabulous books about the Napoleonic war with a dragon airforce. That cover is the one on the Science Fiction Book Club edition, which I have. I really like that particular cover.

The first book came out in Britain as Temeraire, but people thought Americans wouldn't recognize the allusion, so the book over here is His Majesty's Dragon, which is another great title. Here is is the Turner painting, The Fighting Temeraire, which is what made the ship famous, and I found it in this wonderful Gutenberg book. You do all know about Gutenberg, don't you? If not, explore the wonders. Click here to see the picture in the book.

I note that His Majesty’s Dragon is up for a Hugo Award. Wonderful news! This is the list I found, after being pointed to it by the SF Canada list. Hugo Award nominees. Fingers crossed for a dragon victory.

And of course, going way back, we have Anne McCaffrey's Pern books (still ongoing, of course.)

Which are your favorite fictional dragons?

What is the oldest fictional dragon you can think of? I found this picture of Tolkien's Smaug, which is a good representation of the nasty dragon. See Smaug here. Check out the rest of the pictures. They're good.

What’s the oldest benign fictional dragon?

Dragons seem to be another “monster” that’s been tamed by the modern imagination. I think they were once universally harmful and feared in European culture (anyone know differently?), but now they’re often large, flying horses, or warships, or amiable – even heroic shape shifters. In romance in particular, we’ve domesticated vampires and werewolves, and we’re working on demons now. What is it in our modern age that wants to tame everything? Are there any imaginary monsters left that really scare us?

Is it perhaps because so many children’s stories have worked hard to teach us that monsters aren’t real, or are actually lovable and misunderstood, or can easily be defeated if we’re only strong enough? My kids loved WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, but they also loved Cookie Monster.
Wikipedia on Maurice Sendak

And here's my page of funny dragons.Click here to visit.

Rambling thoughts on dragons, monsters, and fears, past and present. Comments?

And get ready, everyone, for something new from the Wenches!

Jo, enjoying an exclamatory Englishness. It must be spring!

Sisterhood of the Service

by Mary Jo

Several weeks ago, I attended a tea held by the officers wives club at Ft. Meade, which occupies a large chunk of territory between Baltimore and Washington.  Kathryn Falk, founder of Romantic Times magazine (now the RT Book club— http://romantictimes.com/ ) is a long-time supporter of the troops, and she told a romance-loving member of the club that she’d be happy to be a guest at a meeting.  Since Kathryn knew that the area is home to a good number of romance writers, she suggested inviting more of us, and An Event was born. 

Though opinions vary dramatically about the war, just about everyone supports the troops and their families, so the event inspired much goodwill.  My publisher, Ballantine, contributed 80 books each for two different Ballantine authors, and other publishers also made book contributions.  Each tea table was presided over by the wife of a senior officer who established a theme and provided refreshments.  The lady in charge of my table could easily go for a second career in catering; she had made half a dozen different treats, including tiny cupcakes with icing flowers on top, heart shaped tarts, and more.  And they tasted even better than they looked.  (The cupcakes on the right aren't hers, but they give the idea. <g>)

But below the trappings of a first rate party, I also sensed the bonds between these women.   Military life is hard, with long deployments, abrupt moves, and its own culture.  I got the sense that these spouses and family survive and flourish because of their mutual support (as well as innate strength.)

But I have little experience of the military. Though I looked up some books on the subject ( http://tinyurl.com/yr4b8h & http://tinyurl.com/2v55ru ), there is no substitute  for real experience , so I decided to ask an authority on the subject about what it’s like to be a military wife.  Here is a statement from the woman who did a lot of the organizing for our tea: Kimberly A. Lowe, Major, Air Force Reserves: 

Like most college freshmen, I pledged a sorority in the hope of finding life long friends.  I did not realize then that it would be another 15 years before I would join another sisterhood that would provide me with the life long friends that I sought in college.   

After graduation, I moved to Boston as a Lieutenant, then Germany as a Captain.  As a single officer, I was footloose and fancy free.  Although I could be deployed at any time, I was only responsible for myself, not a family. 

But my sorority sisters' lives were changing.   Two of my "sisters" married and had children.  I felt abandoned.  But my turn was next.  From Germany, I moved to the Pentagon, met my future husband, and married him at Ft Myers.   Nine months later, I was a mother working midnights shifts in a command post.   I chose my family over my career and never looked back.  I joined the ranks of my sisters as a wife and mother.  But something still set us apart - the career paths of our husbands.

My sorority sisters bought houses in manicured neighborhoods; they started second careers; their children attended private schools.  They bought new SUVs as I was shipping my Civic to Amsterdam for my husband's assignment to NATO (European streets do not accomodate American cars!). 

For the first time in my life, I was entering a new sisterhood alone - the sisterhood of military spouses.  I found common ground with new acquaintances - damaged furniture, deployed husbands, and foreign neighbors.  In fact, I was sad to leave after three years overseas.  I felt a connection with these spouses that I had never felt before, even with my sorority sisters.

I now live on a large post near Baltimore, Maryland - my house is the size of my sorority sisters' garages.  But I interact with spouses from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and even the Coast Guard.  I use my leadership skills from the Air Force to organize luncheons to improve morale during ongoing deployments. 

More important, I use my personal experience as a military spouse to reach out to those in need in these tough times.  Some of my neighbors are Martha Stewart, Suze Ormond, and Cindy Crawford rolled into one.  I am not.  But I am accepted for who I am - a military spouse - and for the unique talents that I can contribute to our military community.  The Secret handshake for our "Sisterhood of the Service" is to be oneself.   And that is the best lesson one could learn in life.   

Kim

I originally thought of this blog as a meditation on sisterhood.  Someday I’ll do more on the subject, including what it was like to 'follow the drum' during the Napoleonic Wars, and also the sisterhood of writers. 

But for today, I’ll concentrate on our contemporary Sisterhood of the Service.   Thanks so much, Kim.  Being part of a military family has special challenges and special rewards.  As an American citizen, I’m grateful to all of you. 

Mary Jo

Time's not on my side

From Loretta:
      In response to last week’s post, several commenters quoted from Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” The poem 

The phrase that’s stuck in a great many minds is “Had we but world enough, and time.”  Oddly enough, I had been quoting another line from this same poem only the day before--“But at my back I always hear/Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”--while talking to someone, not about a life and death matter, but about the writing process.  (Funnily enough, the first writing I ever got paid for was a catalog for an exhibition, It’s About Time.  As you have probably guessed, being a sharp lot of readers, it was an exhibition of timepieces.)
      Shortly after the amazing demonstration of my having not only learned something in college but remembered it, I encountered at a reception desk two people who’d recently discovered my books--thanks to my giving them signed cover flats for NOT QUITE A LADY, whether they wanted them or not.
      Bless them, they went out and bought some of my books.  One had proceeded directly from THE LION’S DAUGHTER to LORD PERFECT.  The other sheepishly told me she hadn’t yet found time to start the book she had.  I sympathized, telling her what an awful time I have making time for reading just for fun.  My workday can start whenever, since I don’t have to punch a clock or be at an office at a certain time, but this also means it ends whenever, too, and that can be long after the rest of my time zone is in bed.
      As comments to my last post indicated, a great many of us feel we haven’t nearly enough time to do all we want to do, let alone what we need to do.
      OK, so maybe I’ll never speak Italian fluently.  But what about reading?  Making time for leisure reading--not research, not business--gets harder and harder.  It takes me a couple of weeks these days to read one book, so I’m getting behinder and behinder on my TBR stacks.
      My terrible confession:  I read at mealtimes.  I know it’s wrong but everyone’s entitled to at least one bad habit, and, I mean, it’s not like smoking crack.  I’ve been reading at mealtimes for as long as I can remember, and luckily, married a man with the same bad habit.  If I didn’t do my leisure reading then, when would I read?  Bedtime doesn’t work because by the time I get to bed, my eyes won’t stay open for more than a paragraph, no matter how riveting the book.  Unless I’m on vacation or sick with the right kind of ailment (many are not reading-in-bed-conducive), the TBR stack gets attacked in tiny increments.
      The woman who’d rapidly proceeded to her second Loretta Chase book had a method, she told me:  She reads two chapters every night, before she goes to bed.
      One of my sisters says that after dinner, she ignores the housework calling to her and sits down with a book.  She reads at least half a dozen books a week.
       I know some people read in the bathtub but this is an art I’ve never mastered.  How do you keep your hands dry so you can turn the pages?  And where do you find time for a leisurely bath in the first place?
      Yes, it’s about time, always about time.
      Tick, tick, tick.  Where do you find the time for your reading?   How do you make the time?  Do you have a system, or is it catch as catch can?

Historical Description

  Wednesday, and Susan Sarah here. We’ve talked before about anachronisms in writing historicals, and I ran smack into this recently while writing a quick description of a woman’s hair in a late medieval context. Her hair is auburn, a dark red-brown. So I was searching for a phrase to conjure the sleek, polished sheen of the length of her hair, having used auburn the page before. Red, brown, auburn...the color of polished mahogany....

But wait! It can't be mahogany-colored. I know this because, pen poised (or fingers poised over keyboard) I stopped to look this up. Mahogany was discovered by Europeans (South American people had known about it for a while) around 1500, and it wasn’t until after 1600 that it began to appear with any regularity in European and British furniture-making.

Historical context will sometimes determine the use of words and phrases in text and dialogue. Certain words and expressions that come readily to us, the authors and readers, are anachronistic, out of their time sequence, in a historical novel. Seemingly innocuous, they can tear the fabric of the historical context a little--too many, or just the right (or wrong) one can jar the reader out of that world.

Such as mahogany. Or walnut (another wood not used very early). Coffee. Chocolate. Cocoa. Tea.
I'm thinking of these words as adjectives and used in description, not as objects and items. Like, chocolate-colored satin. Water the color of weak tea. That sort of thing.

An author friend once told me, when she made the transition from medievals to nineteenth century, that she felt liberated in the writing–-for the first time she could use words like coffee, chocolate, tea, pastry, diamond, upholstered...and a whole slew of more “modern” words (for the 1800s), objects, concepts. She didn't have to stop and think about it, or take a few minutes (or longer, alas, sometimes) to look the danged thing up. This happens frequently when writing medievals, and less so with later time settings, but it is a consistent consideration for any historical writer.

Mentioning an orange sunset, for instance, in a medieval--but how do you describe that color, without that great word, "orange"? It's an interesting dilemma that comes up with many other words, like mauve (a no-no until late nineteenth century), maroon, turquoise, aqua, citrus, lime, lemon, orange, tobacco brown, puce (pretty color, awful word!).

Other simple things can trip one up, reader or author. A medieval hero may catch a hare while hunting, but it better not be a rabbit until after the 12th century–-they were introduced to Britain from Europe. Wolves were hunted in the extreme and became extinct in Scotland and Britain after the 1670s (where does that leave all those historical werewolves?). Falconry flourished...but don’t give a Harris hawk to your historical characters, even though they are commonly flown today (and appeared in that most sacred and adored of movies, Ladyhawke) --they didn’t occur naturally in Britain or Europe.

At what point is it okay to use the word “fathom” –- as in “he couldn’t fathom it” -– well, not in a medieval, nor even a Tudor-set novel, though the word has Greek and Old English origins. I once had the word “hothead” in a medieval book flagged by a copyeditor. I squeaked it through anyway, but it didn’t qualify for use, according to Webster’s finest.

What about the staff and stuff of life, bread, wheat, corn, barley, and so forth?  Wheat was not grown in most of Scotland, for example, and for a very long time (even centuries) they didn’t have the knack of yeast breads, especially in the Highlands. If you read a medieval Scottish novel and the characters are tearing into a fresh loaf of hot bread, feel free to shriek “no, no, it ain’t so!” (unless those characters are in a Lowland monastery run by English monks).  And “corn” in British-set novels is a very confusing term to American readers especially. The English used “corn” as a general term for a variety of grains. We understand it as, well, corn.
   

Weaponry is another topic where one can easily trip up, and jar the story loose from its historical moorings. Even if the author abhors violence and doesn’t want her gentlemen, lords, dukes, earls, or ruffians fighting, a passing knowledge of weapons is essential to any historical writer, for fast referral. A rapier is neither saber nor broadsword, a broadsword is not a claymore, a dirk is not a dagger (not always anyway), a basket-hilt appears first in Scotland and only after a certain date, and on certain blades. A wheel-lock is not a fire-lock, a pistol or gun can be either. A glass is not necessarily a goblet or a cup, a flask is not a wine bladder, a girdle is a griddle (not a corset), a crusie is a lamp, not an author (couldn’t resist that one! *g*).

Some phrases that we’re used to hearing won’t ring true. A Regency hero, for instance, drawling “Oh, right,” in a sarcastic tone. Or a medieval hero snapping, “Not!” (I’ve seen both in books). On the other hand, it’s possible to adapt a modern tone to a historical for an upbeat, light, more immediate tone. We’ve all seen this done very well in novels as well as movies. A Knight's Tale and Marie Antoinette are good examples of this. In historical novels, the author needs a good ear and a certain gift to pull it off, but it can be successful and really enjoyable.

It's not always necessary to be the Anachronistic Police...but it is good for a writer to absorb research in passing and absorb language tone of whatever time frame the story is in, and it helps to be aware of quick, casual language and references used in text and dialogue. Though most readers will be forgiving about out-of-context references to the color of polished mahogany, coffee-brown satin, or lemon-yellow ribbons, sometimes little words like those can shake a historical framework.

Have you all come across this sort of thing in novels? I figure it falls into three categories: A) it drives one nuts, B) it's barely noticeable, or C) the modern context of a word or phrase now and then can bridge the historical setting of the novel to our own time.  Whatcha think?

~Susan Sarah

RITA Finalist - Mary Jo Putney!

Two thumbs up for Mary Jo!  The Marriage Spell (Ballantine, ISBN 0345449185) is a finalist in the Long Historical category of Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA contest for published authors.  This is pretty impressive when you consider only 100 finalists made the cut out of 1,100 entries.  Way to go, Mary Jo!

The Marriage Spell hardcover: http://tinyurl.com/yr3wcp

The Marriage Spell paperback: http://tinyurl.com/2e4fr6

And here's more proof that being a Wench, even an Honorary Word Wench, is a Good Thing:  Recent guest Shana Abe, HWW, finaled in the Paranormal Romance category with The Dream Thief (Bantam Dell, ISBN  0553804936)

The Dream Thief:  http://tinyurl.com/yol8zs      

Read the details in all their glory at the RWA website here:  http://161.58.67.252/ritafinalists2007.htm

Congratulations, ladies.  Awesome job!

Historical Geography

Pat Rice here:

Loretta complained the other day of researching subjects of which she knew nothing and in which she couldn’t even speak the language. I don’t know how bad Loretta’s historical Italy is, but I can tell you that France is a huge internet black hole. I visited the country once, chaperoning a bus full of teenagers, and learned far more about teenage hormones than the countryside. And now here I am, attempting to race my characters across not only the French landscape, but one that existed in 1791. You think our coasts are affected by global warming now? Do you have any idea how much difference a century or two makes?  LOTS.  I’m sitting here trying to compare my Rough Guide to Normandy with online travel sites to historical accounts and I’m going cross-eyed.  My suspicion is that the information I want is on all those sites in French.  Wikipedia may be questionable, but it's a good basic start in English for the area I'm researching: Normandy geography . But beyond that and my guide, I'm rowing hard and going in circles.

And those on-line language translators are good only for a laugh. (this is one of the better ones: http://world.altavista.com/)  Monkeys might be able to put two words together and grasp a concept, but computers sure can’t.  My theory is that computers have grown up to be just like their parents—nerds who know machinery and logic but have almost no grasp of verbal skills. 

Example:
I copied the last three sentences of the first paragraph into Babel, had it translate my English to French, then copied THEIR OWN French translation back to English.  Here’s the result:

Do you have an idea how much difference per century or two marks? FATES. I rest the test here to compare my approximate guide of Normandy with the sites in line of voyage to the historical accounts and I am to go cross-observed. My suspicion is that information that I want find on all these French building sites

I rest my case. Cross-observed! I love it. And admittedly, even English hasn’t come up with a correct spelling for on-line, online, on line, so I’m sure “line of voyage” makes a good substitute. <G>

I seem to have an obsession with climatic scenes on cliffs for reasons only my subconscious can understand.  And cliffs are not static, as I have learned to my dismay.  The first time I wrote a cliff scene (a hundred or so years ago, the way I feel today), I couldn’t travel to the area to check it out personally until the book was done. To my great dismay, the area that had been described as cliffs in historical accounts was flat. Totally flat. No cliffs in sight. To this day I don't know if the cliff disappeared or the writers lied.  Argh! So I make a conscientous effort these days to put my characters where there actually are cliffs, if that’s what the scene requires. I’m playing with links to see if I can make them work, so here’s one to the cliffs I’m exploring for the current WIP: Etretat cliffs

and for those of you too lazy to check the link (like me), here's the photo:

Grand, aren’t they? Now try to figure out if I can send my villain out there.  Worse yet, I have to save the villain because he’s the hero of the next book, so he has to get back to safe land somehow! The things we do to complicate our lives.  How many of our readers have been to Etretat (I’m not going to persuade Typepad to put in the accent marks), France and can tell me if the arches are accessible?  Or are there other nifty places where I can drive my villain to the brink and over and not kill him? He has limited powers of earth, wind, fire, and water, but he can’t fly. Let your imaginations go! 

And as we near our first anniversary, the wenches will be playing with a new  blog format. We’re thinking of posting only on Monday-Wednesday-Friday-sometimes Sunday, which means I have no clue when I’ll be posting next.  But I’ll try to post to my personal blog at (http://patriciarice.blogspot.com/) Pat Rice's blog    at least once a week, maybe more often, now that our duties here are less demanding.  One of these days, I’ll conquer the internet. Or maybe even make a book trailer. How hard can that be, right? (which is a topic for another time--do any of you pay attention to book trailers? Or even know what they are?!)

Lady Day, & Other Lost Holidays

By Susan/Miranda

Holidays have taken it hard in the last decade or so.  Used to be, a glimpse at the windows of any elementary school could tell you the season: construction paper ghosts and witches meant Halloween, angels and Santas heralded Christmas, red hearts promised Valentine’s Day, and the eggs and bunnies appeared for Easter.

But political correction has taken its toll.  Witches and ghosts are banned as promoting satanic sympathies, Christmas angels and Easter bunnies are too Christian to be tolerated, and Valentine’s Day is banned for raising the ugly possibility that some people really are loved more than others.  Nativity scenes are banned from public places, and in the spirit of equal (negative) time, so are the giant menorahs. According to my friends with children in New York City schools, the students are so culturally diverse these days that the school system’s given up trying to sort out Christmas, Hanukah, and Kwanza, and the only mandated celebration now is Winter Solstice.

Secular holidays haven’t fared much better.  We used to celebrate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln; now they’re jumbled today in a single three-day weekend marked by ski trips and lots of sales at the mall.  In many offices, Martin Luther King Day falls under the “day of personal observation”, an employee’s choice.  Even the Fourth of July is under attack, with many lobbying for making it a permanent long weekend regardless of whether it’s the second, third, or fifth of July.

Writing books set in the past means that your characters celebrate holidays often now long forgotten.  As we’ve mentioned here before, Twelfth Night was a more festive celebration in 17th and 18th century England than Christmas.  Most holidays still remained close to their religious beginnings as holy days. 

In my July book, Royal Harlot, King Charles II and his Court enjoy a grand masque celebrating the February holiday of Candlemas in 1665. Ostensibly a Christian holy day, Candlemas marks the purification of the Virgin Mary and the first presentation of the infant Jesus Christ to the elders in the Temple.  But in the way that those in power today can never resist turning almost anything into a good photo op, so Charles had decreed that the allegorical theme of the Candlemas Day masque would show how the various enemies of England should be righteously vanquished –– thinly disguised propaganda to build support for Charles to wage war on the Dutch.

Just as the king used the Candlemas masque for propaganda, his mistress (and my heroine) Barbara, Countes of Castlemaine, saw it as an opportunity to flaunt her own position. Seventeenth century court masques were a mixture of lavish display, music, and amateur theatrics that permitted the courtier to show off their “talents” and wear nifty costumes.  Playing the part of Venus urging Mars to war, Lady Castlemaine’s costume included scandalously short men’s breeches (the Restoration version of Daisy Dukes) to display her long legs, and nearly every jewel the king had given her.  The king was enchanted, the queen was put out, war was declared on the Dutch soon after, and what any of this had to do with the infant Jesus and the elders in the Temple is pretty hard to fathom.
Royal Harlot

Which brings me, finally, to Lady Day.  Lady Day is another Christian holiday turned secular.  Originally the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25, Lady Day was intended to honor the Virgin Mary –– the Lady.  In Britain, it also became one of the Quarter Days (the other four are Midsummer Day, Michaelmas Day, and, of course, Christmas Day) when new servants were hired and rents and rates were paid. 

Until 1752, when England shifted from the Julian Calendar to the Georgian, Lady Day also marked the start of the “official” year, rather like the modern American business year begins on July 1.  According to the folks at Wikipedia, a vestige of the traditional rent-paying on Lady Day still lingers in the United Kingdom, where tax day is April 6 –– Lady Day adjusted for the days lost in the calendar change in 1752.
More on Lady Day

So what forgotten holidays do you wish were still remembered?  And what modern holiday celebration do you find so oddly out of character with the holiday’s original intention that you’d like to share it?

My Hero

It's Sunday, it's Edith, and I have a question for you.

Now, I've heard people say that readers and writers of Romance fiction are really readers and writers of Science Fiction/Fantasy, because of Happy Endings, Perfect Love, the whole "Ever After" concept, and….
those heroes of ours. Strong. Handsome, (or if not conventionally so, then wildly attractive anyway.) Smart. Rich, or about to be so. And Perceptive. Able to know what a woman feels, and wants. (and able to deliver it.)

We all have our favorites, going back to Sir Lancelot (though I always thought he was a bit too good for his own good) Romeo (So young! So impulsive! Oh, grow up!) Mr. Darcy (Sure, he falls for Our Heroine, but catch him at a PTA meeting? I don't think so.) Mr. Rochester (Wonderful in fiction, but all that sulking?) and on and on and etcetera.

But pray let us get real. We have our heroes in Fiction, whether they be novelistic or cinematic. Here's the poser: Did you ever meet anyone in real life who reminded you of someone you secretly adored in fictional life? Not only the heroic guys, but even someone you knew was unsuitable for the long term? A Captain Sparrow? An Indy Jones? The gorgeous dolt in "Cold Comfort Farm"?

Confession: Once, in my impetuous youth, I went out with a ringer for young Brando in "Streetcar." A real-life Stanley Kowalski. Thrilling. Until I realized he wasn't kidding. He wasn't amusing us both by putting me on. He really was that dumb. Ah me.

So: Did you go out with a Hero? Did you eventually decide to ditch him? Or did you marry one? Mind, not a fella who acted like a hero after you knew him, but one that immediately reminded you of one. In short, were your romantic choices ever influenced by what you read and saw in the movies?

Really? What happened? Do tell!

Walking the Labyrinth

By Mary Jo and Jo

This afternoon I’m speaking at 2:00 at the Lovetsville Library in Lovettsville, Virginia, so I don’t have time to insert photos before I leave.  Hence, lots of links, which I can do the night before.  <G>

This post is a result of the Novelists, Inc. onference in San Diego last week.  Ninc ( www.ninc.com ) is a a group of multi-published authors of popular fiction, and the conference is laidback, professional, and very enlightening.  Jo, Pat, and I attended this year. 

On Thursday before the conference started, half a dozen of us decided to visit the famous San Diego zoo, and we also wanted to walk the labyrinth at a nearby church.  With Jo’s permission, here is her delightful chronicle of the event, which she posted on the Ninc loop:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“Two intrepid Ninc members DID find the labyrinth, after the rest of the wimps took a taxi home.<G>  (Note from MJP: I was one of the wimps.  I plead jetlag. <G>)

There were maze-like elements, because finding it was a challenge!

St. Paul's Cathedral was unknown to taxi drivers and none of us had thought to do anything so clever as print out a googlemap, so our plan to stop there en route to the zoo didn't work. Someone at the zoo eventually, with great effort, figured it out and marked it on a map, but as it would have meant walking back aways, we all continued on through the zoo. Later, much later, after an enjoyable day, we returned to the taxi rank and decisions.

Most just made a dash for the ride, but Julia Ross  ( http://www.juliaross.net/ ) and I (the redoubtable British representatives, you'll note) set off to walk out of Balboa Park, map in hand. We even, in typically English style, managed a dash across a four-lane road and arrived triumphantly -- 20 minutes after it officially closed.

Girding our loins with the spirit that made the Empire, we found an open door and explored, finally meeting a lovely sexton who basically said, to heck with the pettifogging rules, here you go, ma'ams. We tipped our virtual pith helmets and were left alone in a large church hall with a large labyrinth painted on the tile floor.

At which point Julia admitted she'd never walked a labyrinth. To be honest, she seemed a bit dubious about the reward for her endeavors. But I set off, and ever game, she started in after me. In the end, she pronounced herself pleased.

It was great because the size gave lots of turns -- and I think it's that, the switching from left to right sides of the brain that has the effect -- though the actual paths were narrow. Julia and I were brushing when we passed and if a lot of people were walking, it could get awkward.

When we emerged, enlightened and transported, we decided we needed more mundane transportation. Which looked likely to be a trick unless we tracked down our friendly sexton again and asked for a phone and phone book.

But the British didn't get an empire for nothing, you know. Julia found
something in her bag with the hotel phone number on it and I found my cell
phone. The concierge agreed to dispatch a cab, and we made it back, weary but triumphant.

Rule Britannia!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Thanks, Jo!  I adore labyrinths—my contemporary romance, The Spiral Path, is named for a labyrinth that was part of the hero’s healing journey, as well a metaphor for the complexity of the characters’ lives and relationship.  ( http://tinyurl.com/2rjd7x ) ) 

I first became acquainted with labyrinths when my author friend Ciji Ware (http://www.rightsizingyourlife.com/ ), who was living in San Francisco at the time, marched us up the hill to Grace Cathedral after dinner and we walked the labyrinth.  There is something immensely soothing about the process—right and left brain being balanced, as Jo said.

Intrigued, I did some research and found that originally the words labyrinth and maze were used interchangeably, but these days, “maze” is usually used for walkways surrounded by towering hedges with dead ends and an intention to confuse.  The famous maze at Hampton Court in England has a man on a platform in the middle to tell baffled tourists how to find their way out. <g> 

A labyrinth, in contrast, is generally two dimensional and has a distinct pathway through.  You follow the path in to the center, and from there you follow another pathway out.  The route swings you around so that you can be close to the center and not reach it, then become headed off to the perimeter again.  Rather like life, which is why walking a labyrinth is such a meditative experience.  Here’s a Wikipedia description that will probably tell you more than you really want to know about labyrinths <g>: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth

It turns out that Grace Cathedral in San Francisco is central to the current revival of interest in labyrinths.  Some medieval cathedrals had labyrinths inside.  People who couldn’t make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem (which most couldn’t), could walk the cathedral labyrinth on their knees, praying all the way.  (And those stone floors were hard!) 

I can’t find my book on the subject offhand, but if I recall correctly, several people from Grace Cathedral went to Chartres in France, couldn’t find anyone to give them permission, so they moved the chairs and rugs and copied the pattern, then took it back to San Francisco. More on Grace Cathedral and its labyrinths: http://www.gracecathedral.org/labyrinth/

Now there are labyrinths everywhere, usually at churches.  There are also portable labyrinths on canvas rolls so they can be moved around.  To find one near you, check the Labyrinth Locator: http://www.veriditas.net/

While the labyrinth was central to The Spiral Path, I included mazes in a couple of historicals.  In Dearly Beloved, the villain tries to hunt the heroine down in a maze so he can kill her.  (I visited Hampton Court’s maze for the research.  It was easy to imagine skullduggery there! http://www.tourist-information-uk.com/hampton-court.htm )  And in Silk and Shadows, the hero and heroine find some privacy in the center of a maze.

Jo also developed an interest in labyrinths and mazes when she was writing (the RITA winning) Devilish with the Daedalus metaphor.  “Of course, Daedalus's labyrinth was a maze, so it brings up that ambiguity.” 

One of Jo’s favorite mazes is here: http://sistersofsaintanne.org/bc/photo10.htm  She’ll walk it again when it dries out.  (Which can be a challenge in British Columbia. <G>)

I’m lucky to have a labyrinth within two miles of my home.  Here is one that we usually walk every New Year’s Day, after attending an annual open house given by friends who live nearby:  http://www.bonsecours.org/bssc/catalogue/Labyrinth.htm  It’s an amazingly lovely and peaceful site, a retreat center that used to be a convent. 

How many of you have experienced labyrinths?  Tell me some of your labyrinth experiences.  And if you haven’t—have we whetted your appetite to seek one out?

Rule Britannia!

Mary Jo & Jo

Shana Abe, HWW!

The Wenches would like to thank SHANA ABÉ for being our interview guest!

We're so grateful that Shana was able to take time to chat with us. That was a fantastic interview, Jo and Shana, and a really terrific contribution to March Dragon Month in Wenchland. We're big Shana fans here, and looking forward to reading the next installment in her dragon series--meanwhile, we will content ourselves with catching up through SMOKE THIEF and DREAM THIEF, and of course, the backlist! We'd to present Shana with a little Wenchie award....

~Shana, you are hereby declared an Honorary Word Wench--you may now add HWW after your signature. We know you've been dreaming of this moment.  :)

~Shana, you are more than welcome to return to Word Wenches anytime to visit, comment, and promote your books here

As a sincere token of our appreciation and admiration, here's a wee medieval dragon to honor your work in resurrecting fictional dragons. May it shape-change into a great little dragon to perch in your office and bring you good fortune always--and may it remind you of your special day in Wenchland!

luv from the Seven Wenches and the Whipster

Welcome, Shana Abe

Jo here.

We're delighted to have Shana Abé as our guest.

Shana has a long career in historical romance, but is currently a huge success with her Drakon book, about shapeshifter dragons in Georgian England. The first, THE SMOKE THIEF, was one of those books that got huge reader buzz. Everyone was saying, "You have to read this!"

Jo: Welcome, Shana. I'm always curious about a writer's origins. Were you a writer from the cradle, or did the insanity come to you later in life?

Shana: I can’t make any claims to sanity from the cradle or otherwise, LOL. I do know that I always loved creating fantasy worlds. I could tell stories for hours to my friends and not run out of steam. I don’t know they put up with me.

Jo: What is the first fiction you remember writing?

Shana: I remember writing a play in the first grade. It starred me as a beautiful princess (ha ha) who gets kidnapped by an evil sea hag (my older sister). I’m rescued by a sea prince (my younger brother). My sister refused to be the sea hag, however, and since she was four years older than I was, I couldn’t make her do it. I think I had to beg my best friend to be the hag instead.

Jo: The mark of a really best friend!

Shana: I recall that I made my parents sit through the whole thing...and that it didn’t actually have an ending, LOL.

Jo: When did your interests turn to romance?

Shana: Like lots of incredibly well-rounded, intelligent, accomplished people, I love to read romance. *G* My mom had this wonderful collection, and as a young teenager I would filch whatever I could from it to devour late at night. I think I went straight from Nancy Drew to Regencies, actually. And I was hooked.

Jo: That'll do it. I was sucked in by Georgette Heyer. Here's a link to a site about Regency romances. The Nonesuch How did you learn/practice your writing? Have you belonged to writing groups, chapters of RWA, or other organizations?

Shana: I’m afraid I’m one of those people who just got lucky and fell into writing as a profession. I didn’t study it extensively in college. I joined RWA only after my first book was accepted for publication, and only because my agent gently informed me that I should. I didn’t really know what RWA was, which was a shame, because I know now it’s such an amazing resource for writers.
Check out RWA here.

Otherwise, I’m a bit of a lone wolf. I’m sure I’d benefit by belonging to a writing group or RWA chapter, but it always seems like I’m running behind on even everyday moments, like grocery shopping or paying the bills. Writing can be such a lonely profession; it’s always a delicate balance between practicing the craft and seeking outside support for it.

Jo: That's so true, especially as groups and writer friends can be wonderful when things aren't going so well. Your writing career hasn't followed a completely smooth path. Can you tell us about some of the ups and downs and what lay behind them, creatively speaking?

Shana: I thank God every day I still have this job, and that’s the truth. I’m so grateful to be able to write. So when there were downs, it was mostly when I felt so drained or exhausted that I couldn’t find that magic within myself any longer. It was worrisome.

About a year and a half ago I went through an excruciatingly distressing divorce. It rendered me into something like the walking dead. I had a manuscript due and I simply couldn’t write a thing, month after month after month. My heart wasn’t just broken, it was shattered, and I couldn’t imagine writing about love ever again. But...I had that book due, and I knew I had to write it. Even though I was very late with it, everyone at Bantam was incredibly wonderful and supportive. Still, there were definitely days when I thought my career was over.

Jo: That must have been terribly rough. Our ability to write can be extraordinarily robust, but so vulnerable to some assaults.

Shana: Somehow, in what I could best call a delirium, I wrote the book. It turned out to be THE DREAM THIEF, which to this day has plot points that escape me. Sometimes I’ll flip through it and think, “Oh, yeah. I wrote that.” I do remember that I have a line in there by the heroine, Lia, who says that love is the most terrible feeling in the world. That was absolutely where I was emotionally at that time.

Jo: That was a very wrenching book in parts. Now I know why.

Shana: But of course, I gave Lia a happy ending! And Amazon.com named THE DREAM THIEF
the Number One Romance of the year. So I guess it worked out.

Jo: Very well deserved. Is there anything in particular you wish you hadn't done, or had done? This is by way of advice to the writers who read and sometimes comment in Word Wenches.

Shana: I wish that I hadn’t, and still didn’t, procrastinate so much. I mean it; I’m really terrible that way. Even when I try not to, I procrastinate. It’s an awful habit. If you don’t do it already, don’t get sucked in!

Jo: Even before the Drákon books you've had paranormal elements in some books. Is this a long standing interest? Have you ever written specifically for the SF&F market?

Shana: I have always had a fascination with the concept of other worlds, either magical or spiritual or physical. I think I’m one of those people who’ll always wonder “what if” when I gaze at the stars, or get lost in the woods, or read fables. And although both THE SMOKE THIEF and THE DREAM THIEF are being marketed by Bantam as fantasies (in addition to romance), I haven’t yet written strictly for the SF&F market.

Jo: Have you been a big dragon fan for a long time? What are your favorite fictional dragons? Not saying there are any real ones, but you never know....

Shana: Um, according to some of the fan mail I’m getting these days, apparently shapeshifting dragon-people are real...

Jo: Yikes!

Shana: ... and some people think I might be one of them. Yeah. Yikes.

But okay, seriously, I guess I’ve been a dragon fan as long as I’ve been a fan of any sort of fantasy concept. Dragons, unicorns, mermaids, faeries...what’s not to love? *G* I think one of my most favorite dragon tales is a very old Swedish one, which I’ll both condense and paraphrase for you, probably to its great detriment:

Once there was a prince who was most unfortunately born as a dragon instead of as a human boy, and was thus banished by his parents to live in the royal woods. He spent a lot of time acting out—wouldn’t you be mad if you were really a prince trapped in a dragon’s body, forced to eat berries and sleep on twigs?—and so grew up to become a big nuisance to his family and people, destroying crops, capturing livestock, that sort of thing.

(Jo's picture of a sad dragon.)

But the truth was, he was lonely, and he wanted a wife. None of the village virgins were especially keen on this idea, but finally one clever girl agreed to wed him. On their wedding night, she showed up wearing layers and layers of gowns. The dragon prince was a little puzzled, but politely asked her to remove her clothing. She, just as politely, replied that she would, but that for every dress she took off, he had to shed a layer of skin.

So they stripped. And stripped. And in the end she was naked, but so was he: at last a handsome, human prince.

Surely one of the earliest examples of a resourceful woman saving the day.

Jo: Indeed, and a beautiful metaphor for love. What about the Georgian period? Why did you set the Drákon books in that time slot?

Shana: I really loved the idea of having this tightly-knit, tribal and enclosed society of feral, animal-like people functioning within the confines of upper-class Georgian civilization, with hoops and corsets and powder and lace. It was actually a very sexy time period, both visually and culturally speaking, I think much more so than the years just before or after.

Jo: Definitely. And those aristocrats could be feral, too, at times. Georgian aristocrats and shape-shifter dragons is such a great fit it seems as if it should be true. Did the idea just come to you or were you circling something like that for a while? Please tell us more about the way it all came about. Did it come to you smoothly, or was there a lot of struggle to get that world just as you wanted it? For those who haven't found the series yet, please tell us a little about the world and the books already out.

Shana: I had been writing medievals for a while, because that was where my interest began as a romance writer. But I was really starting to feel that I’d explored the limits of that world. By the time I wrote THE LAST MERMAID, I knew I wanted to move into a different time period. Fortunately for me, THE LAST MERMAID gave me the opportunity to explore four different centuries in one novel. The second story in the book (there were three) was set in 1721: I had an assassin heroine whose next assignment was a Scottish lord, the hero. This book was an unabashed paranormal—there are mermaids!—with the heroine, Leila, having the bittersweet gift of being able to read people’s true hearts if she physically touched them. But that gift was also slowly killing her.

Leila really sparked my imagination. I adored that she was so cunning and resilient, but had to look and act like a delicate court lady cinched up in her gowns and glittering with jewels. I had a lot of fun writing the story, and when it was time to think about where I wanted to go next, I instinctively returned to that time period, and that paradox.

I knew I wanted to write about shapeshifters of some sort, and my first thought was werewolves. But there are already so many great werewolf romances out there, and I really wanted to do something different. One day I was watching the hawks soaring above my yard (I have house rabbits as pets, so watching out for hawks is part of my job) and I was so taken with their ferocious beauty and grace. I’d love to be able to fly like that! And I just thought, “Dragons!” That’s how it happened.

THE SMOKE THIEF was one of those amazing stories that pretty much wrote itself. I was so lucky.

So, to summarize the books: There exists a group of highly secretive, highly constrained creatures known as the drákon, who have the ability to Turn from human to smoke to dragon. They have many other Gifts as well: they can hear the unique music of metal and stones, like gold and diamonds. All their senses are heightened; they’re strong, and swift, and sly.

Because their kind has been hunted nearly to extinction over the centuries, they live disguised as humans in the lush, isolated community of Darkfrith, England. These are powerful, sensual beings who, for the sake of survival, have become farmers and miners and smiths, all ruled by an Alpha: the Marquess of Langford.

Naturally, in such a tightly controlled world, there are going to be rebels. One of them is Rue, the heroine of the first book, who actually fakes her own death to escape the shire and live free. She resettles in London and begins to use her Gifts to become the Smoke Thief, a notorious jewel thief. Problem is, Rue is the first female drákon in generations who can complete the Turn, and once the Alpha learns of her existence, he’ll move heaven and earth to find her, to get her back to Darkfrith as his bride.

I loved Rue. I think she was me back in high school: a shy sort of social misfit who lives in a dreamworld. Only Rue has the courage to make her dreams real.

Rue eventually has a daughter, Lia, the heroine of THE DREAM THIEF. Lia is the fifth of five children, quiet, apparently completely without the Gifts that define her kind. But the truth is that Lia’s been keeping secrets: she can hear the future in her dreams, and in that future, her entire tribe is destroyed by the human man she is destined to love.

Poor Lia! I gave her quite a dilemma: do you try to save your family, or do you try to save your true love? Either way, she loses. But she fights back by rejecting those two choices entirely, and flinging herself headfirst into a plan to save everyone, even if it means destroying herself in the process. Lia turned out to be much stronger than I first anticipated. She never gives up on love, and refuses to accept that she can’t fix the devastating future that’s rushing toward her. I loved her determination and desperate faith.

Jo: Did you have trouble interesting editors in the concept?

Actually, my editor loved the idea from the start. Thank God. In fact, Bantam was so happy with THE SMOKE THIEF that they decided to publish it first as a hardcover instead paperback, which was a big leap for me as an author.

Jo: With a beautiful cover, too. So, what are you working on now?

Shana: I’m working on the third book in the drákon series, which is the story of a princess of the drákon, Maricara, and Kimber, Rue’s eldest son. And I recently got some good news: Bantam wants me to continue the series, so it looks like there’s going be a few more drákon books even after this one.

Jo: That's very good news. Is there anything you'd like to ask the Word Wenches readers?

Shana: Hmmm. Do you think the upswing in the paranormal market has played out? I’ve heard all kinds of opinions on this one!

My answer: For obvious reasons, I really hope not! *G* I remember that when I was starting out as a published author, I wanted to plunge right into writing paranormals, but my agent and editor shied away from the idea because the market was so relatively small. Now it’s booming, and I love that. I truly hope it continues to grow.

Jo: I remember that -- when everyone said paranormal romance wouldn't sell. Ha! You're one of the few combining it with historical, however, and I think you've found the perfect fit.

Okay, everyone, time for you to talk to Shana. And remember, everyone who comments here will be in the draw for not one but TWO hardcovers from Shana.

You can visit Shana's website by clicking here.

So, which of Shana's books is your favorite? Do you have specific questions to ask her? Now's your chance.

What about Shana's question? What do you think about paranormal romance? Will it continue to be very popular? If so, why? Do paranormal elements enhance a romance for you or make it more difficult to believe?

What sort of paranormal elements do you like most? Vampires? Werewolves? Dragons? Faeries? Merpeople?

Do you think, like me, that Georgian aristocrats, with their dangerous, amoral arrogance and lush
ornamentation, were made to be dragons? This guy isn't particularly glittery, but he has a very dangerous look in his eye. I could see him developing claws!

Jo

If only I'd known

      From Loretta:

I’d planned to celebrate the start of spring with a new spring Barbie but on St. Patrick’s Day we got more than a foot of snow, so around here it still looks like winter.  But it’s spring.  Out for a walk yesterday, I saw a little girl in a driveway.  Foot deep snow all around her.  She was coatless, bouncing on a pogo stick.
      Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out the seasons in Venice, where my WIP begins.  A recent puzzle to solve was when, exactly, people went on summer holiday, known as villeggiatura.
      Once again, as was the case with LORD OF SCOUNDRELS, I find myself wishing I spoke fluent Italian.
      It reminds me how I’ve always wanted to learn that language.  But this seems to be one of those things, like the great books I never got around to reading (last week’s blog) that I’m never going to get around to.
      There are too many things I’d like to learn.
      Pat recently blogged about learning history from novels.
      Well, I like learning history--and art, and music, and language, and, well, lots of things, from writing novels.
      Not the political history that schools bore their young victims with--Dates & Wars History, I call it.
      The fun history--as many of you commented--is the details of everyday life.  What a corset looked like and what it felt like.  How the laundry was done in a big English country house.  What a bed looked like, how many mattresses, and what they were made of.
       So here my new characters are in Venice, and I’m trying to figure out, for instance, where this building is in relation to that one, which means dealing with all those Italian names for walkways and bridges and schools and churches and such.  And what would someone say if he trod on someone’s foot?  And what are some good expressions of disdain, of anger.  Oh, if only I had learned Italian.  Sigh.  And then I realize there’s a special version of it that’s Venetian, which I ought to know, too.
      Italian isn’t the only missing area of knowledge in my world.  There’s architecture.  What’s a pediment?  What’s the difference between a Gothic and a Renaissance building?  What’s a lateral window?  A heraldic cartouche?  A mannerist arcade?  It would be so much easier to understand the layout of that palazzo if the architectural terms in the books I consult weren’t a foreign language to me.
      And speaking of foreign languages, how about music?  Somewhere along the line I developed a deep affection for Italian opera.  But despite piano lessons, and some self-taught guitar playing, my music knowledge is about zero.  I know what I like but don’t know anything much about it.
       And what about Greek and Latin?  My heroes would have learned it from an early age.  That’s mainly what they were taught, all though school, and university.  How cool would it be to be able to read those bits of Greek and Latin that Lord Byron and his friends casually drop into their letters and diaries?  Alas, the few years of Latin I had early on didn’t take, and all I remember is the first line of Caesar’s Gallic Wars.
      And what about how to ride a horse?  Whenever I need special horse knowledge, I have to consult my friends who know about horses.  It would be so great to know about horses.
      Well, life is short and you can’t do everything.  I’ve written books and I know some stuff that some other people don’t.
      But I don’t know a fraction as much as I wish I did.
      What about you?  Is there one or five or ten things you always wished you’d learned but never got around to?

Amazing Grace: How Sweet It Is

Hi!  This is Mary Jo, not Susan Sarah, since we swapped days.  She kindly filled in for me last Friday when I was out of town, so for today, I’m the Wednesday Wench.  And I want to rave about a movie. 

We recently saw the movie Amazing Grace, which is about William Wilberforce and his long campaign to end the slave trade.  I loved, loved, loved it.  Of course I’m a sucker for most costume dramas, and I also spent a year immersed in exactly the history from which the movie is drawn, so I’m undoubtedly biased. <g>  (My book that resulted from the research, A Distant Magic, looks at abolition through a lens of fantasy and romance, but it’s basically the same history.)

I was hooked from the moment I saw the trailer online several months ago (you can see it at http://amazinggracemovie.com/ )  I defy any history lover (which most people who come here are) to see that trailer and not want to rush out and see the movie.  (Though as I said, I’m biased.)

Ioan Gruffud (who made a marvelous Horatio Hornblower) plays Wilberforce, and while he’s undoubtedly taller and better looking that the real WW (who was very short and frail  looking), he does a terrific job portraying Wilberforce’s strength, faith, and sensitivity.  It’s said that when Wilberforce spoke,  he sounded a foot taller and he could hold the whole House of Commons in the palm of his hands when he spoke.  And given how rowdy Parliament can be, that was no small feat!

The cast is a feast of great British actors.  Rufus Sowell, whom I first saw as a rural hunk in Cold Comfort Farm (one of my favorite movies of all time), plays the radical cleric Thomas Clarkson, whose organizing and activism were as essential as the political tenacity of the more establishment Wilberforce. 

Ciaran Hinds, who was the lovely naval captain in the movie of Jane Austen’s Persuasion (another personal fave) plays Tarleton, the MP from Liverpool who was one of the slave trade’s greatest supporters.  (Yes, this is the same Colonel Banastre “Bloody” Tarleton of Revolutionary War infamy.) 

Only the British could make a movie of talking heads and politics and make it so gripping.  It helps that there is lot of sly British humor along the way.  Wilberforce’s long time friend and political ally, William Pitt the Younger (who became Prime Minister at age 24) is played by an actor I’ve never heard of, Benedict Cumberbatch.  (Isn’t that Dickensian? <g>)  He does a terrific job, and also gets a lot of first rate one-liners. 

I’ve heard that some reviewers are claiming that the movie downplayed the extent to which Wilberforce’s work was driven by his faith, but I would have to question whether those reviewers actually saw the movie.  Faith was clearly the heart of Wilberforce's commitment, and equally clearly, his strongest supporters were Quakers and fellow evangelicals.  (Above is the image of Albert Finney playing the Reverend John Newton, the slave ship captain turned evangelical preacher who wrote the song "Amazing Grace.")

At the beginning, Wilberforce is wrestling about whether he can serve God and society both.  His faith is always there, and the last shot in the movie is of Westminster Abbey with a military band playing the music of Amazing Grace.  (And amazing moving it was, too.)  I thought the elements of a very complicated movie were very well balanced. 

I was impressed at how they structured such a big, sprawling story that covered many years.  (I struggled with the same problems in my book.)  A good part of the story is told in flashbacks as Wilberforce talks through the night with a lovely young female admirer, Barbara Spooner.  It’s a charming romance and yes, more or less true to the historical record. 

Even if you’re not especially interested in Wilberforce, the movie is worth watching for the historical details, from lighting candles to the way animals are always rambling around the property.  (Wilberforce was also a founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.  Truly, he was perhaps the greatest reformer in British history.)  It’s also fun to see the costume changes.  At the beginning, wigs and Georgian brocades.  In the last great vote to end the trade in 1807, we’re almost into the Regency and the wigs are gone.  (Ending the slave trade was the first great battle.  Full emancipation didn't come until the 1830s.)

If you’re interested in the history, I recommend reading Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains (a National Book Award Finalist).  It’s a terrific read, with the tension of a novel and a sweeping view of a historical era that I didn’t learn about in high school. 

But in the meantime, you might want to see the movie if it’s still playing near you.  It’s a way to support history in popular entertainment. <G>

So, have you seen the movie?  Do you want to?  Do you know much about this era of history?  It's inspiring to see that sometimes, humankind does the right thing even when it isn't easy.

Mary Jo, who will certainly buy the DVD

Historical Choices

Pat Rice here, keeping up my jetsetting image by saying I’m just back from San Diego where I merrily partied with Mary Jo and Jo and the likes of Judith Merkle Riley (eat your hearts out, dear readers!) and several other honorary wenches and soon-to-be wenches.  We had Fun in the Sun, watched protest marches beneath our hotel windows, and avoided the St. Patty’s Day madness of the Gaslamp District by hobnobbing in the Presidential Suite of the U.S. Grant Hotel. And now that I sound like an RT ad, I’ll return to your regularly scheduled, highly elevated, intellectually stimulating, blog of the day.

Call me slow, but in getting back into the current manuscript, I just discovered one of the reasons historicals don’t connect as easily to the reader as before.  Twenty or thirty years ago, an author could rely on the reader knowing that Paul Revere would warn the British, Wellington would win at Waterloo, and that the king and queen were beheaded in the French Revolution. We could use those events as elements of suspense that the reader understood as the British hero rides out with his troops, or the French soldier marches into battle, or the queen’s maid asks to stay with the royal family. We’d know disaster was about to strike, and we’d be on the edges of our seats, wondering how the author would save the world against all known odds.

Sadly, I don’t think we can expect the same of today’s readers. Does the school system have any idea how much a lack of history deprives students? How can they understand historical or literary references in any book without the background of knowledge of the world as it was? How can they learn from the past if they don’t know the past? Why isn’t the sign of a good education as important as driving a Porsche?

Okay, that rant can only go downhill from there.  (I always enjoyed Tommy Smothers when he digressed into entertaining rants, but I’m not nearly as humorous. Maybe I should learn to play a guitar. Or a yo-yo.)

So back to the original point—we can’t write historicals like we used to write. I just sent poor dumb Louis and Marie-Antoinette plodding in their cumbersome berlin into the French night, and now my fictional characters are safely riding into the sunset. How do I let the reader know that Louis and Marie aren’t going to be so lucky?  Instead of the tension of the reader knowing the villain will mercilessly track the royal berlin and circumstances will be their downfall and the king and queen will lose their heads within the year, I have to create a fictional counterpart to ride along and explain everything. It would have been far simpler if I’d just skipped the real world and real history and made up everything.

Which, of course, is what is happening in historical romance these days. What’s the point in including actual historical events if the majority of readers don’t have a clue as to how they have affected the world in the book as well as the world around them?  The French Revolution is a fantastic example of what happens when the rich suck the blood out of the poor until they’re nothing but dry husks, then start on the middle class.  Maybe they hoped to create Russian serfs out of them. There’s another fascinating period I’ll probably never have the chance to write—Russian history. If American readers barely know American or English history, I’d have a devil of a job explaining Russian.

But I have this horrible urge to provide the education that our schools can’t. Which leads me to the Question of the Day—how much do you appreciate the actual history in a genre book?  I know all our readers are well read. (Especially after reading some of the replies this past week.  I didn’t dare mention my favorite reading was MAD magazine when I was young!)  Most of you know your history and are perfectly comfortable with historical fiction and nonfiction.  Do you appreciate seeing real history in your romances? Or do you feel as if authors are “talking down” to you if we explain what you already know?

What about readers who aren’t familiar with history? Do you appreciate tidbits of information you didn’t know?  Or would you rather authors just got on with the character drama and skipped the historical backdrop?

We’re so limited by word count these days that I hate to include bits that will bore people when I know I can add all sorts of exciting character development, but I relish the historical byplay of comparing what was to what is to what might be. And since this book is more fantasy than anything else I’ve written, I want to keep the reader fully grounded in the reality. Argh, I have to make choices….

Don't Quote Me On This, But....

by Susan/Miranda

Do you believe endorsements?  When someone fabulously famous or celebrated or educated, or even Just Like You tells you to buy something, do you listen?  Are you willing to take the advice of a complete stranger, and plunk down your MasterCard when it counts?

Publishers believe you will.  That’s why almost every book on the market today carries some sort of recommendation on the cover or front pages.  For fiction, these come mostly in the form of praise from other writers, usually other writers successful in the same genre.  This makes sense: if you like A’s books, and A says B’s book is a rip-snortin’ read, then it (should) follow that you’ll like B’s books, too.  A’s quote gives B instant credibility.  It’s as much a gift of generosity as one of admiration, its kind praise shared through bookmarks and websites. (At least that's how I've always thought of it, and a hearty thanks to all the authors who have done this considerable favor for me over the years.)

But before I was published, I had only the vaguest fairy-tale notions of how this came into being.  I thought that A just happened to pick up B’s book, and wrote to her, and said swell things, that B in turn passed along to her publisher.  Somewhere I guess that must happen, just like some fairy-tales do come true.

But for the most part, review quotes (that’s their formal title, just as “to quote” really means “to give a review quote”) come about in three different ways.  The first, and most agreeable, is between author-friends and acquaintances.  B meets A at a conference/booksigning/class reunion/airport lounge/orthodontist’s waiting room.  They email, they chat, they cross paths again.  B finally screws up her courage, and asks A if she’d be willing to read her next book in manuscript form, and IF she likes it, give her a quote.  In almost all cases, A will happily oblige.  That’s what friends and colleagues are for, and a tidy deposit in the karma bank it is.  There’s precious little that one writer can really do to help another professionally, but this is one of the best.

However, it can get messy if A is a New York Times bestselling author and in great demand.  A is flattered to be asked by B, but as her star rises, A discovers that right after B are C,D,E,F,G and the whole rest of the alphabet, eager for quotes of their own.  A can be a real princess, read and quote for everyone who asks so long as they say please, and risk being late turning in her own next book.  Or she can ask B to write her own quote, and A will endorse it as her own.  Or A develops a generic quote that she gives to every writer who asks: “No one slices bread like B!”  Or, in time, A may just throw up her hands in overworked dismay, put out the word she’s given up giving quotes, and change her email server and phone number.

But what happens if B doesn’t ever meet A?  Then B must rely upon that professional matchmaker, otherwise known as her agent.  Agents will cheerfully act as go-betweens, hunting down other authors for quotes, whether blindly or from their own lists of authors.  They’ll make polite inquires for B, praise her work to A (agent-praise is always more agreeable than self-praise, anyway), send along B’s manuscript if A agrees, and shield B from the ugly truth if A says she wouldn’t quote for B if B were the last book on earth, the no-good, plagerizing slut.

The other go-between can be B’s editor.  Most writers pay attention when an editor asks a favor, because in this business, You Just Never Know when it could be very useful to be in another editor’s address book.  A really pays attention when her editor is also B’s editor, and the interest rate at the karma bank goes through the roof.

But the very best part for A is that, if she’s lucky, B’s book will make her forget that she and A are writing pals, or publishing stable-mates.  Instead A will get to be a reader first and forget about quoting, and lose herself in a wonderful book.  She’ll have the rare privilege of being among the first to discover a new author, or read a book that might someday become a bestseller in its own right. 

In this spirit, I’d like to recommend two new historical novels that I recently quoted.  Both were by authors new to me, and reading their books was like finding unexpected treasure.  Check ‘em out:

The Winter Prince by Cheryl Sawyer
http://www.Cherylsawyer.com

Too Great A Lady: The Notorious, Glorious Life of Emma, Lady Hamilton by Amanda Elyot
http://www.tlt.com/authors/lcarroll/amanda_elyot.htm

But what about you?  Do you pay attention to cover quotes? Or have you recently “discovered” a book or author you’d like to recommend yourself?

LOVE STAGES AND PAGES

It’s Sunday and it’s Edith, and hello!

Today, I am in the midst of an emotional crisis. I’m in the getting-to-know-you stage of my new love, my newest WIP. The third chapter. And I just got the copy-edited pages of my last book, which was my last love.

This sets up a triangle, and while I love triangles, you can see where this one is a bit disconcerting.Still, I will survive, and the books will too.

But it got me to thinking about how writing a novel is very like having a romance. You can even break it down into similar stages.

1) The Awakening. You’ve fallen in love. The bolt from the blue, or the slow realization that this plot is for you.

2) It Begins. The slow, feeling your way into the heart and mind of your beloved. Is he (and she) worthy of you? Are you worthy of them? What will you do in your time together? Is there a meeting of the minds as well as the hearts? And is the chemistry right? Brains are fine, but is there enough sexual tension?

3) The Doubts. Is this affair going as it should be? Is everyone doing the right thing? Are you really truly sure of commitment? You may have a love affair without commitment, but you can’t have a novel without one.

4) The Dread Dead Middle Malaise. You begin to worry if you’ve done the right thing, and if this is the right love for you. There have been things said, and maybe done. You can’t turn back, but should you end it all now? Surely, this isn’t true love. You could have done better. Aha, you recognize this! It’s happened before. Self-doubt is all it is, because much looms ahead. You’re desperate to get to the end: the fulfillment and rapture until ever after. But it wouldn’t make sense. You have to get over your issues before you get on with your love story.

5) The Excitement Renews! You’re racing toward the end; there aren’t enough pages to tell the world about your new love. You’re at it night and day, naughty you!

6) Ahh! It’s over. Pride and serenity. Married, promised for eternity, and all down on paper.

7) Not Quite. You finally go back, see what’s happened and think about it. Your heart sinks. It’s not what you wanted to do. It was so much better in theory. You failed you. Too late. It was the best you were capable of. Turn away, and move on.

8) But wait, maybe some counseling will help? Your editor has a few ideas. You defend some of you actions. And you realize you goofed with others. Correction time.

9) Bliss at Last. You get the copy-edited pages back after making changes for your editor. It’s wonderful! How could you possibly have doubted? You are terrific! (Until you read an anonymously written bashing you get on Amazon, from someone you doubtless ticked off at some time in your life.)

10) Here we go again all aglow again. You are certain love is lovelier the second, third and thirtieth time around, and you fall head over heels again.

At least that’s how it goes for this writer, and, come to think about it, except for stages 7 – 10, how it goes for this reader of romance novels too.

Am I right? How does it work for you?

Fun in the sun

Hi, this is Jo, in spirit if not in fact -- because I'm in San Diego and unlikely to be able to respond to any comments here until I get back. So it's really talk among yourselves time, though I'm sure some of the homebound Wenches will drop by. So first I'd like to remind you all that Shana Abe will be a guest on WW, probably next Friday 23rd. If you haven't tried her Drakon books, you've missed a treat. Georgian aristocrats were MADE to be shapeshifter dragons of an imperious nature. AND, she'll be giving away two hardcover books. Spread the word. Next, a few idle questions to see if any spark your interest. If any do, I might expand upon them in future posts. Is there a different appeal in historical, contemporary, and contemporary-paramormal romance? If so, what is it? (If this reminds you of a university exam question, don't worry. No marking, no failing.) Historicals and contemporary-paranormal often have larger-than-life heroes, even too big for their boots, one could say. Is this the appeal, and if so, why? What's the draw of dukes? Why won't a mere viscount cut it? --> my only duke. And they thought he was a vampire.*G* I look forward to your answers. Best wishes, Jo

All-Time Champion List

A Wench Classic post from a while back...looking this post over, I realized that so much of this still applies, and it would be fun to revisit the All-Time Keeper list (the ATK!). These still apply for me, and I'd love to know if yours have new additions ...

Pondering the books on my bookshelves -- many, many well-thumbed volumes, dusty or in use, and more than a few of them, ahem, not entirely read --  I started thinking about the books that have found a permanent place in my heart and my thoughts. We've all read a staggering number of books in our lives (some of us have time to read a staggering number every week/month/year!) -- yet only a fraction of those stick with us forever. For each of us, that list is undoubtedly different, with a few beloved stories in common. (I'm talking fiction here, though an all-time keeper list of nonfiction would be a fun blog -- I'll try that next time!)

I have a short list (and a really loooooooong list) of books that I will always remember -- books that have moved me, made me think, thrilled me with story or characters or artfulness of writing--and the best hit all three elements at once in wild and wonderful combinations. For me, the quality of the writing is as important as the story and characters, and the ones I love best weave it all masterfully together.

Some books are part of my ATK list for emotional, personal, and very individual reasons. Some stories have influenced or touched me deeply at certain points in my life and are sentimental favorites, some have taught me something I needed to learn at the time, and others kept me going or gave me a temporary escape hatch when I needed one. I'll be forever grateful to those books, and those authors.

What books would you list as your ultimate favorites? What books are the cream of the crop for you personally, books that will stay with you forever, treasured on your bookshelf and in your heart and head. What books have resonated so deeply with you that you will read them again and again, or at least keep them on your shelves always?

Here's a list of some of my ultimate favorites, off the top of my head -- I'm not home today to peruse my bookshelves and remind myself, so these are the ones that pop to mind first. Some are "great" or classic books, some are personally dear to me, some are gorgeously written, and some are just cracking good stories.
And I'd love the time to read them all again, and recapture the wonderful sense of thrill and discovery and resonance that I experienced when I first read them. The intriguing question -- would I recapture that feeling? I'm a different person now than when I read some of these. Hmm.... anyway, here are SOME of my classic fave reads...the whole list would be very long and is always growing....

In no particular order:

The Ivy Tree, Moonspinners, This Rough Magic, The Crystal Cave...and just about anything by Mary Stewart (these are my comfort reads, exquisite writing and masterful storytelling)
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (just breathtaking in all its aspects)
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte (my classic read)

 

Anne of Cambray, Mary Lide (what a poet can do with a medieval romance -- exquisite)
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell (I read this five times in high school!)

The Wolf and the Dove, Kathleen Woodiwiss (my treasured introduction to historical romance) -- and the quick list of some of my favorite historical romances, ever: Prince of Midnight, Laura Kinsale, Lord of Scoundrels, Loretta Chase, The Wild Child, Mary Jo Putney, Tapestry of Dreams, Roberta Gellis...and way too many more to count....

Pippi Longstocking (really this could be #1 on my hit list, if we are gauging pure enjoyment)
The Far Pavilions, M.M. Kaye (another sentimental favorite, as I was stuck in a hospital bed the week I read it, so this is one of those savior books for me)
Vision of Light, Judith Merkle Riley (adored it, start to finish, thank you, Judith!)
The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkein (and the rest of the series, though The Hobbit for me was The Best Ever in fantasy and the epic, leading into the visionary storytelling of LOTR)

Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow  (deep, insightful, poignant, wacky, funny, dark and fascinating -- I loved it the first time I read it for a college course, and have read it since, gobbling its rich and dynamic and slightly crazy story.)
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (dazzling writing, wild and gorgeous story and craft)

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (moved me as a kid, when I didn't fully understand it, and as an adult, when I did)
Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset (masterful on every level, with an unforgettable characters and setting)
Moby Dick, Herman Melville (once I got past the "assigned reading" mentality, I loved it--pure writing, as good as it gets in parts)
A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens (I love his work, but of all of his books, this and A Christmas Carol speak most closely to me)

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (in college, not only did I love the story, it fascinated me how very readable this was) and another personal JA fave, Northanger Abbey.

So there's a few of my all-time ultimate champion books ... I'm sure there are more, and there are a TON of romances to add to it, but I'm not home to see them (and I am a visual thinker). As soon as I go downstairs, I'll look at my bookshelves and smack my forehead: "Oh yeah! that one! and that one too!".... 

I'd love to know some of your all-time favorites. We all respond to books individually and the favorites may differ widely...and yet, some of them I am willing to bet are exactly the same....

~Susan Sarah

One of these days

From Loretta:

      I’ve been answering a lot of questions lately.  But no, the police have not asked me to assist them in their inquiries.  My alumni organization, which is putting together some kind of directory or nostalgia album or something sent out questionnaire.  One question was, “What’s your favorite memory of Clark?”  My answer:  “I don’t remember.”
      Like many others, I was really too immature at age 18 for college, so the early years were not only a blur but a waste:  time squandered.  On the other hand, I learned some things, which we can put into the Life Lessons category.  After leaving school a few times and going back a few times, I finally settled down and became a model student.  That last year I remember somewhat.  This enabled me to answer the question, “Who was your favorite faculty member?”
       He was an English professor who specialized in what I thought of as the Really Old Stuff:  Medieval literature, Old Norse Sagas, Chaucer, and Shakespeare,.  He also taught a course in Tragedy.  Except for Shakespeare, these did not constitute my favorite areas of English literature.  Give me a choice between tragedy and comedy and I will always choose comedy.  Old Norse Sagas, for those of you who have not encountered any, are usually tragic.  Lots of fighting and killing and revenge.  But I thought the world of this professor, and would take any class he taught.
      Meanwhile, my favorite subject--the English novel of the 18th-19th centuries, somehow got lost in that Life Lessons part of my education.  I really don’t remember what happened then--it was the Vietnam era and I think we shut down the school at one point--but I somehow managed not to read at least half the novels in the syllabus.  Same goes for American Literature.
      In short, I was not always the nerd I am today.
       I was thinking about this not long ago when I answered a questionnaire from Waterstones, in connection with my Carsington books, which recently started to appear in the UK from Piatkus Books.  One question stirred up the ghosts of my squandered youth:
      Q:  Which classic have you always meant to read and never got round to it?
       A:  Tobias Smollet’s The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker.
      I got that answer right away, because, after college, I set out to read nearly all the books I should have read while in college.  I discovered that the author of Moby Dick had a sense of humor, and the book wasn’t a boring fish story as I had supposed.  Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy turned out to be crazy and funny, strangely modern.  George Eliot wasn’t a bore but an insightful and witty writer with a keen understanding of human psychology.  I also discovered that I still didn’t like Thomas Hardy but at least I understood why.
      There were other Important Books not on the syllabus, that others had read and I hadn’t.  Look Homeward Angel was a revelation to me, when I finally got around to it.  Little by little, in the years since college, I’ve filled in the gaps in my Must Be Read list.
      The one book on my shelves I have still somehow not managed to read--or even open--in the last two or three hundred years, is The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker.  I still have the copy I bought in college.  It gazes at me reproachfully from the shelf.
      I keep meaning to read it, but something else comes along.  It never makes it to the top of the TBR list, though I’m sure it ought to, and will probably give me ideas for one of my stories.
      But there it is, the one reminder of my careless youth.
      Maybe it needs to be there, as a reminder.
      Or maybe I’ll read it next, right after I finish the two books about Venice.
      It’s not the only book I’ve always meant to read but never got around to.  There’s Ulysses, too.  But, frankly, I don’t think that’s going to happen.  It doesn’t matter how beautiful the writing is.  I no longer have the patience for modern literature impossible to figure out without the aid of several volumes of critical explication and a college professor.  Smollett has a much better chance.
      What about you?  We all have TBR piles, but is there one of those Great Books waiting sadly on your bookshelf for you to choose it at last?
      Have you a classic or classics you always meant to read and never got round to?
      

To POV or not to POV

Susan Sarah here!

I want to return to a topic that’s come up before on Word Wenches (but there’s always more to be said on anything and everything) -- I’ve been planning my next couple of books, and got to thinking about Point Of View again–-that dear dragon in the structure of any story, the chosen perspective of characters and story.

In my historical romances, generally I keep two points of view, the hero’s, and the heroine’s, and I vary them scene to scene–not within the same scene. Some may add a third point of view, that of a villain, but so far I haven’t tried this variation myself. Keeping to two POVs in a book is third person limited, and for me it serves the purpose, as an aid in developing character and especially the love story, and as a way to keep the story uncluttered, so that the romance and the emotional story are the true heart of the book.

  In general for romance I avoid omniscient third person -- that all-seeing-eye, which can too often become the eye of the author. When reading books I'm sometimes aware of the author's presence--and to me, the author needs to stay distant, stay behind the scrim or behind the black curtain and work those puppets without the audience ever catching a glimpse of the creator. For my own books, I avoid mixing POV in the same scene--head hopping--because *I* am the one who will get confused, haha. In my early books I tried this and it never saw the light of day for me, because I realized that I could quickly lose control of the scene that way, and blur the action, the reason, and the emotional prize for that scene, that chapter, that whole book.

I like to keep the POV simple: His ‘n Hers POVs, one per scene, sometimes a whole chapter. It helps focus the story, and I find it also helps to intensify character and give more immediacy to action and emotion, and thus plot and character development, within the story. It's limited, yes, but it’s handy. When the POV is in the heroine’s head, for example, we know intimately what she’s thinking and feeling. As for the hero in that scene, it’s sometimes very useful to not be in that character’s head–we are the observer then, along with the heroine. His actions, words, and reactions indicate what he’s thinking, feeling, planning to do–all described through gesture, , expression, words, indicated tone, context, and so on. This can be done very subtly, or overtly, depending on what scene, character, and story require just then.

Sometimes if I'm having problems with a scene, it’s not working, it’s not moving ahead, it may be that I’m using the wrong POV. When I rewrite it from the other viewpoint, suddenly it flows again. The main POV should be awarded to the person most affected–either emotionally or in terms of some plot development--by the action in that scene. One psychology technique asks, “Who owns the problem?" –and this is a good question for the author to ask at the start of a new scene, especially where limited his 'n hers POVs are used.

I’ve also written a book entirely in first person–-that novel will be out next year, and more about that later-–and it was an interesting experience for me as a writer. I have always enjoyed reading first person narratives, and I loved writing it, loved being that close in a character’s head. This is where the author can really get into the character, put on their clothes and be the actor, as long, again, as the author can personally keep out of the story and avoid subjective commentary that does not serve story or characters. I discovered some inherent pitfalls when writing exclusive first person -- one is the incessant “I, I, I, I” that comes up with every sentence. To avoid starting every sentence with “I” or peppering every paragraph with that droning me, me, me, me (and that drove me crazy sometimes) -- I had to be careful to vary sentence structure, trying to avoid starting too many sentences in a paragraph with “I” for example. With first person, it's necessary to expand the point of view by expanding the character’s thoughts beyond herself. She had to become a consistent and generous observer for the reader, or the danger was a self-absorbed character, which for my particular book was not the way to go. That can work for character and story, but often not.

Sometimes a book will be written from multiple points of view in first person, and in others stories first and third person will be varied within a story. These are all ways of expanding that first person point of view.

What do you all, as readers, think of His ‘n Hers POV, omniscient POV, bouncing and head-hopping within a scene (does it bother you, or does it enhance the story for you)?  And what do you think of first person? Does it drive you mad or does it help make a story come alive?

Do you think first person could work in romance? I’ve always wondered about this, and wonder why we aren’t trying this more often as an interesting variation.

~Susan Sarah

Wordbugs

Pat Rice here:

A comment on one of our blogs the other day got me to thinking---always a dangerous sign.  Really, folks, you shouldn’t stir my dusty brain cells.  You never know what will explode out of them.

A reader complained about an author having “of course-itis,” apparently using the phrase repeatedly throughout the book and often multiple times on a single page.  And while I totally sympathize with the reader who asked where in heck her editor was, I also suffer from this habit of repeating phrases and words, so my brain started ticking. 

I have been accused by my critique partner of having at least one word or phrase per book that pops up repeatedly and with irritating frequency.  Until she made me aware of this, I never noticed.  But she was totally and completely right. Once I started looking for the word or phrase, it was everywhere.  It was ugly.  How many times can one use the word “actually” in a sentence? Listen to a TV news reporter sometime.  See what I mean? Teenagers can’t talk without the word “like” and there are some people who can’t utter a complete sentence without a four-letter curse in it.

These wordbugs are like earwigs—music that gets stuck in your brain and won’t leave you alone.  Usually, it’s the most trite and awful of music, and the wordbugs are generally simple things like “of course,” or “actually,” or “calmly,” or something that describes one of the characters in your head, so it just keeps popping out.

I’d like to hear a scientific explanation of this phenomenon, but I have several theories in the case of writing, at least. Speculating on teenagers and TV announcers is out of my realm. One possibility is that the subconscious part of the brain is quicker than the conscious when we’re writing.  The creative process requires that we go deep inside our brains where weird things dwell, and when we’re in full swing, we’re not thinking about grammar or punctuation or anything except getting all the details of a scene onto the page.  Emotions, actions, dialogue, settings, fly from our fingers at great rates of speed, and the brain simply grabs the words that are easiest to reach—like the one we just used a dozen times. It’s like sticking “uh” after every word while we grope for the next one.

The other theory is similar, except it happens when we’re editing.  That’s the wordbug theory.  I don’t know how many times I’ve caught myself skimming over a completed chapter, looking for things that need tweaking, and suddenly deciding that a line needs a certain word, let’s say “calmly,” only to discover that word had just been used. My brain read it, liked it, and decided it went better elsewhere.  Happens all the time.  Don’t know if the word got stuck in my brain or my eye, but it stuck somehow, and if I let it, it would pop out over and over again.  But if I have to chase down synonyms for it, it scampers off quickly, never to be heard from again.

I really don’t know if wordbugs happen because we’re writing too fast or because our brains are losing their elasticity with age. <G>  I just know they happen.  I never used to have half a dozen people reading over my manuscripts to catch these phrases, but then, I’ve never gone back and read my old books to see if they happen.  I’m not ready to admit an aging brain yet!  But the bugs are truly hard to catch. If you spend a year writing a book, you can’t possibly remember every word you wrote in that year.  I read and re-read mine as I write, but I’m generally re-reading for a purpose, and wordbugs aren’t high on my agenda.  By the time I reach the editing stage, entire sentences are engraved on my brain and I can’t separate out these idiot bugs easily.  That’s why I rely on outside readers who see the material fresh to catch the irritations. My editors and my copyeditors still find more, even after the book has been carefully gone over several times. And I’ve caught them doing the same thing—adding a word used in the paragraph before because it stuck in their heads.

Does anyone else notice this in their own conversation or writing? I know it’s not just writers because I hear it all the time in the way people speak. How do you cull these repetitive words from your speaking? Your writing?

Oh, and my publicity people would be upset if I don't mention that I'll be chatting tonight, along with Jenna McKnight, on  www.coffeetimeromance.com at 9PM EST if anyone would like to pop by and say hi!

Saving Daylight

By Susan/Miranda

Yesterday marked the beginning of Daylight Saving, three weeks earlier than usual.  In theory, this is supposed to be conserving oodles of energy for the betterment of the country, but like so many schemes put into being by Congress, it seems more than a little suspicious.  So far, none of the warnings of massive computer malfunctions have come true, and it remains to be seen if the predictions that people’s internal clocks are being upset and schoolchildren becoming depressed will come true, either.  But the bottom line is that once again we mortals are trying to jerk daylight around to suit us.

This is, of course, nothing new.  Long, long ago, people pretty much had to follow the sun’s schedule for day and night, just as animals did,  Fortunately Prometheus came to the rescue and stole fire from the Gods as a special gift for us snivelling low humans, making it possible to turn night into day.  For his trouble, Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock with an eagle to fly down and devour his liver each day (a lesson to Congress if ever there was one.)

Much later, in the late 18th century during which us Wenches set our books, staying awake after dark continued to be a luxury.  Work days were defined by the rise and setting of the sun.  Battles were postponed by nightfall, journeys were limited by the length of the day, and farmers (which meant the majority of Europeans and Americans) still followed the days as determined by the sun and their animals with full moons offered a passing respite for travel and harvests. 

Candles, lamps, and firelight were, for most people, luxury items.  The best candles were made from spermaceti (a by-product of whaling) or beeswax, with homemade candles dipped from tallow (animal fat) a smelly, smoky second.  Even lower on the light-scale were rushes dipped in tallow.  Also just coming into popular use were lamps that burned whale-oil. 

Reading and writing by the light of a candle or fire may sound romantic, but it’s not easy on the eyes, as anyone who has tried it knows.  If people didn’t go directly to bed after dark, then they used these hours for tasks that didn’t require much light –– knitting, spinning, food preparation for the next day’s meals, cleaning tools and weapons –– and for cheerful entertainment like conversation, drinking, music, dancing, flirting, and general goofing around.

The ultimate luxury was a blazing chandelier, especially if the candles were replenished in the course of the evening.  No candles lasted very long, or gave off much light, which in turn dictated the taste for highly polished (and reflective) silverware, brass, and looking-glasses to capture and magnify all possible light.  The sheen of silk fabrics, metallic-threaded embroidary and lace, and cut-steel and marcasite buttons on evening dress accomplished the same thing.  Part of the reason why diamonds and other cut stones were considered appropriate for after dark was how well they showed by candlelight.

The first supporter of moving the clock ahead to capitalize on the longer days of summer was that consummate “improver” Benjamin Franklin.  But it wasn’t until English builder William Willet began to lobby Parliament in the early 20th century that the idea began to gain support.  While the objections of farmers and sailors made sense, some others seemed a little far-fetched, such as this expounded in the House of Lords by Lord Balfour:

“Supposing some unfortunate lady was confined with twins and one child was born ten minutes before 1 o’clock [when English clocks would be moved ahead] and the time of the birth of the two children would be reversed…Such alteration might conceivably affect the property and titles in that house.”

Or, in other words, which son got to be the Duke and therefore the Romance Hero.

Both England and America legislated Daylight Saving (called Summer Time in England) during the First World War.  Since then, it’s been sporadically lengthened or shortened: during World War Two, it lasted year-round, and was called “War Time”, while during the 70s, President Nixon signed the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act (saving sunlight, if not verbiage) which lasted for fifteen months. (For more about Daylight Saving, see: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/e.html)

The current switch is a result of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.  Now Daylight Saving will last from the second Sunday of March until the first Sunday in November, thereby totally messing up all those early-bird Trick-or-Treaters who count on going out when it’s dark at 4:30 on Halloween.  Theoretically, we’re all going to save 1% of our total energy costs, plus see our personal productivity grow by leaps and bounds.  There’s even supposed to be less crime.

So what about you?  Are you more productive by daylight, or does your brain whirl along better after the sun sets?  Did you find it horribly hard to get up with the alarm this morning?

Dragons Are a Girl's Best Friend

I thought I was done with my contributions about dragons, and then I remembered the dragon I love that is teaching me Spanish. …Sort of.

See, early one morning, as I was flipping around the TV dial, looking for something, anything other than the same twenty minute loops of news, and basketball, football and golf, roller derby, wrestling, ski jumping, hockey and ice dancing. Saturday morning/afternoons are the TV Sports Ghetto; just as early Sunday mornings are religious, followed by political analysis.

There were also infomercials and innumerable chances to buy stained glass lamps, jewelry, make-up, handbags, and plus sized clothing being shown. I was about to five up when I found a beautifully produced children’s show, and paused. It was called “Jane and the Dragon.” It’s about a medieval girl, Jane, the neat castle she lives in and a knight and child prince and princess and a king and his guard and a jester, blacksmith and others, from menial to top drawer. And Jane’s best friend: her Dragon. She’s wise, and solves problems with the help of the Dragon. The technique of the production is somewhere between ‘toon and digital, the characters are loveable, and the music is medieval sounding, and I love that show! It’s a Canadian production.

But I never found it again. And believe me, I looked. Until one morning this past winter, I discovered it on a Spanish-speaking network. I took French for six years and still am laughed at in Paris and Montreal. English is mine, but foreign languages are not my strong suit. But there was “Jane and the Dragon” in Spanish. Every Sunday morning. I wanted to see it. So undaunted, I watched it. Now I watch it every week.

I learned to read before I went to school by having comic books read to me. And now, I think I’m learning Spanish. Hola!

So I conclude three things:
1) The Canadians can produce something wonderful besides lower price drugs.
2) Dragons are universally admired, and these days we like to believe them to be good. (I bridle at that new bank commercial, which while very funny, shows a decapitated dragon.)
3) If you want something bad enough, you can learn how to get it, and in learning, learn something else too.

So, have you seen “Jane and the Dragon”? (I don’t know anyone connected to the show, believe me.) And have you every pursued something frivolous only to find you’ve found gold in other ways too?

Working gal

Heeeeeeere's Jo! Okay, I'm late again. Getting into the Saturday Girl job is proving a bit sticky.

I'm not unemployed, thank heavens, but I'm not exactly employed either. They call it self-employed, but that's not quite right either because it implies that SELF might be watching the clock, scolding if I'm not writing or doing writing-related tasks at certain hours, and even -- what a thought -- giving me days off and paid holidays.

No, what I am is "freelance." Free of the shackles of day-to-day routine but still obliged, by inclination and commitments freely entered into, to produce saleable goods in my own eccentric way.

Which sort of makes me like an aristocrat, I think. I'll get back to that.

My husband is also unemployed, though I employ him as business manager and resident tech wizard. Most of the time he, too, is free of the shackles of day-to-day routine, though still obliged etc etc.

The point is? The point is that days of the week and weekends mean little to us and it's really easy to lose track of them. I've even started moving a little pink dot along the days to help me keep track. I've now written my blog day on the calendar -- on Friday, because that's when a west coaster needs to do it to get it online in a reasonable way.

Which brings me back to aristocrats.

Most historical novels, especially romances, are about aristocrats, but I find I'm often annoyed by the way their lifestyle is constructed. All too often they either have jobs --- estate manager, soldier, doctor, music teacher, spy, even though they have title, land, and no need of money. This is because in romanceland, not having a job means you're an idle wastrel.

Too rarely do we see the peer of the realm who has many demands on his time. No, he doesn't have an employer dictating his days, nor does he have set hours to do this or that (though I like to see him spending a good bit of time in the House of Lords helping to run his country, if only as an aside.) But he, like the freelance writer, has many things that have to get done or there are consequences. Often portraits, as with this one, show them with some "tools of the trade" such as books, ledgers, globes etc.

This applies particularly to heroines. For some reason I don't come across many governesses and companions in historical romance today, perhaps because those seem feeble occupations, but they are the most realistic. Instead, many heroines are busy at jobs more suited to the 20th if not the 21st century. Simply being a peer's daughter and looking to marry doesn't quite fit the bill?

Shame, because I write that a lot. It certainly doesn't mean she has to be an idle wastrel. Even if a portrait shows her reading, which is common, it may be something more substantial than a novel, as here. What she's more likely to be is a freelance social worker and in training to be a high-level household manager and hostess. Beiing a free-lance social worker has a bad rap these days, especially if one is rich and aiding the very poor, but in the past very, very few people were employed to look after the less fortunate in society. It was all volunteer work. If Lady Lala is busily setting up her business, or even writing novels, who's making sure the orphans get cared for?

So, what do you think about this? Do you prefer your historical heroine to have a job? Does preparing to be the wife of a powerful man and mother of his children not cut it anymore? What about that "Duke of Lust?" Do you want him to be obviously paying attention to his vast land holdings, his many dependents and responsibilities, his high position of power in the land? Or would that spoil the fun for you?

You can see where I am on this, but there are no right answers. This is fiction. Often this is fantasy. It's certainly supposed to be entertainment. What's your cup of tea?

(Got to mention that Thea in Lady Beware has no job, no hint of one. But she's always been in training to be like her mother, the Duchess of Yeovil, the indefatigable manager of a vast range of efficient, focussed, benevolence. My sort of gal. Both of them.)

Jo

Barbara Samuel, HWW!

The Wenches would like to thank BARBARA SAMUEL for being our guest!

We're so glad that Barbara took some time to chat with us. Wonderful interview, Mary Jo and Barbara, and a great contribution to Dragon Month in Wenchland. We are looking forward to reading Barbara's story in DRAGON LOVERS, and we would like to present Barbara with a little Wenchie award....

~Barbara, you are hereby declared an Honorary Word Wench, which means you may now add HWW after your signature

~And you are more than welcome to return to Word Wenches anytime to visit, comment, and promote your books here

As a sincere token of our appreciation and admiration, here's Kokopelli to honor the creativity in you, Southwestern-style! May its creative luck be with you and remind you of your special day in Wenchland!

luv from the Seven Wenches and the Whipster

An interview with Barbara Samuel

by Mary Jo

Barbara Samuel is one of the best respected authors in romance.  She’s written category (as Ruth Wind), single title contemporary, historicals, and paranormals of various types.  She has a shelf full of RITAs and twice had books named as RWA favorite books of the year.  In other words, Barbara rocks! 

She teaches online classes and her most recent women’s fiction, Madame Mirabou’s School of Love, was so wonderful that I not only reread it, but I’ve just booked a B&B to spend a few days in Manitou Springs, Colorado, where Madame Mirabou is set.  (See more of her work at www.barbarasamuel.com )

Barbara Samuel is also one of the authors in Dragon Lovers, along with Jo, Karen Harbaugh, and me.  Barbara, the other three novellas in the anthology are more or less historical, while “Dragon Feathers” has a contemporary setting.  Could you tell us something about how you came up with the idea?  What themes were you working with in the story?

BARBARA:  My roots are deep in the southwest, and when the dragon ideas came up, we were actually sitting in a cafe in Santa Fe, so I wanted to brainstorm something in that arena.  Qzecoatl is an Aztec god—a feathered serpent—and seemed perfect for my springboard.   Santa Fe is also one of my favorite spots, so it was an obvious choice of setting.

MJP: Except for your historicals, most of your books are set in your native Southwest.  Could you talk a little about how that sense of place colors your fiction?

BARBARA:  As a writer sense of place is absolutely key to the work—the stories arise from their settings, because I believe humans are shaped by their environment, physically and socially.  The southwest, with its dramatic mountains and skies and vast inland seas of prairie and desert, is a vivid landscape with a fascinating history and blend of cultures that I find absolutely fascinating.  It's a land that requires cleverness and integrity.  It will test you—all through the southwest are tales of the land calling someone, or chasing them away.

MJP: Your novellas all seem to be paranormal, so I presume you like these opportunities to play with magic and dragons.  Have you wanted to write longer paranormal books?

BARBARA:  I've always been a big reader of sf/f, from way way back—everything from Twilight Zone to Bradbury to Tales to Tremble By.  My scholastic book order was packed with fairy tales and ghost stories, and I collected ghost stories and reincarnation novels in particular.   I'd love to do a big juicy ghost and/or reincarnation tale, something dark and intensely romantic and over the top—I  think it would suit my voice.  But there are only so many hours in a day!

MJP: I know people who still yearn for more Barbara Samuel historicals.  What
did you like about writing them that was different from writing contemporaries?
Do you think you might ever do more?

BARBARA:  I'm a restless Gemini and can't stand to write the same thing all the time, so I seriously miss writing historicals and would happily have continued writing contemporaries and historicals forever. I felt that my brand of historical fell out of fashion for a bit, so I focused on other realms.  I'm thinking about doing more now that the pendulum is swinging again.  We'll see.

MJP:  Now for the more general questions.  How long have you been writing?

BARBARA: Since fifth grade.  I wrote five novels in spiral notebooks before I graduated from high school.   I've been publishing almost 18 years. (Wow--how did that happen?!)

MJP:  What was your first book, and how well do you think it characterizes your latest work?

BARBARA: My first published novel was Strangers On A Train, by Ruth Wind.  It was a Silhouette Special Edition about a classical music composer whose husband had committed suicide. She falls in love with a literary western writer who pens tales of the Native American west.....hmmm.   Yes, there's my theme: redemption. Rising from the ashes.  Every single book, even if I try not to do it.   Also, the musical angle and the animals.  There are animals, food, music and redemption in everything I write.

But we all do that.   Someone said we are all writing to answer a particular question about life.  Mine appears to be: how do people weather the trials of life? How do you rise after destruction or sorrow to find a triumphant life?

MJP: This is a theme that fascinates me also, Barbara.  This is probably why I’ve loved your books ever since a friend of mine said I had to read Ruth Wind.  I did, and she was right.  <G> 

What was the biggest mistake you made when you first began writing?

BARBARA:  Taking a pen name that was so wrong on so many levels!  Ruth is dated and the W makes you get on your knees to find it!

MJP:  Which book, if any, was the most difficult for you to write, and why?

BARBARA:   A Piece of Heaven, though I ended up loving it.  I wrote nearly 300 pages before I realized it wasn't a first person novel, and I needed the mosaic of all those viewpoints. (I think it ended up with six or seven narrators).   To this day, it remains one of my favorites, though, so I guess difficulty is not always an indication of how it will turn out.

MJP: What do you consider key elements of a great story?

BARBARA:  A sense of immersion and illumination.  I want to fall into a book and drown in it and never want to leave it.  It can be funny or intense or dark or terrifying, but I want to dive all the way in. When I'm writing, that's the experience I hope to offer my readers.

MJP:  Are there any trends you hope to see in romance in the next few years?

BARBARA:  It would be nice if there was more variety on a regular basis.  I love all kinds of stories, but it bugs me when all the publishers climb on one bandwagon—chick lit or vampires or babies & brides or whatever the flavor of the month is.  What if there is lots of variety all the time? Costume dramas and big sweeping historicals and vampires and babies (maybe not together) and medievals and ghosts and Regency and ---

Barring that, I would like to see that pendulum swing away toward dark historicals again. There have been some published all along, but that tends to be my taste, and I miss them.

MJP:  What is the best part about being a writer?  The most frustrating?

BARBARA:  The freedom and excitement.  The ups and down.

MJP:  What are you working on now?

BARBARA:  I just finished a big juicy foodie-sort of novel.  I had a blast with it.

Oooh, sounds wonderful!  I’ve read some of your writing on food, and it’s so delicious it makes me want to eat the page. <g>  In fact, I just printed a spinach soup recipe off your blog, www.awriterafoot.com

Thanks so much for visiting us, Barbara.  Dragons Forever!

Mary Jo

To Toss or Not?

From Loretta:
      Here is Barbie the Dragon Slayer.  What I like about this dragon--besides the fact that he matches Barbie, is that he has the goofy look of a man in love.  Oh, he’s trying to be macho, breathing fire and all, but love makes a guy stupid (at least, that’s what it does to my heroes), so to me, this is the perfect image, including Barbie, the conquering heroine.
      This is all I feel qualified to say about dragons at present, so, with thanks to Jo for the excellent Barbie/dragon combo, I shall move on to my actual real topic:  How to Throw Away a Book.
      First, everybody stop screaming.  The world will not come to an end if you put that paperback into the recycling bin.
      Second, let me explain.  It all started last month in the Romance Writers Report with an article about the sale of ARCs.  For the uninitiated, ARCs have nothing to do with Noah (that would be with a ‘K” anyway) or bits of circles.  ARC stands for Advance Reading Copy.  Or Advance Review Copy.  The publisher sends these out--for free--to reviewers and others well ahead of the publication date, to get advance publicity for our books.  Because it’s so far ahead of the publication date, this isn’t the version of the book that will hit the shops.  In most cases, it’s the uncorrected proofs.  Sometimes it’s a clean copy of the edited manuscript.  Whatever version of the book it is, though, it’s NOT FOR SALE, as is clearly stated on the cover.
      Here are two examples.  One looks nothing like the final book and one looks very much like it.
       Notice how it says NOT FOR SALE?  Kinda hard to miss that, huh?
      While selling them isn’t strictly illegal, it’s not exactly kosher.  It costs the publisher money to produce ARCs; they do it in hopes of publicity that will sell the final version.  When people sell ARCs, they dishonor the deal.  The author loses out on royalties and the publisher loses out on profits.  As you have heard from the Wenches on several occasions, sometimes a small number of books, or a relatively small number of dollars can make the difference between an author getting her publishing contract renewed...or not.
      This is what I try to keep in mind, too, when it comes to secondhand books, and it’s the reason I avoid buying secondhand unless the book is out of print.
      Which brings me to this month’s RWR and a letter from a reader in response to last month’s article on ARCs.  She worries about what happens to ARCs and used books if one doesn’t sell them.  What’s the alternative? she wants to know.  Throw it in the trash?  She feels that selling an ARC is a way of preserving something precious:  an early version of a work.  To her, throwing any book away is a terrible crime.  Furthermore, authors objecting to the sale of ARCs and used copies “are pushing the world to toss their work in the trash.”  And this, in her view, somehow equates to people thinking of romance as trash.
       I’m not sure I follow the logic but then, I’m a word person, so I’m still stuck on the NOT FOR SALE thing there, at the top of the cover.  And I have to wonder if the people who sell what’s NOT FOR SALE are the kind of people who think rules are for other people, rather than the kind who feel a compelling need to preserve an inferior version of a book for posterity.
      In any case, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with throwing a book away--though, naturally, I’d prefer it go into the recycling bin rather than the garbage.  I say this even though I curse all those who threw away all those copies of some obscure and probably barely readable book from 1820 that I really need, and is now either nonexistent or else so rare that it might as well not exist, since it costs six point two bajillion dollars.
      I still think it’s OK to throw them away.  I’m not saying it’s easy.  It isn’t, for me.  But I can do it, and do, from time to time.  I simply haven’t room to keep all the books I read.  Sometimes they go into the recycling because I don’t want the author to lose out on used book sales.  Sometimes the book ends up in the garbage because something got spilled on it.  Sometimes it's because I thought it was garbage and that’s where it belonged.  And sometimes it’s a book I’ve outgrown.  More often than not, though, I bring the ones in good shape to the library.  Here, too, there’s no profit for the author but at least the books are supposed to be getting into the hands of people who otherwise would not be able to read them.  The public library is a concept I believe in strongly, as I believe in the concept of public schools--making knowledge available to all.  But I still don't see ARCs in that picture, anywhere.
      Time for you to weigh in, oh lovers of books. 
      Do you agree with any of the above or not?  Is it a sin to throw away a book, any book?

A Little Bit of Dragon in Everyone

"May I come in, St. George?" said the Boy politely, as he paused at the door. "I want to talk to you about this little matter of the dragon, if you're not too tired of it by this time."  -- Kenneth Grahame, The Reluctant Dragon, 1898

Susan Sarah here, with a few thoughts on dragons, dragonslayers, and why we even bother reading about the nasty, scaly, slimy critters....

I wrote my dissertation on images of St. George in medieval art, so for years I was surrounded by...well, images of St. George: alone, with other saints, with the princess, on a horse, off a horse, with and without patrons, and of course...with a dragon.

While I was doing all this erudite research, I kept two Gary Larson Far Side cartoons tacked to the bulletin board over my desk. I couldn't find the images online (and my copies are too tattered to scan well), so let descriptions suffice:

Far Side cartoon #1: Artist at easel, painting an image of a knight in armor, with one hand on a spear, and one foot raised and resting on a little red wagon. A man is looking over the artist’s shoulder. “No, the king wanted St. George and the dragon! Dragon!”

Far Side cartoon #2: A dragon outside a cave, tossing a small armored knight in his forepaws. Steam is coming out of the knight’s very hot armor. Dragon: “Ow, ow, Phyllis, hurry up with them hot pads!”

Why dragons? Why do some people find them fascinating, and some do not (including some very fine authors on our Wenches team)?  What is it about dragons? Dragons and dragon-like monsters exist in just about every culture and occur in innumerable myth cycles from cultures all over the world.

Y’all can relax, because I’m not going to info-dump my dissertation work here in the blog, but I thought I’d look at the symbolism, and ponder a little of why that dragon has so much appeal (and St. George too...in the 14th century, he was HOT, and not because the dragon roasted him in steel).

In most images, St. George is in the act of killing the dragon–-thrusting the spear into its side (yes, religious connotations there), or more commonly, down the poor critter’s throat “to breke its harte” as one medieval text put it. Truly, I felt sorry for the dragon, just doing its dragonian thang, and along comes this guy on a horse, and pow, it’s lights out.

St. George was well established early on as a martyred saint, his martyrdom involving not dragon-slaying, but various tortures and multiple executions that included fire, drowning, beheading (and he came back again), and, IIRC, rolling downhill in barrels. Somewhere around the 6th century, in Byzantian/Georgian imagery, he starts showing up with a dragon. In England, he quickly becomes an early favorite saint, his cult growing by leaps and bounds. Soon images of Saint George contain not only the dragon, but a princess being rescued. He starts popping up in medieval romance literature, and that dragon-and-princess thing gets rolling. St. George was a superstar hero in medieval England and parts of Europe. In images and in literature, he teams up with the Virgin Mary (a privilege reserved only for the creme de la creme), he marries his princess (who is pregnant before the wedding) and–-if you can believe this–-he’s secretly the twin brother of the dwarf Oberon, king of the fairies.

He was the only saint to cross over into the truly secular arena, the movie star hero of his day, killing dragons and rescuing princesses for the sake of adventure and chivalry, rather than religious fervor. Very likely the Saxon English responded to him early on because St. George reminded them of Beowulf and Grendel, and the various Viking and Germanic/Saxon tales that include dragons. They understood and could enjoy George, with his dragon and princess. Newly Christian Britain retained a pagan flavor in their beliefs (and that still exists today).

There are other dragon and monster slayers: Beowulf and Grendel, Siegfried and Fafnir, Lancelot, Sir Guy of Warwick, Sir Bevis of Hampton, the Archangel Michael –- the list goes on and on, and expands greatly as one looks at other cultures, Germanic, Norse, Celtic, Chinese, Japanese, and so on.  We’re all aware of the dragons as sea-monsters that appeared on early maps before Columbus and others proved that they weren’t really there. Well, except for the Kraken, as Cap’n Jack Sparrow can attest....

What is it about dragons that had medieval people and others on the edge of their seats? And do they appeal to us today for the same reasons?

To the medieval mind, dragons represented evil, the devil, sin –- qualities and forces to be vanquished and conquered. Saint George and other dragonslayers had the strength, discipline, virtue, faith, and purity needed to defeat the dark forces of evil. That’s a large part of the dragon mythology –- that dark side of ourselves. Like vampires, werewolves, and so on, dragons too can be what Joseph Campbell called the shadow side of ourselves, and as he put it:

“The nature of your shadow is a function of the nature of your ego...It is the backside of your light side...the monster that has to be overcome, the dragon. It is the dark thing that comes up from the abyss and confronts you the minute you begin moving down into the unconscious.”

But dragons, unlike vampires and werewolves, have a positive side too. They are flexible monsters in that sense. They can even be cute ‘n cuddly, well, almost. A stuffed toy dragon for your kid? Sure! A cuddly toy werewolf? No thanks!

This positive side of the dragon is what I think so many of us respond to and find most fascinating. The dragon, even if it seems evil and violent, has enormous potential for greatness and goodness. Across cultures, dragons represent unlimited power, wisdom, knowledge, the unconscious, the potential of the soul. To tame or possess that power and wisdom is the best we can do for ourselves. Dragons hoard gold -– the treasure of the Self, the powerful life force. Dragons are not to be trusted when they dwell on the dark side, yet some dragons have a transcendant power.

The dragon, says Campbell, is the shadow–- “the landfill of the self...also a sort of a vault that holds great, unrealized potentialities within you.” The dragon hoards potential in that pile o’ gold – and it is up to the hero, or heroine, to salvage and release it somehow. No one comes away from a dragon encounter unchanged.

So the dragon has strongly positive, ideal, sublime qualities as well as the deepest, darkest nasty stuff, all combined in one. To read stories about dragons -– dragon quests, meeting dragons, befriending them or defeating them, stealing their treasure or being given a great gift from the dragon itself, to tame or be taught by the good dragons, or to slay the nasty dragons -– these aspects are symbols and metaphors of delving deep within ourselves, learning more about ourselves, and about life. Reading about dragons is exploring the darker, mysterious side of the soul, and vanquishing or befriending them means we emerge from the cave wiser and better than when we went inside.

Even those of us who say we don’t like dragons with scales and fire-breath, have read and enjoyed characters who have all the qualities of the dragon persona: Ebenezer Scrooge, for example, is a prime dragon character. He hoards gold, he snarls and spits fire, he goes down deep into the cave over one long night and emerges–-as we do, with him-–changed for the better, wiser, and willing to release that hoarded potential within himself.

There’s my dragonistic thoughts for a snowy Wednesday.

~Susan Sarah

A Plague of Dragons

Pat Rice here, just back from the Celebrate Romance conference in Kansas City. We had a rowdy good time, and I’ll print pictures once I download them. Really, we need more of these reader/writer conferences where we can all just sit down and talk about books and where they’re going.

But apparently it turned into Dragon Month while I was gone! A plague of dragons creates interesting images in my head, but mostly as a curse of some kind. A plague of dragons be upon you!  But otherwise, dragons don’t interest me much more than villains.  One kills them and wins the fair maiden, right? Like unicorns, they’re there as metaphors in fairy tales, but it never occurred to me to write about one. (The lovely lady and dragon on your left was colored by our very own Jo with some software that makes me shiver just thinking about it!)

Admittedly, I wasn’t exposed to many fairy tales when I was little. I have a distinct memory of deserting my friends to peruse their parents’ library where I’d found a wonderful old fairy tale book.  But sadly, those were the only fairy stories I ever saw until I was old enough to buy my own, so maybe I missed out on that fantasy.

Instead, I read fun books like Eleanor Cameron’s Mushroom Planet series, so I got sucked into a warped version of science fiction at an early age.  I adore space alien books, and I miss the futuristics of the nineties. Apparently, I’m in the minority.

I went on to lap up all things Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury, who is a fantasy writer of the best sort. I branched out into psychic phenomena and von Daniken’s wild theories of long ago visitors from other planets by high school. My aptitude was pretty definitely in the sciences, but I was willing to consider all possibilities.

In other words, unless dragons were dinosaurs, I wasn’t interested.  And the Munsters are as close to vampires as I can get, even though there are scientific theories about them, too. Blood, yuck. My mother could never convince me to be a doctor. Weak stomach.

So, unlike Susan/Miranda, I’m quite happy contemplating witches and wizards and space aliens and even ghosts, because they have some connection to the real world as my open mind sees it. Trolls are fine when Pratchett writes them, and fairies ought to be fey creatures who live in the woods and perform mischievous magic, so they’re in my universe as interesting creatures. But dragons? Sorry, Tolkien’s hoarder was much too obviously metaphorical to hold my interest. So I guess I’ll leave that fantasy to Mary Jo, et al.   

Have you ever thought about what books in your childhood affect your current reading tastes now? Heyer fans gobble up Regencies, right? Give us the name of the guilty culprits that led you astray from literary tomes and into the wonderful wacky world of mass market fiction….

There Be Dragons (Just Not Here)

By Susan/Miranda

First of all, let it be known that I am not a Believer. 

I don’t have unicorns on my t-shirts, crystals hanging from my rear-view mirror, fairies in my garden, or a bustle in my hedgerow.  I really do watch Most Haunted for the old houses and castles, not the ghosts (which sounds like buying Playboy for the articles, but I swear it’s true.)  I think that vampires are creepy cannibals, not sexy love-gods.  And there’s nary a single hobbit or Harry Potter among my DVD’s.

There's also no fantasy or paranormal elements in my books, either, and no matter what the omnipotent Publishing Market demands, I don’t see that changing.  My poor characters have to muddle along like the rest of us lowly mortals, without magic, e.s.p., or the fear of getting hairy every full moon. It’s not that I have any deep philosophical objections to fantasy, or that I view witches, wizards, and vampires as a personal threat on religious grounds.  Nothing so grand as that.

The sad truth is that I just . . . don’t . . . get it.  Like people who are color-blind or tone-deaf, I was born without the woo-woo gene.  Oh, I check my horoscope every day, and I’m willing to curse this particularly vile retrograde along with the rest of the world, but as the disclaimers always say, I do it for Entertainment Purposes Only.  How Mary Jo and Susan/Sarah can put up with me is proof of just how good friends they are.

All of which makes Dragon Month here at the WordWenches something of a challenge to me.  Yes, a good writer can breathe life into anything, and turn even a tea-cup into a character readers will never forget.  I’m sure that given the gifted writers behind Dragon Lovers –– Wenches Jo and Mary Jo, and Honorary Wenches Barbara Samuel and Karen Harbaugh –– that Dragon Lovers will be an anthology that readers will devour, and I fervently hope for them that it lands them on the bestseller lists.

But dragons and moi?  Dragons are reptiles. Really, really big and scary reptiles, with over-sized bat-wings, scales, claws, and fire-breathing capacities enough to scorch entire medieval villages.  It sounds like a bad deal all around to me, like one of those pictures in National Geographic that you wished you hadn’t looked at after you did.  No, thank you.  My imagination just shuts down cold.

I’m in the minority, of course.  J.K. Rowling’s proof enough of that.  Publishing today loves all things paranormal and fantasy, and just as the historical romance world has narrowed its range, the more fantastical side of fiction has widened to the obvious delight of many readers. This is a good thing, too.  I’m all for diversity in books.  If there’s a book a writer wants to write and a reader wants to read, then it should be out there.  The world would be a powerfully dull snoozerama if we all read and wrote exactly the same thing.  End of story.

Well, not quite.  I’m re-reading this now, and that opening disclaimer about me not being a Believer.  I really should amend that.  Because as a writer, I do Believe: I believe in characters and stories and the solemn agreement between subjects and predicates.  I believe in history and love and heroes and heroines who do brave, wonderful, foolish things.  I believe in writers trying their damnedest to get the story out of their heads and onto the page.  I believe in imagination, and having the courage to go wherever it takes you. 

Just please, please, please don’t ask me to write about dragons.

So what about you?  Does fantasy make you fly, or are you a stick-in-the-mud realist like me? What do you think of the paranormal and fantasy trend?