Word Wenches

An Interview with Sherry Thomas

by Mary Jo

MJP:  As a romance writer, I get all kinds of romance promo thingies in e-mail.  If I’m busy, I delete them unopened.  Sometimes, if I’m not busy or the promo is for an author I like, I’ll take a look.  The very first time I ever went out and bought a book by an unknown author because of the cyber-promo piece was Sherry Thomas’s Private Arrangements.  ( http://sherrythomas.com/  )

Quite simply, her prose was ravishing—the kind of wit that is associated with the very best of Regencies, though Sherry’s books are set in late Victorian times.  Try a sample: http://sherrythomas.com/arrangements.html#bookexcerpt 

Her wordcraft would be impressive with any new author.  What makes it extraordinary is that Sherry is a first generation Chinese American who didn’t come to this country until she was 13.  According to her website, a year later she was reading big fat historical romances with her trusty Chinese American dictionary by her side.  Not only is English not her first language, but unlike, say, German and English, Chinese and English are totally different in structure and usage.

Sherry, could you tell us how went from that dictionary to becoming a published writer, and an instant hit with your first book? 

ST: LOL, I'm not so sure about the instant hit part, but I will say it has been a long way from that English-Chinese dictionary, which I still have, though I haven't cracked it open in years.

It helps that I've always been a fan of words and language.  For my tenth birthday, my great aunt gave me a brick of a Chinese dictionary, and I used to read it for fun and—this went into true word geek territory—copy down interesting idiomatic expressions in a notebook. 

And it helps that I've always been a huge reader.  After I arrived in the States, I very quickly ran through all the Chinese-language books there were to be had among the Chinese student population (my mom was a grad student then at LSU).  So I was more or less forced to read beyond my English level in order to read anything at all.  I read tons of historical romance and science fiction, destroyed the spine of my poor dictionary, and emerged at eighteen with the vocabulary of a Victorian old lady. :-)

I think this answers about half of your question, on how I acquired proficiency in English.  My road to publication is a different story altogether.  I came from a family of scientists and engineers.  While I enjoyed my writing assignments as a child, I can honestly say I'd never seriously considered writing as a career.  Partly because we knew of no writers, partly because I already understood even then that crafting stories was hard, since with the stories I made up to entertain myself and my friends, I could never go beyond a wildly scintillating beginning to any sort of plausible plot development.

But sometimes life throws curveballs at you.  And so it was that I found myself in my early twenties not studying for a grad degree as had been my plan all along, but raising an infant as a stay-at-home mom.  After reading a particularly silly romance one day, I said, hmm, perhaps I could do better.  And perhaps I could make a little money from it.

That was the beginning.  After that came eight years of the usual writer's slog.  Manuscript.  Rejection.  Manuscript.  Rejection.  More manuscripts.  More rejections.  Until one day the stars aligned.  People said yes all the way up the chain of command and I found myself with a book contract.

MJP:  What particularly draws you to writing romance?  Why historical novels?  And why the late Victorian era?

ST: I've always been drawn to love stories.  But I am not a romantic in the traditional sense.  I don't think romantic love is sufficient at all for happiness, but must be accompanied by wisdom, courage, kindness, generosity, patience, commitment...and the list goes on and on.  So my stories aren't exactly about people falling in love--they are already desperately in love—but about how they acquire the depth and strength of character to handle something as marvelous and difficult as love.

MJP: Aha!  A most salient point, and entirely true.

ST: As for the historical part, for the longest time I had no idea why.  I mean, it has been my great ambition to write SF romance, yet I keep completing one historical after another.  Finally I realized that it's because the price of love is at its highest in historical romance, what with marriages being a practically irreversible choice and reputations of such paramount importance.  So the stakes are correspondingly higher.  With higher stakes come sharper conflicts.  And with sharper conflicts come more absorbing stories.

I got hooked on the late Victorian/Edwardian era because of my great addiction to 2 books—The Shadow and the Star by Laura Kinsale, set in 1887, and Beast by Judith Ivory, set in 1902, if I'm not mistaken (my copy is out with a friend).  Because all the technologies we take for granted nowadays were so sexy back then. (Electricity? Yum.  Telephone?  Hot.  Automobile? OMG!)  Because photography existed and I use photographs relentlessly in my stories.  And because people bathed regularly.  :-)

MJP:  Your first book, Private Arrangements has the mother of all conflicts!  Gigi committed a devastating betrayal, and the depth of Camden’s feelings are reflected in his equally devastating over-reaction.  Can you tell us a bit about how you came to write this particular story?

ST: I read a lot of Big Misunderstanding story lines growing up.  So I was rebelling against my romance upbringing by writing a story where there is no misunderstanding, that if the hero thinks the heroine did something awful, it's because she really did do something awful.

Private Arrangements exists in two versions.  The unpublished version was my first manuscript, completed in 2000.  It was soundly rejected everywhere.  I tossed my only physical copy of it into a box in a corner, where it quietly fed bookworms for five years until for no clear reason I sat down one day and read a few pages from it. 

I kind of gagged on my writing.  But I realized I was still as fundamentally taken with the idea as ever—that of a young woman who commits a grave wrong in the name of love and the messy aftermath of it all.  So I took that basic backstory, changed everything about the book except the characters' names, and rewrote it from scratch.  (There is not a single thing I used from the prior manuscript, nothing.)

The big lesson to me, which again served me very well with Delicious, is that I shouldn’t ever be afraid to toss things out and start over.  An idea is nothing until the execution is commensurate.

MJP: Your second book, Delicious, has some of the best food porn I’ve ever read. <g>  The lushness of the descriptions reminds me of authors like Barbara Samuel and the poet/essayist Diane Ackerman.  Do you love to cook?  Love to eat?  Was it because all that lovely food fit the story?  All of the above?

ST: Roughly speaking, I wrote three completely different full versions of Delicious.   In some of the earlier drafts there was actually a lot more food porn, because that had been my original intention, to write food porn.  And then somewhere along the way I came to a realization that no, it's not about the food, it was never about the food.  And I made a decision that food should not come on the page unless it is about character. 

MJP: That’s one of the things I loved about the book—that the food was always about emotion. 

ST: Much of Delicious is about the hero's loneliness.  He is a man who no longer tastes and his dead tastebuds are a metaphor of the way he's buried his emotional self.  When the heroine's cooking shocks his palate into life, this is his reaction:
       
“And therein lay the danger of Mme. Durant and her cooking—not that it was delectable, but that it was evocative, and made him think far beyond food. The rediscovery of taste was as perilous as he’d feared it would be, rousing other dormant, dangerous longings for everything he did not have, everything he’d hoped to hold dear and could not.”
 

So I hope this is what the lushness comes from, that it connects the stomach to the heart.

As for me, I do love to eat, and I do like to cook (though no one has ever called me cooking evocative).  But through most of the third and final draft of Delicious, I was very hungry myself—I have this bad habit of not getting off the computer when I'm on deadline, whether I'm actually writing or not.  And perhaps my own fervent hunger seeped a little into the book? :-)

MJP: There are two kinds of writers on deadline: those who don’t eat anything, and those who eat anything that isn’t nailed down….  (Read Delicious to find the meaning of the madeleines above on the right.)

As both a reader and a writer, what do you consider key elements of a great story?

ST: I really don't think there is a single key element beyond suck-me-in-ness.  Whether it is world-building, prose, character, voice, emotional intensity, sexual tension, humor, or just good old plot-and-pace, do one thing exceptionally well, and I will read the book.  Do two things exceptionally well, and I will read the backlist.  Do three things exceptionally, and I will shout about you from the roof tops.

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

ST: I'd like to see more power couples.  Readers love Eva Dallas and Roark.  They love Dain and Jessica.  Yet romance does not produce nearly as many of them as one'd think.  Heck, even I've only produced one power couple (Gigi and Camden in PA).  But I'm trying.

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

ST: The best parts are so many, never having to buy business attire is definitely one of them.  And writing is just such a joy in and of itself, getting paid for it still makes me giggle, like getting paid for eating and sleeping.

The most frustrating thing is probably when stories don't gel.  You write and you write and everything is just so much pablum with no zing, no punch, no emotional truth.  Or when your editor comes back with a 16-page single-spaced revision letter. 

But after Delicious, I've concluded that just about any sad sack of a story can be fixed, provided one is willing to dump the said sad sack and start all over again. (Twice.)

(You bet now I think a lot harder before committing 90,000 words to hard drive!)

MJP:  Do you have any other thoughts you’d like to kick around?

ST: I'd like to thank the Wenches for having me.  It's been a pleasure and a privilege and I'm humbled to be amongst so much greatness.

<mjp rolls eyes slightly, but with a smile>

MJP: Tell us about your third book, Not Quite A Husband, which will be out in 2009. 

ST: I have a penny-dreadful kind of pitch for it, taken directly from a discarded paragraph of the manuscript.  “The frontiers of India!  A time of war!  He is deathly ill and she is the only doctor in miles!” 

And I'd like to mention that they used to be married until she asked for an annulment.  Conflict enough?  :-)

MJP: Works for me. <G>

For more fun, check out Sherry's two book trailers, which she did herself.  I particularly liked this one for Private Arrangements, which I thought really captured the essence of the story. <g>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_9LYBD_YPY&feature=related

Here's the one for Delicious:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6VQZGSUYuk

Sherry will give away a signed book to a commenter who posts between now and midnight Thursday. 

You can check out her website at http://sherrythomas.com/

And don't try reading Delicious unless you have some good food at hand!

Mary Jo

Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

No. I haven't gotten to the white wine yet.
That's because †he sun isn't over the yard-arm yet. I don't have a boat, but that's when they say drinking usually starts. But what direction must the boat be facing? It is, I think, a silly designation. One drinks when the occasion is right.
And the moon won't be up until tonight.
It happens to be New Year's' Eve for folks of my persuasion - 5769! It commemorates the day that Mankind was created. This year, it falls on ... tonight! It ends October 1st.

It's interesting to have a New Year in September - or October. It's an olde calendar, so it's based on lunar cycles. That's half the fun - never knowing just when the new year will appear.

I also have a New Year to celebrate at midnight, December 31st. This year it will welcome the arrival of 2009. It arrives on the same day every year because it's based on a solar calendar.

So I celebrate both.
One New Year is for assessing your past year, admitting your mistakes and thanking the Creator for letting you make it so far, even so.
It's also for asking for forgiveness, remembering old friends, repenting your sins and mistakes, praying a lot for mercy and courage, and vowing to do better in the new year.
And it's a time for blowing horns, and dancing and drinking.

The same thing happens at the Jewish New Year too, except it goes on for days, and you repent and fast for a day, and then eat a lot the rest of the time.
And blow horns and dance and drink.

But one New Year comes when the world here on the East Coast of the U. S. of A. is usually barren and frozen. And the other comes at harvest time.
Both make sense in their timing.

Lots of things start in the autumn. The seeds and fruit that ripen and fall in the autumn go into the ground to wait for spring. Even as things seem to be dying, there will be a rebirth. And many things are brewing under the snow in the winter around here, sleeping until spring. Even as the world seems forsaken by life, it will be reborn. So both holidays celebrate Hope. And both new years' observances are for celebrating life, being grateful for it, and noting the passage of Time.

So what's the link betwixt a new year and Fiction?

The world of Fiction defies Time. The world of Historical Fiction lets a reader and writer travel through Time. And the world of Historical Romance allows both reader and writer to revise truth, ignore Time, and create a happier world that exists outside of Time. That's the lure of it, the core of it, and the joy of it. At least it is for me.

And so just as I celebrate two new years, I realize that I can't predict what will happen to me or thee in either one, and am forced to contemplate the fact that we are all at the mercy of cosmic forces we can't fully understand. That's why I write fiction. And I 'll bet that's why you read it too.

Is it?

So I wish you a gladsome, joyous new year, filled with promise and hope, and the joys of health, wealth, joy and Fiction, whichever one or two or three new years you celebrate.

.....

L'Shana Tovah!
Happy New Year!

Guest Sherry Thomas Here 10/1

On Wednesday, October 1, the Wenches are delighted to welcome Sherry Thomas, called "the most powerfully original historical romance author writing today" by Lisa Kleypas.  Sherry writes smart, intense, sumptuous Gilded Age historicals.  Her first book, Private Arrangements, was an April, 2008 release, and her second, Delicious, came out in August 2008.  Join Sherry October 1 for wit, wisdom, and and truly delicious food porn! 

Beam Me Up, Scotty!

  Susan Sarah on a rainy Friday morning … and let’s face it, some days we just don’t have much time for a bit o’ bloggery, so I’ll make this a short and hopefully fun bit o’ bloggery.

Here at Word Wenches, we love historical fiction and non-fiction, and most of us love reading and learning about history, studying eras and people, and reading and writing within those generous parameters. And this morning, seeing the trailers and reading the reviews for the new movie "The Duchess" -- where Keira Knightley, according to advance word, has stepped completely and beautifully into the very elegant slippers of the Duchess of Devonshire -- I got to thinking.

What if we could not just read about, or act as, but actually BE our favorite historical person for a little while?

What if you were shown an actual time machine -- one that works effortlessly, within the expanded laws of quantam physics -- and then told that you could step into this thing and program something specific in time, for as long or as brief a period as you like -- so that your conscious awareness would be projected and merged with that of any historical person you choose? If that were possible, what woman (or man) would you want to be? You have the ability to step into their shoes and their life, and you can duck out before things get sticky. And if you like, you can stay much longer, though knowing what we do about the denouement and demise some of our favorites, we might want to opt out.

You’d probably have more than one choice – my own list is pretty long. Last night I asked my sons and my husband who they would want to be. My oldest son (the doctah) said, “I’d love to be Socrates, except for that whole hemlock thing. Though it's really quick as long as the rhythm of the heart is..." blah blah. He said he'd also like to live for a while as a historical Shaolin monk. Not too long.

My middle son answered that he’d like to be Roland, Charlemagne’s elite knight (what a nice revelation for his mom, who didn’t even know he was too aware of the Chanson de Roland) – or that he’d choose to do the Viking thing, and maybe pop in as Leif Eriksson sailing to and discovering North America. Or he’d step into a Samurai’s flip-flops for a while (my youngest son didn't answer his cell, so he didn't get to participate!).

My husband said he’d like to be Nikola Tesla or Andrew Carnegie, and when I suggested that there might be, er, more exciting choices … he admitted he'd secretly love to be a medieval Mongol on the Steppes, galloping a horse across the plains. I loved that part in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ...

As for myself, the choices were so very many and so very tempting that my decision circuits were practically overloaded (this is not a stretch for a Libra). So I settled on a few picks for today, and tomorrow I'll think of more, and more the next day, and the next … I'd keep that time device thang pretty busy.

I'll go with these:

1) Joan of Arc (she utterly fascinates me ... I'd love to feel the freedom, power and wonder of all that she experienced, but I’ll duck out before the end!)

2) Eleanor of Aquitaine (I’d stick around for quite a while here, though when the dysfunctional family stuff got too tedious, I might leave ... no wait, I'd  probably knock their heads together and make them sit there until they worked it out ) … popping in as the absolute diva of medieval queens brings in the full medieval experience and I wouldn't want to miss that.

3) Charlotte Charpentier, wife of Sir Walter Scott … mostly because I absolutely adore the woman’s house and would love to live there for as long as I could (and who could resist lovely Regency gowns AND Abbotsford!)

4) Margaret of Scotland -- 11th century queen ... the research opp alone would be incredible, since she's the central subject of my current novel-in-progress. I'd duck in and out of Margaret's life, taking notes, while skipping the excessive prayer and fasting routines -- really I'd want to observe her, rather than be her -- so I'd also choose to be one of her close circle of Scottish and Saxon ladies, to better study this incredibly complex woman. Though my needlework is not up to the task, and I'd have to fake it.

Who would you be, and why?  And what would send you running back to the time machine, yelling “Beam me up!” while you still had the chance?

~Susan Sarah

The Angry Apostrophe

From Loretta:

I recently learned that 24 September is National Punctuation Day.  In honor of the occasion--which coincides nicely with my recent blogs dealing with Annoying Errors, I thought we could talk about those interesting squigglies and dots and dashes we use to help readers understand what we mean.

In my last blog, I indicated that one way to get a group of authors ranting and raving was to bring up the subject of copy editors.  Among other things, a copy editor is supposed to check our punctuation.  For some reason, copy edit changes used to disturb me far more than editorial changes.  I would go ballistic when a copy editor removed or added a comma, yet not even blink when an editor suggested I delete three chapters.

It must be some kind of mental condition.  That would explain why I still twitch when I remember a very weird set of mistakes in at least one volume of Byron’s Letters and Journals.  Throughout, it’s was used where its should be and vice versa.  It drove me insane.

I know Byron was clueless about punctuation.  He admitted it.  I know a dash tended to be his universal punctuation tool--but he did dash very dashingly, we must admit.  I can understand his failing to master the art of commas, semi-colons, and colons.  An apostrophe, however, is sort of a spelling tool, isn’t it?  It marks contractions.  And he seemed to understand this aspect of punctuation..sort of...or was that his editor?  He uses tons of contractions.  They appear in practically every piece of his poetry I quoted in Your Scandalous Ways.  Here’s a sample from Beppo.

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

Yes, he had his own unique style but his grammar was fine and his spelling no weirder or more inconsistent than others of his time.  It seems bizarre that he got it’s and its backwards consistently.  I can’t help thinking those errors were not in the original letters but were committed by a typist, copy editor, or printer and somehow went through the whole production process without anyone realizing--or with everyone thinking that’s how he did it.

I’ve always wondered why it’s and its confuse anybody, but they clearly do because I see it all the time, including in newspapers.  Is it because English teachers don’t drum it into kids’ heads early and often enough?  It’s one of those things, like the use of lie and lay, that need to be drummed in because it’s easy to get confused.  In English we form possessive pronouns differently from the way we form other possessives, e.g.,  “Pavarotti’s voice was distinctive” but “its engine was broken.”

However, while I can--sort of, and with sorrow in my heart--understand how apostrophes get misplaced, I have never figured out how apostrophes got into the plurals business--as in “Banana’s 89¢ a pound” or “keeping up with the Jones’s.”

Here is one approach to explaining the correct way to use apostrophes.  Here's a politer version of same.  And here are many examples of punctuation abuse.

A few years ago, Lynn Truss got so exasperated with stupid punctuation that she wrote a book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, about it.  Funny thing is, the book’s loaded with...um...punctuation errors.  Louis Menand, in the New Yorker (28 June 2004), reviewed her book, and suspected it was a hoax, because the errors, he said, started in the dedication and continued with gay abandon throughout the book.

In Jasper Fforde’s alternate reality novel, The Eyre Affair, a form of specially engineered bookworms (as in actual larval things, not nerds--and I cannot possibly get into the technical capabilities of these bookworms) excrete apostrophes.  That would explain the wretched excess.

Here's one proposed solution to apostrophe atrocities: abolish that little squiggle.

I don’t agree.  I’ve devoted my life to the English language, trying to master its intricacies.  Punctuation, grammar--all those dull, technical matters to me are part of the big game of exploring the expressive possibilities of a remarkably elastic language.  To eradicate a punctuation mark is like eliminating, say, metaphors.  Yes, it would make things simpler, but should language always be simple?  A straight line is the shortest distance between two points, but it’s not necessarily the most beautiful route.

But that’s just me.  Now it’s your turn.  Got a pet punctuation peeve?  An example of demented punctuation?  An argument for or against abolishing a particular punctuation mark?  A strange punctuation experience?  A profound indifference?

This is the place.  Now’s the time.

Romance on the Reading List?

by Susan  Scott

My daughter is a freshman at a large, internationally-known university in the northeast.  Because she’s a smartie (I swear, that’s the end of my maternal bragging), she placed into an honors English seminar in rhetoric and composition.  Apparently the focus for each section depends on each professor’s interests and expertise, and my daughter wasn’t sure what the topic or reading list would be until the first day of class. 

Of course since English had always been among my own favorite classes in school, I expected a full report.  And I got it, too, via the cell phone the minute my daughter left the classroom.

“Mom,” she said gleefully.  “You won’t believe this.  We’re reading JENNY CRUSIE!!!”

I didn’t believe it.  Mothers of teenaged girls have a finally honed skepticism.  But she emailed me the syllabus, and it was true.  I’ll quote from the professor’s introduction:

“This course examines the rhetoric surrounding romance and how we see it: what is romance? How has love been defined in Western society? How do perceptions of gender, class, and race affect how romance is portrayed, marketed, or used as a marketing tool? In other words, this course uses romance, both as a concept and a genre, as a lens through which we can discuss various approaches to critical analysis. . . .

“Ultimately, this course is designed to make you think critically not only about gender, genre, and emotion, but, more importantly, about how and what you write. Thus, you will examine different kinds of texts and different methods of analyzing those texts in order to foster a more critical approach to not only others’ writing, but your own as well.”

What were the odds that the daughter of a romance writer would end up in the one seminar that was discussing romance seriously?  Pride in my much-maligned genre grew as I scanned the reading list.  Yes, Jenny Crusie was there, but also Annie Proulx and George Eliot. And Cassie Edwards, ahem.  And a couple of names familiar to WordWenches readers –– AGTigress and Laura Vivianco –– as well as one of our fav sister-sites, the Smart Bitches.  Major academic R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and about time, too.

And yet, the stuffy-reading-dinosaur-parent side of me was . . . unsettled.  Does popular genre fiction really belong in a college English literature class? 

Up front: my qualms are not based on quality.  There are plenty of first-rate writers writing genre fiction, much of which I’m sure will stand the test of time and still be read and enjoyed a hundred years from now.  Besides, people like to read genre fiction more than any other kind of book (even Oprah picks!), which is enough to qualify them as Good Books to me.  After all, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens were considered writers of low popular fiction in their respective days, and gosh, look at their reputations now.

Nope, my Niggling Doubts are in another corner.  My daughter and her classmates would have no trouble at all finding Jenny’s books in just about any place that sells books, from B&N to Walgreen’s and Walmart.  They’re waiting there, beguiling in cheery covers, and deeply discounted, too.

But what about all those other long-ago writers who are often no longer even in print, let alone in deep discount?

For most people, college is the last gasp of required reading, the last time you’re expected to read books and authors you’ll never go near once left to your own devices.  It’s only four years, even less for majors outside the humanities.  Sometimes required reading provokes nothing but Fear and Loathing, which is why there will always be Cliff Notes. 

But what about those hidden treasures?  Those authors you discovered and came to love, whose characters seemed to speak to you, or whose language seemed written exactly to your tastes?  Books that made you think? 

Or was that just me?

I'm a reader.  Always have been, likely always will be. For me, back in the dark ages of the 1970s, college reading lists were crammed full of happy surprises.  I learned that there were far more voices in the literary world than dead European white males (the dreaded DEWMs!), and that the lives of the 18th century French women in Dangerous Liasons weren’t any less complicated than those of the 18th century Chinese women in Dream of the Red Chamber. I found I often liked the lesser books better than the famous ones, preferring Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders over Tess of the D’Urbervilles.  For the first time, I read women writers that still weren’t being taught in my high school: Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston, Edith Wharton, Anne Hutchinson, Virginia Woolf, Phylis Wheatley.  I learned that there was a lot more to English theatre than just Shakespeare, and that the plays of Aphra Behn were still worth reading, even with three hundred of years of dust on the pages. 

I could go on and on, but (mercifully) I won’t.  I can’t make up my mind, anyway.  I keep flip-flopping over this like the proverbial flounder on the dock.

So instead I’d rather hear your opinions.  Are you delighted/horrified/indifferent that romance is finally considered worthy of academic study?  Does modern genre romance deserve a place in a liberal arts education?  Should Welcome to Temptation be elbowing out The Rise of Silas Lapham? Could the professor have made the same points about romance using less familiar texts from the past, or will twenty-first-century college students glean more useful insights from contemporary popular fiction than a musty book that's two hundred years old?  And do you remember discovering some unexpectedly special book by way of required reading, or were reading lists no more than the bane of your school exisitence?

We Have Winners!

We have four winners, this time!  Edith has awarded books to three winners for leaving comments on her post titled "Who is She Wearing?" In her own words, here are her choices:

For illuminating: Laura Vivanco
For Gretchen: for amusing and eerily on the nose
And for naughty Louis, for downright ridiculous.

Winners, please send your mailing address and your book choice to Sherrie.

Susan King has chosen Janae as the winner of the autographed Dougie MacLean CD.  Janae, please send us your mailing address.

Thanks to everyone for participating!

Gold and hyacinths

There's Charlie with a little phial of gold I bought for him in Australia. He likes sparkly things and that seemed appropriate.

I though I'd be topical and talk about financial matters, especially "interesting" ones.

But first, prize winners! I selected three winners from the blog on historicals and masks/secrets. Thanks for filling in so well for me when I was in Australia. I may blog about some of the historical aspects there one day soon. Like the convict who tried to escape in a kangaroo suit... But I digress. Or tease.*G*

Theo wins a book for her observation that in Phantom the disguise is almost a third entity in the plot. Yes, perhaps that's what a disguise, and also a secret, needs to be.

Rev Melinda wins for pointing us to one of the profound aspects. "one of the central psychological and spiritual tasks of adulthood-- the task of knowing oneself, of coming to terms with that self, and of allowing oneself to be seen, and known, and loved, by others." Beautiful.

Anh Piper wins for a fascinating glimpse into the morgue. " we had many instances where people had 3 or more names written on the board. It was really very odd."

E-mail me at [email protected] with your choice of book. I've just received some copies of a Christmas collection from Harlequin called A Bride For Christmas. (Sorry for the picture quality. I haven't had time to scan it.) My story in there is'nt new -- it's The Wise Virgin -- but the other two stories are by the excellent Heather Graham and Candace Camp, and I haven't yet added it to my book list.

On to financial nuttiness.

I believe back when one of the Wenches mentioned the great tulip mania of the 17th century.
"At the peak of tulip mania in February 1637 tulip contracts sold for more than 20 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman. It is generally considered the first recorded  speculative bubble. The term "tulip mania" is often used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble.^{"
Wikipedia article}

Apparently there is some debate about the extent of the mania, see article here and whether it was exaggerated in the 19th century book Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which is still a good read. It is also suggested that there was a speculative bubble in hyacinths in the early 19th century. (Is there a Regency spy plot with a twist there?)  I find it totally delightful that people could become so fervent about flowers.

It's not gone away. Also from Wikipedia. "Garber also notes that, "a small quantity of prototype lily bulbs recently was sold for 1 million guilders ($480,000 at 1987 exchange rates)", demonstrating that even today flowers can command extremely high prices."

Perhaps speculation in tulips was all good business after all.

Moving on, we have the South Sea Bubble that occurred through overheated speculation in the shares of the South Sea Company. The stock price collapsed after reaching a peak in September 1720.

The South Sea Company (1711 – c1850s) was an English company granted a monopoly to trade with South America under a treaty with Spain.

I don't really understand this one, but it has all the feel of modern economics. Again, from Wikipedia.
"In return for its exclusive trading rights the government saw an opportunity for a profitable trade-off. The government and the company convinced the holders of around £10 million of short-term government debt to exchange it with a new issue of stock in the company. In exchange, the government granted the company a perpetual annuity from the government paying £576,534 annually on the company's books, or a perpetual loan of £10 million paying 6%. This guaranteed the new equity owners a steady stream of earnings to this new venture. The government thought it was in a win-win situation because it would fund the interest payment by placing a tariff on the goods brought from South America."
Wikipedia article

At the same time -- financial irresponsibility, or perhaps just extravagance, must have been in the air -- France was inflating the Mississippi Bubble Similar idea. Different location.

Things don't change, do they?

Do you know of any other historical bubbles?

What fiction has used these bubbles as plot elements?

What about other financial elements in novels? There's the famous buying at the right time at the end of Heyer's A Civil Contract, of course. (I wrote the foreword to Harlequin's reissue of that, so it's another book you winners could have a copy of.)

I used the Duke of Bridgwater's problems with raising money for his canals in Tempting Fortune. For dramatic purposes, it's useful that back then stock holders in companies were responsible for company debts.

Something about that was part of the Poldark books. Does anyone remember the details? Ah, that made a grand TV series, didn't it? Why aren't they making them like that anymore?

Do you think financial matters are a rich lode untapped for historical fiction, or is it all too mundane, and best left alone?

So that's what popped into my mind in this week of interesting financial times. Share your thoughts.

I'm off to Ottawa next week to speak at the Sweet and Spicy conference there. There's a signing on the Sunday, so if you're in that area, come and say hello.

Jo

Wild in the City

by Mary Jo

My thanks to Pat for swapping days with me.  I was scheduled for Monday, but over the weekend I spoke at a writers' conference in Columbus, Ohio, then went down to Cincinnati to stay with a friend. Our plans were upended by a huge windstorm that knocked out electricity to 90% of the metropolitan area.  The damage is still far from repaired, and the situation inspired reflections on how life was lived in the days before electricity.  Perhaps I'll ruminate on that another day.  (But I had a great time, even if it wasn't exactly what my friend and I had planned on doing. <g>)

Today's official topic is how we react to wildlife.  When people visit Kruger National Park in South Africa, one of the world’s great wildlife preserves, it’s natural for cars to cluster on the road to watch when something really cool is visible, like rhinos in a mud wallow or a band of elegant, improbable zebras drift by.  On the plains of Africa, wildlife is majestic and heart stopping (and the humans are caged in their vehicles. <G>)

The same thing happens on Assateague Island when any of the famous wild ponies amble into view.  Less obvious is how suburbanites stop their cars to watch the woodchucks that hang out in a culvert by a street.  The woodchucks (aka, groundhogs or even whistlepigs, a great name!) like to come out and graze the grass early and late in the day.  (http://www.groundhoglearningzone.com/ )

I’ve been to KNP (I shot the pictures above) and I also know that culvert and those woodchucks.  (Originally a possum lived there, but he’s gone and the woodchucks moved in. I think the possum was a developer who fixed up the culvert, added gas heat and a fireplace, then flipped it to the woodchucks so Mr. Possum could move to Miami beach, but that’s just a theory.)  Every time I drive by, I look to see if Mr. Woodchuck or any of his family are out.   

So even though people flock to the diversity and excitement of cities, we love seeing wildlife.  The key is that it’s wild.  Unpredictable.  Unexpected.  Few creatures are more lovely than deer gliding out of the woods at dusk, even if you hope they don’t eat the shrubs.  One can argue how wild these deer are—some people try to chase them off with banging pots and pans and just get a bored stare in return—but they certainly aren’t domestic. 

Sophisticated city folk will stop their cars to watch a mama goose and her goslings waddle across the road.  And bird watching is one of the most widespread pastimes in the country.  Not serious, life-list bird watching, but the hang-a-feeder-from-the-pine-tree-and let’s-look-at-the-goldfinches kind of watching.  And what can be more magical than a hummingbird whirring in to feed at a hanging basket of red petunias?

Even squirrels, wicked little critters though they are, are delightful to watch.  (A shop near me that is devoted to wild bird feeding has a sign that if your check bounces, there will be a $25 fee, and ‘we’ll release two gray squirrels in your yard.’  Now that’s a threat!

We are creatures of nature, after all, and there are few among us who don’t enjoy the beauty of unexpected wildlife.  (Mosquitoes are also unexpected wildlife, but not so much fun.)

Historically, in a more agrarian world, there was a lot more nature around.  Foxes snacked on chickens, cats were kept to keep the rodent population under control, badgers went about their business.  Certainly our ancestors were more matter of fact and much less sentimental about wild animals.  The bunnies I see in my neighborhood are cute, but to predators, bunnies are the Big Macs of the food chain.  It’s all in your perspective. 

When I moved to England some years back, I was startled to go to the Oxford city market and see game hanging besides stalls.  Pheasants, rabbits, hares, and even full sized deer.  (Call me a hypocrite, but I prefer my animal protein to look safely neutral.)

To our ancestors, wild animals could be the difference between eating well and barely subsisting.  My father said that once on a hunting trip, one of his pals killed a porcupine and they cooked it.  His verdict: “It’s good for starving men.” <g>  But in a hungry January, porcupine stew might look pretty good.  A cook had to know how to clean, dress, and cook game, no wimpiness allowed. 

Perhaps it’s because modern urbanites tend to be pretty divorced from nature that we take such pleasure in animals.  Whole blogs can be written just about pets, and have been (let me tell you about my new cat!!!), but all animals can attract our attention.   In Pamplona, Spain, the annual Running of the Bulls is a test of courage (and stupidity, frankly), while Brattlesboro, Vermont has an annual festival called The Strolling of the Heifers.  (http://www.strollingoftheheifers.org/event/index.php )

When I was a kid in the wilds of Western New York, in the fall we’d drive across the county to watch the migration of vast waves of wild geese.  Endangered peregrine falcons became celebrities when they nested on the 33rd floor of an insurance company skyscraper in downtown Baltimore.  And movies about heavily anthropomorphized animals are reliable hits, especially with family audiences. (Babe, anyone?)

What about the animals in your life—not the pets, beloved though they are, but the wild animals?  The unexpected animals?  The working critters.  Do you have some magical memories you’d like to share?  Please do!

Mary Jo

I Don't Say Tomahtoe, I Throw Them

Pat Rice here:

Regular readers will recognize when I’m immersed in a new project because I inevitably emerge ranting about the problems of historical word usage and the modern reader. These past years, I’ve been tangling with the difficulty of translating 18th century French and a made-up Latin-based language into 21st century American, but now I’m going back to my Regency roots and re-learning the 19th century.

For whatever reason, the phrase barque of frailty didn’t ring right in my ear, even though it’s frequently used in romance. I have stacks of Regency reference books, and I’m perfectly aware that according to them the term is often used to mean a woman of questionable virtue, but I went with my instincts and googled it. I ended up on this website http://www.io.com/~dierdorf/nono.html and now I’m wallowing in my usual quandary between historical accuracy, modern American-English, and romance tropes. 

Admittedly, the website isn’t at fault for my rant.  They’re remarkably broad-minded about the  anachronisms in modern literature.  He even makes the same argument I’ve made that Greek and Latin etymology could be understood even if a word wasn’t in common usage at the time.

But the part driving me nuts is that “barque of frailty” is one of the many Georgette Heyerisms that haunt our modern historicals in our attempt to imitate “historical” dialogue. I suppose we could call Saint Georgette historical at this point, but the term was never a Regency expression. And that’s just an ice crystal at the tip of the iceberg.

There are tons of words like “fiancee” and “fanny” and “dashed” that the modern American reader would easily accept as historically accurate.  I knew that fiancee was Victorian and have spent a lot of time wording sentences so that Regency terms like “intended” and “betrothed” don’t grate on our modern ears.  I would never put “ass” in the mouth of a proper period heroine, but until recently, had I not thought it “sounded” American western, I might have considered “fanny” to be a polite euphemism. I hadn’t realized that even in modern British, “fanny” does not mean one’s buttocks but the female genitals. How many of you would have noticed if I hadn’t just told you? And while “dash it” might have been used by men as a euphemism for “damn it” in the Regency, the popular romance dialogue of “dashed” as in “The dashed cur ate my Hessians” would be incorrect until later in the century.

Likewise, had I written about a refrigerator, pharmacist, or neurosis in my Regencies, I would have had reader letters flying so furiously that I might never come out from under the barrage— even though those words have been in use for hundreds of years. Come to think of it, maybe I should find some way to use them if only to generate more visits to my website!

But should I use the words “cad,” for scoundrel, or “blink”—as in swift movement of the eye—I would be historically inaccurate, and my wager is not one person would complain.

So let’s have fun with our knee-jerk reactions to certain words.  What words or phrases pull you out of the story or cause your suspension of disbelief to come crashing down?  How many Americanisms have you caught in our supposedly British stories?  How much rope will you allow an author before you hang her? And my wondering mind wants to know—do you actually look up the words that throw you out of the story?

And the Winner is . . .

Sherrie, here, announcing another winner.  Jaclyne Laurin, please come to the winners' circle!  Because Loretta Chase chose your blog topic suggestion, you win an autographed book from her.  Please visit her site at http://www.lorettachase.com and choose a book, and then let Loretta or Sherrie know your choice.

Congratulations, Jaclyn!  Keep those suggestions coming!

Who is she wearing?

A good friend is a lovesome thing, God wot. (God what?- I never understood this one.)

At any rate, I asked my good friend and writer extraordinare, Joan Wolf, what I could put on my blog this week that was absolutely new, new, new.

And she came up with a doozie!

Here we go: What do you imagine your favorite writer is wearing when he/she is writing?

Wonderful. What fun! Actually, I'd been thinking about Fashion this week. It's in my new work in progress. And I confess I've been watching "Full Frontal Fashion" on Cable this week, since it's in NYC this week, the Bryant Park Spring Fashion Show ... No, I watch because those brittle gorgeous skiiiiiny models clumping around the catwalk in their impossible shoes, rattling their hip bones and shaking their non-existant boobs, awe me. Chic! Terrifying. And not one garment I could/would wear. But it did get me musing about fashion. When a writer works at home there's usually no one around to criticize but the dog or cat and they are too clever to comment.
But what do tfhe really high rolling writers we love wear as they pen stories about adventure, mystery, or soaring romance? Only underwear with holes in it? Ratty PJs? The latest thing in case the doorbell rings?

Now I can't and won't tell you what my writer friends wear when they create. I want to keep them as friends. And I've described my own writer's gear in interviews. Nor will I name any other breathing writers and what I think they're wearing. I wouldn't dare.

One of my favorite movies, ROMANCING THE STONE, showed a rich and famous Romance writer bumbling around her apartment in a lumpy old bathrobe as she went to work.

I always imagined Barbara Cartland striding around her study, dictating to her secretaries while wearing a pink silk caftan with Maribou feathers drifting behind her as she paced. Maybe a pink silk scarf on chilly British morns? And I bet she wore comfy mules, with fluffy feathers. But that was because of her cover portraits, I think.

I like to think that Shakespeare, another Brit writer, wore a long lavish red robe with a wide sash as he sat at a table and penned his plays. (A brimming mug of ale nearby.)

Dickens was fully dressed, I think, with collar buttoned and his shoes always on. I know he had a young mistress, but like my own Victorian grandfather, I can't remotely imagine him nekkid, or even half-clad.
I think Dostoyevsky was dressed to the nose, because Russia is cold.

And every Private Eye Mystery writer to this day probably emulates Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane in my imagination: they hunker over an old manual typewriter, wearing a night's growth of beard, and yet they have on sharp pin-striped suits with wide lapels as they write and drink from a whiskey bottle far into the night.

Who knows what science fiction and fantasy writers wear? Something out of this world in any way?

I believe Jane Austin wore a pretty morning gown, and took care not to get ink on her fingers.

It pleases me to imagine that Emily Dickenson wrote while stark nekkid. She was a sequestered spinster, but she had such fire and emotion in her soul. Yes, naked as a jay bird, and smiling to herself as she penned her passionate poetry.

Now, what do you think your fav writers here or then wear/wore to work?
And if you write, what do you wear when you do?

The most illuminating or amusing or downright ridiculous answer will get the author any book from my backlist.

To Tour or Not to Tour

  Scotland! I’ve been so fortunate to be able to visit there several times over several years … really, who would turn down a tax-deductible reason to go to Scotland?!

               

The place is wildly inspiring as well as tax deductible for a researching writer. I've been able to wander castles and ruins, sleep in ghost-inhabited manor houses, visit ancient cairns, medieval churches and old city quarters, all of which have appeared in one book or another; I’ve walked for hours in Edinburgh in rain, sun and fog; I’ve been through the Highlands in all sorts of weather, and some of the Hebridean islands too. I’ve stood on the shores of remote Highland lochs, jumped across fast burns and sunk to my ankles (and wheel covers) in muddy bogs; I've walked over narrow inlets and stood on windy cliffsides and sailed on boats through thick dawn mist. Yup, there are places in Scotland that really are as romantic, majestic, and/or atmospheric as reputation claims.

               

These are officially research trips, so I try to glean info for whatever I’m working on. Sometimes I’ve hit research gold, discovering information that doesn’t exist in books or online searches. A rusty old sign beside Loch Katrine telling about local whiskey smugglers gave me an idea for a novella (“White Fire” in APRIL MOON), and then my next Sarah Gabriel release, THE HIGHLAND GROOM.

And one day, standing in a quiet sunlit spot in a castle ruin, I suddenly imagined the strong-willed stonecarver heroine who became Alainna in THE STONE MAIDEN.

On a rainy afternoon in Dunfermline, I met an elderly historian who told me local historical anecdotes that have never been published (except by me!). Those nuggets added a deeper layer to the story I was writing at the time – LAIRD OF THE WIND. The hero, a close follower of William Wallace, feared that he had led betrayers to the patriot. The local traditions helped resolve the plot with a twist (and of course the hero found the love of his life!). Without that rainy afternoon, I might have written the story differently …

Now my visits to Dunfermline—one of my favorite peaceful places in Scotland—will come in handy again. My current novel-in-progress about Queen Margaret of Scotland is set partly in Dunfermline, where Margaret  and Malcolm Canmore spent much of their time. Until I can get back to Scotland, memories and digital picture files will do the trick.

               

And I’ve met people in Scotland who have become lifelong friends, who now visit me when they’re over here. Just last year I explained to a friend, Scottish musician Dougie MacLean (if you don’t know his music, you’re in for a treat!) about a plot problem in LADY MACBETH … how could Macbeth, fatally wounded in battle against Malcolm Canmore, travel the fifty rugged miles from the Highlands to Scone, as recent historical evidence indicates? Macbeth was severely wounded, and it seemed impossible. My friend pointed out that Macbeth would "just take a boat" -– heading for the coast instead of inland as historians assumed, he could have sailed down the firth to the River Tay. That made all the difference to the scene. I put my characters on a longship one more time....

               

Writing Scotland is a fantastic excuse to go to there, and I've often used what I've learned there ... but more often I research my books at home. Traveling for research is huge fun, but it's not essential to the writing process, especially for fiction. Many, many authors brilliantly evoke places they’ve never seen.

No matter how much in-depth, in situ research and trekking about we do, ultimately writing good fiction comes down to planting the self in the chair and getting the work done. Good writing relies on quality of imagination and the ability to weave what we’ve learned and imagined into a complete and convincing story fabric. Whether or not we’ve been to the places we write about isn’t the important thing … it’s writing about what we love and what fascinates us, and conveying that in the book. That’s what really counts.

Have you all been to Scotland, and if not, what's your favorite place to travel (in reality or in daydreams)? Do you notice in a novel when an author seems know the place well, either through traveling or through detail work done from home?

I'm offering a special prize this week, since I mentioned Dougie MacLean, who's currently on an east coast tour (check his concert schedule for tickets) ... a winner chosen at random from comments to this blog will win an autographed Dougie MacLean CD!

Slainte!

Susan Sarah

Mea Culpa

From Loretta:
Since I am in Deadline Hell and funneling all creating thinking into the WIP (now officially titled DON’T TEMPT ME) I once more dip into the Readers Questions bag.  This is not an activity for the fainthearted.  There are things with fangs in there.  This week’s is an older question from Jaclyne Laurin.  She’s actually asked several questions, with material for several blogs, so I’m snipping.

“I know that once a story is submitted to the editor, it goes through a series of proof-reading and corrections, reworking storylines and editing.  Why is it that after all that work some of these mistakes are still found in the story?  Do the authors not keep vitals on their characters in order to keep his/her description accurate all through the book?”

Last week, we had a lively discussion about titles, and how readers feel about mistakes made in that department.  It’s only one example of how easy it is for authors to make mistakes.  Including really horrendous, ridiculous ones.  I speak from experience.

I research the daylights out of my subjects.  I keep spreadsheets of character names, physical descriptions, dates of birth, dates of important events, and historical data.  I keep a notebook of facts and details I need to check.  A phrase in Chapter 2 might be too modern.  I’ve changed a character’s hair or eye color or name or age part way through the story.  I need to find out where a shop is.  I make a note in the notebook and go back to the WIP.

I do this because stopping to correct these kinds of details while in the process of writing disrupts my concentration, mood, and the story’s flow.  Because I revise so much while writing, it’s usually better to reserve the detail work for later in the process, when I’m cleaning up the manuscript before submitting it.  But sometimes, in the frenzy and exhaustion of Deadline Hell, I miss one of my notes, and the mistake appears in print, to annoy readers like Jaclyne, who wonders how this can happen, when so many pairs of eyes review my work.

Mistakes with eye or hair color or other vital statistics are the kind someone really ought to catch, same as they ought to catch a writer's using, say, "flaunt" when the correct word is "flout," or a comma where there should be a period, or a missing end quote.  If I’m such a babbling idiot by Deadline time as to miss an obvious mistake, a copy editor ought to catch it, and most will.  But I’ve never had the same copy editor twice, and as is the case in all professions, some are sharper than others.  (Along with covers, the subject of copy editors is one guaranteed to get a group of authors very excited.  And not in a good way.)

When it comes to historical detail or foreign languages (for Yanks, the latter would include British English), it’s mainly the author’s responsibility.  And this author, though a nerd, ALWAYS makes at least one mistake per book.  It’s not that I don’t care.  I drive myself  & others crazy with the obsession to Get It Exactly Right.  Yet inevitably, there are errors.  Because Nobody’s Perfect.  (For the best use ever of this phrase, please see Some Like It Hot.)

I could do a whole blog--or several--on the pitfalls of historical research, but foreign languages allow for an easy demonstration of the If You Don't Know It's Wrong, How Do You Know It's Wrong principle.

A few years ago I found out that there were a few errors in the Italian (pronouns and gender errors) in Lord of Scoundrels.  This happened despite my consulting books as well as people who spoke and wrote Italian.  Trouble was, I did not realize how difficult and complicated Italian was--trickier grammatically than French, for instance.  I did not know that the book I relied on was inadequate.  Neither I nor my consultants realized my queries to them should have been more detailed.  What I needed was an experienced professional translator, but I didn’t know enough to know this.

I cannot expect editor and copy editor to catch Americanisms (i.e., words or phrases the English wouldn’t have used) or anachronistic language.  So no, I can’t expect them to catch errors in every single foreign language that appears in my books--like Arabic as understood by English speakers in the 19th C (for Mr. Impossible).

Jaclyne says, “It sometimes annoys me to find these in the books I read, thinking that if I found them, they should have been easily corrected in the editing process.  It makes me think I should become a proof-reader... seems to me the ones that are supposed to do the job are only skimming the story, not reading it, and so, not doing their job properly.”

That may be a little harsh.  True, I and other authors have discovered errors introduced by others during the editing/copyediting/proofreading process--and not corrected, despite our protests.  We’ve also discovered mistakes that every single person reviewing the manuscript somehow overlooked.  But we definitely can't expect those reviewing to be omniscient.  We’ve all made mistakes, I think, for which we can blame no one but ourselves, and all we can say to readers is, Mea Culpa.

But I’d like to know what other readers think.  When you find mistakes in a book, what’s your reaction?

We Have a Winner!

Sherrie here, doing the announcement thing.  Sharon Baumgartner, you are a winner! Loretta chose your blog topic suggestion as the subject of her most recent blog, and that means you win a book! Please pick a Loretta Chase book of your choice and let Loretta or Sherrie know.  Congratulations, Sharon!

Remember, folks, if you submit a blog topic suggestion and one of the Wenches chooses it as their topic, you automatically win an autographed book.  Submissions come to me (Sherrie) and I add them to our master list.  When submitting a topic suggestion, please include your mailing address.  Thanks, and bring on those suggestions!

Secrets and disguises

Jo here, musing from Australia. :)

So what makes a historical a historical?

(And where do you stand on "an historical" and "a historical"? Maybe it's my English accent, but "an historical" sounds all wrong to me.)

Talking about this a few years ago, someone said, "Historicals always have masks and disguises."

That seemed too simple to be true, but there's a lot to it, isn't there? Not quite always, but a surprising amount of the time. So your mission, Wenchfans, should you choose to accept it, is to discuss this proposition* among yourselves, with examples, of course. (On right, a picture of a Venetian masquerade, with the disguises very complete.)

*Historical romances nearly always involve masks and disguises.

Because the basis for a defining factor is that others are not, does it also hold that contemporary romance rarely uses masks and disguises? If so, why? There are masked balls today, and other ways of temporarily changing appearance.

If the idea has any basis, what lies beneath it? Is it perhaps that the distance to the past makes carrying off a false identity more believable? Not sure that works for me. I was often exasperated by plots in which a husband can tryst with his wife at night wearing only a mask and somehow she never twigs. I think that one's gone with the dodo, but what makes a subterfuge plot work, and what makes it falter?

Of course The Scarlet Pimpernel immediately comes to mind, but he used a lot more than a mask.

I can look at my recent books and see the premise holding. Lady Beware starts with Thea not knowing who Darien is. He's not in disguise, but he doesn't introduce himself.

In A Lady's Secret, Petra is disguised as a nun. Certainly she has some right to the name and habit, but it's a disguise.

In The Secret Wedding, both characters are concealing the truth. Christian is merely going as Mr. Grandiston instead of Lord Grandiston, for his own good reasons. Caro, however -- Dorcas Froggatt as was -- goes through a series of switches as she tries to evade him.

My story in Dragon Lovers (The Dragon and the Virgin Princess) isn't exactly historical, but I'd say it's more so that contemporary, being set in a fantasy medieval-style world, and in that, the hero hides his true role.

Have you ever gone to a masquerade party in a costume that made you truly unrecognizable? How did it go?

So go at it, and as I may not even be able to chip in, talk to each other. Discuss and debate. Thrash this out.

When I get back, I'll choose the three posters who I think contributed the most interesting content to this blog and give each a book.

Have fun,

Jo

Rites of Passage, or Stops on the Schoolbus of Life

by Susan Scott

Labor Day’s done, and now comes the annual ritual at the school bus stop across from my driveway: tiny children with Elmo backpacks, brand-new sneakers, and too-short haircuts, hopping up and down with excitement as their moms try not to weep and their dads record it all with the family video-cam.  Yes, it’s the first day of kindergarten, an American rite of passage if ever there was one, the first bona-fide step away from home and towards adulthood, or at least as much adulthood (i.e., solo trips to the restroom) as can be credited in five-year-olds.

Farther up the street, at the bus stop for the middle schoolers, it’s a slightly different story.  They’re righteous and rammy and slugging one another with abandon.  They’re almost-big-kids, with their parents relegated to the next driveway, holding coffee cups instead of cameras. 

At the top of the hill is the stop for the high school bus, and there’s nary a parent in sight – except, perhaps, that anxious mom with a freshman daughter, slumped down in the parked minivan where she hopes no one will see her.  These kids are barely awake, languidly texting as they wait, while one couple elevates their morning pulse with a tangled kiss or two. There’s a jaded, been-there-done-all-that air to this bus-stop, which is of course blown away by the speeding (waaaaaay over the limit), honking cars driven by lucky juniors and seniors, freed forever from bus-purgatory by drivers’ licenses. 

But there are other rites still ahead for those seniors: SAT’s, prom, college applications, and graduation.  Looming ahead are college and jobs, first houses and mortgages, marriages and babies, and the whole cycle begins again.

Such are the milestones for modern American kids: first day of school, first boyfriend/girlfriend, first cell-phone and driver’s license.  There are zillions of others, of course, from first solo in the ballet recital to first home run in Little League, the first sip of forbidden beer to a whole lot of other forbidden things that parents would rather not think about.  While three years separates my own son (21) and daughter (18), they’re both excited about an upcoming first that they’ll share at the same time: voting in a presidential election.

All of which made me think of the big events that marked transition in the lives of young people in the past, say, two or three hundred years ago.  School was seldom in the picture, especially school beyond the barest basics.  If your father was a farmer, that first step towards maturity could be the first day you were deemed old enough to go out in the fields to work for the day, instead of being kept at home to help with your mother’s chores, or, if you were a girl, the first time you were considered responsible enough to oversee the kitchen fire and midday meal.

In my three historical novels, the 17th century women who became my heroines were considered self-sufficient at ages that would astonish modern mothers.  Sarah Jennings (Duchess) was a maid of honor in Charles II’s court soon after her thirteenth birthday.  By the time she was nineteen, Barbara Palmer (demurely painted as a teen-aged bride, left) (Royal Harlot) had already left behind her country upbringing, conducted passionate affairs with several different gentlemen, married, and become the mistress of the king of England.  Youngest of all was Nell Gwyn (King’s Favorite), who had found her first “protector” at twelve, and four years had become the most popular comic actress of her time.

If you were a boy of a higher rank, perhaps the most important first step would be your “breeching”, the shift from wearing a babyish gown to breeches like the men, or perhaps it would be the first time you were permitted to ride a proper horse instead of a pony.  If you were a girl, it could be the first time you were allowed to wear your hair up, or to attend a party with dancing at a neighboring inn.

Depending on your family’s circumstances, your father could sign apprenticeship papers that would take you away for years to learn a trade.  He could send you into service in a rich man’s house, or give you over to the enlistment officer for a career in the military, or marry you off to a suitable mate.

If you lived near one of the new mills or factories, your father could find you a job working dawn to dusk, even if you were only seven years old, and contribute your earnings to supporting the entire family. If you were more enterprising, you could bid farewell to your family forever and emigrate to a foreign land –– America, Australia, India –– where fortunes could be made and land was free for the taking.

For wealthy, titled offspring, the landmarks were grander.  Young gentlemen would leave behind the family schoolroom for public school, and a grand tour of the Continent afterwards, to be followed, perhaps, by a maiden speech in the House or overseeing an estate, or a younger son’s honorable career as an officer or clergyman.  For young ladies, a Season in London would be crowned with a match, and a marriage, and the serious career of being a wife, mother, and mistress of the household.

But on the whole, people haven’t changed much.  Whether 1808 or 2008, rich or poor or in between, the goal for parents remains generally the same: to see their child become a contributing, useful member of society, to find both security and happiness. It’s only the paths and the stops that mark the way that have changed with time, and with each individual, too. 

So what was a favorite “rite of passage” for you –– an event or moment that you were sure changed your life?  Was it something that seems charmingly insubstantial now (getting your ears pierced, or taking the subway without an adult), or one of life's perennial biggies, like marriage or the birth of your first child?  What was it that signified that you were at last on your way to being a “grown-up”?