Word Wenches

Who needs an editor?

From Loretta:

I hit the email Send button Sunday night at 8pm, which means that YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS is in the hands of my editor as you read this.  It also means I'm brain damaged, so don't expect much.

Last time, some readers asked for more about the writing process, and this seems as good a time as any to provide some of the many Valuable Insights that stun one over umpty bazillion years of writing for a living.

Here’s one:  It isn’t over until it’s over.  When I send in the manuscript the first time, I do jump up and down with joy but it’s not the big bounce you’d expect.  This is because, before very long, that hunka hunka deathless prose is going to bounce right back at me.  It’s called Revisions.  There may be authors who get it all exactly right the first time around but that is not moi. 

I leave some holes in the plot or there aren’t enough smoochies or some curst thing or other.  And for you, Elaine McCarthy, who asked about Dreaming Up Stuff, let me say here and now that I would pay good money for the secret to dreaming up smoochies with the same ease I experienced early in my career, when I was fresh and innocent--and when, perhaps, less was demanded of us in this area.  Which is not to say it ever was a piece of cake.  Such scenes are deeply dependent upon the personalities and problems of the characters involved.  This is because the smoochies in a romance are supposed to be about emotions and the development of a committed relationship.  It is not supposed to be merely an exercise in finding interesting variations on fitting Tab A into Slot B.  I am not writing the Kama Sutra; I’m writing a love story.  OTOH, one does like to make it interesting.

They do get done eventually, and then I don’t remember the trials and tribulations of making it interesting while still keeping it romantic.  In this way, writing a book is like giving birth:  One forgets the pain.  Sadly, there are no epidurals for writers.  But I digress.  (When do I not?)

Revisions.  I like them, because it’s a time to unload some of the responsibility, finally.  It’s the first time anyone else reads the book--and my Anyone Elses are experts.  Early in my career, I did give the manuscripts to friends, to look for ghastly errors and such.  I’ve found that method unsatisfactory.  People tend either to get caught up in the story (not a bad thing, I admit) and not notice problems or they get caught up in minutiae, and fail to see the big picture.  A good editor sees the big picture and can tell you where the gaps are or where it’s too crowded or not full enough or whether it doesn’t flow well in Chapter X--and, yes, whether the smoochies pass muster and why or why not.

I would not make a good editor.  I often have a very hard time articulating what’s wrong with a book; it’s harder still to be clear about what’s right with it or how to make it right.

One finds on reader loops that many people are quite clear about what works for them and what doesn’t.  I wonder, though, if they’d be able to suggest what would make a problematic book work.  If a story element or a scene is confusing, would they be able to pinpoint where the author’s wandered into Confusion Land or what she might do to clarify things?  I’m not sure I could do it.  And I’d have an extra hard time doing it if, for instance, I wasn’t wild about the genre or subgenre.  Or maybe wasn’t nuts about the author’s style.  Or disliked a certain type of character.  And could I look at the book from the perspective of readers who love that genre or style or type of character?

Editors do this--and more--all the time.  And they like to do it!  Most of them will tell you it’s their favorite part of the job--and the one they wish they had more time for.

Me, I’d rather write the books.  And when I read one, I just want to sit back and let the book do the work.

What about you?  How do you think you’d do, sitting at the editor's desk?  Your dream job or your nightmare?  And if you’ve done it, what do you think of the job?

Reference books

Here's Jo, in a real time crunch.

I'm another Wench with a November 1st deadline, and it's a lethal one, as the book, A Lady's Secret, has just been moved from June to March 2008. Everyone wants everything yesterday! Plus my publisher's sending me to a managers' meeting for Books-a-Million next week and there's things I want to prepare for that.

There's lots to do in the garden, too, but most of it's going to have to wait. It's definitely fall here now, though, so the Kids are a memory of summer.

But reference books. Always fun. I'm not going to list the books to hand, because though they're mostly great (some odd ones sneak in there!) they're classic references and I don't use them all the time. Instead, I've tried to list the ones I've used in the past weeks. A different sort of sample.

That's a very poor quality picture of the shelves to hand, with  my Aeron chair -- bless it -- and the back of my monitor. The big  window  spoiled the picture. I need to get another one. The facing wall is all bookcases. Happy sight.

Now I'm at the end of the writing of this book. I've just done a big read through, which led to some scenes being cut but new ones being required, so these are different books to the ones I might read early in the process. For example, The Empress of Pleasure: The Life and Adventures of Teresa Cornelys, by Judith Summer (Penguin Viking) is one I read months ago but which has affected A Lady's Secret. Sometimes I like to have books close to hand as if they're giving off an ambience even when unopened.

Here's the back copy for A Lady's Secret. (No cover yet.)
The nun and the rake!<br>
When Robin Fitzvitry, the fun-loving Earl of Huntersdown, encounters a cursing nun in a French inn, he can’t resist the mystery. He offers to help Sister Immaculata reach England, expecting only amusement on the tedious journey home from Versailles. Petra d'Avernio is not exactly a nun, though she has spent years in an Italian convent with her widowed mother. Her mother’s death has left her in danger and she must find the only person who might protect her—her true father, an English lord who does not even know she exists. This gorgeous young aristocrat will be a dangerous ally, but she’s glimpsed her pursuers and must race to the coast. She will resist him, use him, and eventually escape him with virtue and secrets intact. She hopes….

You'll see it's not surprising that there are quite a few map books in the list.

Harrap's Concise French Dictionary. (This gives phrases as well as simple words.)

1976/7 AA Members' Handbook. This has 10 miles to the inch road maps of Britain, which is useful for a large scale view. It also has sentimental value as it's the last one we used before emigrating.

1998 AA Large Scale road map of Great Britain. (That's a picture of a recent edition.) We bought this on a trip there in 2000, cheap because it was an old one, and I keep using it because the one I bought last year is much more poorly designed. This is a big book with 2.4 miles to the inch. It's great for details, and also for names. It shows little villages and sometimes I get character names that are true to the area that way. Look for these from remainder houses. You can often get last year's cheap.

Patterson's Roads, 1829. This is a facsimile of a coaching guide. It's well past my 1764 book date, but many of the basics about roads are still true.

The County Maps of Old England by Thomas Moule, and Town and City Maps of the British Isles, compiled by Ashley Bainton-Williams, both from Studio Editions. Some of these are Victoria, but I still find them useful. The county maps have topography.

So, too, do the maps in the 1950s edition of Chambers Encyclopedia, which often gives the answer, even in these internet days.

Slang Through The Ages, Jonathon Green.

Hoyles Games. (Many editions of this and related books, of course.)

Oxford Illustrated Dictionary.

The London Rich, Peter Thorold, St. Martin's Press.

Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang, Eric Patridge

The Connoiseur's Complete Guides.

(I also look at pictures a lot. This is a photo we took of the south downs in England.)

Argos Global Price Guide, 1995/6 This was a great cheap buy from a remainder place. It's a huge book of antiques illustrated in full color. When I want inspiration for a pocket watch, ring, glassware, sword, I can generally find examples in this book.

Oh, and there's also the OED, which my lovely local library makes available on line.

There you go, then.  That's what I've been dipping into. If you've dipped into any non-fiction books recently, tell me what they are. They don't have to be research, or even historical.

Jo :)

Undressing Your Hero

Susan/Miranda, stepping up to the podium to make an introduction....

Sometimes here at WordWenches, we have historical experts (like Dr. Josh King) as guests.  Sometimes we have other historical authors (like too many to list) come visit us.  Today we're fortunate to welcome a guest who combines both qualities, as well as being a frequent visitor to post.

Kalen Hughes is the author of the acclaimed LORD SIN, which landed her on Amazon's "Hot New Releases" list as a first-time author. Her next book, LORD SCANDAL, will be released in June, '08.  For  more about Kalen the author as well as her books, please stop by her site: www.Kalenhughes.com.

But today it's Kalen Hughes, specialist in historical dress, who's our guest-blogger.  Since the age of three, she has been involved in various living history events from the Middle Ages to the Roaring 20s, and is an expert historical seamstress as well as a scholar of fashion and clothing.  We're delighted to have her as a resource here this Wednesday, and next Wednesday, too.   Let the questions begin!

I was extremely excited and honored when the Wenches invited me over to talk about historical clothing. As many of you already know, historical costuming is a major hobby of mine. I spend oodles of time both studying and recreating (and sometimes wearing) the clothing of past eras.

While my own novels are set in the late 18^th century, today we’re going to take a look at the layers of clothing a gentleman would have worn c. 1812 (note, the layers are the same for the entire extended Regency era, roughly 1790-1830). To the right we have a fashion plate of just such a man. He's wearing the most fashionable hat of the day, pantaloons, top boots, and an open dress coat over a double-breasted wasitcoat.

Please feel free to ask about other eras if you’re curious. In picking the garments for our hero I’m going to go with the most common versions, not the exceptions (but if you have questions about exceptions just ask!).

Let’s start from the skin out. Our hero’s “underwear” consists of a shirt, stockings, and drawers. The shirt is going to be of white linen. It is not much longer than a modern shirt, but it is considerably fuller in both the body and the sleeves. One very important thing to note: it does not open all the way down the front (regardless of what is depicted on countless romance novel covers)! It has a partial neck-opening from the collar to about mid-chest. So the shirt had to be pulled on/off over the head. It buttons closed at the throat, though this is hidden by the cravat. The cuffs are wide (2”-3”) and button closed in an overlapping fashion (like a modern dress shirt, not like a French cuff)

Drawers are not universally worn (there are reports that some men simply tucked their shirt tails over   and under), but they certainly existed. JP Ryan describes the extant pair of drawers she based her pattern on thusly: “In design, these under drawers are like a separate lining for men’s breeches. The drawers have a shaped waistband with an open front fly. The waistband is fastened with two buttons, and is laced closed in the back. The seat is full, the legs tight, with sufficient fullness through the crotch for full freedom of movement. The fly front rise is short, with the waistband fitting around the hips and stomach. The knee-bands are designed for ties.”

Our hero is most likely wearing a relatively thick pair of stockings (most likely of cotton or wool). The curator at the Costume Museum in Bath says that for dress occasions they wore a cotton stocking under the silk stocking to hide their leg hair.

Coats come in several varieties, and the terminology is confusing, and sometimes contradictory (esp. as the Victorians messed them all about). On most of the coats in our period (shooting coats excepted) the pocket flap is for decoration only. The actual  pocket (if there is one) is inside the coat, usually in the tail (as with the extant example on display at the Jane Austen Center in Bath). This pocket was sometimes reached from the outside of the coat, and sometimes from the inside (which seems inconvenient, to say the least). Information on when the breast pocket appeared varies. I’ve heard that Brummell invented them in 1813, but J. P. Ryan says she’s seen them on extant 18^th century coats.

Our hero is most likely in a dress coats (also called a tail coat). It has a cutaway front and tails in the back. It could be single or double breasted, and while most are made of wool (usually in a dark colour), extant examples in other fabrications (such as plaid linen) do exist. Blue coats are invariably shown with brass/gold buttons, all others with self fabric covered buttons.

As for our hero’s “unmentionables”, let us put him into buckskin breeches. Though breeches, by the Regency, are considered old fashioned, buff leather ones are still commonly worn for “morning” or “country” attire. These are the jeans of their era. Most have a front fall, a flap that covers the front opening. This fall goes only from about hip-bone to hip-bone. The waistband buttoned, usually with 2-3 buttons, then the fall closed like a bib over the otherwise open front area of the pants. Belts were not worn. Pants of all types would have been held up by “X” crossed braces (suspenders).

Waistcoats all button up the front. They could be single or double breasted (like coats) All the examples I’ve seen have a method of tightening at the back. Some have ties, some have buckles and straps. The front is the fancy, decorative part, with the back (and sleeves on some 18^th century examples) being plain (just like a modern day suit vest). The interesting thing to note for Regency-ear examples is that they are square/flat across the bottom.

Cravats are simply long rectangles of material that are tied around the neck. Mostly they were white, but colors were not uncommon among the working classes and the sporting and dandy sets. Though Brummell made the starched cravat fashionable, it wasn't jut starch that was responsible for the stiff nature of the Regency cravat: there is a horse hair pad hidden inside! The “Belcher” neckcloth (named after the man who made them fashionable, the famous pugilist Jem Belcher). These colorful cravats were also called peacock eyed. They are the origin of the cowboy bandana. I think our hero might be just enough of a Corinthian dandy to sport one of these, don’t you?

Boots were the sneaker of the Regency era. Previously they had been worn only for riding, hunting, etc. Now, they’re part of proper morning (informal) attire. They come in many forms for men, There was the top boot (also called the English, John Bull, Jockey, or tall boot), Hessians (also called the Austrian or Hess boot). Some reach the knee, other examples only come up to the calf. Both lengths of boot are worn with pantaloons of varying length, and with breeches, sometimes exposing a good deal of stockinged calf.

Our hero would complete his ensemble with gloves (most likely of a yellow/buff or brown) and an beaver hat (what we would call a top hat, or an opera hat). So that's it. He's dressed. I know we said "undressing", but now you can picture it in reverse. *grin*

GOOD AND EVIL THESAURI

How many of you have noticed the feebleness of Microsoft Word’s thesaurus? Raise your hands!  Have you noticed that sometimes it even gives the wrong synonyms for the word selected? How bad is that? Don’t these geeks understand how important the right word is to writers? That words are to us what gigabytes are to them?  If writers were more organized, we’d have gathered together to stone the geeks responsible by now.

In Googling Microsoft Word Thesaurus to see if anyone else has discovered the idiocy of this electronic garbage, I ran across Pete Moore’s paean to Roget’s Fourth, my personal favorite, at http://www.absolutewrite.com/fun/thesauri.htm.  It’s not only a hilarious column (try Roget for translating the Gettysburg address sometime), but it verifies that Microsoft has deliberately CENSORED the thesaurus. Not just messed up the definitions but eliminated entire words because THEY thought they were inappropriate, words like “idiot” for instance.  How dare they?  Did they think school kids would spend their day sending each other notes with more intelligent substitutions for idiot?

And even knowing how bad Word’s thesaurus is, I still automatically click to it when the word I want eludes me, because that one click is so much simpler than diving into my beloved Roget’s.  I may go directly to Roget when I can’t remember the name for the part of a ship that I need, or a color I want, or all the other fascinating things that I can find once I start playing in wonderland, because nothing electronic can replace a book.  Just the index can remind me of the word I need, which is what Word ought to do and doesn’t. But sometimes, when I need that elusive perfect word, I sink into Roget, and I’m lucky to come out of my trance in ten or fifteen minutes. Which is why I keep going back to that danged one click. Time is precious. 

So I’m tickled to have discovered a new trick, www.thesaurus.com.  I’ve only been playing with it  a week or so, but it’s been absolutely fabulous in helping me find better words than the overworked ones I have in my revised manuscript.  There are only so many ways one can say “superhuman power” before it gets old, especially if I’m writing about the 18th century when there weren’t any scientific terms for telekinesis or the like.  This on-line thesaurus comes directly from my beloved Roget’s, gives me antonyms and related words along with the synonyms, and all by simply typing in a word. I keep it open at the bottom of my screen and click on it whenever I need inspiration.  I think I’m in love all over again.

Do you have any thesaurus stories? MS Word stories?

And just because I'm so tickled to have real bookshelves again, I'm including a photo of the partially completed ones my husband is building for me. And I'm supposed to remind you that  I'm blogging daily on my progress from  idea through proposal to ...hopefully...sale, along with rants on writing life, at  www.patriciarice.blogspot.com.  And also about  www.feedblitz.com which can feed blogs directly into your mailbox.  I'm actually reading blogs regularly now!  When you hit the site, realize "subscription"  means sign up for a blog. (So, I'm a dolt. )

Guests, Book Trailers, & FeedBlitz

Lots of announcements!

We are thrilled to welcome guest blogger Kalen Hughes for the next two Wednesdays -- 9/26 and 10/3.  Kalen will be talking about clothing.  Learn the ins and outs (or is that offs and ons?) of English Regency-era clothing. There will be lots of pictures!  Part 1 will be "Dressing (and Undressing) a Regency Gentleman.  Part 2 will be "Dressing (and Undressing) a Regency Lady.

In Jo's post titled Book Trailers, she couldn't get Kasey Michaels' video promo to work because the link was wrong. If you want to catch up with that one, try http://youtube.com/kaseymichaels.

Want to know the instant a new post goes up at Word Wenches?  Now you can!  We've installed the FeedBlitz link in the left sidebar, at the very bottom.  All you have to do is enter your e-mail address and click the "Get e-mail updates" button.  FeedBlitz will then send new posts directly to your inbox. Be the first on your block with the latest news!  There's another good reason to subscribe to e-mail updates:  If you're a book winner, you'll find out right away, because the announcement will appear in your inbox.  In the past, there have been a few book winners who never got in touch with us after they were announced as winners, so they lost out on a free, autographed book. And that's just a crying shame.

Are you in with the in crowd?

By Mary Jo

No, I’m not talking about social trendiness, a topic in which I have zero interest.  I’m interested in Introverts and Extroverts. 

I’ll mention here that I am no psychologist, merely a reader of pop psych articles.  But the I/E split intrigues me because it's a useful frame for dealing with life, and it represents a prime aspect of personality.  And always has, the past as much as the present. 

I’m going to make lots of sweeping generalizations.  You are warned. <G> 

For starters,  who are these “I” and “E” people?  As Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion ) says, “ Extraverts (sometimes called "extroverts") are gregarious, assertive, and generally seek out excitement. Introverts, in contrast, are reserved, thoughtful, and self-reliant. They are not necessarily asocial, but they tend to have smaller circles of friends, and are less likely to thrive on making new social contacts.”  Carl Jung more or less came up with the idea, but it’s such a useful concept that it is now slung around pretty casually.

My sister, who as it happens IS a psychologist, once explained the concept to me more simply:  extroverts are energized by being with people, and introverts are drained.  Extroverts outnumber introverts about three to one, and they tend to get better publicity.  Contrast “life of the party” with “disaffected loner.” 

Even Shakespeare picked on us.  Think Julius Caesar: "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.”  Clearly Cassius was an introvert. <G>

Many of you have probably taken a Myers-Briggs test, or equivalent, which judges four personality traits: Extroversion/Introversion; Sensing/Intuition: Thinking/Feeling: Judging/Perceiving.  The test results in a four letter score like INFJ or ESTP. 

The Myers-Briggs is often given to young people as part of vocational testing to establish what their preferences are.  For example, someone who likes peace and quiet probably wouldn’t want to work on a stock exchange trading floor.  A person who likes to be right in the middle of the action will die of boredom as a night watchman at a quiet suburban mall.

If you haven’t ever taken the Myers-Briggs, or have and would like to do it again, here are three internet sites that offer free M-B type tests with 50 or so multiple choice questions.  I like the top one best because it offers a five point scale rather than a simple either/or. 

http://www.kisa.ca/personality/

http://similarminds.com/jung.html

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

If you don’t like the results at one site, try another. <g>  All of these traits exist along a spectrum, and if you’re toward the center of the scale, you could shift from one mode to the other with slightly different questions or a different mood.  Overall, though, the results should be similar.

My first experience with this kind of testing was the Keirsey temperament sorter in the book Please Understand Me. ( http://tinyurl.com/2om3hq ) I rated as an INFJ, subtitled—“The Author.”  <g>  This was well before I started writing.  My SO, aka “Mr. Extrovert,” tested out as ENTJ: The Field Marshal.  He loved that. <g>  Here’s the Keirsey website, which has lot of good info on the personality types:

http://www.keirsey.com/keirsey.html

As an example of how this works in practice, Mr. Extrovert threw a big party in August to which he invited basically everyone he ever met, and I’d say about half of them came.  By the time it ended, he was lit up like a Roman candle while I felt like roadkill.  I do not even want to THINK about another large party for at least a year.  Preferably five. 

Speaking of which, when did “party” go from being a noun to a verb?  That usage has to have been invented by an extrovert.  <g>

Of course, how much an introvert is drained depends a lot on who the people around are.  The vast majority of writers are introverts from what I’ve observed, but turn us loose at a writing conference where we’re surrounded by our own kind, and we can get crazily interactive.  (When I gave the keynote at an RWA national conference a few years back, the one thing I said which everyone remembered was that it was “a  group of 2000 introverts pretending to be extroverts.”)

Many conference attendees periodically withdraw to their rooms to recharge, or leave the hotels for a long, quiet walk.  Some of us get into an over-stimulated, buzzy state, strung out and exhausted but not wanting to miss anything or anyone.  Almost all of us go home at the end of the conference feeling deeply depleted and ready to sleep for three days.  But while there, we can give a pretty fine imitation of extroversion. 

I’ve had people say, “Isn’t it hard to work at home alone all the time?” to which I reply, “No, it’s WONDERFUL.”  I love great billows of time where it’s just me and the cats (and the e-mail and maybe a few phone calls.)  Because my work life gives me lots of time for peace and recharging, I actually score more toward the middle of the I/E scale than I used to, because my “I” needs are so well met. 

Contrarily, an extrovert with a demanding, people-filled day job, may score more toward the “I” end of the scale because her extrovert needs are being so well filled that the need for quiet time becomes more pronounced.  Even the most effusive E needs some peace now and then, and even the most solitude-craving “I” tends to want to interact with people now and then. 

Not that all writers are “Is.”  I know at least one proven E who has produced over a hundred books and is still going strong.  For years she worked with a collaborator.  Eventually they went their separate ways, but then her husband retired and is happy to do web and business related work for her, so there’s always company nearby.

Other “E” writers compensate by becoming active in writing groups, I suspect.  Or if they have an active family life, that may take care of their extrovert needs very nicely. 

Most experienced writers learn to deal with the public fairly competently, but it’s usually a lot of work and time-limited.  For example, I can be gracious and friendly in a book signing for maybe two hours.  After that, all bets are off. <G>

Another good bit from my sister:  She says that if you invite an extrovert to join you for a movie, they’ll ask, “Who’s coming?”  An introvert will ask, “What’s playing?” :)   

In my own observation, when receiving party invitations, the “E” will say, “Great!  When and where?”  The “I” will say “Do I have to go?” unless she knows and likes a good number of the people who will be there. 

I suspect that many of the regulars here at Word Wenches are introverts since you’re book people.  I think one reason books have value to so many women is because in a stressful, over-full life, a woman can find mental privacy in the middle of a family food fight if she’s reading a good book.  (This may be why women have always been greater readers than men.) 

I went to my Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and found lots of quotes on solitude and tranquility, but none on partying.  Clear proof that it’s the introverts who are the writers, so naturally they’re the ones producing the quotes.  <g>   Like this one from Shelley’s “Song to the Men of England”:

I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good.

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?  So which are you, and introvert of an extrovert?  Have you shifted with time and circumstances?  Please share any appalling experiences you have with the opposite polarity!

Introvertedly yours,

Mary Jo, who avoids crowd scenes like the one on the left

Falling in Love Again

FIRST THINGS FIRST: The winner of totally arbitrary, picked blindfolded and by chance NAME THAT HERO drawing is: GRETCHEN F.!

If she will kindly email me her addy, I’ll send her the autographed copy of BRIDE ENCHANTED. This was a great contest! It’s a good thing the prize was awarded on the luck of the draw. If the winner had to be decided on merit I’d have gone mad. SO many good names, so many brilliant suggestions. Thank you, thank you – and you may be sure I’ll use some of those names in future. In fact, if you see my next hero sporting the name you sent, email me and I’ll send you a copy of that new book.

Now, as you might have guessed, I’m writing that new book. Yes, I’m falling in love again. By nature a monogamist, I nevertheless have the most promiscuous imagination, because in order to write about a new lover, I have to fall in love with him myself.

How awkward that can be. After all, I remember all my heroes. The strangest thing is that as I lavish praises on my new love, I feel guilty, hoping my old loves won’t be hurt. Well, sometimes, they are.

They sit in the shadows of my mind and stare at me reproachfully. There’s Warwick Jones, from my LOVE trilogy, looking at me with his famous, sad, sardonic smile. And by his side, Magnus from A TRUE LADY, shaking his handsome head. There, in a chair, acting like he doesn’t care, is my beloved Alasdair from THE DEVIL’S BARGAIN, and next to him, looking glum, dear Raphael, my redheaded Rafe from THE CHANCE. And I see Christian, from THE RETURN OF THE EARL, frowning.

After all his sufferings in exile, he’s still obviously capable of being wounded. And there's Drum, Earl of Drummond, from THE CONQUEST, who dearly loves his Alexandria, but who nevertheless stands there, sighing. And arms crossed, shoulders leaning against the wall, watching me always and ever, my first love: Jason, Duke of Torquay, from THE DUKE’S WAGER. They come from far and near - Oh my, but it’s getting crowded!

Why are these gallant gentlemen still concerned about what new man I care about?

Because although I gave them each and every one a wonderful heroine and a devoted wife, they always knew who loved them most: their mommy, their creator, their author: me.

But falling in love again doesn’t mean I ever forget any of them. Truly. I’m not sure they believe me. I don’t understand it myself. But you, Gentle Reader, may. Having read so many romances with so many exciting heroes from so many wonderful authors, don’t you fall in love with each new hero each time too? Or do you love only once, and keep looking for the same man in each new book you read?

I’d love to know. And believe me, I know they would too.

PS Enjoy the following historical hero movie montage.  I know I did. :)

Tools of the Trade

Susan Sarah here ... deep in a writing mode, hurtling toward an autumn deadline, and sitting here staring at a stack of mostly-filled yellow legal pads and a plethora of pens on her desk....

I have an assortment of pens – fountains and ballpoints, rollerballs, gel pens, felt tip, calligraphy pens with boxes full of nibs, even quills. I have fancy holders and spare coffee mugs full of them, and drawers with trays full of them, a myriad of sizes and styles and colors. A lot of them ought to be tossed; they’re dried out, or I never liked them much in the first place, or I liked them so much that I intend to find the right refill someday. When my kids were little I would sometimes give them the job of sorting the plethora of pens and tossing the ones that didn’t work. They would have a blast scribbling away on big sheets of paper, tossing the dried-out markers, the pens that skipped, the pens that globbed, the empty pens that had no ink cartridge or refill inside, and so on.

And I have a wide assortment of pencils, too, in various shapes and types and colors—pencils always come in handy for editing, and it’s especially wise to have a zillion pencils because I never know what color pencil the copyeditor will have used on my manuscript....

Usually the CE uses red, but sometimes it’s purple, blue, or green, while the editor uses plain graphite pencil. It’s up to the author to come up with yet another color to differentiate from their penciled “voices” on the pages. Oh joy! I get to go through the colored pencils and try every one of them! Oh, that red one’s too hard, this blue one’s too soft, I don’t have three or four of the purple, and the green is too faint, and look! Here’s a purple that’s Just Right (it’s amazing how many colored pencils one can wear out on a 400-page, moderately copyedited manuscript).

I have pen-lust, and pencil-lust too, along with paper lust, and of course, that weakness so many of us are susceptible to: demon booklust. For today let’s look at The Pen: what is it about the writing instrument that can make a writer’s heart go pitty-pat?

It’s the tool of our trade, after all, more so than keyboards or computers. It’s putting pen or pencil to paper that makes that connection, facilitates that spark. And people have been putting pen to paper, or stylus to wax, or brush to hide and quill to parchment for as long as people have been around. We are, as humans, compelled to express ourselves in various ways, and making signs on a surface to represent our thoughts is one of the most basic ways we have to let those thoughts wing outward so others can catch them and make what they will of them.

Pens began more than likely as reeds dipped in ink of some sort, and applied to a support of some kind. The ancients used reeds or brushes with ink of some kind (made from plants, berries, acorns, oak gall, iron salts, even snails – who discovered this stuff in the first place is what I’d like to know) -- and a stylus made of bone or metal was a popular method of writing as well, when dragged in soft wax spread on a wooden tablet, as the Romans did, and the Anglo-Saxons as well (who no doubt learned it from the Romans). Egyptian scribes would chew the ends of sharpened reeds to soften them enough to hold ink long enough to write a few words, then chew and dip again. Yum.

The quill pen was first used around the 5th or 6th century – though it seems logical  enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was used even earlier. The best quills were made from the flight feathers of swans and geese, taken from the left wing for the best curve in the central shaft (and from the right wing for left-handed scribes, if they hadn’t had the sinister left-handedness beaten out of them!).

Quills provided a marvelous writing tool, though the ends needed frequent cutting and sharpening with a knife, sometimes dozens of times a day if there was a lot of writing or copying of manuscripts going on. The quill met most writing needs for centuries, until finally in the 18th century fine metal nibs of brass and then steel were created and attached to the feathers.

Fountain pens are my personal favorite. I have several. I used to dip them in ink bottles years ago, and then gave in to easy pop-in cartridges. I love the smell of the ink, and I love the way the ink flows with a good pen -- at times a fountain pen has a certain magic that seems to encourage the writing to flow right along with it… Fountain pens were first invented in the late 19th century by Lewis Waterman (I have several of his pens, okay, his descendants’ pens), and around the turn of the century, someone thought up the ball point pen, which weren’t terribly popular or affordable until WWII, when they came in very handy out in the field (I did my research for this blog and found out some interesting bits of trivia!).

And after that followed Bic pens (the Frenchman Bich came up with a cheaply produced ball point), and the Japanese thought up the felt-tip, and then it was onward in triumph to roller balls and gel tips and pens that write upside-down, in water and in outer space….

And I think I have an incarnation of each of them in my desk drawer, all in a glorious jumble of writing tools. Maybe because I was an art major for years, I respond to pens and colors, to the feel of the writing tool in the hand, and the connection between hand and brain, mind and imagination channeled down through ink and nib.

I'll be loyal to a pen for a very long time, and then discover another, a newer, design or kind, and then I turn fickle. Right now I’m wearing out Pilot G-2s like crazy, in every color (they have minis! I love them!)…..

I f you, too, are addicted to good writing tools, what’s your favorite pen? And do you, too, make an utter fool of yourself in a stationery store, or even the back-to-school aisle of your local superstore?

~Susan Sarah

Scandalous Preview

From Loretta:

In response to popular demand (two readers), today’s blog is about YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS, my almost-somewhat finished Work in Progress.  As most of you are aware, we are required to deliver our manuscripts anywhere from six to twelve or more months before publication.  My book’s scheduled for June 2008.  Before that, there will be considerable back-and-forth with editors.  This means a great deal may change.  Even names.  So I’m going to hold off on excerpts for a couple of months.

YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS is the second in my Fallen Women series, which started with NOT QUITE A LADY--which is also the fourth book in the Carsington brothers series.  I think each book should serve as many purposes as possible, considering how much time I spend writing them when I could be watching movies, say, or traveling around the world or shopping for clothes.

Though surnames might change, the hero and heroine’s first names are a pretty safe bet to stay.  Francesca, an English divorcée with very expensive taste in jewelry and appalling taste in husbands (thus the “divorcée”), has come to Venice, the Sin City of her day.  Her day is 1820.  We meet her in September and if all remains the same, the events of the tale will take a little over a week.

By the time of my story, Lord Byron, who lived in Venice from November 1816 to December 1819, has gone on to Ravenna and his affair with the Countess Guiccioli, after numerous other affairs and one-night or one-hour or fifteen-minute stands.  Lord Byron did a lot of smooching in Venice, but I am not sure he out-smooched Casanova.  I would have liked to mention the latter in YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS, but his memoirs weren’t published until decades after the time of my story.  Byron is one of my sources--which at this moment far surpass the number of canals in Venice in 1863.

For those of you who, as I did, lack a clear picture of how strange and wonderful this place is, here it is, from the viewpoint of deities and satellites.

Venice lies in the middle of a swampy lagoon.  For centuries, it was accessible from the mainland--with difficulty and only by the experienced--only by water.  According to an 1863 Baedeker’s “The 15,000 houses and palaces of Venice are situated on three large and 114 small islands formed by 147 canals , connected by 378 bridges (most of them of stone) and altogether about 7 M (miles) in circumference.”  The number of houses and canals has changed over time.  Still, Byron would easily recognize the city today.  He might hesitate to swim in the canals, though.

Following a period of time living with a merchant and his wife (with whom the poet had a tempestuous affair, surprise, surprise) Byron moved into the Palazzo Mocenigo, which is on the Grand Canal, the big S-shaped waterway that divides the city.  My heroine Francesca lives on a rio, one of the many other canals.  Her house is the Palazzo Neroni, named in honor of a character in Trollope’s BARCHESTER TOWERS.

  Across the canal from her is the fictional Ca’ Munetti.  Ca’ is Venetian shorthand for casa, which is what all the palaces except the Ducal Palace were called before the fall of the Republic.  After 1797 and Napoleon’s arrival (and ransacking), though, the restriction on using the term palazzo was lifted.  This is why you will come across a building listed in one place as the Ca’ Rezzonico and in another as the Palazzo Rezzonico.  I stole the name “Munetti” from Byron’s friend Hobhouse's misspelling of somebody or other.  For those of you curious how authors come up with fictional names, this is one of my highly sophisticated methods.

Back to my tale.  In the great tradition of storytelling, A Stranger Comes to Town--and moves into the place across the canal.  The stranger is my hero, James, who is named after James Bond because he, too, is a government agent, albeit a very cranky one on account of (a) he’s been there done that with being Secret Agent Man and (b) he wants to be in England and (c) the other spies are too incompetent to figure out how to get a bunch of Highly Significant letters from a girl--Francesca--thus sticking him with a dumb job in Venice, wettest city in the universe, when he could be in London, second wettest (or is it third?), meeting nice girls for a change, instead of adventuresses, assassins, and Fallen Women.

James is half English, half Italian, all blueblood, and he’s Trouble, a Very Bad Boy.  Really.  He showed promising signs of a criminal career in his youth, before he was steered into legal criminality.  But Francesca is a Very Bad Girl.  It’s a match made, not in heaven, but in Venice, which in many people’s opinion is the next best thing.

Since I could go on endlessly about, say, the prisons on the eastern end of the Bridge of Sighs--or the challenges of getting the Italian words right and who I’m pestering for information--or what a gondola looked like in 1820--I’m going to do the sensible thing and leave it to you to tell me what you’d like to know.

Apart from excerpts (they’ll be coming), what else do you like to learn from an author about a book pre-publication?  Do you like bits of history to help set the stage?  Do you want more about the writing process:  picking names, doing research, dreaming up stuff?  More about characters?   Let me know, and I’ll try to accommodate you either today or in the coming months.

Book Trailers

That's Davy inspecting the future wine on the vine earlier in the year. The grapes are a-swelling. :)

Book trailers are a new way of attracting readers, but most are for contemporary romance, especially romantic suspense and paranormal.

There aren't many for historical romance, however, and I think I know why. I thought about doing one for LADY BEWARE, but I had trouble finding the right images. My covers aren't particularly useful there, and period art, though lovely,
doesn't quite do it. I have lots of photos of period interiors, stately homes, parks, and even costumes in museums, but it's the people. Short of stealing images from movies, I couldn't find pictures of people in good period dress doing something vaguely relevant to the story.

I love the idea of trailers for historicals, however, and I've found some on line. I'd love to hear what you think. Do you like these? Would you like to see more? Do they make you want to read the book? What would you like to see in the perfect historical trailer?

Lady Merry's Dashing Champion

The Becketts of Romney Marshl
(This one needs something extra for me to view it, but it might work for you.)

Surrender To The Highlander
(down a bit on the left.)

To Tempt A Scotsman
Her Irish Warrior

Touch of Texas

Rivals For The Crown

Lessons of Desire

Two with some magical elements.
Twilight Magic

Wench Mary Jo's The Marriage Spell

Over to you!

Jo

Art vs. Commerce

By Susan/Miranda

Like most businesses, publishing is always on the hunt for the Next Big Thing, not only in what goes between the covers, but what’s on the front as well.  As Wench Pat noted in her last blog, Cover Art follows fashion like everything else.  As soon as one book with an interesting cover becomes a bestseller, every other art director in New York rushes to join the parade. In other words, Good Art is the Art that Sells.

Now what’s new is old.  Old Masters, Fine Art, or just plain Paintings (it’s all in the capitalization, I guess) are gracing popular fiction.  This kind of art has long been used on bookcovers, but usually on so-called classic fiction.  Old art equaled old writing, apparently, though in many readers’ minds, the sight of any “old” painting on a bookcover immediately brings to mind book reports and reading lists.  I really wonder at some of these choices, too.  What exactly does the worldly French Comtesse d’Haussonville (painted by Ingres in 1845) have to do with Jane Austen’s heroine Emma of a generation earlier?

The art on covers now is often cropped in more interesting ways (though don't get me started on the head-less-ness; I'll save that for another blog), and balanced with elaborate type and other design elements to make it seem more "fresh."  Period art helps give a book historical credibility if the characters are based on real people.  When I wrote about Sarah Churchill in Duchess, it made sense for my publisher to put her portrait on the cover.  Though as I discovered when my publisher was choosing which portrait of Lady Castlemaine to put on the cover of Royal Harlot, it helps if your heroine’s face can pass current standards of attractiveness (For more about this, see my earlier blogs, Beauty & the Barbara, and Cover Girl.)

Lately paintings are turning up on mass market fiction, too. It's an interesting trend, one that many of the WordWenches readers seem to be embracing.  However, for the sake of fair reporting, I have to note that fine art covers on historical romances are, in several cases, proving more confusing than enticing.  Readers aren’t “seeing” these covers as romances, and seem to feel a traditional clinch (however overdone) announces a romance much better than a 19th century portrait -- or so the marketing folk are whispering with trepidation.  Who knows for certain?

Personally, I’m all for using art from the era of the story for any historically-based book, whether it's a romance, a western, action/war, or a fictionalized biography.  I love art history, and a painting I recognize makes me much more likely to pick up a book.  Museums and other private collections are paid for the usage of these pictures, too, and I appreciate how those fees help keep such institutions afloat.  And, frankly, it’s a lot easier to have a historical romance taken seriously when it has a handsome period cover (like Pam Rosenthal’s The Slightest Provocation here) instead of another luridly sweaty bodybuilder torso.

Which leads me to my Question of the Day: With all the thousands of historical images available around the world and over time, why are publishers using the same paintings over and over?   

Yes, I know, I’ve got the art-history-nerd-girl eye that spots these things at fifty paces.  But I can’t be the only one who’s noticed this, am I?  Georgette Heyer’s books are (finally) being reissued in elegant formats worthy of her writing.  But in my local big-box store, this new edition of The Infamous Army is on a table twenty feet from Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict.  Arggh!

That’s only the beginning.  Surely with all the beautiful art produced during the Tudor era by artists like Hans Holbein, there must be scads of images to use.  Yet both The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn by Robin Maxwell and A Lady Raised High by Laurien Gardiner have the same painting on their covers  Yes, it's a picture of Henry VIII's doomed second queen, but it wasn't done in her lifetime, or even by an English artist.  Instead it's a highly romanticized version of Anne's last days in the Tower of London, painted by Frenchman Edouard Cibot in 1835.  Go figure.

 

Another French artist has had even greater success defining English ladies of the Regency era, at least if current cover-art is to be believed.  Gerard's portrait of (the French, not English) Juliette Recamier is luminously beautiful, and one of the most famous portraits of the early 19th century. Art directors all up and down Manhattan must agree, because Juliette's turning up on covers lately with super-model frequency.  Here she is, in various forms, gracing the books of Honorary Wench Candace Hern, Mary Balough, and Amanda Elyot.

But perhaps the trend is already fading.  Philippa Gregory, the most successful of   current historical novelists, has never had a period-painting on a cover on her popular Tudor-set books.  Instead her “look” has been over-painted photographs of costumed models, with lavish gold embossing and lush type.  Yet the latest edition (the movie tie-in) of The Other Boleyn Girl looks more like one of the Gossip Girls series set in modern New York than the Tudors of sixteenth century England.

What do you think of fine art on book covers?  Does it make you pick up a book, or pass on by?  And how many other separated-at-birth covers have you seen in the stores?

You can quote me

From Loretta:

I have a book due soon, and my brain, which is thinking as hard as it can about that one thing, begs to be excused from thinking about anything else.  That is why today I’m letting others do my thinking for me, in the form of quotations.  You're invited to join the quote fest.

“Tim had made shift to live many years by writing novels, at the rate of five pounds a volume; but that branch of business is now engrossed by female authors, who publish merely for the propagation of virtue, with so much ease and spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge of the human heart, and all in the serene tranquillity of high life, that the reader is not only inchanted by their genius, but reformed by their morality.”

A guy wrote that.  The guy is Tobias Smollett and the quotation comes from THE EXPEDITION OF HUMPHRY CLINKER, which, some of you may recall (though I can’t imagine why) was one of the books I never got around to reading (the blog is One of these days).  I finally did get around to it, and it’s a delightful book.  Though I am more in sympathy with Samuel Johnson regarding remuneration--“Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money”--and I’ve a constitutional aversion to using books to reform anybody, I think Smollett was certainly right about women’s “knowledge of the human heart.”  He had many apt things to say about this, that, and the other thing.  For instance, “A man may be very entertaining and instructive on paper...and exceedingly dull in common discourse.”  That’s my thinking.  If I could talk entertainingly, I wouldn’t need to write.  Not that this is what I wish for.  What I wish for is to be a quotable writer.  In the meantime...

How about this little Smollett gem: “truly, she has got a languishing eye, and reads romances.”

If this tempts you to try the book, I strongly urge you to spring for the Norton Critical Edition, which is very nicely annotated.  Otherwise, you’ll feel as though you are reading a language you learned in junior high school and haven’t used since.  And that, BTW, is something I stole--er, I mean, am quoting from somebody or other (a Wench, could it be?).

Which brings me to this from Robert Benchley:  “Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author’s soul.  If that upheaval is not present, then it must come from the works of any other author which happen to be handy and easily adapted.”

My current WIP, YOUR SCANDALOUS WAYS, has many quotations. 

Because Byron was in Venice about the time of my story, and because he has such delicious things to say about men and women and their relationships, I’ve used quotations from his poetry at the start of each chapter.  Too, now and again my characters will quote somebody.  This is a way, among other things, to indicate that H/H have similar tastes in books or music or to show a deeper understanding of an issue.  Some quotations I’ve used because they’re so apt that nothing else will do.  And some because, well, I love them so much that I just want to share them

Here’s a chapter quotation, from BEPPO:
      For glances beget ogles, ogles sighs,
      Sighs wishes, wishes words, and words a letter,
      Which flies on wings of light-heel’d Mercuries
      And then, God knows what mischief may arise
      When love links two young people in one fetter,
      Vile assignations, and adulterous beds,
      Elopements, broken vows and hearts and heads.

I quote from DON JUAN as well, which is very accommodating in that way, being so looooooong and loaded with great stuff.  You’ll find quotations from that poem in LORD OF SCOUNDRELS (reissue coming in December) as well.

I have lots of quotations to share, not all sublime.  Many are ridiculous, but they are favorites, some decades old.  There was the Salada Tea Bag:  “If it weren’t for Venetian blinds, it’d be curtains for all of us.”  There are other authors.  Dickens, of course.  Oscar Wilde.  I could go on and on but that would get pretty boring, since it’s all one person’s taste.

So I ask you to take a turn and share quotations from your collection.  Sublime?  Ridiculous?  In between?  It can come from a Great Work, a fortune cookie, your Uncle Albert.

Maybe I’ll steal it and use it somewhere.

Journey to yesterday

by Mary Jo

The last weekend in August, we visited the past.  Not literally, of course—I save that for the characters in A Distant Magic—but we spent two nights on Smith Island in the Chesapeake Bay.

As the only inhabited island in Maryland, Smith Island is well known regionally, though probably not elsewhere.  (Tangier Island, with a similar history, is not far away but in Virginia’s portion of the bay.)

The island’s roots run deep—it was discovered by Captain John Smith (but named after Henry Smith, an early landowner.)  It was settled in the 1680s and many current residents (there are several hundred, but I can’t find a reliable figure) are descended from those early colonists.  The place is packed with Evanses and Tylers and Marshalls Bradfords. 

Most of the original settlers were of English and Welsh descent, and the population is overwhelmingly Methodist.  As was generally true in the past, the church is the largest, most imposing building in the town, rising above the surrounding houses in each of the three Smith Island settlements. 

Smith Islanders speak with a distinct, rather Elizabethan lilt, and use some non-standard language constructions.  They are inheritors of a traditional way of life that is fast vanishing.  Not that they’re off the grid—these days the island has electricity and telephone service and most of the businesses have websites (heres the island site: http://smithisland.org/ ) and the older kids are ferried to school on the mainland when they outgrow the elementary school. 

But it’s a different way of life from what most of us know.  I think it must be rather like the lives of the English historical characters I write about.  You are part of a small community where everyone knows everyone else.  This is probably sometimes suffocating, but people are well-behaved. (Here’s an amusing piece about police presence on the island:  http://smithisland.org/police.html )

You can’t easily nip into town and do serious shopping.  In bad weather, you’re isolated for days, weeks, or even months at a time so you had better be good at getting along with the others in your household and neighborhood.  Having a well-furnished mind so you can keep yourself amused is also necessary.  Not to mention a well-furnished pantry.

Smith Island can only be reached by ferry.   (There was a helipad on the main road for emergency medical evacuation, but I use “main road” loosely.)  The ferry ride is about 45 minutes from Crisfield, the nearest town.  The Crisfield water tower has a crab on it, so it’s not surprising that it’s the crab-picking capital of Maryland.  <G>

Our weekend visit to Smith Island was way cool, though not literally—we could have done without the heat wave that sent the heat index over 100.  (Bleaaaghhh!)  But the island is an interesting place.  For starters, it’s dead flat and only a few feet above sea level.  Over the years, hundreds of acres have been lost to erosion and rising water levels. (Global warming in action.)  Someday the island will vanish altogether. 

The original settlers were mostly farmers, but loss of arable land, plus the development of refrigeration, turned many of the residents into watermen, which is the local term for those who harvest the bay’s crabs, oysters, and fish.  There is also some tourism, of the hit and run variety.   Most visitors take a ferry over from Crisfield at 12:30 pm, have a bite of lunch, rent bicycles or a golf cart to explore, visit the very nice museum, then leave on the 4:00 pm ferry back to Crisfield.  There were a couple of dozen people on the noon ferry, and we were the only ones who had luggage to spend a night. 

There are three small B&Bs.  The one we stayed at, Chesapeake Sunrise ( http://chesapeakesunrise.com/pages/1/index.htm ), was right by the ferry landing and couldn’t have been more convenient.  Hospitable, too, and we were given the run of the kitchen and fridge.  On the other hand, one doesn’t go to Smith Island for a Ritz experience.  Our room was pleasant (and mercifully had a window a/c unit), but we shared a bathroom with the owners. <G>  Not a problem, though. 

Right next door was the Bayside restaurant.  Most visitors lunch there, with fine crab cakes and Smith Island cake being the favorites.  (The Bayside closes when the ferry leaves.  On advice of our host, we bought carryout for our Friday night dinner.) 

The Smith Island cake is well worth describing, since it’s a layer cake with 8 or 10 layers.  Each layer is maybe 3/16th inch thick.  With so many layers, there are lots of opportunities for frosting, which explains the cake’s popularity.  <g> White cake with chocolate icing seemed to be the favorite, and a worthy choice it was.  Another local specialty was applesauce pie, which was a kind of custard and also quite nice.  It’s a dry island, though—my companion was Not Pleased to find he couldn’t order a beer to go with the crab cake. <g> 

In case you’re wondering, the Smith Island cake isn’t made from several standard layers that are sliced into narrower pieces.  Each thin layer is baked individually.  You use as many 9” tins as your oven can hold, then bake for 6 or 8 minutes.  Obviously the potential for burning is high.  The pans have to be pulled out at exactly the right time, then cleaned and used again.  Labor intensive but worth it, at least for the lucky eaters.  (Here’s a recipe for a version with chocolate and peanut butter: http://tinyurl.com/yrtnge  )

The high point of our weekend was a boat ride out to the Martin National Wildlife Refuge that makes up most of Smith Island.  The refuge is actually a separate area across a channel.  Once it was also farmland, but now it’s pretty much gone to marsh. 

Luckily, our landlady knew exactly who to call.  Captain Waverly Evans was available, the tide was right, and he picked us up half an hour later in a no-nonsense working boat.  80 years old and well-weathered by a lifetime on the bay, the Captain is a multi-tasker who is a waterman, I’m sure, plus he takes out tourists like us and makes folk art from wood that he sells in his own shop. 

Multi-tasking is common is such small communities—everyone we met seemed to wear several hats.  Our B&B hostess is an excellent painter http://paulistudio.com/ and her husband runs the small but spiffy Smith Island Marina in front of the house http://www.smithisland.us/marina.htm , plus he has a job in Crisfield.  (Neither of them are island natives.)

The wildlife tour was wonderful.  We glided around marshes covered with sea grass and admired the egrets and herons, not to mention the fattest white gulls I’ve ever seen.  The wildlife service builds stands to attract ospreys—sea eagles.  The stands look like an inverted pyramid on top of a pole, and the ospreys cheerfully built their messy nests inside.  (The nest at right was built in a dead tree, the traditional mode.) Most nests seemed to have a mated pair and one or two nearly grown offspring.  When they flew off at the boat’s approach, often one had a fish firmly clenched in its claws. 

There was also a peregrine’s nest, the result of a documentary project film project, and a bald eagle nest. We saw one of the eagles at a distance, but it just sat in a tree and looked bored.

Best of all were the pelicans.  There must have been a hundred or more cruising lazily in a shallow bay.  They swooped up into the air when we approached—those suckers are BIG—then sailed down and settled on the water again. Magnificent.  I understand that in the autumn, during the sea bird migration season, the island is amazing.  That’s when the serious birdwatchers show up.  We are mere dilettantes. 

This island has cats as well as birds.  Here’s a fun site with pictures of local kitties: http://smithisland.org/gallerycats.html

Because of the boat ride, we only had time to hire a golf cart to explore the inhabited part of the island for half an hour.  It was enough.  <G>  There are two settlements on the main island, Ewell, where we stayed, and Rhodes Point.  The later was once called Rogues Point because it was a pirate hangout, but the U. S. Post Office refused to allow an office in a community called Rogues Point, so the name was tamed. <G>  The third settlement, on another piece of land, is called Tylerton and has a B&B with the wonderful name The Inn of Silent Music. 

A little general store sort of place called Ruke’s (all of a block away) was open for dinner on Saturdays—the only night of the week when you can eat dinner out.  It was—authentic in the extreme.  But they served darned good crab cakes. <g>

We left Sunday morning on a 7:30 am ferry, a much smaller boat than the one we came over on.  The weather was sunny, the sea flat calm, and the temperature very comfortable.  Paradise on a boat.  We were the only passengers—along with 11 cartons of soft-shelled crabs.  We were told that when the soft shells reached New York City later in the day, they’d sell for $40/dozen.  The crabs were a lot more valuable than we were. <g>

If you’re ever in the area, I certainly recommend a visit to Smith Island.  It’s authentic, with a real and rooted community, and a traditional way of living that may not make it to another generation.  It’s a special place. 

With great crab cakes.

There are other places like Smith Island, that are uniquely themselves but also connected to the past.  What ones have you visited?  Or you'd like to visit?  It's always nice to add new locales to my travel wish list! 

Mary Jo

NAME THAT HERO

What's in a name? Everything!

Whether you're writing a romance, a fantasy, a mystery, or the Great American Novel, your character's names are important as the plot.

Call me Ishmael.
Great.
Call me Irving?
Not so great.

Frankly, Myrna, I don't give a damn.
Mmmm... needs work.

I've written dozens of romance novels and novellas. The plots keep coming, but the names get harder. Frankly my dears, I'm running out of really great hero names. And I'm starting a new Regency set novel.

I don't go for the 'Rock' names. By which I mean really "hard" hero names: Dirk and Brad, Lance and Thrust...(big old grin) by which the author shows that the guys has got IT! I need real names that show character, grace, and most of all - names that fit the time and place I'm writing about. That's not saying I need some Melvins and Jerrys. I mean a name that signifies a man of means, and parts - that he knows how to use in his historical era.

So how about giving a girl a hand by suggesting a good heroic name? If I use it in a book, I'll let you know and will give you many thanks. And I'll pick one namer at random to win a copy of my new book: BRIDE ENCHANTED. (Hero name: Aubrey) I'll announce the book winner in my next Wenches blog.

So suggest away! Help! And thanks in advance.